People’s Food Policy: Discussion Papers

The following 10 policy discussion papers capture the many ideas and conversations that came out of our Kitchen Table Talks (People’s Food Policy Project 2009-2011). Resetting the Table: A People’s Food Policy for Canada captures the top policy priorities from each of these papers.  

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1. Indigenous Food Sovereignty

2. Food Sovereignty in Rural and Remote Communities

3. Access to Food in Urban Communities

4. Agriculture, Infrastructure and Livelihoods

5. Sustainable Fisheries and Livelihoods for Fishers

6. Environment and Agriculture

7. Science and Technology for Food and Agriculture

8. International Food Policy

9. Healthy and Safe Food for All

10. Food Democracy and Governance

1. Indigenous Food Sovereignty

Executive Summary

We are a group of community based activists, scholars and story tellers who work on issues of food sovereignty. We come from diverse regions of Turtle Island and share fundamental beliefs towards the land and all she stands for. We represent fishing, hunting, and gathering peoples and bring an understanding of the impact of colonialism on our regions. Indigenous food systems include all of the land, soil, water, and air, as well as culturally important plant, fungi, and animal species that have sustained Indigenous peoples over thousands of years of participating in the natural world.

All parts of Indigenous food systems are inseparable and ideally function in healthy interdependent relationships that transfer energy through indigenous ecosystems and economies. In addition, indigenous food systems also support, both directly and indirectly, the transfer of energy through the present day agriculture based economy, which has been developed and industrialized by settlers through the process of colonization.

Our nations originally developed and perfected many of the world’s great foods, such as beans, corn, squash, potatoes, berries, herbs and medicines for which there is no acknowledgement or compensation. For indigenous peoples, lands and food are at the centre of what it is to be indigenous. In other instances, nomadic cultures required access to vast territories, which in turn ensured access to traditional foods.Tribal values of giving, sharing and trading are at the heart of land care and food sovereignty. Indigenous peoples hold lands, foods, medicines, and animals as sacred and freely gifted. Without them, humanity would cease to be.

2. Food Sovereignty in Rural and Remote Communities

Executive Summary

The industrial food system raises numerous challenges for the food sovereignty of rural and remote communities. For communities that are further away or more tenuously connected to commercial centres, the cost of store-bought food is higher and the nutritional value lower.

Pressures of centralization leave many rural communities without the required facilities to inspect or process food for local consumption. Food knowledge relevant to the local ecology is being lost, while research and training opportunities are focused on techniques not suited to the diverse bio-regions in the country.
For rural and remote communities, solutions to the food sovereignty crisis strengthen the capacity of these communities to provide food for local and regional consumption. By building the resilience of each community’s food system, we build a diverse, local, and resilient national food system. Proposed solutions include:

• Establishing community-based knowledge exchange networks to facilitate the exchange of food knowledge, information, and ideas across cultural and generational lines.
• Providing infrastructure and support for research and post-secondary training in food production that reflects the diversity of rural and remote bio-regions (including northern regions) and is inclusive of a range of food sources (e.g., traditional or forest food) and non-industrial methods.
• Developing a national food/land protection system in which land-use planning prioritizes and protects food cultivation and is inclusive of all food sources, including those used for hunting, gathering, fishing, and agriculture.
• Developing approaches to inspection and processing that are flexible, responsive, innovative, and bureaucratically streamlined in order to accomodate the less industrial, more seasonal, and variable approaches of small-scale local producers and their unique needs.
• Identifying food as a priority area for small business development and employment training.
• Developing regional trade networks for the promotion, marketing, and movement of food products among communities within a given region.

3. Access to Food in Urban Communities

Executive Summary
 

The purpose of this discussion paper is to highlight the barriers to food sovereignty for urban residents and provide policy solutions to those barriers. We focus on three action areas: 1) economic barriers to healthy food and reliance on charitable providers for low-income populations; 2) limitations to urban food production; 3) the inability for many population groups to connect with local food sources and information.

Recommendations:

• Improve programs (minimum wage, EI, pensions, income support) so that all Canadians can afford adequate nutritional food. Alternatively institute a system of vouchers for wholesome food to give every Canadian. Ensure that there are no “food deserts” in cities and suburbs, forcing people to travel extraordinary distances to find food.
• Institute programs to legitimize agricultural use of urban land. Fund school food  programs.
• Institute “buy local” food procurement policies within municipalities, regions, provinces, territories, and federal institutions. Institute a purchasing policy for all federal-level institutions and contracts that gives preference to local food whenever available. Provide funding for food coordinators in all urban communities.

4. Agriculture, Infrastructure and Livelihoods

Executive Summary

Canada’s farm sector is one of the world’s least profitable. Our food production system is one of the world’s most export-focused – Canada has quadrupled food exports since the late 1980s. Our food system is energy-inefficient and climate-destabilizing. It is increasingly corporate-controlled. And it often operates counter to Canadians’ health and wellness aspirations.  

