Category Archives: Articles

The Locavore’s Cookbook: Honey a sweet, versatile substitute for sugar

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By Heidi Bjarnason – Creston Valley Advance
Published: April 06, 2012 8:00 AM

Honey is another local product that we’re very fortunate to have a good supply of in the Creston Valley. Honey, as long as it’s kept raw and not heated to above 95 F (or above body temperature), has many health benefits. While honey is essentially a sugar and should be eaten in moderation, it does contain many other health benefits that processed white and brown sugar do not contain. If honey is heated it destroys the natural enzymes that are responsible for many of the health benefits. Even when heated, cooked in a dish or baked into something, it’s still a healthier, natural choice for a sweetener because it contains small amounts of various vitamins and minerals, including vitamins B2 and B6, iron and manganese, and because the composition of the sugars, it is better for blood sugar levels.

Honey is naturally anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal. Natural honey (made from bees that feed on flowers and not refined sugar) that is kept raw actually contains healthy bacteria, which may be why it’s such a good remedy for things like a sore throat, cough and even an upset stomach. It’s a natural remedy for many other things, and may even help people with seasonal allergies, as long as they are consuming local honey, as the bees use pollen from the flowers causing the allergies.

Honey, however, should not be fed to babies under 12 months old as it can contain spores that cause botulism, which can be life-threatening. It is safe for older children and anyone else to enjoy honey, though.

Honey should be stored in an airtight container to prevent it from absorbing any moisture. If it’s stored properly, in a sealed container and in a cool, dry place, honey can keep for a very long time as it doesn’t spoil. Eventually, the honey will crystallize, but it is easily turned back into a liquid by gently heating it, or it can be used in solid form, stirred into hot drinks or spread on toast or crackers. Honey should not be microwaved as this will heat it too much, killing enzymes and changing the flavor, but it can be warmed by setting the container in warm water until the honey liquefies (be careful not to put cold glass into hot water as it will break).

Honey is slightly sweeter than typical sugar, so when replacing sugar in recipes the amount of honey can be reduced. Keep in mind that honey is a liquid, though, so when baking, the amount of dry ingredients to liquid ingredients will need to be changed, as well.

Baked goods that contain honey also brown faster than baked goods made with different sugars and sweeteners. You can reduce this by reducing the baking temperature by 25 degrees and increasing the baking time. Keep in mind that darker honeys will have more flavor, while honey that is lighter in color will be the mildest in flavor, so some will be better for certain dishes or baked goods than others.

There has been a lot of attention put on honey lately, because of the amount of “fake” honey being sold. Some honey comes from bees that are just fed plain sugar or processed corn syrup. The resulting honey is no better than refined white sugar because that’s where it came from. This is just more reason to support local beekeepers so that you know where your honey is coming from.

While it’s still beneficial to choose honey over sugar in cooking and baking, it is best to consume some raw for the health benefits. We enjoy it stirred into plain yogurt, mixed with peanut butter or almond butter as a dip for apples and other fruit, added to smoothies and, of course, stirred into tea and drizzled (or spread) onto toast. We use it in no-bake granola bars and other treats, as well.

No-Bake Cherry Almond Granola Bars

Makes 10-12 small granola bars

  • 3/4 C crispy cereal (look for whole grains with very little if any added sugar)
  • 3/4 C puffed grain cereal (such as puffed wheat)
  • 3/4 C old-fashioned rolled oats
  • 2 tbsp ground flax seed
  • 1/3 C roughly chopped dried cherries (or other dried fruit chopped into small pieces)
  • 1/4 C raw honey
  • 1/2 C natural almond butter (or natural peanut butter; for a nut free option use sunflower seed butter)
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • pinch salt
  • 1/2-1 tsp cinnamon

Prepare an 8×8 pan by lightly oiling it, or just lining with wax paper.

In a bowl, mix the cereals and oats. Set aside. Warm the honey and almond butter slightly if it’s not already liquid at room temperature. Mix in the ground flax, vanilla, cinnamon and salt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix very well. Press the mixture into the pan and flatten with the back of a spatula. Place in the fridge till firm, carefully remove from the pan and very carefully cut into bars. The bars may break and crumble slightly, just press back together. Wrap individually, place inside a sealable bag and store in a cool place, either the fridge or freezer.

