Tag Archives: local food

York Region Food Charter

Charter promotes a healthy local food system for York Region

The York Region Food Charter was unveiled on March 20th in Richmond Hill. The charter is a guiding document for the development of coordinated food-related policies and programs across the region’s nine municipalities. Aligned with the food movement across Canada, it promotes a system from farm to plate that provides access to local, affordable and nutritious food for everyone. The draft of the charter was developed last Spring in partnership with United Way York Region, through Strength Investments.

Read more

And be sure to check United Way York Region’s Strength Investments community fund opportunity: does your United Way offer this?

Upcoming Webinars

Baltimore: A Healthy Food Access Case Study

Thursday, May 16
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Pacific / 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Eastern Baltimore offers an important example of a city that has successfully implemented an inter-governmental initiative to increase access to healthy and affordable foods in underserved neighborhoods.

This webinar offers an in-depth exploration of Baltimore’s healthy food retail programs and accomplishments including its virtual supermarket program, the financing of two recent healthy food markets, and a just released study mapping food quality in Baltimore food markets.

Presenters Include:

  • Laura Fox, Director, Baltimore Office of Chronic Disease Prevention
  • Amanda Behren’s, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future Maryland – Food System Mapping Project
  • Dana Johnson, Market Leader Baltimore, The Reinvestment Fund
  • Patricia Smith, Senior Policy Advisory, The Reinvestment Fund

Register here

 

Starting a Food Hub: Successful Hubs Share Their Stories

Thursday, May 16, 3:30 – 4:45pm ET

Free! Register Now

Food hubs hold great promise for a myriad of positive community impacts – economic development and job creation, farmland preservation, environmental sustainability… the list goes on.
But how do you start a food hub?
This webinar brings together the stories of the formation and first year of three different, successful food hubs. Our presenters are all founders of their hubs. They will share some of the best decisions they made … and some of the worst. What types of contacts did they feel really helped their business to thrive? How much money did they need, and how did they get it? Why did they choose their incorporation status? And more…
Panelists:

  • Sandi Kronick – Eastern Carolina Organics
  • Chris Hartman – Good Food Collective-Head Water Foods, Inc
  • Jim Crawford – Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative

Economic analysis of local and regional food systems: Taking stock and looking ahead

The Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems and the Union of Concerned Scientists cordially invite you to a public webinar
Monday, May 20th – from 3:00 to 4:30 pm EST

Brief Summary – To address the current state and future direction of economic analysis with regard to local and regional food systems, Michigan State University’s Center for Regional Food Systems and the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food & Environment Program convened a meeting of a group of economists and local food researchers on January 31 and February 1, 2013.   This webinar will provide a brief synopsis of the meeting outcomes, with a focus on questions one should consider when conducting or commissioning a study on the economic impacts of local and regional food systems.   There will be adequate opportunity for participants to weigh in with comments and questions to continue to inform the discussion on future economic impact studies of local and regional food commerce.

To get on the webinar, go to: https://connect.msu.edu/richpirog

The webinar will be recorded for those who are not able to participate on May 20th.  For additional information please contact:

Rich Pirog – Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems  –rspirog@msu.edu

Jeff O’Hara – Union of Concerned Scientists – johara@ucsusa.org

 

Resources to Create or Expand Healthy Food Retail: Public and Private Grant and Loan Programs

Thursday, May 30
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Pacific / 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Eastern

This webinar will provide an overview of the “Find Money” section of the Healthy Food Retail Portal and provide examples of specific federal, state, and local resources that can be tapped to create or expand healthy food retail opportunities in underserved communities.

Presenters Include:

  • Pamela Porter, Executive Vice President, Strategic Consulting, Opportunity Finance Network
  • Christine Fry, Senior Policy Analyst and Program Director, ChangeLab Solutions
  • Khanh Nguyen, Portfolio Director – Healthy Living, The Colorado Health Foundation
  • Patricia Smith, Senior Policy Advisor, The Reinvestment Fund

Register here.

** NEW** Micro-Dairy Case Study Video

On April 4, at the OMAF and MRA- U of G Partnership Knowledge Exchange Day 2013: The KTT Toolbox, we took part in a workshop that discussed the processes involved in gathering and responding to user feedback, and the positive changes in the digital toolkit that resulted.

At the same event, Jordan Vander Klok won the Student Video Contest with his video “Building Regional Food Hubs in Ontario: A Micro-Dairy Case Study” [YouTube] – part of a series of video case studies currently being conducted by Nourishing Ontario.

Congratulations, Jordan!!

Community Meeting on Local Food System

Are you interested in a local food system in Huron County?
Please attend our community meeting to learn more and share your ideas!