The Canadian food system’s multiple pathologies are interlinked and logically related, and the same is true of the solutions. There exists, in Food Sovereignty, a coherent set of effective alternatives to our current food policies, alternatives that can restore prosperity, sustainability, and healthfulness. Solutions include:

• Refocusing our departments of agriculture away from commodity-based, export-focused agriculture and toward community-based, sustainability-focused agriculture.
• Supporting family farms by:
  • measuring policy success by net farm income rather than export volume;
  • relocalizing markets—more closely linking farmers and food-buying citizens in order to maximize the dollars farmers receive;
  • implementing capped, targeted farm aid programs aimed at supporting family farms;
  • expanding Canada’s excellent supply management systems, currently in place for dairy, poultry, and egg producers; and
  • harnessing diversity, dispersal, self-supply, knowledge, and renewable input cycles to increase the resilience and sustainability of our farms.
• Creating programs to support small farms, new farmers, and young farmers.
• Curbing non-farmer land ownership and creating new land tenure, financing, and farmland protection mechanisms.
• Restoring sustainable, dispersed, family-farm-based animal husbandry.
• Implementing strategies to decentralize and proliferate food processing in Canada.
• Using public food procurement dollars to push forward the food system Canadians want.
• Funding a huge, multi-channel education effort on food and related issues—using education to accelerate our ongoing move from “consumers” to sovereign “food citizens.”

5. Sustainable Fisheries and Livelihoods for Fishers

Executive Summary

On the Atlantic coast, federal fishery policy, supposedly designed to protect fish stocks, has been disastrous. It is driven by the assumption that a highly mechanized fleet catching fish for export is best for the economy. On the Pacific coast, the DFO (Fisheries and Oceans Canada) regulations enable corporations to own the fishing boats, forcing fishers with quotas to work as “sharecroppers”.
What is needed is a fisheries policy that accords coastal communities control over their harvesting, ensuring long-term economic stability.
Indigenous communities that have traditionally relied on the fishery for its main food supply should, in accordance with several Supreme Court decisions, be allowed to follow their traditional practices under a co-management approach.

Priorities

1. Conservation, protection, and restoration of fish populations and the ecosystems that sustain them must be central to maintaining the food security and livelihoods of coastal communities.
2. Rebuilding local markets for fish products is crucial. This involves support for wharf-gate sales, increased marketing of Canadian fish within Canada, and supporting local and sustainably caught value-added fisheries and fair trade certification.
3. Aboriginal jurisdiction over traditional lands and waters should be recognized, and Aboriginal and treaty rights to make a livelihood from fishing must be given priority over commercial and sports interests.
4. Independent family fishers, owner-operator fleets, and fishing with the lowest impact gear type must be prioritized. Where quotas and ITQs (Individual Transferable Quotas) exist, measures should be taken to develop strict transferability clauses that protect fisheries and marine ecosystems and ensure that these are kept within coastal communities.
5. Labeling fish for sale must be clear and honest: the species of fish, the place where caught, and the method of harvesting. Traceability measures should link back to the fisher.
6. Open-pen salmon farming should be banned and closed containment enforced. Salmon and other types of fin fish aquaculture should only be allowed when coastal communities are the direct beneficiaries and managers.

6. Environment and Agriculture

Executive Summary

A healthy environment is the basis of a resilient and sustainable agro-ecosystem. Agriculture affects and is affected by the natural world, and as such it must work within natural systems. Canadian agricultural systems must build and maintain healthy soil, clean water and air, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, mitigate and adapt to climate change, protect and enhance biodiversity, protect farmland, and reduce waste.

1. Because agriculture affects, and is in turn affected by the natural environment, policy measures must ensure that soil, water, air and biodiversity of the environment is protected for agriculture and that agricultural practices contribute to the ongoing health of the environment. For example, if an industrial practice (such as emitting toxic particulate matter) harms surrounding agricultural land or has deleterious effects on the food it produces, the industry must be required to alter its process so it is safe for agriculture. In turn, if an agricultural practice (such as applying manure at excessive rates) harms the surrounding environment with impacts on its integrity and sustainability, those practices must be altered to ensure that the environment is protected.
2. Agriculture and the global food supply are exceedingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. At the same time, ecological agricultural provide significant climate change benefits, through its increased capacity to sequester carbon in to soil, by improved energy efficiency by reducing fossil fuel derived pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and by reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly nitrous oxide and methane. Therefore, agriculture policy and climate change mitigation policy must actively promote the shift to ecological farming methods.
3. Program, policy and regulatory measures must promote transition to more ecologically sustainable methods of farming and must remove financial and fiscal incentives that support ecologically damaging farming practices. The current safety net programs encourage specialization, concentration and increased scale of production, increasing both environmental costs and the risks of catastrophic failure. At the same time, farmers who convert to certified organic production shoulder the burden of carrying all the economic risks during their transition period. Policy should provide effective carrots and sticks to promote the uptake of sustainable agriculture.
4. Education is a key to ensuring broad public support for environmental sustainability, so formal and informal methods must be used to promote knowledge and understanding of the ecology of agriculture and the impacts of agriculture on the environment. As food becomes an ever more significant factor in world-wide social stability, the need for the population to have a fuller understanding of food production will be increasingly important. School curricula at every grade level need to incorporate both practical and academic lessons about sustainable agriculture. Community colleges, universities and informal education providers also need to be supported in providing research, training and skill-development to educate the upcoming generation of ecological agriculture producers.

