The next Canadian food policy should include a switch in emphasis from a trade and big-is-better mindset to an emphasis on local food, a local food advocate has told MPs.
During House of Commons agriculture committee hearings Feb. 29 on the next five-year Growing Forward plan, Food Secure Canada senior policy adviser Anna Paskal said a three-year national consultation on a “people’s food policy” shows consumers want more local food options.
She said more local food emphasis, including government help for organizations that encourage local production and connecting buyers to producers through local food hubs, would be good for Canadian health and local economies.
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The current industrial food system is “failing” Canadians, said Paskal.
“There are two and a half million Canadians who don’t have enough food to eat,” she said. “At the same time, we’re losing thousands of family farms, over a quarter of Canadians are considered obese and the industrial agriculture system is one of the leading contributors to climate change. The status quo is no longer an option. We need change.”
Paskal noted the fact that at least four national food strategies are being developed in Canada from different perspectives. Based as it is on three years of hearings and involvement from thousands of farmers, consumers, activist agencies, unions and others, “the People’s Food Policy is the most comprehensive national food policy being advanced in Canada today.”
But she said it would require a shift in emphasis in the next agriculture policy framework.
“We must build support for sustainable local food into our policy processes and this is where you guys come in,” she told MPs.
When Liberal MP Mark Eyking, whose family operates a large Cape Breton vegetable farm, argued that support for local farming does not necessarily bring access to the major food stores where consumers do most of their shopping, Paskal said the government set a precedent by requiring the fuel industry to include a percentage of biofuel in the product.
“We’ve legislated 10 percent biofuels that has to go in,” she said. “We can legislate a certain percentage of local and sustainable food that’s Canadian in our retail system. We have that power, we have the precedent.”
Pressed on the connection between local food strategies and existing export policies, she said exports and local food can co-exist but the balance is wrong and should be changed.
