A country with so much food production should have its own national food policy, says federal NDP agriculture critic Alex Atamanenko.
The MP for British Columbia Southern Interior is surveying Canadian opinions during his Food For Thought tour, which stopped in Saskatchewan last week.
Atamanenko wants to develop a policy to present to the federal government for consideration. The policy would include a food security plank.
He said Canada is caught between two competing visions of agriculture and food – the large industrial model and the buy-local, eat-local movements. International trade obligations are also at play.
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“We have to make some decisions as a nation,” he told about 60 people in Regina. “We should be able to feed ourselves.”
The meeting did just that, convening first with a potluck meal containing local food. Atamanenko’s contribution was produce from a relative’s Saskatoon garden.
Don Mitchell, the NDP candidate in the federal constituency of Palliser and a longtime local food advocate, said Canada has long been on a path away from food sovereignty. He referenced a 1969 government task force that called for a massive reduction in the number of farms and decreasing government subsidies for farmers.
“The task force predictions were really modest compared to what we see today,” he said during a panel presentation.
Mitchell said movements focusing on food security, such as community and backyard gardening, should expand rapidly. There should be permanent farmers’ markets and training available to teach people about food and food culture.
He noted that preserved food once sustained all families, yet many today don’t even have gardens. And probably fewer preserve food to feed their families through the winter.
Paul Beingessner, a farmer and activist from Truax, Sask., said that extends to farming skills like animal husbandry. As younger people move away from the farm, the industry loses the ability to pass those skills on.
He said the “intense belief” that agricultural exports are the way for farmers to be secure is leading to insecurity.
Amy Jo Ehman, a Saskatoon freelance journalist with an interest in food security, found that out when she tried to obtain white pinto beans developed in Saskatchewan. The variety was developed for the export market and isn’t available to local consumers.
Several years ago Ehman began eating a diet based on locally grown foods. She found it difficult to track down some products that fall into that category. Some companies refused to say exactly where she could get the products she wanted.
She did learn that people who want to drink milk processed at the province’s only dairy in Saskatoon should look for the code 4015 on the container.
She has gone one step further.
“I broke the law in the procurement of local food,” she admitted.
That happened when she purchased non-pasteurized milk from a dairy farmer outside the quota system.
“This is going on all across Saskatchewan,” she said, because consumers want to support their own producers.
Local vegetables scarce
Saskatchewan produces only three percent of the vegetables available in local stores, a fact Ehman called embarrassing, except for potatoes in which the province is self-sufficient.
She said local producers and processors could benefit from government policies that encourage them.
Mitchell said that could be as simple as stickers that producers and processors could put on their foods to identify them as Saskatchewan grown and made. He encouraged people to take individual action.
