Communities in Transition Information Resource: Local food

Showing posts with label Local food. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Rural/Urban Divide, Part 1

by hanspetermeyer

I write extensively about living in a small city in a rural context, particularly from a "sustainability" perspective. Every once in a while I'm reminded that what I see as a continuum – from deep rural to deep urban – is experienced by others as a great divide: the city on one side, the country on the other. An example is the exchange that took place in the "comments" section after a post by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland here at CITinfoResource.com

Does it have to be this way? And is the perception of a rural/urban divide standing in the way of the kinds of transformations we need to see, in both urban and rural landscapes and communities?

Two romances...
There is a romance to rurality. Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above. Give me a ride-on mower and chainsaw to manage it – and a four-wheel drive pickup to drive to town in. Above all, do not fence me in with the language of the town or the city or with pretty words about "protecting the environment" at the expense of my livelihood (and with it, your urban standard of living, by the way).

On the urban side, the romance is about the pastoral idyll or untouched wilderness. All that open land and starry skies stuff is there to be enjoyed for its own sake – as an aesthetic respite from urban life, and as the source of ecological services (water, air) that make sustain our human settlements. I'll hug the trees – and protect the future of your kids and mine, rural and urban.

Romance and reality
These are generalizations. But the reality of living in rural BC does mean being close to the source of the province's historical wealth; it means living with logging, mining, the mess and dirt and smell of farming. But this dirt isn't a smudge on the rural romance; it's "honest dirt," the mess and muck of producing livelihoods for families and a high standard of living for the entire province, urban and rural.

As much as many of us are becoming aware of how destructive our rural resource extraction practices can be, our communities – including our urban communities – are still hugely dependent on them. As city dwellers, we still want our high standard of living; many of us also want to "protect" the beauty of the hinterland; and all of us have an interest in sustaining the natural systems that provide clean air, water, and mitigate the impact of climate change.

A shared – but complicated – romance?
In recent years I've seen some closing of the distance between the rural/urban divide. It's not that the romances have changed; it may be that a new romance is emerging, one built on food.

Urban dwellers have complained about the completely natural odour of their agricultural neighbours at times. But I've noticed a sea-change in how people look at even this issue, at least in my region. Nowadays there is a certain cachet in being reminded of food production in the neighbourhood. I think it has to do with the new "foodism" – a combination of concerns about "food security," "food sustainability," health, and gourmandism.

George Penfold has much to say about our recent interest in food. He's been a farmer, and he's widely esteemed as an academic and professional involved in rural and agricultural land use issues across the country. He's written for CITinfoResource on these topics, in May of this year and in September 2009. What he says isn't always that easy to stomach for someone, like me, who grew up in a rural context, worked on farms, but is now loving and living a much more urban foodie life.

George's comments are echoed by people like Gary Rolston, an agricultural consultant on Vancouver Island. I interviewed Gary in 2009 about "food sustainability and the Comox Valley." Our region is one of two major agricultural centres on the Island. But Gary suggested that our recent ag renaissance is a bit shakey. For one thing, locals who say we support increased local food production are, by and large, entirely unaware of what this will mean for demand on our already taxed water resources. We also have an over-developed imagination when it comes to how much food can be realistically produced. And, as George's comments on "food self-reliance" make clear, we will always be trading for many staples – unless we dramatically change our eating habits (dried fish and salal berries anyone?).

George identifies several forces at play here: continued high dependence on food production that is subsidized by (short term cheap) fossil fuels (and mechanization and transport), (short term) cheap access to land and water, a romantic and boutique approach to food purchasing, a standard of living that supports the latter and is built on the former. The forces are at play; they may soon - as with Gary's water issue - be in conflict.

An urban/rural rapprochement based on food is, then, not without it's problems. It's a good thing to support our farmers' markets and local food producers; but this really doesn't get to the heart of what ails our agricultural economy. And as George and Gary's insights suggest, a lot of our new-found urban foodism is a cleansed urban romanticist version of what food production is really about.

