Tag Archives: regional food system

Regional Food / Infrastructure Funding Opportunities

A number of funding opportunities have come across our desk in recent days and are well worth sharing.

The Ontario Catapult Microloan Fund for Social Enterprises has a fast approaching deadline (July 12). This program is designed to enable “social entrepreneurs and innovators to turn their ideas into world-changing impact by supporting promising early stage social enterprises with access to capital and [Centre for Social Innovation’s] existing programming and services.” Loans of up to $25,000 will be available to small (under 25 employees) social enterprises in Ontario. Fill out this pre-screening survey to determine if you are eligible for one of the loans. The inconvenience of the tight deadline is outweighed by the fact that, depending on your eligibility, the same application may qualify you for three other funding opportunities.

Ontario Ministry of Infrastructure has launched its Places to Grow Implementation program for 2013-14. The fund is meant to support research, capacity building and public education in the area of growth planning. Eligible applicants include academic institutions, sector/professional organizations, non-governmental/not-for-profit organizations and municipalities / administrative organizations. There is no deadline associated with this fund. (Au francais)

Federal and provincial governments have partnered up to fund Growing Forward 2 – Helping You Reach Your Goals. This program will support “strategic initiatives” that focus on innovation, competitiveness and market development. Eligible applications will come from organizations and collaborations, and there are three upcoming deadlines – September 5, October 24, and December 12, 2013. You can find more information at the Agricultural Adaptation Council’s page (with an excellent breakdown of eligibility and application process) or at the Growing Forward 2 portal.

The Community, the University, Sustainable Community Food Systems

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Working Together to Improve Regional Food Systems

Interested in learning about Community-University partnerships and their ability to facilitate healthy, sustainable community food systems?

Join us for a webinar, Wednesday June 26, 1 – 2 pm EDT

Hosted by The Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project of Food Secure Canada and Carleton University

All webinars are recorded and posted within a week.

Webinar description

In 2000, the Waterloo Region was recognized nationally and internationally for its innovative and comprehensive approach to creating a healthy community food system. It was through this approach that food was recognized as a key determinant of health. In this webinar, Katherine Pigott, Steffanie Scott, and Wajma Qaderi-Attayi describe two models of community-university partnerships in the Waterloo Region Food System.

These models are operating through the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo and through the Healthy Eating and Active Communities Team at the Region of Waterloo Public Health. We will compare and describe these two ad hoc models of community-university partnerships, both of which act as facilitators of a healthy community food system.

Our presenters:

Katherine Pigott has worked at Region of Waterloo Public Health since March 2000. Katherine has over twenty years experience in community based planning, systems change and policy formulation that spans health promotion, economic development, crime prevention, and environmental planning. In the course of her work, she has launched several businesses and non-profit ventures to meet social needs. She acts as Chair of Health Promotion Ontario.

Steffanie Scott is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo, and is engaged in research on sustainable food systems in China and Canada. She is President of the Canadian Association for Food Studies and is past Co-chair of the Waterloo Region Food System Roundtable. Steffanie’s next research project will involve developing a sustainable urban food system assessment framework, which will be applied in several cities in China. Steffanie teaches a 4th year course on food systems and sustainability.

Wajma Qaderi-Attayi is now working to complete her Master’s in Public Health. Currently, as a Public Health Planner Intern, she is working on the Healthy Eating Active Communities team at the Region of Waterloo Public Health, also with Health Promotion Ontario. In addition, Wajma is also currently precepting public health surveillance at the University of Waterloo.

Upcoming Webinars

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Scaling up Alternative Food Initiatives Embedded in the Social Economy

June 24th, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM Pacific Time

Despite the increasing growth and attention to farmers markets, CSAs, local food box programmes, etc., alternative food initiatives geared towards local production and consumption, many of which emerge from the social economy, remain minor players when contrasted with the conventional food system.

Key Challenge: how to scale-up alternative food initiatives so that they have a greater transformational impact in the larger agri-food system and also serve as a catalyst for broader societal change towards a sustainable and strong social economy?

The case studies examined in this webinar highlight the opportunities and challenges in scaling-up food relocalization without sacrificing commitment to social, economic and environmental values and goals.

We suggest the need to focus attention equally on building physical infrastructure and capacity (production, storage, distribution, retail) whilst also investing in social infrastructure and capacity (coalition-building, partnerships, clustering) required for a robust and resilient local food movement. We hope to initiate a discussion about the challenges and tensions between pragmatic and transformational approaches to issues of food security, food sovereignty, food justice and sustainability.

