How to Participate:

1)   Read the strategy.

2)  Respond: Note which suggestions you support, oppose, or would suggest changes to. Add your own ideas for policy and action. The deadline for submissions is MAY 31, 2012.

3)   Submit your feedback through the web forms. Give us your feedback (big and small!) – from broad themes to word-smithing. If you REALLY, REALLY can’t use the web form, you may provide your feedback to strategy@sustainontario.ca

4)   Review the revised Strategy in June 2012.

How to organize community or group feedback:

We encourage you to review the strategy as a group and discuss it together. We hope that bringing a group together to discuss this will benefit you in thinking about your own work and your own food system. We welcome group submissions. To make it easy we’re providing some resources to help you organize your own consultation event.

1)   Use the materials provided and your own materials  to gather feedback on the strategy.

2)   Input the information into the web forms. If that is too difficult, you can mail the hard copies to Sustain Ontario at 365-401 Richmond St. W; Toronto, ON; M5V 3A8.

Thank you for the work that you do and for your participation. We look forward to hearing from you!

If the links in this email do not work, for you, please visit http://sustainontario.com/initiatives/ontario-food-and-nutrition-strategy

About the Strategy

A group of organizations has come together to start developing a Food and Nutrition Strategy for Ontario. Through this Strategy we aim to set common goals and directions for the food system, and to coordinate our efforts so that we are all working together towards a food system that is good for food providers, eaters, and the province as a whole. We will also be using the recommendations created through this strategy to contribute to the Local Food Act and Childhood Obesity Strategy that the government is currently developing.

Our goal is to create a strategy that provides government, funders, and all of those working on the ground with common directions and with processes that will be useful in the long-term. The partners that have been working on the strategy to-date have created a draft of the strategy, but we need to hear from you. What have we gotten right? What needs to be removed? What needs to be edited? What is missing? Do you have stories, research, or studies that would support your suggestions?

As we waited for Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan to present the 2012 Ontario Budget yesterday, many of us were wondering what it would mean for food and farming. Would we see the budgets of the ministries and programs fundamental to our work cut? The Drummond Report recommended  bolstering economic growth rates and increasing focus on health promotion. Would those translate into greater investment and focus on health promotion? What about building on the potential of the food and farming sector to create more jobs and generate economic development? Or would the budget-makers come down somewhere in the middle neither undermining our work nor advancing it to its full potential.

As many might have imagined the answer was right in the middle. The 2012 Ontario budget opens up a couple of opportunities to advance healthy food and farming systems, but mostly maintains the status quo.

Here’s what’s relevant to building healthy and sustainable food systems in the 2012 Ontario Provincial Budget:

• Social Assistance payments have been capped for the next year. Our friends, neighbours, and colleagues receiving social assistance will continue to struggle to afford healthy food. Demand for food banks may continue to increase over the coming year.

• The government has committed to creating a Jobs and Prosperity Fund and Council. The purpose of the fund is to support productivity growth and job creation in the business sector. The Council will provide advice to the government on consolidating and refocusing existing business support programs. For our sector, it will be important that, as Ontario’s largest employer, we are well represented on this council. We also need to make sure that our decision-makers (and those on the Council) know that we are a significant (the largest) employer and how much growth potential there is in our sector.

• Investment in Food and Agriculture through OMAFRA has been increased slightly. What those funds are going to be used for is not yet clear and the budget gives no indication other than capping business risk management program payouts at $100 million. While there are many on-going programs that OMAFRA will need to fund from their budget, there are also several programs that were part of the “Pick Ontario Freshness”  program that have ended this year. Renewing or revising these programs and developing and implementing the promised Local Food Act will come from the renewed OMAFRA budget.

• Included in the budget for health care is implementing Ontario’s Action Plan for Health Care, which includes focusing on health promotion. However, though the Action Plan itself acknowledges that obesity has a direct effect on the rate of type 2 diabetes and the $4.9 billion it costs the province every year, the plan itself includes no plans to help adult Ontarians eat more healthily.