Having said all of that, I still believe that our faddist foodism is a potential bridge between urban and rural ways of looking at the land and our communities. Contact with food producers is opening our eyes somewhat to the messiness of production and rural life. There is an exoticism to this of course, but even as exoticism, it means we may be starting to appreciate the experience of rural food producers – and maybe, through them, their experiences as loggers, miners, etc. In short, food becomes a doorway to an interested rural/urban conversation, something that wasn't there a generation ago.

Getting visible
The rural/urban divide is a problem of conflicting romantic stories about what "rural" means. It's also a problem of invisibility. Our busy and self-contained urban lives don't have much of a view of the rural areas on which we depend for food, fresh water, our ecological systems of support, not to mention the resource industries that support us financially. Typically, our trips into rural areas are about recreational or spiritual retreat: we want and see only the pastoral idyll that gives nourishment; we ignore or reject the messiness.

People from outside the city are often also afflicted with a blindness – not to urban ugliness, but to the many good things that cities and urban neighbourhoods have to teach us about living together and about sustainability. Our shared romance with food (on both the consumption and production sides) is creating an opportunity to actually see a richer, more complicated relationship between urban and rural realities. If we're serious about the future of our communities – urban and rural – we need to be looking for this richness in each other's realities and in each other's romances.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Local Food and Agriculture: Six Questionable Assumptions

by George Penfold

Over the last few months I have attended several public events in the Kootenay region that have focussed on economic development. Invariably, local food and agriculture is part of the conversation. As I listen to comments, I hear several implicit and sometimes explicit assumptions made about local food and agriculture that need more careful consideration.

1) Local agriculture means local food.
This is a big assumption and one that is most questionable in my mind. Farmers are business people. Unless there is some agreement, through a Community Supported Agriculture initiative for example, I see no reason why farmers won’t continue to sell their products to the highest bidder, wherever they might be located. Food will move from one locale to another, based on market factors, other things being equal.

2) Local food will be less expensive.
Food is energy. As long as we have enough economic and political stability to have functioning markets, food prices will follow energy and the overall food “market” prices.

3) Local agriculture will result in local food security.
Agriculture is always vulnerable to disease, pests, weather, drought, and markets. All crop failures are “local” in the region where they happen, and we are not immune to these disasters.

4) We can expand the agricultural industry under current market conditions.
This will be very difficult. High land values, insufficient returns, lack of access to land and water, lack of skills, insufficient interest in “food” farming – among other things – all stand in the way of expanded agriculture. Strategies such as community supported agriculture, farm gate sales, etc. can help, but many farmers aren’t interested in that form of marketing.

5) Growing local food is ecologically sound.
If BC is only 50% self sufficient in food, and if we maintain our current diet, tens of thousands of hectares currently in grass and trees will have to be opened up to cultivation, and much of it would have to be irrigated. That change would have significant ecological consequence, even with organic or other so called “environmentally friendly” farming methods.

6) Local e.g., "100 mile diet," is the best strategy
Not all areas of the province, or even Western Canada, have equivalent resources in terms of land, climate, and water. The lower mainland and the Okanagan are well off. But what do the folks in Prince George and area do for a full range of food? The best of our lands are well suited for growing fruits and vegetables. Wouldn’t we be better off to grow fruit and vegetables here and buy or trade grain (by rail with peak oil) with the Prairies?

These assumptions and the questions they raise are by no means specific to the Kootenay region. You can find them in many "locales" where food, economy, and community sustainability are being talked about. You'll see them showing up in the food discussion taking place at CITinfoResource.com, or – to cite another region – in the conversation online at Sustainable Food Vancouver Island on Facebook.

Is it about food security?
Although many local food initiatives use the term food security, the need for basic nutrition – think of Somolia or Haiti – is not the issue either now or likely in the future. We do not have a problem with basic nutrition; in fact more of us die from eating too much than too little. We are rich and as long as food is available somewhere in the world, it will be ours, albeit at a higher price when peak oil unfolds.

