World Food Day: 2012

As world food prices soar, it becomes imperative for local communities to develop local solutions that they can implement, support and benefit for their sustainable livelihood.

The United Nations have declared 2012 as the International Agricultural Year of Cooperative as a key to feeding the world,  supporting and investing in farmer and producer organizations.   One step in achieving food security is to support and invest in farmer and producer organizations. Getting smallholders organized in cooperatives allows them to increase their food production, market their goods, create jobs and increase their own livelihoods, in all agricultural sectors, such as agro-industries, and fisheries.

Cooperatives are a good example of becoming self sufficient, eating fresh nutritious food.

October-Double Bill Movie Night

 

In our continued journey to screening provocative and informative documentaries, and having just celebrated Thanksgiving, it makes to look at our food decisions and choices.  The two documentaries highlights our dependence on the food system that looks at  how efficiency is deficient from different perspective.

Growing your own food, living healthy and caring for your community is a sustainable way to live.

The Power of Community: Whether you are a global warming skeptic or not, the fact remains that oil from fossil fuels is a finite resource. One day it will run out. What will the world look like and what will we do when that happens? There are so many products and services that we use in our daily life that rely on oil, either for transportation or in their manufacturing: * Fuel * Pesticides and fertilizers * Food * Pharmaceutical medicine * Plastics * Cosmetics * Appliances

 

The Story of Food: USC Canada’s new short, animated film will get you thinking about our broken food system. It identifies whats gone wrong, and what we can do to rebuild it.

Water, the food of life

  Because the growth of the population is estimated to be over 7 billion by the year 2050, food and food security is a top priority for all governments and people.  The World Water Day Campaign for Rio highlights the seriousness of the situation by creating World Water Week, which is August 26 to 31st, 2012.  The goals are to create access to nutritious food for everyone, including:

Following a healthy sustainable diet;

Consuming less water-intensive products;

Reducing the scandalous food wastage: 20% of the food produced worldwide is never eaten and the water used to produce it is definitively lost!

Producing more food, of better quality, with less water.

Water is a major part of growing food, and address clean water is a basic right for everyone.  Access to nutritious food is providing food security for everyone on the Earth.

World Food Day 2011

The Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (fao), motto is a world without hunger. and the focus for 2011 is food prices.

Food security is being addressed in communities all over the world, from collecting seeds to cooking nutritiously, including supporting  buy local – farmers’ markets, community gardens.  What happens when you don’t have those choices, relying on an unreliable source of food, buying it.  You have a crisis: no money, hunger and rising food prices.

According to the World Bank, rising food costs in developing countries (2010 – 2011) have pushed more than 70 million people into extreme poverty.  On World Food Day 2011, let us look seriously at what causes swings in food prices, and do what needs to be done to reduce their impact on the weakest members of global society.

Child hunger in communities in Canada have reached crisis levels.  Seen as a developed country, how is it possible that we have so many hungry children.  It is shameful.

Moving from crisis to stability, let’s look at ways to encourage growing food and teaching the basics of self sufficiency, because only then will we be able to have a stable community and a stable world.

New Food Collaborative in Ontario

 

The Ontario Collaborative Group on Healthy Eating and Physical Activity (OCGHEPA), is a provincial not for profit that is looking at the determinants of good health, which includes eating well, physical activities, and includes access to food.

Its mission is to improve the health of all Ontarians by advancing healthy eating and active living initiatives through strategic partnerships, knowledge exchange and collective action.  Our vision for 2015 is an Ontario that supports healthy eating and active living for all.

The Collaborative have been working together for the past few months and will start to formulate the organization’s principles.  They have identified the priority areas and will be working with stakeholders in the near future.

Visit the OCGHEPA is working on the following priority areas:

• Making Ontario the healthiest province
• Developing an Ontario food and nutrition strategy
• Improving access for all Ontarians to healthy food and physical activity opportunities
• Using the 2015 Pan Am games as an opportunity to promote healthy eating and active living
• Childhood obesity
• Food security
• Healthy eating/physical activity in school
• Built environment

Home Farming – Looking back for the future

 

The convenience of harvesting your own produce is also cost effective, sustainable and tasty, of course we can add  nutritious.  The idea of growing vegetables, fruits, berries and small livestock is called home farming.

