Charting the Future of Food; Exploring a Sault Food Charter Taste 10 fruits and vegetables every day Eat local, organic and fair trade food Share sit-down home cooked meals Debbie Field FoodShare Toronto Know where your food comes from Grow food in your community Don’t truck it in or out--compost! Ensure everybody can afford good food Invest in our children and their nutrition Sustain our farmers and rural communities Friday November 5th, 2010 Willowgrove United Church 55 Tilley Road

Food Charters Across Canada Municipal governments in Canada that currently have food charters include: Toronto, Sudbury, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Kamloops, Kaslo, Merritt, Ottawa, Montreal, Central Okanagan, North Okanagan, Shuswap, Vancouver, Thunder Bay. The Saskatoon Health Region recently adopted a Food Charter as well as the Capital Regional District (Greater Victoria, BC,) The Province of Manitoba was the first Province to adopt a food charter and the Province of Saskatchewan is currently developing and exploring the adoption of food charters. As well, a proposal was recently presented to the House of Commons to adopt a Canadian Food Charter.

Toronto’s Food Charter-- 2001 champion the right of all residents to adequate amounts of safe, nutritious, culturally-acceptable food without the need to resort to emergency food providers; advocate for income, employment, housing, and transportation policies that support secure and dignified access to the food people need; support events highlighting the city’s diverse and multicultural food traditions: promote food safety programs and services: sponsor nutrition programs and services that promote healthy growth and help prevent diet-related diseases: ensure convenient access to an affordable range of ensure convenient access to an affordable range of healthy foods in city facilities: adopt food purchasing practices that serve as a model of health, social and environmental responsibility; partner with community, cooperative business and government organizations to increase the availability of healthy foods; encourage community gardens that increase food self-reliance, improve fitness, contribute to a cleaner environment, and enhance community development; protect local agricultural lands and support urban agriculture; encourage the recycling of organic materials that nurture soil fertility; foster a civic culture that inspires all Toronto residents and all city departments to support food programs that provide cultural, social, economic and health benefits; work with community agencies, residents’ groups, businesses and other levels of government to achieve these goals.

The community food movement is: Growing food in front yards, community gardens or local farms; Distributing food for the local market; Involved in school based student nutrition programs; Making a point of buying fair trade, local or organic food; Involved in food policy or government lobbying; Trying to eat healthier foods; Celebrate culture and family through food.

We are living in difficult times when it comes to food Hunger remains a big problem; The least healthy foods are promoted by the dominant food system; Farmers have a hard time making a living; Agriculture is not environmentally sustainable; Many illnesses are connected to what people eat; You could say that society puts food last, rather than first as a priority.

And we have had a few difficult years Haiti is the paradigm of all that is broken; A substantial increase in global hunger; Pandemic of obesity and diabetes; Environmental and farm unsustainability; Bees are sick for a variety reason; Canada’s Listeria and food safety crisis; And now a world wide depression. Our food system as it is now organized is in big trouble.

The food system as it is currently organized has many problems. Why: is there increased and intensified hunger in such a rich country? are so many family farms facing bankruptcy and difficulties? does the dominant food system promote the least healthy food? does mainstream agriculture demand so many energy and chemical inputs? is there less and less family and community food activity?

Our current food system is characterized by three dominant problems: Hunger Unhealthy Malnutrition/Over-nutrition Agricultural unsustainability

Global Hunger 1.1 billion go to sleep hungry War Poverty Drought Mismanagement of Soil Trade Lack of Sustainable Agriculture Putting Food Last

And food banks are such a symbolic expression of these problems…….                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Across Canada, 3-5% of people use a food bank, and an equal number go hungry while10% of our population are food insecure… and 60% of those who are hungry are children. And food banks are such a symbolic expression of these problems…….

In a world of plenty, hunger is a distribution problem. We have commodified a basic need and created a monopoly game -- to eat people need the chips to play, and if you are poor you are out of luck. We all agree that the single most important policy change needed to reduce hunger is to ensure adequate incomes through: Increasing minimum wage to $12/hour Restoring 25% cuts to social assistance and as well as a cost of living increase for the past decade.