Featured Presenters:

Mary Beckie: Dr. Mary A. Beckie is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta. Her research and teaching focuses on sustainable community development, specifically the role of agri-food systems, community-based resource management and the social economy, and is grounded in the scholarship of engagement. Dr. Beckie holds a doctorate in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development from the University of Saskatchewan and has been involved in related work in western Canada, the mid-west United States, Europe, Cuba and Sri Lanka. Her previous research with BALTA focused on the role of farmers’ markets as catalysts in scaling local food systems.

Sean Connelly: Dr. Sean Connelly is a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the
University of Otago in New Zealand. His research and teaching interests are in human-environment relations, sustainable community development and local food systems. He completed post-doctoral research with BALTA focused on local food movements and sustainability and has a PhD in Geography from Simon Fraser University.

Register here!

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The Community, the University:

Working Together to Improve Regional Food Systems
Interested in learning about Community-University partnerships and their ability to facilitate healthy, sustainable community food systems?

Join us for a webinar
Wednesday June 26, 1 – 2 pm EDT
Sign up to receive call-in information.
Hosted by The Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project of Food Secure Canada and Carleton University

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“The Connected Organization”

Thursday, June 27, 2013 at 1 p.m. ET

Universities, non-profits, governmental agencies, and Extension systems must embrace the principles of the Connected Organization in order to thrive in the future.

Join noted author and speaker Dave Gray to learn how the principles of The Connected Company can be applied to institutions and organizations such as Extension. Gray will talk about why, to keep pace with today’s connected citizens, your University, Extension system, Governmental agency, or non-profit must become a connected organization.

Being connected means being deeply engaged with faculty, staff, partners, and clientele, changing how work is done, how you measure success, and how performance is rewarded. It requires a new way of thinking about your organization: less like a machine to be controlled, and more like a complex, dynamic system that can learn and adapt over time.

Connected organizations have the advantage, because they learn and move faster…While others work in isolation, they link into rich networks of possibility and expand their influence.

Register here!

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eOrganic
eOrganic now has more than 90 webinar recordings -on topics ranging from Brown marmorated Stink bug and late blight to organic farming financial benchmarks and National Organic Program updates- available at: http://www.extension.org/pages/25242/webinars-by-eorganic

Fortnightly Feast – vol. 9

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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.”

Is CFIA’s local your local?

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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:

the food originated within a 50 km radius of the place where it was sold, or
the food sold originated within the same local government unit (e.g. municipality) or adjacent government unit

It turns out that somewhere along the way the CFIA decided to do away with that policy and replace it (for now) with

food produced in the province or territory in which it is sold, or
food sold across provincial borders within 50 km of the originating province or territory

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

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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

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

Fortnightly Feast – vol. 7

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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.

Ontario’s “Local Food Act”

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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 Perth, Simcoe 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!)

Fortnightly Feast vol. 3

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2nd Annual UVM Food Systems Summit – June 2013
This June, UVM’s Food Systems Summit will be the venue for intense examination and exchange of ideas, knowledge, and practical skills. A valuable part of the summit is the The Necessary [r]Evolution for Sustainable Food Systems Conference on June 27.
Read the full story…

5th AESOP Sustainable Food Planning Conference
The next AESOP Sustainable Food Planning Conference will be held October 28 and 29 in Montpellier France. The main theme of the 2013 conference is ‘Innovations in Urban Food Systems’.
Read the full story…

Regional Sustainable Food Systems Coordinator (Oxfam)
Climate change, lack of access to agricultural markets, and financial resources, high food prices, dispute for natural resources, and gender discrimination issues are just some of the factors preventing a fair and sustainable food system for the people of Latin America. And with the aim to find lasting solutions to poverty, Oxfam is working hard to make a difference. Shaping plans and putting them into action, you’ll help us to help people to help themselves. Read the full job posting…

Waterloo Region Food Charter
Vision: A healthy, just, and sustainable food system is one in which all residents have access to, and can afford to buy, safe, nutritious, and culturally acceptable food that has been produced in an environmentally sustainable way, and that supports our rural communities. Such a food system promotes social justice, population health, and profitable farms, reflects and sustains local culture, and supports ecological viability.
Read the full Charter…
Endorse the Waterloo Region Food Charter…