We have always seemed quite willing to eat well while others go hungry while they watch "our" export food grow in their back yard. I see no evidence that we are inclined to move up the moral ladder to higher ground, especially if we have a crisis. Even if we did move up the moral ladder, or lost import options as a result of oil prices, economic or political instability etc. we are nowhere near having a basic food security problem. When I look at the consumption figures in Canada, it’s pretty clear that by changing our food lifestyle to include less processed grain in the form of meat, dairy, etc., and growing some of our own in our back and front yards, and if we reduced the amount of food we waste, we could be awash in food – especially grain – in one growing season (although we would likely have to develop "adjustment" programs for our dairy, beef and pork farmers, and put more dollars into CIDA to address the international consequences).

Or is it about protecting our "food lifestyle?"
More troubling to me is that some of the comments I hear seem to be about protecting our “food lifestyle,” a lifestyle based on the broadest range of possible choices. This food lifestyle is also highly energy consumptive and very injurious to the environment, land, and farmers in our own country and around the world.

We also seem to want to make sure that we can also have that lifestyle as cheaply as possible. It's more than food lifestyle, it's really lifestyle and food's role in it. Food for many is about status, entertainment, and convenience. Those values are a long way from a value set that would rebuild food and agriculture based on food as an integral part of lifestyle – hobby (gardening), social experience (community gardening, processing), social value (making sure everyone has enough), insurance (investment in food production in case things do go really sideways), and a more general focus on building more resilient regional economies.

Looking in the mirror

Perhaps the food conversation needs to shift focus? Maybe we should be talking less about farmers and agriculture, and more about our personal food lifestyle. This may turn us towards altering our food consumption choices and producing our own food. We need to look in the mirror; we need to look more critically at what is in our shopping carts; and we need to look at our own back (or front) yards, rather than looking across the fence at what farmers are, or are not, growing. That may be a much shorter and more feasible path to food self sufficiency and resiliency.

About the author:
GEORGE PENFOLD is the Regional Innovation Chair (RIC) in Rural Economic Development at Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC and Adjunct Professor at the School of Business and Economicsat Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. In 2005 the Real Estate Foundation of BC contributed $100,000 to the RIC endowment fund at Selkirk College as part of its support for sustainable community planning and informed development in the greater Kootenay region.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC/ 2010. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website for non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Dr. John Church talks about Cattle Industry Sustainability in BC's Interior

Dr. John Church is the Regional Innovation Chair (RIC) in Cattle Industry Sustainability at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. In 2005 the Real Estate Foundation of BC made an endowment grant towards the establishment of this RIC, one of a number that the Foundation has supported throughout the province.

In 2009 CITinfoResource editor hanspetermeyer interviewed TRU's Vice President of Research, Nancy Vanwagoner about the Cattle Industry Sustainability initiative. In this interview, Dr. John Church talks about the challenges facing the industry and the grasslands, and how TRU is helping to make a difference.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Beyond urban agriculture and farm land preservation

Editorial preface

We invite you to propose your own "guest column" with CITinfoResource. Currently we are hosting a discussion about food and sustainability.

Food production, access to affordable and arable land for food production – these are only part of a successful strategy for community sustainability. In our last CITinfoResource post we featured a guest column by George Penfold, BC's Community Economic Development Regional Innovation Chair at Selkirk College. There is currently great passion for local food self-sufficiency. George posed some sobering questions about our willingness, even our capacity, to seriously live out this passion. He suggested that there are significant choices facing us as consumers of food-stuffs and as local decision-makers if we are serious about developing locally self-reliant food systems.

The following article by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland adds another challenge – and opportunity – by suggesting some of what urban areas – even small urban areas, including the many small cities and towns of BC's non-metro regions – can do to support existing local food production. We hope encourage you, both as readers of CITinfoResource and as consumers of food-stuffs, to chime in with your own experiences of supporting or working with the food systems in your communities.

Beyond urban agriculture and farm land preservation

by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland

Food and agriculture have finally caught the attention of the planning and other professions – perhaps for the first time in modern history. At least that's what the 2009 summer issue of Plan Canada (Vol 49: No. 2) suggests.

