Food Secure Canada: At Home in Montreal By Diana Bronson, Executive Director at Food Secure Canada. It's an exciting fall for all things related to food in Montreal! Not only are innovations evident in Montreal's exciting restaurant scene, the food movement is also bubbling over with excitement as more and more organizations begin to connect across sectors traditionally considered distinct: poverty, health, environment. Everywhere you look, people are not only talking about food, they are taking collective action. Just this past weekend, dozens of people gathered for the Convergence of Justice Alimentaire Montreal (JAM) to increase collaboration between community groups and academics working on food.
Food Secure Canada (FSC) as a national network of organizations and individuals that has existed for a dozen years, but only recently established its head office in Montreal (March 2012). Founded on the three pillars of zero hunger, safe and healthy food and sustainable food systems, FSC convenes a number of national networks (children and food; local and sustainable food; Northern food issues; Provincial networks) and other working groups (indigenous circle, New farmers' initiatives, federal budget working group, etc). FSC was also active around the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food last year and has called for the respect of his recommendations.
Its members created Food Secure Canada in order to work towards substantive and lasting policy change at the federal level. Policy change has become urgent to deal with:
- over 3 million fellow citizens living in food insecurity;
- a national crisis of obesity and diabetes costing taxpayers billions of dollars;
- an unsustainable industrial agricultural model that is putting the family farm out of business.
Our vision for policy change is laid in
Resetting the Table: A People's Food Policy for Canada – a document published in 2011 following consultations involving over 3500 people over three years. It summarizes a forward-looking vision of our food system.
Some events worthy of note this fall.
On October 16, World Food Day, Food Secure Canada will be calling on all political leaders to address our broken food system and look seriously at the solutions being offered by organizations across the country. Later, on 26-27 November, we shall host an evening featuring food system innovations – and we're not talking GMOs –from across the country.
The Food Movement is on the move, and we invite you to join us in this very exciting time! Already FSC and the John Molson School of Business (and the David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Business) have collaborated through internships but there is much more we can do together. Become a
member or sign up to find out what is next.
More information:
514 271 7352;
info@foodsecurecanada.org
Onward with social entrepreneurship By Stephen Huddart, President and CEO, The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation. The Foundation is a financial supporter of the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing and the SVX. About five years ago, Lidia Varbanova and Paul Shrivastava from the David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise invited me to sit in on a conversation that the Centre holds every so often, with people from across the university working on breakthrough ideas for sustainability.
As someone whose work is focused on social innovation - basically, new approaches to complex problems in society - I love discussions where ideas, disciplines and possibilities collide, and it struck me that day that one of Concordia's greatest strengths is the diversity of its faculty and student body. A faculty member from the Middle East talked about the concept of 'inward-facing architecture' - such as you find in many eastern and southern countries - and its potential to simultaneously address social isolation and building footprint. Some engineering students from three or four different countries spoke about their joint work designing a cleaning system for large areas using nano particles. Now nano makes me nervous - technological innovation that doesn't take social context into account can produce unintended and disastrous side effects - but rather than raise those concerns, I asked the group where in Montreal, Quebec or Canada they would turn to get first stage financing for such a venture. The answer was, nobody knew. Silicon Valley, said someone, or maybe Boston.
For a country that attracts some of the best minds in the world to research, teach and study in its universities, and that spends more per capita on research than most, this isn't good enough. We see the results every day in the oft-cited productivity gap.
I mentioned an idea that might provide part of the solution: a 'social stock exchange' where capital could be raised for 'social ventures' - companies and non-profits with a bottom-line focus on delivering a specific environmental or social good, while generating a financial return for investors. It would be organized to serve community and regional scale innovation, but linked nationally and globally, allowing for scale and dissemination.
It took longer than expected but on September 19, 2013, the SVX was launched at the opening bell of the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). With just 12 ventures listed, and for 'accredited' investors only, (minimum 25k), the SVX itself is still at the nano stage. But project lead Adam Spence at the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing reports that there are over 50 ventures and funds in the due diligence pipeline, and discussions are underway with several provinces about setting up regional sites.
Santropol Roulant and Sustainability By Chad Lubelsky, BA from Concordia's Communications Program. He is currently the Executive Director of Santropol Roulant. Santropol Roulant is a Montreal community centre that uses food as a vehicle to realize its mission to break social and economic isolation. Since our founding in 1995, sustainability has run deep at Santropol Roulant. The holistic nature of sustainability fits naturally in the design, implementation and evaluation of our activities and programs. It's no exaggeration to say that sustainable thinking has been part of Santropol Roulant's organizational culture and practice since our founding in 1995. That isn't to say that we've always thought of ourselves as a
sustainable organization. How we define and think about what we do has evolved since we first started out.
