SASKATOON – The chickens on Silke Verwimp’s fruit farm in Outlook, Sask. get to eat her produce that goes unsold at farmers markets.
Vegetable farmer Eric Yoder of Rosthern, Sask. also hates waste, so he started a community-shared agriculture plan. He sells shares in his vegetable operation to city people who pay him in the spring for a steady supply of produce through the summer and fall.
Farmers and low-income urban dwellers met at a recent conference here to discuss food security. The discussions were organized by the National Farmers Union and the development agency, Oxfam. Several similar discussions are being held across Canada. The results “will find their way to the World Food Summit” in Rome this November, say organizers.
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Farmers are struggling with how to get more money for their products, but speaker Hart Haidn, a Fort St. John, B.C. organic grain grower, said some can be misled by food processing. Farmers may think they are adding value to the food, but they are in reality reducing its nutritional value and adding cost.
Also, transporting food long distances harms its freshness and creates gaps between producers and consumers.
Buy locally, buy in bulk
Haidn suggested the answer lies with consumers buying from local producers either at farmers markets or through community-shared agriculture plans. They should also ensure good nutrition by buying food with as few additives as possible, buy in bulk and in season and prepare meals from raw food.
Grandora, Sask., farmer Elizabeth Thomas said low -income city residents should try collective kitchens, in which groups buy large purchases and get together to cook large amounts for storage in their homes.
“You need a freezer, it’s the Saskatchewan co-operative way,” she said.
By buying and storing in bulk from local farmers in the summer, consumers can avoid foreign produce in winter with its questionable additives and higher prices, she said.
Ignorance of how people obtain their food is another problem the workshop tackled.
“I’d like to open my garden to local schoolchildren so they can see how a potato grows and gets into the store,” said Thomas. Others, such as Yoder, allow city dwellers to work in the vegetable patch they have helped finance.
Another way to link up is being tried by Saskatoon’s Child Hunger Education Project. Member Karen Archibald said in addition to starting collective kitchens, the group has been talking about forming bulk buying groups at city schools this spring. The power of volume purchases means farmers and food wholesalers should sell to the groups at a cheaper rate. Archibald said the group has met with the NFU and the Mennonite Central Committee and now has a list of farmers willing to sell to the bulk buyers.
Archibald said the group hopes this concept “will provide a small but concrete link between producers and those who can’t afford the price at farmers markets or Yoder’s.”