• Both the Action Plan for Health Care and the 2012 provincial budget both tout the development of a Childhood Obesity Strategy. The purpose of this strategy will be to reduce childhood obesity by 20 per cent over five years. The strategy is to be created by a panel of advocates, health care leaders, non-profit organizations, and industry.  This strategy has significant potential. To realize its potential the right people need to be around the table. They need to be given enough leeway to develop a strategy that not only helps children to access and eat healthy food, but also makes sure that there is a food system that will enable them to continue to eat healthily.

• The Ministry of the Environment’s budget is being cut by $100 million. There is no indication in the budget of why that is, nor how those costs are going to be cut.

So what does this all mean for us?

*First, it means that the work that we are all doing together to create healthy, ecological, equitable and financially viable food systems will continue to receive a similar level of financial support – neither increased nor decreased. The possible exception is impacts as a result of cutting funding for the environment. The impacts of those cuts is unclear.

*Second, those Ontarians who receive social assistance will likely feel the pinch of spending caps, putting pressure on those of us in the emergency food sector and working in community-based food security programs.

*Finally, it means that we’ve got to keep in touch with our decision makers, our communities, our families and our friends, continuing to help Ontario understand that the food and farming sector offers solutions to help us become the thriving and vibrant Province that we can be.

The conference will explore the relationships between food production and consumption, regional and local foodscapes, relationships between urban practices and rural environments, as well as crossings of food that occur on a larger, global scale.

To register for this innovative event, visit the Congress 2012 website.  Program highlights are listed below, but a full schedule for the conference can be found here.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

Read more about the Food and Farming Action Plan here and continue on for the full OAC article.

University of Guelph

Jobs Aplenty in Agri-Food, Report Finds

Feb 2, 2012 – News Release 

Toronto Chickens Supports Charter Challenge in Upcoming Court Case

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  The working group of backyard chicken owners in Toronto, Toronto Chickens, fully endorses the upcoming Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge that has been undertaken by Calgarian Paul Hughes.

Mr. Hughes’ court case is set for March 5, 2012. He is challenging his city’s bylaws that disallow the possession of urban chickens in Calgary. As a group that is working to change Toronto’s bylaw so that urban hens will be allowed again in the city, Toronto Chickens will monitor the course of this upcoming trial very closely.

Three huge issues will be front and centre in Ontario’s 2011 election – health, health and health.  All three issues – medical health, economic health and environmental health – have one thing in common. Good food is indispensable to success with all of them.

With growing awareness of the importance, value, and potential of food across Ontario this could be the year that food finds its rightful place at the policy table. In Ontario today there is no food ministry, minister, office, department, legislation, plan or strategy.  As a result we’re missing out on great opportunities to create jobs– the food sector has already become Ontario’s top employer;  improve health promotion and generate huge medical savings; create lively and welcoming communities; engage students and make curricula relevant; and improve our air, soil, water and wildlife habitat. Food can make all of these things happen – but it won’t until there’s coordination across ministries, jurisdictions, communities and businesses.

Photo by Laura Berman - www.greenfusephotos.com

Sustain Ontario’s job is to bring together a wide range of food-related community and stakeholder groups across the province. Our non-partisan goal is to help the government get its act together with food. We’d like to see all parties integrate a focus on food into their platforms, taking advantage of the opportunities that come from managing the food file in an integrated way.

Sustain Ontario and many of our members are taking action this year to make sure that food is on the agenda. We’ll be playing our part by creating a toolkit, connecting people to events, activities, ideas, and resources that they can use to make sure candidates understand why food is so important and what they can do to use food to address the issues facing our province. Part of that will be keeping you informed through this blog about healthy food and farming policy asks, campaigns, issues, and party platforms.

Good Food Policies and Programs for Ontario are our policy asks. The Good Food Policies and Programs would bring about  immediate changes that will prevent our food system from further eroding, give people who are hungry today access to the food that they need, and will make sure that we’re not missing the obvious and immediate opportunities available through food.