Heidi Bjarnason is a Creston Valley mom and blogger. For more recipes, ideas, pictures and kid friendly ideas and food, visit Fooddoodles.com .

Read more of Heidi’s articles here:

How Designing Smarter Farmers’ Markets Will Help Our Cities Survive

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What we’re working towards in the Creston Valley isn’t unique to our area. We all know this shift is happening all across North America. Every community will face their own individual challenges and opportunities, and there are many great models of success out there. One of my favourite is what is happening Detroit, read on!

….

Posted from Treehuger


© Dan Carmody

Daniel Carmody, President of the Eastern Market in Detroit, is a passionate speaker, and entranced many of us attending the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference in Buffalo this fall. It seemed, at first, an odd choice of speaker at a conference about old buildings. But in fact, he demonstrated how important the growing and distribution of food can be to the rebirth and revitalization of our cities and towns. It isn’t about one market, but about the entire economic system in America. Dan kindly shared a copy of his presentation with me, which forms the basis of this post.

A hundred years ago, 38% of Americans lived and worked on the farm; today, it is less than two percent. The impact of that change has been massive; the economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair this month that the last Great Depression was caused by industrialization of agriculture, a “structural change in the real economy.”

Agriculture had been a victim of its own success. In 1900, it took a large portion of the U.S. population to produce enough food for the country as a whole. Then came a revolution in agriculture that would gain pace throughout the century—better seeds, better fertilizer, better farming practices, along with widespread mechanization. Today, 2 percent of Americans produce more food than we can consume.

Stiglitz writes that we are going through the same kind of massive change right now as the manufacturing economy that built Detroit and much of America changes.

Today we are moving from manufacturing to a service economy. The decline in manufacturing jobs has been dramatic—from about a third of the workforce 60 years ago to less than a tenth of it today. The pace has quickened markedly during the past decade… the inevitable result is precisely the same as it was 80 years ago: a decline in income and jobs. The millions of jobless former factory workers once employed in cities such as Youngstown and Birmingham and Gary and Detroit are the modern-day equivalent of the Depression’s doomed farmers.


No, This Is Why You’re Fat! /via

But the tools and techniques that revolutionized agriculture came at a cost. It is massively dependent on fossil fuels for equipment and fertilizers. Farmers cannot make enough money to live on farming alone. There is massive concentration of ownership (two seed companies control 60% of the market, four companies control 83% of the meat packing industry) so that farmers have little control over the prices they sell their products for. Half of the corn they grow is now used for making fuel , so the price of food is skyrocketing at the same time that the customers are losing their jobs or cutting back on spending because of the economy and debt.


© Eastern Market

In the country, the agricultural system is broken, and in the city, the manufacturing system is broken. But some, like Dan Carmody, see new opportunity in reintegrating the two. He sees food as an organizing tool for society; urban farming and markets can be important employment and wealth creators for cities. Detroit’s Eastern Market is a demonstration of how this might work; Its development strategy is to make it the hub of a complete local food system:

  • Serving as a center for urban agriculture by hosting both a model market garden and urban garden training classes.
  • Serving as an animated venue for improving education about food-related public health issues.
  • Developing cutting-edge systems to convert waste streams generated in the district to provide energy to heat, cool and power facilities, and compost to increase food production yields.

It can generate a lot of money and jobs; Michael Shuman has estimated that if 20% of Detroit’s food was grown locally, it would create nearly 5,000 jobs and nearly $ 20 million in business taxes.


© Dan Carmody

There are all kinds of jobs in food, from the obvious ones of farming and production to processing, wholesale and retail. The Eastern Market supports 300 independent food vendors and several hundred non-food vendors. It is expanding to serve the wholesale industry and is helping Detroit schools switch from processed food to locally grown and minimally processed food.


© Dan Carmody

They are setting up a city wide network of incubator kitchens in schools’ disused existing kitchens.


People’s Pierogi Collective /Screen capture

They are supporting local processors and packagers to produce and market specialty products. They are working with community groups to establish farmers markets and stands around the City.


