What We’ve Been Served: Food And Farming Issues In The Election Platforms

October 3, 2011

by Lauren Baker

Farming, food processing and food retail is the second largest economic sector in Ontario, generating sales of well over $40 billion per year. Yet farmers are going out of business, urban sprawl continues and farmland is being paved.

Growing rates of diet-related chronic diseases are driving our health care costs through the roof, and will add billions of dollars to the provincial health care bill into the foreseeable future.

At the same time, almost 40% of people who are fed by foodbanks are children, a shocking statistic that points to the chronic hunger and inability to access healthy food faced by some Ontarians.

Considering all this, it isn’t surprising that Ontarians are demanding a new approach to farming and food policy.

How are food and farm issues represented in the four elections platforms? What are the parties promising in relation to the future of food and farming in this province?

Sustain Ontario has done a very useful “report card” that allows visitors to the Vote ON Food and Farming website to read what parties have said about key farm and food issues. Quotes from the party platforms and the results of a survey administered to each party are offered so that voters can get a sense of where the parties stand on diverse farm and food issues. I encourage you to spend some time with this tool to see for yourself what the parties have promised.

As I read each of the policy platforms I was struck by how many of the issues important to the organizations and people working towards a food system that healthy, ecological, equitable and financially viable are on the agenda. The compiled promises from all four platforms could be considered a food and farm action plan for the next four years.

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Harvesting The Full Value of Farmers’ Produce

October 3, 2011

by Bryan Gilvesy, YU Ranch owner and Norfolk ALUS

Whenever we look ahead to the future of food and farming, the clear challenge is feeding up to 9 billion citizens across the globe. The prevailing wisdom looks towards technological improvements based on monoculture crops, GMO plants, chemicals and chemical fertilizer. This analysis often assumes the world to be static, with only the population changing. However, tying agriculture solely to these techniques has effectively linked the future of our food supply to the one resource that will go up in cost and disappear one day – oil. It also ignores the threat that climate change introduces to food production: uncertainty. In fact, even here in Southern Ontario we are now farming with 200 more corn heat units (an index showing the amount of heat required for different varieties) than we did when I started farming some 30 years ago, a 6.5% increase and strong indicator that things are warming up quickly.

It also introduces risks to farming that, up until 50 years ago, were largely managed by farmers. Industrial commodity based food systems that tether farmers to oil and commodity prices, do not focus on managing climate change risk and have introduced another layer of risk farmers never contemplated before: The fact that your industrial supplier might get it wrong.

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Three Wins for Local and Sustainable Food

October 3, 2011

By Farrah Khan, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

No matter who leads our province after the October 6th election, we need to send a message to our politicians about the importance of promoting locally grown, sustainable food.

Our government can easily legislate policies for local and sustainable food procurement targets for government agencies and can also make it easier for all Ontarians to buy organic food grown nearby. Doing so will be a boon to this industry and will also help in our battle against climate change and illness.

Food and the Economy:

Buying fresh local apples instead of imports is an obvious benefit for Ontario’s economy. It’s in the best interest of our government to encourage the purchase of local food to promote Ontario’s businesses and create jobs.

Food and the Planet

Buying produce grown closer to home uses less fuel and saves on transportation costs, while at the same time spewing fewer greenhouse gases and noxious chemicals into the air. Reductions in water, pesticides and energy use in ecological farming practices ensure we are making efficient choices with our provinces treasured resources, which further reduces our impact on the planet.

Food and Health

Certain agricultural pesticides are linked to neurological illness and cancer and are a threat to wildlife and human health. Organic farmers use non-toxic pest control methods, so when buying local sustainable food, we can be confident about serving safe and nutritious meals to our families.

Local, sustainable food policies will boost our economy, improve our health and save our planet. Let your local candidates know why food should be on the agenda this election and be sure to keep the discussion going even after the polls close.

Farrah Khan is a Campaigner for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE). Help doctors protect the planet – visit us online, on twitter or on facebook.

Learn how to voteONfood.

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Better Health is Worth Your Vote

October 3, 2011

This election, the Heart and Stroke Foundation is engaging voters and candidates across the province in the goal of creating a healthier province. What is unique about the Healthy Candidates campaign is that we are creating a positive, win-win opportunity for candidates and voters alike. Our campaign website (www.HealthyCandidates.ca) allows voters to challenge their candidate to ‘go healthy’ and to congratulate the candidates that have taken that important step.

With nearly 300 candidates signed on, almost 75% of all registered candidates from the four main parties have now pledged to take action on health promotion and prevention through the Healthy Candidates campaign. A powerful demonstration of political will made even more remarkable by the cross-partisan nature of the support – every party now has more than 30% of candidates signed on with that number growing every day.

The unprecedented success of this campaign demonstrates that health promotion is an issue that transcends party politics. When campaigns mostly highlight what separates each party – this is an issue for which there is a rare consensus. Each party recognizes that we must do more and that this is a vital priority for Ontario voters.

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Ontario’s food processing sector is an important economic cluster

October 3, 2011

Michael Wolfson, the City of Toronto’s Economic Food & Beverage Sector Advisor, had this to say about the economic importance of Ontario’s Processing sector:

Having been involved in the Food Processing sector in Ontario since 1978, I have known for some time what others are just discovering. This industry is the heart and soul of Ontario’s economy. It’s centered in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) with over half of the Provinces’ processors located here. The cluster is far reaching and includes, farming, primary production, logistics, packaging, machinery, food service, retail, institutional food supply, research centres, colleges and universities, marketing and professional services. It has grown at an average of at least 5% per year ever since I can remember and has weathered many of the economic downturns in the economy over that time.

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Supporting New Farmers

October 3, 2011

Agricultural Renewal means supporting a new generation of farmers in Ontario.

by Christie Young, Director of FarmStart

We are facing a very real crisis of renewal in agriculture within the next 10 years. Farmers are getting older in Canada and fewer young people are entering farming. Just 2% of the Canadian population farms. With under 30,000 young farmers in Canada today and the fastest pace of decline in our history, fewer and fewer farmers will be producing our food in the future. This loss of farmers will severely impact our food security, the capacity of our farms to provide Canadians with most of the healthy foods we need to thrive in the 21st Century.

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