But that’s not all we’re asking for. We’re also asking that the provincial government create processes and structures that will allow us to realize all of the possibilities that food presents us. We are asking that all ministries that deal with food be brought together at one table.  We are asking for support of community and business based food policy councils and alliances. We would like to see the province have a strategy and an action plan for food. Across this province we need to start working together to find new opportunities and new solutions.

Sustain Ontario isn’t the only group that thinks it’s time for good food this election year. Groups across the province are asking politicians and candidates to change the future of food. Here are a few of the many:

The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario is advocating for policies to prevent childhood obesity. Check out their advocacy document, starting on page 12 to learn more about their food focused policies.

The Holland Marsh Growers Association is advocating for policies and budget changes that will enable farmers to keep farming and make a good living (and that are good for eaters as well).

FoodShare Toronto, which works for good, healthy food for all is advocating for student nutrition, support to local farmers, and good food boxes.

Watch this blog to learn more about Sustain Ontario’s policy asks, other food focused campaigns, and what the parties are saying about food this election year. Share your ideas, opinions, resources and more. We’d love to hear from you!

The response to Sustain Ontario’s Metcalf Food Solutions report, Menu 2020: Ten Good Food Ideas for Ontario has been fantastic.

Why Menu 2020?

Last summer I proposed to write a report for the Metcalf Food Solutions series. After one year of being on the job as Sustain Ontario’s director, I wanted to showcase the good food ideas I learned about while speaking with farm and food leaders throughout the province.

I felt these initiatives were resulting in the policy outcomes we want: economic development and jobs, improving health, ecological farming practices, addressing the indignities of poverty and hunger, a strong farm sector. Often these good food ideas acheive several of these outcomes simultaneously. But these efforts are severely under resourced.

This led to my understanding of Ontario’s good food gap: a policy environment that separates farming, food and health.

The result of my many conversations with farm and food leaders is Menu 2020: Ten Good Food Ideas for Ontario. The report presents a rationale for doing food, farming and health policy differently by taking the lead from people on the ground.

Media coverage

In the Globe and Mail: Setting the table to beat the “good food gap.”

On Metro Morning: Sandy Houston, President of the Metcalf Foundation speaks with Matt Galloway.

In the Winnipeg Free Press: Many woes, single cause: dysfunctional food system.

And a commentary by John Clement of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario: “Thumbs Up” for recommendations on agricultural planning in new report.

What is next?

The report recommends an Ontario Farm, Food and Health Act, to trigger the reform of policies, programs, regulations and taxation in favour of the local food economy and access to healthy food. We will be working to flush out this Act over the next six months and welcome your ideas.

What are the best practices for local food distribution in Ontario and beyond? Take our poll: http://twtpoll.com/wpe0r5

Sustain Ontario and Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance (OCTA) have partnered to develop case studies of local food distribution models. Distribution has been identified as a priority issue for both Sustain Ontario and OCTA members. Regional and local food production has increased in response to market demand. Yet farmers face significant challenges in reaching existing and expanding local markets. Several innovative enterprises have developed recently that bridge this market gap. These alternative distribution models are the focus of the project’s research and case studies. We will be looking at existing business models in Ontario as well as other jurisdictions.

The research will explore an important economic opportunity that will be of interest to farmers and processors, people expanding or adding value-added capacity to their operations, small distributors who plan to expand, and organizations involved in economic development, community development and culinary tourism. The report in addition identifies significant new market opportunities that will be of interest to policy-makers, investors and government partners.

It is funny how things change sometimes.

I was reminded of this recently when I received a glossy promotional magazine in my mail for one of Ontario’s farm organizations that discussed amongst other things a national food policy like they had invented the idea.

A few years ago I was at a government consultation meeting around the future of agriculture. I was there representing the National Farmers Union and the thousands of farmers across Canada who have been talking and working on promoting the need for a national food policy and agricultural policies that actually focus on the needs and importance of family farmers. During the meeting I brought up the idea of a national food policy.

Continue reading the full article here: Food policy for Canada by Grant Robertson