VANCOUVER – There’s something that people love about fall suppers, and it might have more to do with the feeling than the food.
Cathleen Kneen says people have always shared food as a way to build communities and make sure everyone has enough.
It’s what she calls the “zucchini theory of food security.”
Think about zucchini left on your doorstep by a neighbour; an ice cream pail full of cucumbers or tomatoes from a friend; those signs advertising free crabapples to whoever wants to pick them.
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Kneen, elected chair of Food Secure Canada at last week’s annual meeting in Vancouver, said growing, gathering and exchanging food has always been at the root of community.
Food affects how people relate to each other. It comforts at sad times and helps celebrate happy ones.
Getting together at the annual fall supper is a tradition that marked the end of harvest. In earlier times, those who attended these suppers grew or raised all the food that was served.
That has changed.
“We’ve switched our agriculture from growing food to, more or less, edible commodities,” Kneen told 900 delegates from North America and several other countries.
The definition of food security is debatable. Even at last week’s joint meeting with the California-based Community Food Security Coalition, leaders struggled with the word security.
“The term is problematic, especially in this political era,” said Kai Siedenburg of the CFSC.
She offered food sovereignty or food justice as other possibilities.
Many of the groups working under the food security umbrella define the term as “a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally appropriate, nutritionally sound diet through an economical and environmentally sustainable food system that promotes community self-reliance and social justice.”
Debbie Field, executive director of FoodShare in Toronto, said however it is defined, the term must balance rural and urban interests.
“It’s (about) getting farmers a better income,” added Summerland, B.C., farmer Kim Stansfield to cheers from other attendees.
Indeed, food security advocates encourage consumers to buy locally and support farmers.
In Canada, when people talk about food security they don’t just mean ensuring the poor and starving have access. FoodShare, for example, has developed a Good Food Box program that provides fruit and vegetables purchased directly from farmers to participants. The cost of the box varies, depending on what and how much the consumer wants.
Kneen looks at it this way: “There is no food security if people are dependent on outside sources for their food supply.”
In that sense, none of us is food secure, she added.
The infrastructure that provided for local food production has disintegrated and the diversity that once existed on farms is gone. She said it’s time to get all levels of government moving on policies that will help Canadians feed their own country.
“There’s nothing wrong with trade,” she said, adding she is a proponent of three Cs of trade: citrus, coffee and chocolate.
“You should feed your family first and trade the leftovers.”
Climate change and declining oil supplies are two good reasons to move food production closer to home, she said.