Where – Stanley Community Centre just west of Varna
When – Wednesday May 8th from 6pm to 9pm
Refreshments available – doors open at 5:30
Please call or email to register:
Janice Dunbar 519.482.3416 ext.2255
jdunbar@huroncounty.ca

What we hope to achieve:

  • Create unified/common understanding of a sustainable food system in Huron
  • Bring learning from other rural areas engaged in sustainable food system efforts
  • Build momentum and leadership for a sustainable food system in Huron County

Some questions we hope to answer:

  • What does the system look like?
  • What are the missing pieces?
  • Who are the key players in the system?
  • Where are you? How do you fit within the food system?

Fortnightly Feast – vol. 7

Community Engagement: Pedagogy, Partnership, Practices
26th Annual Teaching and Learning Innovations Conference
Jointly sponsored by the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences and the Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Connie Nelson, Lakehead University
“Service Learning and Democratizing Knowledge”

In the past month we’ve seen a huge revival in the use of the term ‘sustainable’ in the foodosphere (that’s the ‘blogosphere’ as it relates to food) – as I tried to capture in the last Feast (vol. 6.2). Whether talking about farm insurance, food marketing, food systems, food justice, food hubs, food regulation, the future of farming, or the future of food, it’s gotta be ‘sustainable’ (again). Here is a small (but important) sample:

http://fox6now.com/2013/04/27/urban-farming-expert-promotes-sustainable-food-systems/

http://learn.uvm.edu/sustainability/food-summit/breakthrough-leaders-program/

http://www.farms.com/BASFconverstionsonsustainability/tabid/1247/Default.aspx

The Small-Minded, Small Farm Conundrum
Our ideas are not small in any way, but we end up time and time again arguing our case primarily on the basis of size.   … But size alone seems not to be the primary driver of risk.  Rather, such factors as time, distance and system complexity are the most immediate keys to controlling risk, and that would make local and regional food systems a critical part of any effective national food safety strategy. Read more

Local and Regional Food System Marketing Program Opens Up New Round of FundingThe USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has announced a request for applications for its latest round of funding for the Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program (FSMIP).  Two previous priority categories remain for the 2013 round of grants:

  • Creating wealth in rural communities through the development of local and regional food systems and value-added agriculture; and
  • Developing direct marketing opportunities for producers, or producer groups.

Read more

Greenbelt Fund Green Papers – Volume 6 – People: Attitudes and Beliefs
When making changes to the food purchasing process, the challenge public institutions face is that they tend to involve a long list of staff members that play a role in this process… Any one person on this long line of those directly and indirectly affected can stymie institutional change. It is therefore of utmost importance that relevant staff is engaged when initiating change. Read more

Locavesting is a call to rethink the way we invest, so that we support the small businesses that create jobs and healthy, resilient communities. Read more

… and finally, regular Feast readers will have been struck by the number of articles on the investment in infrastructure happening at a a state level in both Michigan and New York. Here’s more:

What is a food hub? Part 3: Michigan Hubs

The Michigan Food Hub Learning and Innovation Network facilitates:

  • increased learning, innovation, and profitability for participating food hubs
  • increased access to food hub financial and technical assistance, research, and education
  • increased business-to-business collaboration across food hubs.

Read More

State approves $2.5 million for Madison County ‘food hub’
The grants from Empire State Development Corp. will help Growing Upstate Food Hub LLC, a consortium of farm businesses, build the $4.2 million shared-use facility in Canastota. Read more

New Report Release from Nourishing Ontario

Research report shows how sustainable food systems strengthen the health of local communities

WATERLOO – A new report by Ontario researchers documents how farmers’ markets, co-ops and other sustainable food systems strengthen the economic, environmental and social health of local communities.

After extensive consultation with the Ontario food community, the report — called Models and Best Practices for Building Sustainable Food Systems in Ontario and Beyond — will be made available to the public today through the Nourishing Ontario website: http://nourishingontario.ca/models-and-best-practices/

Read more from the press release

Ontario’s “Local Food Act”

On Monday of this week, the Ontario government re-introduced the Local Food Act. The new Bill 36, “An Act to enact the Local Food Act, 2013” (pdf) contains two provisions generating most of the response in the press: local food procurement and Local Food Week. Some have complained that the Act would replace “Ontario Agriculture Week” with “Local Food Week” -by celebrating both in the week before Thanksgiving.

Local food procurement by public sector organizations is the focus of most of the Act’s provisions, which lay the groundwork for mandated “goals or targets” for various  sectors. These goals or targets are a way of addressing one of the practical constraints to encouraging procurement of local food in the public sector: metrics**.  Research on Ontario’s health care sector suggests that these mandated “goals or targets” are only half of the ‘metrics’ that are required. The report’s authors found that the province must first establish clear and definitive boundaries around the concept “local food” -and how it is to be measured- and then give public sector organizations the opportunity to establish baselines. This is the approach used by the Canadian Environmental Law Asoociation’s model bill [Ontario Local Food Act 2013 – pdf], which contained -as a first step- the assessment of existing local food procurement (along with production, processing, and distribution).