© Dan Carmody

It is much more than a farmers’ market; it is putting people back to work making stuff we need. And it isn’t just for cities like Detroit; the model works for main streets in former market towns across America.

Here at TreeHugger, we have been writing for years about the merits of supporting local farmers, vendors and craftspeople, about the advantages rust belt cities will have in the future , with their water, their transportation infrastructure of rail, road and canal; their temperate climate in a warmer world.


© Dan Carmody

In Detroit, Dan Carmody and the Eastern Market have shown how this might work. It’s a demonstration of how to revitalize a community and rebuild a local economy. it is more than just a farmers’ market; It may well serve as a model for survival.

Bring Back the Bumblebee

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Alarmed at honeybee colony losses that reached 80 to 100 per cent last spring on Vancouver Island, a Victoria farmer is abuzz over a program she says will boost native bee populations that could replace the threatened honeybee.

Working with the Victoria-based land trust, The Land Conservancy, as an agricultural program assistant, Nathalie Chambers is leading the just-launched Pollinator Enhancement Program. The provincewide plan aims to improve conditions for native bees so that farmers are not as dependent on the honeybee, the dominant pollinator, originating in the Mediterranean area and brought to B.C. in 1858.
More related to this story:

* ‘Alarming’ decline in bumblebees seen worldwide: researchers
* Decline in bee pollination linked to climate change: study
* B.C. apiarists stung by bee deaths

“We need to restore the health and habitat of native bees,” said Ms. Chambers, who farms the 11-hectare Madrona Farm with her husband, David, where they grow a large variety of vegetables, fruits and flowers. “This work is very, very important in terms of agriculture. Native bees are tailor-made for pollination.”

Yet the advantage of honeybees is that it’s the only species that can be managed, cultivated and moved to where needed for pollination, said B.C.’s apiculturist Paul van Westendorp. “It’s the proverbial workhorse.”

Species like the bumblebee, however, have their own advantages. They are at least five times more efficient pollinators than honeybees, Ms. Chambers said, because they disengage their wings and get right into the flower.

And unlike honeybees, who don’t emerge until the temperature is 9 C, bumblebees begin pollinating early-flowering plants as soon as February.

Vancouver Island has 45 native bee species that are part of B.C.’s 400. Throughout North America, there are about 4,000 native bee species, said Eric Mader, a pollinator program director with the Xerces Society, based in Portland, Ore. An entomologist, he’s assisting Ms. Chambers with The Land Conservancy’s pollination program, which includes 90 B.C. farms.

“Farmers are ideally situated to deal with pollinators because they manage large tracts of land,” Ms. Chambers said.

One of her key messages to farmers will be to put away the pesticides.

Because emerging native bees are already foraging, she’s advising farmers to seed their fields with flowering cover crops like clover, buckwheat and phacelia, which provide nectar.

Native bees logically prefer native plants, so species like oceanspray, dogwood and Garry oak should be available.

Farmers should also stagger the planting of flowering plants so that a succession of food is available until bees retreat in the fall.

When plants, like sunflowers, have finished producing, they should be left standing to provide food and habitat.

Buffer areas of wild flowers are effective. In California, a 100-kilometre-long flowering hedge has been planted for the bees, part of the 20,200 hectares of new U.S. habitat created for native bees in the past couple years, Mr. Mader said.

Habitat is crucial. Seventy per cent of native bees are ground nesters, living in undisturbed soil, while 30 per cent live in trees.

In California, 30 per cent of the land bordering a farm was left natural for a kilometre. “The farm got all of its pollination needs met by wild bees alone,” Mr. Mader said.

A recent Canadian study found that canola growers made more money when they left 30 per cent of their acreage fallow. With native bees populating the wild land, canola yields on the remaining 70 per cent of the land were more than they would have been on the full acreage because of the increased pollination, Mr. Mader said.

“If we say the honeybee is all we need, that puts food security in a bad position. It’s really difficult to keep honeybees alive in North America,” noted Mr. Mader, author of several books on native bees. They’re given “a cocktail soup” of drugs and pesticides to keep them alive.

Last year, despite treatments like Apistan and fumigillin to kill mites and bacteria, 21 per cent of Canadian honeybee colonies were lost, according to the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists. Nova Scotia suffered the biggest reduction at 42 per cent. In B.C., it was 24 per cent.

