Debbie Field of Foodshare

Author: Kyle L. McGregor

Posted: May 13, 2010

Categories: News from Sustain Members

A non profit oasis in a city learning to bring an end to ‘food deserts’

Written by Karen Burson on April 29, 2010, MaydayMagazine.ca

Debbie Field is the executive director of FoodShare and is a recognized leader in the world of food security. FoodShare tries to take a multifaceted, innovative, and long-term approach to hunger and food issues. They are involved in grassroots program delivery, advocacy for social assistance reform, job creation and training, nutrition education, farmland preservation, and campaigns for comprehensive food labelling.

A long standing activist in a variety of social movements, Debbie began her work life in 1976 as a teacher at Brampton’s Sheridan College. Next she was Canada’s first Equal Opportunities Coordinator, working for OPSEU (the Ontario Public Service Employees Union). In 1979, along with four other women, Debbie was successful in her Human Rights’ complaint against Stelco in Hamilton for their no-women hiring policy. She was then hired and worked in the coke ovens until the strike in 1981. In the 1980s she was the Coordinator of the Development Education Centre, a non-profit resource centre specialising in third world issues. Prior to coming to FoodShare in 1992, she was Executive Assistant to Metro Councillor’s Dale Martin and Olivia Chow.

I met Debbie at Food Secure Canada’s November 2008 Conference in Ottawa. I had only been in my job at Hamilton Eat Local for little more than a month. The experience meeting the women there was unforgettable; they are brilliant, passionate women like Colleen Ross from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), Lori Stahlbrand, President of Local Food Plus, Tania Morrison, representing the First Nations and Inuit Branch of Health Canada, and the tireless conference organizer and publisher of The Ram’s Horn, Food Secure Canada’s Cathleen Kneen. They are all women who are working against huge odds for food security for all Canadians.

But what, exactly, is “food security?”

There are two commonly used definitions. The first comes from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO):

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s definition is somewhat more comprehensive:

Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.

Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies).

Together, these definitions cover the most crucial points.

Continue reading this article on MaydayMagazine.ca’s website.

Below is a video of Debbie Field discussing food deserts in Toronto.

FoodShare Toronto – www.foodshare.net