Healthy Food For All Report: Food and the Official Plan
Posted: August 13, 2015
Categories: GoodFoodBites / Municipal Regional Food Policy Network / News from Sustain Members / Research
After a lengthy research process, the Haliburton County Community Food Assessment Report “Food and the Official Plan” has been released.
The Haliburton County Community Food Assessment is a collaborative project of Harvest Haliburton and several community partners. As part of the Healthy Food For All project, led by Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition, the community food assessment partners undertook research to determine how Official Plans can be amended in order to support the food system. “Food and the Official Plan,” the first of three reports, offers suggested changes in the five reviewed local Official Plans to fully support the food system. Indeed, the research observed that Official Plans can influence all elements of the food system from production, processing, distribution, consumption and through to waste management.
The successful food system projects and programs have showed that the difficulties posed for food system projects can be easily overcome if municipalities and service providers collaborate effectively.
The Food and Official Plan report outlines the following ways of supporting food systems in Official Plans:
From the Food and Official Plan report:
- “Identification of the food system as an important contributor to the quality of life in the community. The food system contributes to the local economy, the health and well-being of the community and to the environment
- Explicit permission for agriculture related uses of lands in most zones
- Explicit permission for community gardens, farmers’ markets, food hubs in most zones, including residential and settlement zones
- Explicit permission for backyard gardens, roof top gardens, workplace gardens and edible landscaping
HALIBURTON COUNTY: THE FOOD SYSTEM AND OFFICIAL PLANS SPRING 2015
The following recommendations were made:
- The inclusion of a goal supporting local food and the food system be included in Official Plans during their five year reviews.
- The retention of agricultural lands defined as potential arable lands that were identified in the Local Food Infrastructure Report, 2011 and the completion of this mapping for the County.
- Support for community gardens and farmers’ markets in settlement zones
- Support for food hubs and food education in settlement and rural zone
- Support for agriculture related uses in zones where agricultural uses are permitted
- Support for urban agriculture with the exception of animals
- Community consultation on the acceptability of raising livestock, chickens and rabbits specifically, in settlement areas
- The use of definitions from the Provincial Policy Statement, 2014
- The use of rural areas and rural lands as defined in the Provincial Policy Statement, 2014
And suggestions that The Community Food Assessment Partners:
- Continue to review Official Plans as they come up for revision.
- Review municipal Comprehensive By-laws to ensure support for the food system and for local food.
- Consider developing a Haliburton County Food Charter.”
As a Healthy Food for All project partner, Sustain Ontario hosted four Peer Learning Circles (PLC) on four topics relating to healthy and sustainable food systems and planning processes. The PLCs helped strengthen existing collaborative networks; support initiatives on a variety of food access topics; share tools, resources, and best practices; and provide a space for government and network members to discuss initiatives and address how to move forward.