But for Ms. Chambers, who has lost count of time watching native bees buzz throughout her flower garden, “Bringing back the bees is as easy as one, two, three.”

Special to The Globe and Mail

Local Lunch – Goat River Mushrooms

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Local Lunch, part 17: Couple adds mushrooms to local food palette

- David, Sylvia and Isabella White in one of the rooms used for growing mushrooms. - Lorne Eckersley

Sylvia and David White find themselves explaining what is going on behind those locked doors before visitors ask. It doesn’t help that fans continually vent air from the sealed rooms. Yes, they have a little grow-operation, but it is mushrooms, the legal kind, that they are growing.

The young couple purchased a seven-acre bed and breakfast property in Erickson in 2006 and moved here from Vancouver the following year.

“We didn’t find Creston so much as it found us,” Sylvia said.

She and her husband had visited the Yukon with the idea of “doing something with accommodations.” Originally, they thought they might open a hostel with another couple of friends.

“It’s by accident, really, that we found this place,” she said.

David’s mom’s best friend lives here and Sylvia learned that the Goat River Bed and Breakfast was for sale. The rest, as she said, is history.

”We love it here,” she said.

She and David wanted to raise their family in a small town, something they both were familiar with. Sylvia was raised in a rural Polish community and David grew up in Port Hardy. Their decision to come to Creston met with their families` approval. Both sets of parents have followed them to the valley, influenced by the birth of their granddaughter, Isabella, 19 months ago.

The decision to try growing mushrooms commercially came out of the fact that their property is in the Agricultural Land Reserve.

”A huge part of it is that we`d like to stay in the valley and we need something else to pay the bills,” Sylvia said.

Their previous vocations — David is a video game artist and Sylvia sold real estate — didn’t prepare them for an agricultural endeavour. But they have friends who grow mushrooms in the Lower Mainland. Sylvia`s dad tried growing mushrooms in his home and it worked, so they decided to give it a try.

The Whites did plenty of Internet research and their supplier has been very supportive, even coming out to Creston to tell them what they needed to do to get going.

The mushrooms are grown in a substrate of alder sawdust, organic bran and limestone flour. The mix is packed into plastic “logs” and inoculated with mushroom spores. The logs are placed on steel shelves in a room that has a tightly-controlled environment. Growers must provide the correct humidity and temperature, and ensure that unwanted competition, like moulds and bacteria, don’t enter the growing medium.

“Our first batch of oyster mushrooms didn’t do so well,” David said. “The information we read said they need 90 to 95 per cent humidity and I was vacuuming a half-inch of water off the floor every couple of days. Eventually mould started to grow, so we tossed out the batch and started again. Now we are using less humidity and trying to find a level that suits the oyster mushrooms best.”

The mushrooms, oyster and shitake varieties at this point, grow out of slits in the plastic bags in a matter of weeks.

Since harvesting their first crop last month, Sylvia and David have had a very positive response. They have sold the mushrooms at the Creston Valley Farmers’ Market, and friends who produce other products will help them sell in Nelson and Cranbrook markets, too.

An application has been made through the Kootenay Local Agricultural Society to have their operation certified through the Kootenay Mountain Grown program. Inspections have been conducted and David and Sylvia are awaiting word that they have been accredited. The inoculated substrate used by Goat River Mushroom Co. is produced by a certified organic grower.

The Whites are currently only at 25 per cent of their production capacity but new shipments of the mushroom logs are on order and will arrive regularly over the coming weeks so that the two rooms (each type of mushroom needs its own environment) will be full and a regular harvest can be assured. If their initial foray into mushroom growing is successful, a new building will be constructed so that production can be increased to meet market demands.

Members of the Creston Valley Food Action Coalition, Sylvia and David said the organization has been very supportive and that it is exciting to be part of an agricultural community that encourages innovation and competition.

“We are really pleasantly surprised with what is going on here,” Syliva said. “With the food action coalition and the College of the Rockies there is so much support — it’s great to be a part of it.”

The Whites are hoping to have a sufficient supply of mushrooms ready for this weekend’s Creston Valley Farmers’ Market at Millennium Park. They have a pamphlet explaining how to store the fungi. It also provides information about the nutritional values of each variety. Oyster mushrooms, surprisingly, contain protein levels nearly equal to that in animal meat.