This is a good thing. It shows that, as a profession, we are in a receptive mode, constantly learning how to balance the tools we have right now with the need to develop new ways to think about problems and their solutions. For example, urban agriculture and the protection of farmland are priority issues; but other opportunities and approaches are beginning to present themselves, and we must be quick to add them to the "food planning toolbox."

A comprehensive approach
The strategies for creating sustainable food systems in a city must take a comprehensive approach and consider the full range of elements of a food system – not just the current favourites like urban agriculture (eg: community gardens). Improving the food system has values beyond the production of food. We suggest that such improvement begins to give food the power to be an economic driver, a potent community building agent, and a key opportunity to decrease energy demands.

In order to capture these benefits, sustainability in food and agriculture must be approached with a systems perspective. This includes: addressing food processing, packaging, distribution, wholesaling, retailing, restaurants, procurement, education, culture, and food security. Easily 75% of the economic value and climate emissions associated with food come after its agricultural production. If we, as planners, fail to invest as much of our time looking at these other aspects of the food system as we spend on local food production and farmers markets, then we miss the biggest opportunity of all.

Agricultural Urbanism
A movement called Agricultural Urbanism is emerging based on planning cities and neighbourhoods around sustainable food systems. At it's outset, 10 principles have been identified for this movement:

Address the whole food system – Promote the greatest range possible of the elements of the food system in community planning and design;
Foreground the food experience – Make food visible and enhance the experience of the greatest possible range of the food system in the city;
Build the local and regional food economy – Build this food economy through land use planning, education, economic development, and cultural enhancement and celebration;
Provide access to food – Provide access for all everywhere, including food stores, restaurants, food banks and others;
Promote education on food – Embed food education in every aspect of urban life, both formally in the school system, and informally through wherever people access food;
Integrate sustainable food into institutions – Integration into all levels of government policy, programs, and institutional mandates;
Address food for other species – Incorporate urban habitat into all food production areas wherever possible to maintain a healthy ecosystem;
Waste no food – Support and develop the infrastructure and organizations to recover food that might be unnecessarily wasted from wholesalers, retailers, restaurants, and others and channel this food both to the poor and to composting and nutrient recovery programs;
Organize for food – Develop strong partnerships, stewardship groups, collaboration, and overall social capital to support a sustainable urban and regional food system;
Develop sustainable infrastructure amongst food systems – Develop innovative energy, water, wastewater, and solid waste management infrastructure and systems integrated with urban food systems.

When considered in the context of a food system, these 10 principles have many applications, with elements spread across an entire region. However, a concept is emerging in urban planning around creating special places in cities that are dedicated to sustainable food – food hubs and precincts.

Food hubs and precincts are a tangible way to address multiple food system elements and improve food system sustainability in a community. Increasingly, local governments and members of the development community are seeing great potential in food hubs and precincts. This is driving planners and designers to create new methods and techniques to implement food-inclusive or food-focused visions of vibrant cities – in a context where food has become an uninvited guest in city building practice.

What are food hubs and precincts?
Food hubs and precincts are centrally-located facilities that bring together the full spectrum of land uses and programs to support sustainable urban and regional food systems. These have largely been part of the urban fabric in cities and larger metropolitan areas. However, this concept may be appropriately scaled for the neighbourhood and/or town size. For instance, in any food hub or precinct, storage and processing space would need to be built to meet the needs and demands of the local agriculture, resident, and food industry needs. The fundamental characteristics of a food precinct include:

Commercial storage and processing facilities for local farm products;
A centralized distribution hub where multiple farmers may combine and distribute their goods. Among other benefits, this enables wholesale purchasers to obtain the quality and quantity of local foods necessary for restaurant operations and institutional procurement;
A permanent farmers' market where retail and direct marketing of locally farmed products may be sold;
Office space for non-profit organizations and small businesses associated with the local food and agriculture program of the precinct;
Visible community kitchens, labs, and community education areas for facilitating seminars on how to grow, process, prepare, and maximize fresh, healthy local food experiences;
Café and/or restaurants that have locally sourced menus and provide a social environment for people to gather and enjoy delicious foods, generating community vibrance;
Community event areas that provide space for celebrations and special event around food and agriculture;
Authentic architectural and landscape character where buildings, public realm, and landscape visibly demonstrate elements of each community associated with the precinct uses;
Residential features in areas where a neighborhood food precinct has been built into new development;
Food recovery and waste collection.

