Helping to connect good food with low-income communities
Upcoming Webinar: Wednesday October 9, 2013 12-1pm EDT
Join Community Food Centres Canada on October 9 from 12-1pm EDT for a webinar featuring Gillian Flies of The New Farm and Ayal Dinner from the West End Food Coop.
When: Wednesday October 9, 2013 12-1pm EDT
Where: Your Computer – Register Here! – https://cfccanada.
How Much: Free!
From Food in the Hills:
The food hub concept, which is gaining traction throughout North America, holds the solution to a problem that continues to bedevil the local food movement, and that is lack of infrastructure. How can local growers, farmers and artisans aggregate, process, market and share their goods? How can they get what they grow and produce from their fields and home kitchens to the consumer’s dining table and local institutions? Food hubs are the missing link in the local food chain. Read more…
Job Post:
ALUS is hiring a Business Development & Research Coordinator to support the development of a national ALUS business model. This position is ideal for an individual with a background in business and an interest in sustainable agriculture, ecosystem services and valuation, and the role of business in environmental sustainability. For more information, contact Lynn Bishop, Ontario ALUS – General Manager: lbishop@deltawaterfowl.org
“Food and Healthcare: Does Local Fit?”
Co-hosted by the College of Management at the University of Guelph, My Sustainable Canada, and the Agri-Food and Rural Link, this symposium will be held in the OMAF Conference Centre in Guelph, Ontario on Friday, September 13th, 2013 from 9:00 am -1:00 pm.
Research Highlights:
Exploring the Feasibility and Benefits of Incorporating Local Foods into Ontario’s Health Care System
The project’s objectives were to establish the current state of food provision in Ontario’s health care system and to gain an in-depth understanding of the opportunities and constraints impacting food provision decisions in Ontario’s health care system. Read more…
Sugar beet industry converts to 100% GMO, disallows non-GMO option
The US sugar beet industry coordinated an industry-wide conversion to genetically modified sugar beets, thus eliminating a non-GMO alternative for food manufacturers and consumers. Read more…
More Releases from the Holland Marsh:
Moving Farming Forward
https://vimeo.com/channels/
Bonus Video:
http://www.king.ca/Business/
Adapting for the Future
https://vimeo.com/channels/
Holland Marsh Soupfest
https://vimeo.com/71869053
Cultivating Opportunities: Canada’s Growing Appetite for Local Food
The Conference Board of Canada offers a report that “examines the economic impact of local food systems in Canada and the challenges and opportunities local food poses for consumers, governments, and industry”. Read more…
For the faithful reader of this post, and those interested in the creation of sustainable regional food systems, here are two wonderful sources of news, information and events:
The Locavore News Editor, Elbert van Donkersgoed, puts together concise but informative summaries with links to only the most interesting and relevant stories about local food on the internet. These stories are carefully separated into three separate weekly posts, with Ontario-based, Canadian and international versions. Information about Locavore News is available on the Terra Coeur website. This includes an archive of past issues of Locavore News. To add your address to the Locavore News distribution list, send an email to: Plumbline-subscribe@
Along with a huge amount of information on their policies, policy papers, consultations and campaigns, Sustain Ontario also has three streams of food news: from SO, from their member organizations, and from around the world. You can also subscribe to have Good Food Bites sent to you every Wednesday, or to receive monthly updates about the work of the Alliance and opportunities to support food and farming in Ontario.
Seems to be all food hubs, all the time – particularly south of the border, where state and local planning and economic development efforts appear to be following the lead of the USDA in advocating the value of these regional food hubs:
NC Are Food Hubs the Key to Expanding Regional Food Systems?
WI Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative and institutional procurement
July 13th, 2013 marks Meal Exchange’s fourth annual National BBQ Day (TM), a nation-wide celebration of locally sourced foods. Why go local? Buying local benefits your food system,your local economy as well as your taste buds. With farmers markets popping up everywhere during the summer, it’s never been easier to make the right choice.
Great, so where’s the BBQ? Well… It’s in your backyard!
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is undertaking an online consultation on its
Food Labelling Modernization Initiative, until August 30, 2013. The supporting document prepared by CFIA -the Discussion Paper for Food Labelling Modernization– suggests that this is driven by changes in production, processing and global trade, but also by consumers, who “… are looking for more diverse and innovative food choices.
While much attention has been devoted to CFIA’s changing definition of “local food” -and this has raised interesting conversations on the importance of local– it also opens the door to a reevaluation of CFIA’s approach to GM labelling. And given the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service has recently opened its own door to “Non-GMO” labels, such a reevaluation is more likely now than ever. And also more urgently required than ever, following the recent discovery in Oregon of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GM wheat seeds -a product which was never commercially released- and CFIA’s recent approval of Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready GM alfalfa. This is a conversation that we must engage in, as part of the critical development and evaluation of sustainable food systems.