Global (Over) Malnutrition 1 Global (Over) Malnutrition 1.1 billion go to sleep at risk of illness from too much food Fast Food Industry Overly processed food Billions spent on advertising junk food Food industry not concerned with health Obesity, particularly childhood Chronic illness -- cancer, diabetes, health World Watch July/August 2000 “Hunger and Glut --Over a Billion are undernourished, over a billion are fat”

The dominant food system is not based on promoting healthy foods:“Without societal changes, a substantial and steadily rising proportion of adults will succumb to the medical complications of obesity; indeed the medical burden of obesity already threatens to overwhelm health services.” WHO April 17, 2004

Our issues: The industrial food system is totally unsustainable, environmentally destructive and not capable as it currently constructed to do anything meaningful to end hunger or promote healthy food or ensure the survival of the family farm

Food has become just another way to make money Industrialization of our food system has enabled multinational, profit-driven companies to replace family farms with agribusinesses that care more about the bottom line than about what industrialized, monoculture growing systems are doing to our environment, our health and our future. This system doesn’t care about the health of food or farmer’s livelihood, just profits. Food has become just another way to make money

Negative Net Income for Farmers Canadian Farm Income Crisis The National Farmers Union, “The Farm Crisis: Its Causes and Solutions”, Kananaskis, AB July, 2005

We are loosing our family farms at an alarming rate… We are loosing our family farms at an alarming rate…. In the US and in Canada…... in the US there were 300,000 fewer farmers in 1997 than in 1979 and they receive 13% LESS for every consumer dollar spent.

And we have destroyed centuries of traditional methods of fishing and hunting?

We literally put Healthy Sustainable Food Last and we need No priority on food security No government has a Ministry of Food Security No government leaders wake up in the morning and think about how the people of their country will eat? We literally put Healthy Sustainable Food Last and we need to start to put Food First

At the same time the community food security movement is building a movement that works to localize food.

Good, Healthy Food for All Working with communities to improve access to affordable , healthy sustainably produced food. Founded in 1985 with .5 staff and a small grant, now 50 full time staff, hundreds of volunteers, reaching 100,000 a year. -Budget of 5.5 million dollars, 50 staff in 2010 (30% revenue generation, 40% foundations, 10% individual donations, 15% government supported, 5% special events and publications)

FoodShare’s Field To Table Festival & Campaign FoodShare’s Programs FoodLink Hotline Food Justice Advocacy The Good Food Box Urban Agriculture Healthy Babies Eat Home Cooked Food Community Gardens Focus on Food Student Nutrition Toronto Kitchen Incubator Field To Table Catering FoodShare’s Field To Table Festival & Campaign

A computerized database of food programs The Hunger Hotline Now FoodLink -- A computerized database of food programs throughout Toronto

Gardens grow more than vegetables

Community Kitchens and Community Meals as Social Cohesion:

Without any federal program we began one school at a time to organize student nutrition programs

FoodShare’s Good Food Box -- Brazil’s Sacalao Markets Getting Food directly from farmers to urban people Looking South: FoodShare was influenced by programs from the south, particularly Brazil and Peru. FoodShare’s Good Food Box -- Brazil’s Sacalao Markets

Every Tuesday a small army of volunteers gathers to pack hundreds of Good Food Boxes

Over 4000 boxes are delivered each month to over 180 volunteer-run drop off sites throughout Toronto

I come to this movement as a mother worried about how my children were eating at school.. Canada alone in the world in not having a federal student nutrition program

Urban Agriculture Projects Salad Bar project Promoting healthy food Focus On Food: Youth Training & Employment Program Urban Agriculture Projects Growing food in greenhouses and in doors in Canada

Beekeeping Field To Table Catering Company In cities community food security means growing food. Beekeeping Our own brand of honey from our own hives