Benefits of food hubs/precincts
Food precincts are a central element of complete, resilient, and vibrant communities. Through establishing the necessary infrastructure and programs the food precinct/hub enables communities to connect not only to purchasing and experiencing local food, but also to learning how to grow, preserve, and prepare foods. Benefits of the food precinct and hub include:

Re-centre food in our lives through increasing active participation in the food system;
Contribute to a more resilient food economy through strengthening city-to-farm and farm-to-city linkages;
Serve as a resource centre for a wide range of community activities that develop and reinforce the role that local food plays in every aspect of our city life and culture;
Increasing capacity in essential food and agriculture infrastructure, such as processing and sales capacity to the small to medium farm economy;
Centralized distribution point(s) that enable purchasing by wholesalers, grocery stores, and restaurants from multiple farms and producers;
Community, professional, and academic learning opportunities around food and sustainability; and
A conscious planning and design approach to sustainable food cities.

Launching the New City Market, A Food Hub for Vancouver
In some cities, like Montreal and Halifax for example, food hubs and precincts are an important characteristic of the city fabric. In cities like Toronto and Vancouver, food hubs and precincts are just emerging as part of the urban scene. The Stop in Toronto is a new facility that provides a permanent home for farmers' markets and offers a full suite of education opportunities around growing and preparing foods for people of all ages and backgrounds. While city markets have historically been part of Vancouver and present day examples such as Granville Island offer much in the way of learning what works, a new vision for a food hub is emerging and generating a lot of excitement. Building on successful Canadian models like the Stop in Toronto, community champions are gearing-up for an all-in effort to vision, plan, and establish the New City Market, a food hub for Vancouver.

About the authors:

Janine de la Salle is Director of Food Systems Planning with HB Lanarc Consultants Ltd. in Vancouver/Nanaimo. Janine recently developed a plan for an urban-farm park and a guide that will connect local farmers to schools.

Mark Holland is a Principal with HBLanarc. He is a LEED™-accredited planner who holds professional degrees in both Landscape Architecture and Community and Regional Planning. He recently authored and delivered the "Resilient Cities Manifesto" at the October 2009 Gaining Ground: Resilient Cities summit.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009
We strongly encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Thoughts on Regional Food Security & Self-Reliance

by George Penfold

A recently published a report on BC’s food self-reliance shows that in spite of our large productive agricultural areas in the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan, BC is only 48% self-reliant in food. Our only food surplus in BC is in fruit. On the other hand, Canada continues to be a net exporter of agricultural and related food products to the tune of $6 Billion in 2007.

Given that Canada produces more agriculture and agri food value than we consume, what does "food security " mean in the discussion about local food?

I prefer the term food self-sufficiency to describe what we are trying to achieve. Food security is a term that has been traditionally used to deal with the issues of lack of food, hunger and starvation. That is not what most local food initiatives in BC or across Canada are about. They are focused more on increasing local/regional food self-reliance and expanding that part of the regional economy. By labeling this as food security, the fact that there are hungry people in our communities and around the world can be overlooked, and that would be an unfortunate outcome of the local food movement.

Food is Energy
The drive for local food seems to hinge on concerns about higher energy costs. But, higher energy costs don’t necessarily mean we won’t have food. We will still probably be able to get most of what we want, but higher energy costs mean we will have to pay more for it. The implicit assumption that increasing local/regional food supply is an insurance plan against higher costs needs a second look, especially in the Kootenay region.

Transportation costs and the energy related concern about "food miles " can be misleading if looked at only on a distance basis. Yes, trucks do travel 3,500 km or more from California, but they carry 20 or more tonnes, about 6 kg of food per km travelled. Those trucks usually go back with other goods on board. If a local farmer travels 100 km from Grand Forks to the Castlegar farmers market, his or her truck – even using half as much fuel per km – would need to carry 300 kg of food product to use the same amount of energy for kg of food delivered as the truck from California. If the farmer goes back empty and consumers make a separate trip to go to the farmers market, the amount carried would have to be even greater.

