British Columbia is Canada’s hotbed of local food action with active food policy programs in 16 municipalities, Metro Vancouver, local health authorities and the provincial government, according to a national report prepared for the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute.
“I was astounded that there were 64 food policy councils across Canada,” said Joanne Bays, a steering committee member for the report from Vancouver’s Food Policy Council. “Vancouver is really leading the way, but B.C. is a huge hub for food security activity, even in small towns like Kaslo.”
Ontario has 18 active food councils with three times B.C.’s population. Alberta and Saskatchewan have two each.
Local food systems and food security programs generally aim to increase opportunities for local farmers and food processors to sell their products and to ensure that people have access to affordable, nutritious food.
Goals laid out in Vancouver’s Greenest City Action include plans to increase local food assets, such as community gardens, farmers markets, orchards and urban farms made a big impact, said Bays. Those efforts redoubled immediately before and after the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, when thousands of new garden plots were created in city parks and public spaces.
“The food security movement has been active in this province for about two decades, but about 10 years ago we were able to get food security mandated as a public health function,” said Bays.
“Food security is acknowledged here as a core public health function. … So we actually have policy in this province — and it’s unique to this province — that requires the health authority to provide staff to support the development of food policy action groups.”
Since 2005, B.C.’s Community Food Action Initiative has supported dozens of projects and long-term programs through health authorities in B.C., but particularly in rural, northern and First Nations communities.
Gardens were planted, farmers markets opened and school-based farm-to-fork programs established, Bays said.
“This has been building for almost a decade and through these program funds have been released to group not just to build things but to establish relationships with municipalities,” she said. “That’s why we have so many in B.C.”
The work of local and grassroots organizations dovetails with the functions and priorities of higher levels of government.
While the federal provincial governments concern themselves with growing agriculture as a business and products as commodities for export and the province protects farmland through the Agricultural Land Reserve, Metro Vancouver is trying to bring idle farmland back into production and manage development pressures caused by urban growth.
Municipal governments and groups are trying to manage what happens between the farm gate and the table, she said.
Vancouver — and municipalities all over B.C. — are encouraging the growth of farmers markets to encourage demand for local food.
Some public institutions, led by the University of Victoria, are drafting local procurement policies, insisting that their food suppliers buy food produced as close to their kitchen as possible. The goal is to create viable, local markets for Vancouver Island farmers, reduce the university’s carbon footprint and create sustainable food systems.
The City of Vancouver recently created a staff group dedicated to encouraging the region’s hospitals, schools and other public institutions to buy locally grown food with the goal of encouraging the growth of local processing and distribution businesses, Bays said. Small and regional food businesses have largely disappeared from southwestern B.C. in the past 40 years as the food industry became increasingly centralized.
Bays was surprised at the appetite for change at the first roundtable meeting of the region’s institutions.
“They weren’t saying we’re not ready, they were asking for contract language they could take to their suppliers,” she said.