Student Nutrition 800 program 133,000 students Morning Meal, Snack, Lunch, Breakfast Municipal and Provincial $ Teach children and youth about food and develop their relationship with food, From field to table -those involved: farmers, schools (students, teachers and administration), orgs (like us), community Advocacy: change policies, advocate for national student nutrition policy (support for Olivia Chow bill: ? What is it called) Children’s Health and Nutrition Initiative (CHNI) prepare students for learning by nourishing the body offer regular nutritious snacks/meals, often introducing new foods encourage students to practice proper nutrition are open to all students and are non-stigmatizing Toronto Public Health, TDSB, TCDSB, TFSS, etc. Work in partnership to help provide breakfast, snack, or lunch to over 80,000 students daily in Toronto at approximately 450 schools and community sites

Recipe for Change -- Composting: hundreds of kilograms of vegetable waste are composted every week at Recipe for Change -- Changing the grade 12 diploma so that all students become food literate-

Social Policy Level This is the place it is hardest for us; Personal and Group action is important but we are now ready to move to the social policy level

In the middle of the great depression, Then Secretary of Agriculture Henry A.Wallace in the Roosevelt government went to a wheat field in Iowa to declare a new deal for agriculture USDA Surplus Food Stamps School Hot Lunch Program

In the south and in the north global food movements for change that do want to put food first…..

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                All over the world, food advocates are working with local government to make food an important planning issue. Municipal Secretariat of Supplies, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Toronto Food Policy Council, Toronto, Canada

FOOD CHARTERS:

At the local level: Agreeing to do everything in the power to not make hunger worse by advocating senior levels of government But also making the City a food friendly City Allowing People to grow food all over the city In Parks On the grounds of social housing Allowing Communities to set up Farmer’s and Good Food Markets

At the provincial level: “Nutrition Benefit” along the lines of the Universal Child Benefit redeemable at farmer’s markets; What if everyone in Ontario got a “Nutrition Benefit of $92/month redeemable at farmer’s markets? ALUS Supports for environmental farmers Change the education act – food literacy

Alternative Lands Use Service (ALUS) One of the most important movements and ideas to come along to try and fix the broken food system A food system that is not working to ensure livelihoods for farmers A food system that is not working to ensure environmental sustainability But a food system that also does not ensure that everyone has access to healthy food. It could help farmers and the environment; Alison will explain how it could work to improve the environment. But it could work to make basic food a right and also how it could work to help ensure that healthy food became the norm.

Last summer, Bette Jean Crews, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture asked “why …(do)…we subsidize health, education and roads but not food.” She said farmers need more money for their products and if doesn't come from what people pay in the grocery store, it will have to come from tax dollars through subsidies.”

Public Housing, Public Infrastructure Public Health Public Education Public Transportation …maybe public food?

At the federal level: Bring back the social safety net, Work with the provinces on a universal “Nutrition Benefit” Create a “National Child Nutrition Program” Create a Food Security Ministry

A Just and Sustainable Food System A food system that is just and that reduces and eliminates hunger; a food system that is just and allows farmers to have a sustainable livelihoods a food system that is just to the producers of the south -- Wayne Roberts -- it is local if you know the farmer's name A food system that promotes healthy food A food system that promotes family and community culture

Farmers’ Markets- “providing the link” Increasing as market share and yet only a fraction of our farmers sell direct to consumers

To deal with the complexities of the current food crisis, we are being called upon to develop a complex balance of pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.

Can the food charter help organize in the Sault? A food charter is a statement of values and principles that can guide food policy development related to food security. A food charter allows community members and other stakeholders to share their vision of what food security looks like for their community. A food charter can help secure the commitment from local government, businesses and others to move towards building a sustainable food system. A food security policy directs decision making and action related to issues of food access. A food security policy can be local, regional, provincial, national or institutional. BC Interior Health Authority 2010

What are the main things that could work to build on your successes in the Sault to ensure better food access, healthier communities….

The Food Charter: where you may want to work…. Growing food in your farm, front yards, community gardens; Distributing food to an emergency food program; Involved in school based student nutrition programs; Involved in cooking programs; Making a point of buying fair trade, local or organic food; Involved in food policy or government lobbying; Trying to eat healthier foods; Celebrate culture and family through food.