Webinar Recording: Vibrant Farmers’ Markets
Posted: April 27, 2015
Categories: Food Access / GoodFoodBites / News from Sustain Ontario / Webinars
A recording of the Community Models for Vibrant Farmers’ Markets webinar that took place on March 25th, 2015 is now available for online viewing. Below you can access the webinar recording (password available to Sustain Ontario members, supporters, and event attendees) as well as view the slides from each presentation. This webinar was part of the Food Access Peer Learning Circle.
The webinar was comprised of a series of presentations from organizations and collaborative projects from across southern Ontario that are working to make farmers’ and neighbourhood markets more accessible in a variety of ways – from program to policy.
In the order the panelists presented –
FoodShare’s Good Food Markets and Mobile Food Markets are two models to increase community food security, “a situation in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes self-reliance and social justice.” The Good Food Markets are non-profit temporary neighbourhood markets rely that sell affordable fresh fruits and vegetables (both local and imported). Mobile Food Markets is a renovated TTC WheelTrans van that travels to six locations across Toronto selling affordable fresh food in neighbourhoods that have been selected through community consultations. Underlying all of FoodShare’s programs are the priorities that programs be: universal, built from the ground up, multi-faceted, and partnership-based. Angela’s presentation emphasized the importance of working with community leaders and community consultations to determine culturally appropriate foods.
Market Dollars is a food voucher program run by Pathways to Potential, Windor and Essex County’s Poverty Reduction Strategy in partnership with local farmers’ markets. The project aims to make fresh, local food more financially accessible while also increasing social inclusion through community activities and promoting local farmers/vendors. Market Dollars is operated using a social enterprise model aiming to be self-sustaining: some market dollars were sold to social-service agencies at half-price that were then given out to their clients (they found a higher redemption through agency distribution) other dollars were bought at full price, such as Caesars Windsor (a large grocery store and program partner) purchased Market Dollars to give to their staff as staff appreciation or as market promotion. The summer of 2014 was the 2nd year the program ran as a pilot project and Laura’s presentation highlighted both the successes of the program, such as strengthening community partnerships and the challenges, such as the human error and cost of large-scale manual data entry (each market dollar was barcoded to track how it was distributed and used).
The West End Food Co-op is a multi-stakeholder co-op that includes consumers, workers, producers, and community partners. The Co-op’s Market Bucks program is a way to spend money at the Sorauren Farmers’ Market with debit/credit in exchange for tokens, a program that has helped to increase costumers at the market and strengthen a local economy between the farmers’ market and the co-op. The Co-op Cred is a co-op program that seeks to address the inequitable access to fresh food in the community. Participants of Co-op Cred work at the West End Food Co-op or with partners such as Greenest City and PARC (Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre), in exchange for credit at the co-op while also becoming active, empowered community members, gaining experience working collaboratively in kitchens and in growing food, as well as increasing their access to healthy, fresh foods. Corry’s presentation addressed how, those these co-op programs are quite different, they both use tokens and, because tokens are accessed in a variety of ways, stigma is reduced. Most of the fundraising for the Co-op Cred program happens through the Ride4RealFood.
Food Spaces, Vibrant Places is a policy advocacy campaign of the Waterloo Region Food System Roundtable to support zoning by-laws that would allow for and reduce barriers to establishing temporary farmers’ markets, markets that can be set up and taken down in a day (and that are usually in an area of town with little commercial zoning). The campaign focused on last year’s municipal elections, raising awareness about the lack of temporary farmers’ markets in the regions and about how few people in the region have walkable access to healthy food options. Marc’s presentation spoke to the importance of Public Health to engage in advocacy and policy development; that public health can be a facilitator and catalyst of a healthy food system and in effecting regional food policy. The goals for this campaign were to ensure zoning by-laws that permit temporary farmers’ markets and community gardens in residential, institutional, and open space zones (not just commercial); to create supportive licensing regulations for farmers’ markets and incentives for temporary farmers’ markets (such as reduced or waived fees); and to strengthen community garden policies. The campaign gained support from the majority of elected officials in the region and continues as a working group.
The discussion and questions looked at the contextual factors – the community, the partnerships, the goals, and the funding – that determined the different program models and approaches. The panelists also discussed how subsidizing food and infrastructure played a role in their programs and the hope for larger-scale subsidies of healthy and fresh foods.
For those unable to attend, the slides from both presentations are available on SlideShare.net/Sustain_Ontario.
This webinar was part of a series of educational webinars and discussions of the Food Access Peer Learning Circle, a project of Healthy Food for All: Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems in Ontario. The Food Access PLC hopes to be an avenue to strengthen existing collaborative networks, support initiatives on a variety of food access topics, share tools, resources, and best practices, and come to a place of agreement for government and the network to move forward on. For more information on the Food Access PLC, please contact Bronwyn Clement, bronwyn@sustainontario.ca.