More Money For Food Hubs in New York State
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The state is making $3.6 million available for the creation of four new food distribution centers that link small farms and growers to large buyers. New facilities are proposed for the North Country, the Mid-Hudson Valley, the Finger Lakes and Central New York. So-called “food hubs” were a major topic of discussion at a recent Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference at Saratoga Springs City Center, with more than 400 people on hand from Maine to West Virginia.
Read the full story…

Cooperative Community Shops
Community-owned village shops continue to be one of the leading success stories of the UK co-operative and social enterprise movement. In 1992 there were just 33 community-owned shops; 20 years on there are 303, with a further 20 anticipated to open by the end of 2013. Read the full story…

Home-grown food part of a new vision of urban development
Cities feeding themselves is an idea that is gaining traction. In Burlington, Vermont, more than 8 per cent the food consumed by residents is grown within the city limits.
Read the full story…

USDA Releases Report on the Growing Importance of Food Hubs in Rural America
…”The dramatic increase in the number of food hubs since President Obama took office has been supported by state and federal efforts including USDA programs like Rural Business Enterprise Grant, Rural Business Opportunity Grant, Value-Added Producer Grant, and the Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan Program.” Read the full story…

Exploring New Possibilities in Land Tenure
Partner wanted for new farm
We’re looking for a farm couple / farmer with experience in any of vegetables, berries, fruit, mushrooms, medicinal herbs and / or livestock to help re-create a farm, preferably using permaculture / biodynamic principles, on this 150-year-old former dairy farm. It ís 200 acres, about 50 acres pasture / meadow, most of the rest forest, in East Meredith, NY (Delaware County, near Delhi / Oneonta).
There ís plenty of water, sun and worms. The barn burned down. The land is organic (unofficially). Would like to develop a relationship beginning with rent or lease, leading to some kind of cooperative arrangement.
This is a unique opportunity for the right people to establish an operation from scratch. To discuss possibilities, please call Carl Arnold at 718 788 5944 or 607 278 5820, or e-mail resume and letter to carlarnold at mac.com

Metro Toronto Convention Centre and Local Food Procurement (YouTube video)

… and finally

Urban Food Strategies Webinar: Foodlinks European Research Project.
In Foodlinks we are analysing and engaging in knowledge brokerage activities and creating effective linkages between scientists, civil society actors and policy makers, to promote research and practice on sustainable food systems. To achieve this, Communities of Practice (CoP) were established in different themes, one of them revolving around Urban Food Strategies, where we are tackling the rise of municipalities and city-regions as food policy makers, pointing to new relations between the government and civil society.
In the framework of this work and jointly with Purefood European Project, we are holding a webinar on Urban Food Strategies to explore recent and ongoing research in this field.

The webinar will take place on 12th of March 2013, 15:00 – 16:00 (GMT)

After a brief introduction by Professor Kevin Morgan, Jessica Jane Spayde and Jess Halliday will present different structures and governance approaches that urban food strategies (UFS) and food policy councils (FPC) use in working toward sustainable urban and peri-urban food systems.
Jessica Jane Spayde will discuss the key roles UFSs and FPCs play in urban food systems. She will also discuss the ways in which UFSs and FPCs are focusing on integrating and facilitating between civil society, government, and the private sector. They also are using their positions to raise awareness of the problems in the food system, which helps create a culture where people are more likely to demand sustainability changes from governments and private food companies.
Jess Halliday will explore how each urban food strategy is enabled and/or constrained by its multi-level governance context. Using examples from her own research on UFSs in England she will set out a framework consisting of factors that can affect the ability of a strategy to meet its own objectives. She will explain how it can be used to draw comparisons between strategies in very different governance settings, and can be used to help cities formulate strategies that are context appropriate.
After the presentations, there will be an interactive Q&A session moderated by Dr. Ana Moragues Faus. Please join us for this exciting event.
Register here: http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=E953DA83824931
If you have any queries about the webinar or the Foodlinks project please get in touch: MoraguesFausA1 at cardiff.ac.uk
For more information visit: http://purefoodlinks.eu
https://knowledgehub.local.gov.uk/web/foodlinksurbanfoodstrategies

Nourishing Communities

Sustainable Local Food Systems Research Group

Tag Archives: regional food system

The Community, the University, Sustainable Community Food Systems

Fortnightly Feast – vol. 9

Is CFIA’s local your local?

Upcoming Webinars

Baltimore: A Healthy Food Access Case Study

Starting a Food Hub: Successful Hubs Share Their Stories

Free! Register Now

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

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

Fortnightly Feast – vol. 7

Ontario’s “Local Food Act”