Solutions for expanding local agriculture was the topic of a recent conference attended by Russell Brewer, City of Powell River councillor.
The Centre for Civic Governance’s Food for Thought: Progressive Governance Forum, held in Vancouver recently, presented an in-depth exploration on the emerging subject of food security.
Brewer said he came away with a broader vision of how the issue might be addressed to serve needs on the Sunshine Coast.
“They make you think in a broader sense of larger issues,” Brewer said. “They tend to survey the situation over a longer period. We are stuck in five-year time frames in local government.”
Advocacy and leadership roles, developing a living wage policy—the minimum needed for workers to meet their needs—and policy strategies to preserve and protect the agricultural land reserve (ALR) were some of the issues covered.
“The organization facilitates lines of communication between local government and provincial government through like-minded elected officials,” Brewer explained. “This conference in particular presented a good focus on secure food production.”
Attention focused on use of the land by indigenous communities.
“For thousands of years indigenous communities have been sustained through close relationships with the land, with air and water, and with soil, plants and animals,” Brewer said. “Looking at indigenous food sovereignty gives us a way to restore systems wherever necessary and to create opportunity for individual health and community development.”
Brewer said some of the highlights from the workshop on climate change and food production defined key factors municipalities will face in adapting and maintaining effective food systems as a foundation of sustainable society.
The conference report stated that emerging issues from the effects of global warming on agriculture will change drastically over time. Food producers will face shifting economic, environmental and social dynamics as well as challenges around availability of resources. A presentation on poverty and access to food for low income families looked at developing social structures to support long-term community health, to preserve dignity of those in need, and to create opportunities for people to thrive.
“These include looking beyond food banks and emergency services,” Brewer said. “One of the take-home messages was that there is a push on for moving away from fossil fuels and increasing our dependency on sustainable resource. This means creating opportunity for growing our food closer to home, removing the cost and effects of long-distance transportation.”
Culinary tourism was also a popular subject, according to Brewer. It has become an economic driver throughout much of the province and provides opportunities for economic development and to strengthen existing and emerging food production.
“An effective investment in agriculture and culinary tourism could provide an opportunity to create education programs for students,” Brewer explained. “If we can tie in with what’s going on right now in local food production it could go a long way to revitalizing the economy here.”
Brewer pointed out that there were some examples from attendees from other jurisdictions who’d successfully developed food policy and said there were numerous spinoff benefits, including increasing small business, growing food locally rather than importing it, and providing the groundwork to expand agriculture.
“The role for local government could be in bringing stakeholders together and jump-starting the conversations that need to happen,” he said.
“If we are only growing two per cent of the food we consume, we need to figure out ways to reduce the barriers that keep us from expanding: look at access to land, available knowledge and access to funds.”
Brewer explained that at the Richmond Farm School, students go through the program at Kwantlen College, and at the end of the program they must present a business proposal. If they’re successful, they get a piece of land from the district to grow on for three years.
“We have PRSC properties here we may be able to do this with,” he suggested. “A lot of discussion is already happening, but local government needs to join in.”