Sylvia said there is another reason that growing mushrooms appeals to the couple.

“It’s completely waste-free,” she said. “If there are mushrooms left over they can be dried, or cooked and frozen. The substrate makes great compost.”

For more information about the Goat River Mushroom Co., email Sylvia and David at grmushco @ telus.net (remove spaces to email).

Article from Creston Valley Advance .

Topsy Turvy Planting

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From the New York Times

By KATE MURPHY
Published: May 19, 2010

IF pests and blight are wrecking your plants, it might be time to turn your garden on its head.

Donald Rutledge, in New Braunfels, Tex., put his buckets on pulleys to protect his plants from deer.

Growing crops that dangle upside down from homemade or commercially available planters is growing more popular, and its adherents swear they’ll never come back down to earth.

“I’m totally converted,” said Mark McAlpine, a body piercer in Guelph, Ontario, who began growing tomatoes upside down two years ago because cutworms were ravaging the ones he planted in the ground. He made six planters out of five-gallon plastic buckets, some bought at the Home Depot and some salvaged from the trash of a local winemaker. He cut a two-inch hole in the bottom of each bucket and threaded a tomato seedling down through the opening, packing strips of newspaper around the root ball to keep it in place and to prevent dirt from falling out.

He then filled the buckets with soil mixed with compost and hung them on sturdy steel hooks bolted to the railing of his backyard deck. “Last summer was really hot so it wasn’t the best crop, but I still was able to jar enough whole tomatoes, half tomatoes, salsa and tomato sauce to last me through the winter,” said Mr. McAlpine, who plans an additional six upside-down planters this year.

Upside-down gardening, primarily of leggy crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, is more common partly because of the ubiquity of Topsy Turvy planters, which are breathlessly advertised on television and have prominent placement at retailers like Wal-Mart, Walgreens and Bed Bath & Beyond. According to the company that licenses the product, Allstar Products Group in Hawthorne, N.Y., sales this year are twice last year’s, with 20 million sold since the planter’s invention in 2005. Not to be outdone, Gardener’s Supplyand Plow & Hearth recently began selling rival upside-down planters. “Upside-down gardening is definitely a phenomenon,” said Steve Wagner, senior product manager for Plow & Hearth.

The Topsy Turvy.
The advantages of upside-down gardening are many: it saves space; there is no need for stakes or cages; it foils pests and fungus; there are fewer, if any, weeds; there is efficient delivery of water and nutrients thanks to gravity; and it allows for greater air circulation and sunlight exposure.

While there are skeptics, proponents say the proof is in the produce.

Tomato and jalapeño seedlings sprout from upside-down planters fashioned out of milk jugs and soda bottles that hang from the fence surrounding the Redmond, Wash., yard of Shawn Verrall, a Microsoft software tester who blogs about gardening at Cheapvegetablegardener.com. Mr. Verrall turned to upside-down gardening last summer as an experiment.

“I put one tomato plant in the ground and one upside down, and the one in the ground died,” he said. The other tomato did so well, he planted a jalapeño upside down, too, and it was more prolific than the one he had in the ground. “The plants seem to stay healthier upside down if you water them enough, and it’s a great way to go if you have limited space,” he said.

While horticulturists, agronomists and plant scientists agree that pests and blight are less likely to damage crops suspended in the air, they said they are unsure whether growing them upside down rather than right-side up will yield better results.

Mark McAlpine made his own containers for his Ontario garden.

“Growing things upside down seems like a fad to me, but I’m glad people are fooling around with it and hope they will let us traditionalist gardening snobs know what we’ve been missing,” said Hans Christian Wien, a horticulture professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Judging from gardening blogs and Web sites, those fooling around with upside-down gardening are generally enthusiastic, particularly if they have planted smaller varieties of tomatoes.

“Bigger tomatoes are too heavy and put too much stress on the vine, causing it to twist and break,” said Michael Nolan, an avid gardener in Atlanta and a writer for Urbangardencasual.com, who has four upside-down planters also made out of five-gallon buckets in which he grows bushels of cherry and patio varieties of tomatoes as well as small pickling cucumbers.