One of Ontario’s opposition parties has suggested that the province needs more food terminals, modelled on the Toronto terminal that handles most of the current produce sold in Ontario. Regions across Ontario (from Peterborough to PerthSimcoe to Ottawa) are currently taking action on their own to establish regional food hubs that would provide aggregation, processing and distribution infrastructure to service regionally-determined needs. Anyone who follows the ‘Fortnightly Feast‘ on this page knows that, just across our borders, the state governments of Michigan and New York are investing economic development money into the construction of “food hubs” to help drive regional recovery.

 

**(Note: other practical constraints to public sector procurement include i) the BPS Procurement Directive‘s non-discrimination clause; and ii) group purchasing. A recent policy report on local food procurement in Ontario health care concluded that even allowing local food exemptions for procurement contracts under $100,000 would have little effect, as most food services contracts (because of group purchasing) involve amounts larger than that!)

 

Engaging with local food communities

… from The Cord

Going local on food systems

Laurier professor urges students and locals to engage in their local food communities rather than getting food from abroad

James Shin  Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Behind the plates that get served at our tables every day, there are intricate infrastructures and economies that control how and where food is produced, processed and distributed. According to Alison Blay-Palmer, an associate professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, this current food system may not be the most favourable for our local communities. Read more

Fortnightly Feast Vol. 4

Notice Board

The call for abstracts for the 5th AESOP Conference on Sustainable Food Planning is now open. The conference will focus on innovations in urban food systems, with specific sessions on flows, land and governance.
Abstract submission deadline is June 15, 2013.

Social Innovation Pop-Up Lab, March 21, 2013 – Brantford
Finance, Farms and Food – Exploring new ways to organize and raise money for sustainable food system projects. If you are interested in some new ideas and can travel to Brant County on March 21, we encourage you to participate in this learning event. Come out to hear from a variety of organizations on how they are using new tools and approaches to raise money for sustainable food projects. Details.

Petition to Support local food & good jobs in Ontario
The Premier of Ontario has committed to re-introducing a stronger Local Food Act to support our local farmers and eaters.  We think the government can do more to create jobs in Ontario like they’ve done with sustainable energy, by supporting the fast-growing local sustainable food sector, while making the province a more awesome place.  Please sign if you agree and want more diverse local food!

draft Ontario Local Food Act, from the Canadian Environmental Law Association, with funding from the Metcalf Foundation, and building on work done by Sustain Ontario and it’s members.

Greenbelt Fund Green Papers: Volume 5
Access: Aggregating Ontario Product
Historically, farmers in Ontario have delivered their produce directly to local grocery retailers, restaurants, and institutions. This practice has largely disappeared for two reasons. First, distributors emerged as a one-stop shop for restaurants and institutions to obtain product, eliminating the need for multiple suppliers. Second, as franchises and corporate foodservice companies became more dominant, fixed contracts with select distributors to supply categories of products have become the norm. Read more

New  2nd edition of the Resource Guide for Organic Insect and Disease Management [pdf]
Brian Caldwell, Dr. Eric Sideman, Abby Seaman, Emily Brown Rosen, Dr. Tony Shelton, and Dr. Christine Smart

Upcoming WEBINARS

Partners from the Intervale Center, the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) and the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (New Entry) will discuss farmland matching programs, helping farmers access capital, and the structure and challenges of continued support for graduates.

Title: NIFTI Webinar 6 – Transitioning Farmers Off the Incubator Site
Date: Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT

Food policy councils are becoming an effective way to foster healthy food environments in communities across the country.  Join us for an in-depth examination of the successful Los Angeles Food Policy Council.

Title: Food Policy Councils: Improving Healthy Food Retail in a City
Date: Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

Limited retail access to healthy foods affects the dietary patterns and health outcomes of many Americans.  Join us to learn how new research and evaluation practices are helping to generate innovative solutions that stimulate change in local communities.

Title: Food Access & Health Impacts: Trends and New Research
Date: Thursday, April 4, 2013
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

New to us

Australian Food Hubs Network – understandizng, promoting, experimenting with introduction of Food Hubs to Australia
The AFHN is a collaboration of individuals from diverse backgrounds, who are bound by … the vision of fair, sustainable and resilient food systems for all Australians.
We recognise the severity of the many social, ecological and economic challenges our food systems face, locally, nationally and globally. We are convinced of the urgent need for transformative changes in these systems. Read more

Shocking

Could a simple green calorie label make people see nutrition-poor foods as healthier?

 

Food System Sustainability Gathering

South West Regional Gathering: Food System Sustainability
Addressing Local Barriers to Success

This one-day forum will bring together people from diverse sectors to identify and address current challenges to supporting a local, sustainable food system

When 
Monday, March 18, 2013
(Registration/ Networking   9:30)
Program – 10 am to 3 pm

Grey Bruce Health Unit
101 17th Street East,
Owen Sound

For further details