7. Science and Technology for Food and Agriculture

Executive Summary

Our food system was built on the knowledge and innovation of indigenous peoples and farmers. However, this diversity of knowledge has been marginalized and is now at risk as new technologies facilitate greater industrialization and corporate control in food and farming. We need to understand science and technology as including all forms of useful knowledge, both codified and tacit, coming from diverse ways of learning and practices.

In the coming years and decades, science and technology for food and agriculture will either enhance or hinder our ability to meet the challenges we face. How we approach scientific research and the application of new (or old) technologies will determine whether we strengthen or undermine our ability to feed ourselves, maintain sustainable livelihoods in food production, and protect biodiversity and healthy ecosystems into the future.

Science and technology will only play a positive role in strengthening our ability to face present and future challenges if we prioritize ecological agriculture and ensure that our decision-making processes are democratic, led by precautionary principle.

8. International Food Policy

Executive Summary

Canadian aid and trade policies remain stuck in a policy paradigm, pursued by most governments over the past few decades, that privileges free trade, industrial agriculture for export, and corporate control. This has come about through policies which promoted the production of cash and non-traditional export crops at the expense of domestic food production; and that removed subsidies for staple food production; dismantled commodity price controls on staples; and reduced the availability of credit (where it existed) to local farmers. This was achieved through such measures as structural adjustment programmes, trade agreements, and agreements that apply intellectual property rights to life forms.

Policy options include:

• Remove agriculture from the negotiations for free trade and investment agreements. Seek broad alliances with groups in other countries and other sectors struggling against these agreements.
• Take a strong stance against the global land grab and develop a solid and coherent policy in Canada to prevent foreign investors and national financial speculators from acquiring agricultural land.
• Ensure that trade and aid policies contribute to real solutions to climate change.
• Pursue policies that safeguard small producers’ rights to save and control seeds and adopt legislation to prevent patents on life.
• Work to strengthen the Convention on Biological Diversity and ratify the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.
• Consider the positive impact of agro-ecological approaches to food production on local economies, ecosystem health, and social equity.
• Implement the recommendations of the Canadian Civil Society Organizations’ strategy called “Pathways to Resilience” that outlines ways to promote ecological farming that builds resilient food systems.

9. Healthy and Safe Food for All

Executive Summary

This paper focuses on access to healthy and safe food for all and how current policies, research agendas and strategies may be shaped to create supportive food environments and healthy public policy. Specifically, issues examined in this document include Canada’s social safety net, relationships among physical and mental health outcomes with food insecurity, and safety issues in the Canadian food supply. General recommendations made include strategies aimed at reducing and monitoring poverty, more research examining the links between food insecurity and health, broadening the involvement of decision making related to our food supply to include health and consumer advocacy groups, creating supportive environments to make healthy food choices in public institutions and work environment as well as health and educational programs and strategies aimed at improving food literacy.

10. Food Democracy and Governance

Executive Summary

This discussion paper is focused on the need for democratic food governance. Our everyday lives are intertwined with the food system. An inclusive and enabling policy environment requires institutions and organizing structures that facilitate public participation in shaping policies, norms, values, and rules. Moreover, a democratic society must be able to guarantee the meaningful and active involvement of all individuals, groups and institutions in decision-making processes. In other words, people must have a say in how their food is produced and where it comes from, and they must have an active role in realizing the principles of food sovereignty.

This final discussion paper presents a framework and a set of strategies for establishing open, democratic, and transparent governance processes that lay the foundation for the policies outlined in the previous discussion papers with the overall goal of building a sustainable, healthy and just food system. These strategies include:

• Establishing councils/roundtables to work with governments at all levels (municipal, provincial/territorial, and federal) on food policies to achieve social justice, ecological resilience, and sustainable livelihoods in Canada’s food system. They must include representation from all food-related sectors, including health promotion, education, housing, environment, community governed food programs, farmers, and retailers, and must ensure full participation of dispossessed and marginalized people. Each council must be able to organize itself autonomously and establish its own working structures in line with the values and principles of accessibility, transparency, inclusivity, and equality.
• All food policy needs to be grounded in an integrated analysis of the entire food system. This is to ensure that solutions address root causes and avoid creating further challenges due to silo-based thinking.
• Initiatives contributing to a diverse economy must be recognized and supported, including new economic approaches that value ethics of interdependence, sustainability, health, and justice over those of profit and individualism.
• Knowledge based on community experience as well as scientific knowledge must be included in public education, training, and capacity building efforts. The policy environment and broader public knowledge base can only be strengthened and improved by taking into account the contributions of urban and rural farmers, fisher folk, hunters and gatherers, gardeners, and Indigenous peoples.