Bits & Bytes

The Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty in BC has just launched a great new website on Indigenous food systems. Check it out!

The CFIA and the Canada Organic Office have now posted the new Canada Organic Standard online for the guidance of farmers and consumers.

The focus of our actions is on five local target groups - farmers, gardeners (real or potential), marketers, students and educators plus municipalities. Using the same approach that proved successful with our previous initiatives, we raise awareness about food concerns and a sense of possibility followed by supporting community members to take part in the food concerns that they are prepared to act on. Our role is to offer support and assistance where needed. Since 2006 this has included working with the Goldstream Food Bank offering information on good food options, fostering the creation of a major regional farmers market, the Luxton Station Farmers Market, organizing a community garden in Langford, espousing and supporting local policy initiatives aimed at improving local food security, education and awareness raising about local foods through such vehicles as our mobile garden Gardens in Motion, supporting the creation of more community gardens as well as our soon to be available website www.westshoreharvest.ca and a Where to Buy Local Food brochure.

In the Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol 37, Issue 1, Cathleen Kneen discusses the history and potential of a movement for food sovereignty in Canada in relation to the global peasant mobilization.

This is a newspaper report on a new US study which shows strong positive health effects of a small reduction - 1/2 teaspoon daily - in sodium intake.

although grass-fed cattle may produce more methane than conventional ones, their net emissions are lower because they help the soil sequester carbon

Documents from the McGill University conference on Global Food Security are now available on-line.

The UK has just published its vision of a strategy to enable food security for its citizens. Critics are concerned that despite the stated goal of sustainability, the plan leans heavily on genetic engineering and other technologies while ignoring the resilience of locally-focused, small-holder food provision in the face of climate change.

This is a synthesis of a conference held in Geneva in November 2008. It was called “The Global Food Challenge – Finding New Approaches to Trade and Investment that Support the Right to Food”.

This document from the USA is entitled: WHOLE MEASURES for Community FOod Systems: Values-based Planning and Evaluation

An authoritative and comprehensive paper on the genetic engineering of the world's leading staple crop, by Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, Co-Director of Econexus

This workbook was developed as part of a series of research projects on food security. As well as using research and experiences drawn from the Nova Scotia Food Security Projects, it incorporates ideas, insights and advice from people involved in food security issues and actions across Canada. Thought About Food? is intended to provide tools and information to inspire communities to come together and act to make food security a reality for everyone. It was developed by Food Security Projects of the Nova Scotia Nutrition Council and the Atlantic Health Promotion Research Centre, Dalhousie University in June 2005

GRAIN and La Via Campesina held a media conference on November 16 at which GRAIN made a powerful statement on the LAND GRAB.

Research conducted by the UN Environment Programme suggests that organic, small-scale farming can deliver the increased yields which were thought to be the preserve of industrial farming, without the environmental and social damage which that form of agriculture brings with it.

Heartland Foods Co-operative is a local food co-operative that works with producers in and around Kamloops to provide an alternative for consumers with an interest in reducing their carbon and ecological footprint, making fresh, nutritious foods a regular part of their diet, and supporting local sustainable food producers.

This highly successful food recovery program collects and distributes food that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill. The food comes from generous business donors in the area that have food they cannot sell. The program, while contributing to increase the local food supply, also contributes to a better environment by reducing unnecessary waste. In the last three years, almost a million pounds of fruits, vegetables, bakery, dairy and meat items were recovered through FoodShare.

A first sign of the effects of climate change: as a result of the drought, California farmers and farm workers are lining up at food banks.