Tomato varieties are labeled as either indeterminate or determinate, and horticulture experts recommend choosing indeterminate ones for upside-down gardens. Determinate tomato plants are stubbier, with somewhat rigid stalks that issue all their fruit at once, which could weigh down and break the stems if hanging upside down. Indeterminate types, by contrast, have more flexible, sprawling stems that produce fruit throughout the season and are less likely to be harmed by gravity.

When Mr. Nolan first tried upside-down gardening, he used the Topsy Turvy planters, which are made of polyethylene bags and look like Chinese lanterns gone wrong. But he was disappointed in the yield. “I far prefer using buckets,” he said, which hang from tall metal shepherd hooks bolted to the posts supporting his backyard deck. He paints his buckets bright colors, and plants herbs and marigolds in the top to help retain moisture.

Another, less decorative solution for preventing evaporation is to top the planters with mulch or simply cover them with a lid. Regardless, Mr. Nolan said, “The upside-down planters tend to dry out really fast, so I have to water a lot — probably once a day in the heat of the summer.”

Many gardeners reported that the thinner, breathable plastic Topsy Turvy planters ($9.99) dried out so quickly that watering even once a day was not enough to prevent desiccated plants. There were similar comments about the Plow & Hearth version ($12.95) and while the Gardener’s Supply upside-down planter ($19.95) has a built-in watering system, online reviewers said it is difficult to assemble.

In addition to plastic soda bottles, milk jugs and five-gallon buckets, upside-down planters can be made out of thick heavy-duty plastic trash bags, plastic reusable shopping totes, kitty litter containers, laundry hampers and even used tires. Web sites like Instructables.com and UpsideDownTomatoPlant.com show how it can be done, and YouTube has several how-to videos. Variations include building a water reservoir either at the top or bottom of planters for irrigation, cutting several openings in the bottom and sides for planting several seedlings and lining the interior with landscape fabric or coconut fiber to help retain moisture.

Donald Rutledge, a construction project designer and manager in New Braunfels, Tex., devised a triple-pulley system so he could easily hoist his nine upside-down planters 16 feet above the ground, away from ravenous deer. He made his planters out of five-gallon buckets four years ago, following instructions on the Internet. “The tomatoes and basil worked real well upside down, but the lettuce, peas and carrots weren’t so successful,” he said. “It’s been trial and error.”

This year, he put his plantings right-side up in the buckets to see if it makes any difference. He said his suspended garden started as an entertaining summer project for him and his three children but has become more of a scientific pursuit: “Is upside down better than right-side up? I’m guess I’m going to find out.”

The Case for Food Co-ops

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Your Ottawa Region posted an article on food co-ops by Derek Dunn on April 29, 2010:

If a global food shortage and security threat is imminent, as some experts have stated, a retired scientist living in Constance Bay has a novel solution for ensuring Ottawa is able to feed its inhabitants.

The Consumers’ Association of Canada spokesperson, Mel Fruitman, told CTV’s Canada AM two years ago that while the country’s food costs are currently among the lowest in the world, “the bubble is going to burst” before too long. That same year Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group, told the Empire Club and the Financial Post not to worry about peak oil; a global food catastrophe will hit soon and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen.

Massive food shortages are nothing new in remote corners of the world. But food shortages in Canada? Hank Jones, who has extensive knowledge in nature, gardening and related issues, says we have cause for concern even in this country.

“Within the next 10 years we are going to see severe shortages; food production is falling behind now,” said Jones, who 40 years ago was among the first to produce a dissertation in mathematical ecology. “If we get out-bid for our own food, we’d have a problem.”

What he means is this: nations such as China, India and Brazil are seeing their middle classes grow exponentially. China alone has developed a middle class of some 300 million, roughly the same as the entire population of the U.S. They are beginning to demand a greater variety of foods, and more nutritious foods.

Problem is Canada has some of the best soil in the world, at least on par with those three countries – home to almost three of every five people on the planet – mentioned above. Global market forces unleashed in the last 20 years ensures the best price wins, and coupled with some consideration given to those able to buy in bulk, Jones indicated the Great White North has cause to tremble.