Food is energy, and regardless of where it is grown, it will still take lots of energy to grow food in the future, if we rely on anything resembling current technologies. Our regional energy sources include hydro electricity, wood, and coal. None of these are easily adaptable to the oil based production systems we currently rely on. Converting to steam may be possible, but the GHGs (green house gas emissions) trade off isn't great unless much better steam technologies are developed. Going back to manual labour or horses is a romantic idea, but one that would be very unlikely to produce the amount of food needed to support regional demand.

The "Grain-Gap"
If we want to be more self-sufficient regionally, we need a clearer focus on what we need to be growing. Most images of local food initiatives show fresh fruit and vegetables. The average Canadian consumes about 45 kg of fresh, frozen, and processed fruits and vegetables annually. But the core component of the current Canadian diet is grain, both eaten directly (cereals, bread, etc) and processed through poultry and livestock for eggs, milk, and related products and meat.

The self-sufficiency report noted above estimates that the average person consumes approximately 80 kg of grain directly (mostly wheat), and another 395 kg of feed grain consumed indirectly in the form of meat, eggs, milk etc. For the approximately 170,000 folks who live in the Columbia Basin and Boundary regions, that means we would need about 80 thousand tonnes of grain, or at 2.5 tonnes per hectare yield, approximately 32,000 hectares of grain to be self sufficient. In 2006, we grew less than 4,000 ha including all grains, beans, flax, and canola – just over 12% of our theoretical demand, significantly less than overall provincial self-sufficiency of 14% in food grain and 43% in feed grain.

Why aren’t we producing more? Lack of land doesn’t seem to be the major issue. We have approximately 375,000 hectares in the ALR in the three Kootenay Regional Districts, and about half of that is in "farms " as defined by Census Canada.

Do the Math
The main issue is that we simply don't pay enough for food to make growing it pay.

In 2006 there were 1,394 census farms in the three Kootenay Regional Districts, with only 40 of those producing certified organic products. The average capital value (land, livestock, equipment) of farms ranged from $1,325,360 in RD East Kootenay to $746,165 in RD Kootenay Boundary, and $682,663 in RD Central Kootenay. Average farm receipts were $39,420, $59,801, and $53,388 respectively. After gross expenses, however, net income was $133, $1680, and $5422 respectively.

That math is pretty clear. From significant capital investment, the average farmer makes very little or loses money. We will have to pay a lot more for food even at current energy prices if there was any realistic opportunity to reach regional self-sufficiency based on the premise of regional farmers producing more. The diversified "family farm" local food model we seem to want, one that generally existed 40 years ago, was based on spending almost 20% of average household income on food. We now spend less than 10%.

A Complex Situation
There are lots of other issues to consider in trying to reach regional self-sufficiency. Who will our "farmers" be? Where will the farm labour come from? Where will the nutrients come from - not just oil based nitrogen, but phosphate and potash, the water to irrigate? And how do we rebuild regional storage, processing, and distribution systems, among others?

There is no question that local food awareness, direct farms sales, farmers markets, and community and private gardens all help farmers and regional self-sufficiency, but that focus is mainly on fruits and vegetables. The "grain gap," however, is huge. Unless we are willing to make some significant changes – such as changing our consumption patterns, shifting to a grass based meat production system and paying more for local food – regional food self-sufficiency is probably not a realistic expectation.

– 30 –

About the author:

GEORGE PENFOLD was, for a good part of his early life, a working farmer. His is now Regional Innovation Chair (RIC) in Rural Economic Development at Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC and Adjunct Professor at the School of Business and Economics at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. In 2005 the Real Estate Foundation of BC contributed $100,000 to the RIC endowment fund at Selkirk College as part of its support for sustainable community planning and informed development in the greater Kootenay region.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC/ 2009. We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website for non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.