Joan Kerr’s home gardens ( front and back yard) is full of food, flowers and beauty.  Having planted food interspersed edible flowers,  perennials, herbs and berries for more than thirty years has given Joan the knowledge to share and encourage others to do  the same.

To launch the home farming concept, fbsc.org, though its Windfields Community & Teaching Gardens Project, cultivated the Oshawa Victory Garden an as example of an easily replicated model used used for growing food during both worlds wars.

 

The model has a prescribed schemata that includes: potato, turnip, corn, tomato, beans, parsnip,

beets, carrots, peas, cucumber,and squash.

We are embracing this model, and expanding it to include other vegetables, fruit and berries, and also canning/preserving your harvest, storing, fermenting, dehydrating, and cooking.

Help to reach our goal of 300 people who are home farming by 2015.

Join us and share ideas as we grow our own food, caring and maintaining, control pests, canning and storing and finally tasting the harvest.

There is just something wonderful about knowing what you grow and eat.

 

 

 

Growing food in a community garden

According to Wikipaedia: A community garden is a single piece of land gardened collectively a  group of people.  There are many ways to operate a community garden, usually decided by the operating group or by the members of the garden.

Windfields Community and Teaching Gardens, is home to 27 allotments and 30 demonstration plots that grow  peas, corn, tomatoes, radishes, beans, zucchinnis, cucumbers, beets, lettuce, okra, onions, carrots, leeks, peppers and pumpkins.

Research has shown that grown locally is more nutritious than food that travels for days.

Growing food in a community garden is a great way to try and learn about different types of vegetables, their cultural practices, care and how to eat them.  Try joining and supporting your local community garden, grow your own food, and reduce your carbon footprint.

Youth volunteers help to weed and water the garden while having fun.

Obesity costs billion$

The benefits of growing  or buying local food are numerous, including supporting local farmers, the increased nutrient value of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and leads to a dietary shift that can lead to healthy living an a daily basis.

This is an increasingly important consideration since a new research study called Obesity in Canada, estimates that about 25% of adults and children aged 6 – 17 over 6% are obese.  Report highlights:

Approximately one in four Canadian adults are obese, according to measured height and weight data from 2007-2009. Of children and youth aged six to 17, 8.6% are obese.

Between 1981 and 2007/09, obesity rates roughly doubled among both males and females in most age groups in the adult and youth categories.

The economic costs of obesity are estimated at $4.6 billion in 2008, up about 19% from $3.9 billion in 2000, based on costs associated with the eight chronic diseases most consistently linked to obesity. Estimates rise to close to $7.1 billion when based on the costs associated with 18 chronic diseases linked to obesity. Factors that influence obesity include:

• physical activity;
• diet;
• socioeconomic status;
•  ethnicity;
•  immigration; and
•  environmental factors.

Strategies to combat obesity and address the environments that encourage obesity fall into three main categories: health services and clinical interventions that target individuals; community-level interventions that directly influence individual and group behaviours; public policies that target broad social or environmental determinants.

The case for Edible City

It is possible to shift from the buying groceries to producing food.  Being a prosumer (producing what you consume) is one way to do this, AND it’s a growingworldwide trend.  You can grow our own food in your backyard or through a community garden, support farmers markets, on the way to become an edible city.

 Imagine the joy of:

-planting your own vegetables;

- socializing with like-minded people;

- contributing to a local food movement; and

- eating nutritiously

Become part of a global movement, and start eating nutritious food, living healthy, connect with your community and most of all enjoying the fruits of your own labor.

You will feel wonderful, energized, save money and minimize your footprint

 

 

 

 

Labelling practices

The words natural, organic and eco-friendly are (mis)used by corporations, solely for profits.  Product labelling is required, however the definitions are not concrete enough and have allowed corporations to use the words without any legal ramifications.

Marketing Departments use word that cause confusion, preferring that consumers will just purchase a products by the words that are easily read and not the fine print.

 

 

The Organic Consumers Association is promoting organic food and fair trade practices.

It is so important to know what you are buying, eating and using on your body and in your homes.  The reason that companies get away with unethical marketing practices is because consumers are not informed.  Start to support the companies who are trying to be just, ethical, fair and organic.

By supporting local businesses, farmers and producers, you build a trustful relationship, and can hold them responsible for any misleading actions.