And that means, both in the info-tainment media and online, sifting through 1) reasoned, well-supported arguments; 2) venomous attacks; 3) meaningless, sycophantic drivel; 4) unhelpful exaggeration and 5) distracting disinformation, as well as 6) broad uncritical surveys, that present all of the above as equally deserving of your attention.
Based on the previous descriptions, it’s time to do some labelling of your own!
“Label” the following recent items from 1-6 … it’s fun for the whole family!
UK must become global leader on GM crops
GM crops won’t help African farmers
Choice of Monsanto Betrays World Food Prize Purpose, Say Global Leaders
World Food Prize 2013 Laureates
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s decision to radically alter their definition of “local food” has prompted a flurry of responses. The change to a broad definition was supported by large-scale food suppliers and those who felt that the original 50 km limit was overly restrictive. Others suggested that the new rule might be relevant in a province the size of P.E.I., but in larger provinces, the rule would invite market distortion through misleading messages on labels that undermine the efforts of local producers.
In other news…
Farm & Food Care Ontario is presenting Breakfast on the Farm, June 22, 2013, in support of Ontario’s food and farming industry.
Recent national opinion surveys in Australia show that, among other things, “85 per cent want ‘support for local and regional food systems’ to be in the top two priorities of a National Food Plan.”
The 15-member advisory council, which will be chosen in June, will also have to look at difficult issues like raising chickens and bees in the city, or how to set up a food hub at the local community league, said Hani Quan, principal planner with the city’s new food and urban agriculture strategy. Read more…
The first in a series of meetings to discuss the concept of a local sustainable food system in Huron County was held last week in Varna.
Presented by consultants Mary Ferguson and Ryan Turnbull, the goals of the meeting May 8 were to “create a unified understanding of a sustainable food system in Huron, bring learning from other rural areas engaged in sustainable food system efforts and build momentum and leadership for a sustainable food system in Huron County.”
Last week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced its intent to review the term local in relation to food. Calling this undertaking “an initiative to modernize its food labelling approach” the agency promises to soon seek input that will help it better define the meaning of local. Its old definition deemed local food to mean that:
It turns out that somewhere along the way the CFIA decided to do away with that policy and replace it (for now) with
That interim policy is apparently considered less “outdated” and better suited to the “current food production practices” and “consumer needs and expectations”.
I am currently living in Nova Scotia, where many of us do indeed consider anything that comes from this province to be local. But this is a province of roughly 55 thousand square kilometers and fewer than one million people. In contrast, Ontario boasts 20 times the area and more than 10 times the population. Some Ontarians who live in the North would not accept that Southern Ontario food is “local”, as was made clear in a recent province-wide report Models and Best Practices for Building Sustainable Food Systems in Ontario and Beyond. Moreover, our report highlights the need to recognize the unique needs and circumstances of each food region and even each community. Many of our research participants were particularly dismayed by one-size-fits-all approaches, and would be concerned that such disparate food regions would even be thought of as one locality. Local can mean different things in different places. The diversity of geography, demography, and scale in Ontario’s food system could not be overstated and to fail to recognize that is to disconnect policy from reality.
The Canadian Association for Food Studies listserv saw a flurry of exchange on the issue this week. Many of the discussion participants see the CFIA’s interim definition as inadequate and really missing the point of the increasingly popular turn to local – a turn that, in most general terms, aims to address multiple ills of the current food system and not just the simple mileage issues. As one post suggested, the attempts to “operationalize” local result in an “artificial geo-political boundary” that, according to another post, ”does not begin to address all that we need to do in rebuilding healthy citizens and foodsheds.”
In my work, I have criticized food labels as shortcuts meant to stand in for informed consumption. They are easily manipulated, and yet they reassure us that we don’t need to know our food beyond the messages on the packaging. Such shortcuts quell our curiosities and lull us further into food oblivion. They make us ask fewer questions and justify our convenient choices. And they also shape our perceptions of the world making us think that there is a definitive authority on such things as local, and that someone, in this case the CFIA, is being accountable for the well-being and honesty of our food system.
Local is diverse. It is at the same time vague and meaningful, and no one geographical definition can quite encompass all the different things that local embodies. A province-based definition can hardly begin to reflect that. The upcoming CFIA’s consultation must include considerations of regional foodsheds, layers of diversity, and the multiple goals that are embedded in local. This may possibly mean no policy at all, and it certainly means that a policy that relies on the “province or territory” as the foundation of its definition completely misses the mark. To that end, I invite you to keep an eye on the CFIA’s website and have a say in the consultation in any way you can. Perhaps the diversity of local can be reflected in the diversity of our submissions.
Irena Knezevic is a Nourishing Ontario research associate and a postdoctoral fellow at FoodARC. The views expressed in this post are her own and do not necessarily represent either of those organizations. Irena can be reached at irena.knezevic@msvu.ca