Food security is enough of an issue that McGill University holds an annual conference, WHO uses terminology like “the global food security crisis,” and even a group called Food Secure Canada is rallying Canadians to develop a concrete food sovereignty policy.

There is reason for haste, too. Just a few weeks ago, investors of Chinese origin were reported to have an interest in acquiring large tracts of agricultural land in Quebec. An agricultural union in the province is concerned the move could threaten food security. Jones noted there are laws preventing foreigners from owning farm land, but China could insert nationalists into Canada’s immigration system.

“There is always ways around these things,” he said. Then added, “If we get into a situation where we can grow our own food but can’t buy it, that’s not a good thing. I don’t want to see crops shipped out to China and you telling your kids that the food is not for you.”

However, a more serious issue for Jones is the demographical shift among farm workers. As in most are set to retire, and precious few have the knowledge or experience to replace them.

“Industrial farming will let us down. We have to start putting families back into farming,” he said. “But we need the vision and the leadership from the City of Ottawa, from the mayor on down, to make it happen.”

To make what happen? To make Ottawa self-sufficient when it comes to food through the creation of food co-ops or Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

Jones estimates it will take two new farming families per week over the next 10 years in order to reach a point where the city can feed itself. He would like to see 1,000 families become small business farmers living and working in Ottawa’s rural wards by 2020.

How does he propose to attract them to the business? By giving each family a $100,000 grant to get them started, provided they pass a training course (to be held, he suggests, at the former Torbolton school on Woodkilton Road in Woodlawn).

He said the bill for taxpayers comes to about $100 million, or two per cent of what he estimates the city is willing to shell out for the downtown tunnel and other transportation infrastructure.

“We already have farmers ready to retire, but who don’t want to leave their land. They could lease it instead to these young families who’ve interned and gone through the program already,” Jones said. “He can stay on the farm and help them learn about farming – something we need anyway.”

Or, another way to look at it is: a 10 per cent hike in taxes.

Rural affairs officer at the City of Ottawa, Derrick Moodie, is more than a little concerned about the estimated price tag.

“The City of Ottawa is actively supporting local agriculture and is always looking for opportunities to enhance our agricultural sector,” Moodie said. “However, I’m not convinced that a $100,000 grant is affordable.”

He said the city participates in a number of initiatives, including buy local, and that it has some wording related to possible food shortages in a long-range study titled “Choosing Our Future.” But as long as choice and affordability are strong – such as 79 cent bananas – there appears little urgency, he indicated.

CSAs offer native foods, in the case of this region, okra, apples, root vegetables and the like.

Nevertheless, Jones is attempting to move ahead with his plan to convert part of the former Torbolton school into a farmer training centre. He welcomes anyone in the community who is interested in utilizing the property for a multi-use centre to a “strategy workshop” slated for May 2, from 12 to 2 p.m., at the Kinburn Client Service Centre, 5670 Carp Rd.

Time for an Attitude Change?

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Food security not possible without changing our attitudes
by Mona Mattei on 11 Apr 2010

George Penfold, regional innovation chair at Selkirk College, doesn’t believe that we have a food security problem. What he does believe is that Canadians have an appetite problem instead. An appetite for inexpensive, convenient foods year round that is also reliant on using a great deal of agricultural land for one purpose – grain. If people are worried about the future of food, Penfold suggests that they start looking at how they eat.
“It’s been interesting from my perspective having been directly or indirectly involved with agriculture all my life to see the current resurgence of the whole question of food under the label of food security,” said Penfold.

“But when you get into conversations about what does that actually mean, there are all kinds of different perspectives folks have about what food security means to them personally. Some of it has to do with a genuine fear about lack of food. I personally don’t buy that. Haiti has a food security problem. Somalia has a food security problem. For the most part our problem in North America is that we have too much food, or at least we consume too much food, and the wrong kind of food.”

Penfold started his position with Selkirk three years ago with the purpose of providing information and research in support of community development issues in the West Kootenay / Boundary. Food has been a big part of conversations he’s been having as his work carries him around the region. Penfold comes from a farming background so he has some insight into the farm production experience. At College over Coffee, hosted by Selkirk College at Jogas Espresso on Mar. 25, Penfold engaged in a discussion about food.

While Penfold agrees that while some people in our communities have food security problems, the average citizen doesn’t have worries about food security. He stressed that there are probably different motivations and different ways to describe the current focus on eating locally grown foods.

Some reasons are social and health perspectives of having enough to eat; environmental perspectives such as using less energy for food production and eating organically; the desire for good quality food; and the influence of lifestyle perspectives – the 100 mile diet trend. Penfold suggested that the focus really should not be food security but a drive to support regional agriculture and food self reliance.

“There has been a lot of movement toward the idea of reducing our vulnerability as consumers moving to organic food, food with less oil, pesticide chemical input and that’s also behind a longer term concern about oil – where is it going to be in price at some time down the road and what’s the consequence of that going to be in our whole production system,” said Penfold. “A big component of agriculture strategies is how do we create jobs and improve the wealth in our community. The question is: is there a way to make our agriculture and food supply more efficient so that it can be less vulnerable to outside forces – it’s about increasing the resiliency of our food system.”

But reality takes another chunk out of the idea of self-sufficiency when it comes to food from Penfold’s view. In B.C. reports estimate that the average person consumes about 80 kilograms (KG) of grain directly and another 395 kg of feed grain consumed indirectly as meat, eggs, milk, cheese, etc. For the West Kootenay / Boundary area, with 90,000 people, self-sufficiency comes at the price of about 42,750 tonnes of grain or 17,100 hectares of grain production.

With about 53,000 hectares currently being farmed in the region (2006 Canada Census), the current 18,000 hectares of field crops would almost all have to be transferred over to grain to be truly self-sufficient in the current food lifestyle. Forget vegetables, range lands, and horse feed, the farms would all be in grain. Or we could choose to deforest many more hectares of land to meet our current food habits.

“We cannot achieve food security on our current patterns of consumption. It would be very expensive – we’d have to have greenhouses to have the food we enjoy year-round. Our consumption patterns are part of what we need to think about if we’re really serious about food security because we have a climate and a set of land and water resources that can feed us, but not in the style that we’ve become accustomed to,” Penfold stated.

In addition to a certain lack of available land for grain production to feed our cows, and make bread, Penfold was also very clear that, despite everything, if the actual value of agriculture doesn’t increase, there will continue to be an exodus of farmers.

In 1961, Penfold explained, Canadians spent 19% of their total household expenses on food (not including alcohol) and that decreased to 9.3% by 2005. What that means is that the average person is not willing to pay a lot for their food. The ability for a farmer to make a living from his work is critical to the availability of local food, as critical as land, water, climate, commodity marketing and processing, storage facilities, and access for customers.

We need to change our appetites, said Penfold, in order to even consider food self-sufficiency. People cannot expect to have cheap, convenient, non-resilient foods if the sources are more localized.

“As consumers it would be nice to get local food. There isn’t much of a chance of it if that’s all we’re willing to pay for it. The reality is the food that we get coming from other countries is: a) produced at industrial scale, b) produced in a climate that can generate three – five crops a year rather than one or two, c) based on very low labour rates. We can’t compete with that. But that has become part of our lifestyle,” explained Penfold.

“So as long as we expect to go to the grocery store and buy a head of romaine lettuce on a cold blustery day in February for $1.89, we’re not going to get close to self-sufficiency. This is the single most significant barrier to self-sufficiency. We are simply not willing to pay enough to farmers to grow food and generate a reasonable enough income for them and their families.”

Improved food self-sufficiency comes through the commitment of consumers, businesses and producers to regional production, processing and purchasing. But even with improved local systems, Penfold is not convinced that everything can be done in local areas.

“We’re not there yet. In the interim – grow your own, eat low energy, buy from local producers, buy ethically and stock your shelves,” advised Penfold. “Do not be reliant on Safeway for your personal food security. There’s a lot more possibilities that you can take personal responsibility for in terms of regional food self-sufficiency, that you can act on now, that are possible if we can get a system in place where someone else is taking care of all that.

“In thinking about self-sufficiency, I think we need to start looking at broadening our options a little bit. I’m not sure that trying to create a wall around the Boundary, around the West Kootenay, or even around the entire region is going to get us where we want to go.”

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