While today we are known as a food hub and environmental innovator, in our early days we were known as a simple, albeit a bit edgy, Meals-on-Wheels. Interestingly, as our reputation, reach and programs have all grown, our Meals-on-Wheels Program has maintained its place as the driving force of our work and our identity. In fact, the centrality of food in all our activities, continues to feed our understanding of, and desire to, have the most sustainable organization and community possible. And as our core program, the Meals-on-Wheels is the foundation for our ever-deepening understanding of how best to serve our clients, build meaningful relationships, and create a joyful well-nourished city.
You see, for us, offering the best possible service to our clients and volunteers, means that we inevitably always opt for a more holistic and integrated approach to food provision, social service delivery and community engagement. We have had countless discussions with our members about what matters in their lives which led us to reconcile economic, social, environmental and cultural needs. In other words, from the beginning we were creating programs that had a sustainability ethos, without formally calling it as such.
Our urban agriculture projects are designed to support local and organic agriculture, while assuring that such foods remain accessible to all regardless of socio-economic status, level of mobility, or degree of autonomy. As such, our Urban Agriculture Program is perhaps the clearest example of how our work has evolved in accordance with sustainability principles. All our programs are borne out of our desire to vertically integrate our activities, to be more holistic and to ultimately take a broader and more long-term view of our activities and impact.
The Meals-on-Wheels was and is our raison d'être, but our challenge in the past was that feeding people, while necessary and important, didn't sufficiently address the changes we wanted to see in the world. We wanted to see more lasting changes and looking at food delivery through a sustainability lens provided the rationale for developing
food production and capacity building streams alongside our daily essential service.
Today we are continually looking to better integrate our daily essential service (feeding people) with our vision for social change (building capacity for tomorrow). Working with and within the principles of sustainability provides the organization with inspiration and a blueprint for identifying how the different aspects of our work reinforce each other and how to make all our programs more resilient.
Sustainable food services in dense urban areas By Julian A. Giacomelli, CEO of Crudessence, an integrated living food company. He is also on the board of healthy beverage maker RISE Kombucha.
Here in Quebec, there have been amazing progress in the past ten years in sustainable agriculture through urban, peri-urban, and rural farming efforts. These advances can be seen across the full range of both fruits and vegetables, and feed livestock. In particular, the rise of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) through baskets and farmers' markets has allowed a much larger part of the population to access sustainably grown organic food, and spawned a mini revolution in organic farming.
While there is a rise in people shopping local and through CSA, there is a more significant trend at large - a dramatic and continued decrease in at-home food preparation. Given the increase in development of the upstream part of the sustainable food chain (more raw materials), and the decrease in people eating at home (more demand), clearly there are needs and opportunities for downstream activities, in sustainable food transformation and distribution.
Crudessence lies at the heart of these trends, and we are seeing much opportunity and a positive response to our offer. We source, transform and distribute plant-based, organic and as local as possible foods in Montréal. Through our central kitchen, we offer catering of all types, serve five counters and restaurants, and supply a network of 40+ healthy food stores and cafés with fresh meals daily. We also have a wide range of products and ingredients available via our web boutique and in our restaurants. Last, and certainly not least, we encourage cooking at home through our classes and day-long workshops, outreach programs, recipe books, and how-to videos.
With the growing demand for sustainable agriculture and food preparation, there is a significant need to develop and maintain standards, such as the recently launched
LEAF food service standard. LEAF's stated mission is become the "national leader in sustainable food service standards", and aim to promote a number of facets of sustainable food security including community partnerships and the "farm to table" concept. I believe there is room for additional standards and a variety of involved players to bring these to life and into the known, raising consumer awareness and confidence.
Montreal-based
Lufa Farms, a worldwide leader urban farming, has also innovated significantly in alternative distribution. Instead of customers picking at Lufa, or bringing the food to one centralized location like many small CSA farms, Lufa has developed its network of green and like-minded pick-up locations around the city in locations such as cafés and the YMCAs. Via their online marketplace, in addition to fruits and vegetables, Lufa sells baked goods, snacks and other staples for the kitchen from a variety of artisanal suppliers. A soon-to-be-announced insulated bag will allow for purchase of dairy products, eggs and other temperature sensitive items. This amazing alternative channel allows for increased ease of access for customers, stimulates collaboration among the suppliers and contributes to the development of the sustainable food community.
As for sustainably transforming significant amounts of food in urban areas, there is much room for new services and innovation in a variety of areas, including waste management. While
Compost Montreal has started to work with commercial customers, we'd love to see other private parties and the various governments get involved, rendering large scale composting possible. We at Crudessence still send our food waste back to our partner farms to be used as compost, and hope in the future to find enriching urban alternatives for our precious organic waste.
Even more exciting is the prospect of food oriented industrial ecology initiatives like the
Plant in Chicago, designed around symbiotic relationships between multiple organizations in one facility, where the waste of one becomes the input for another. This former meat processing plant is a closed-loop food production and sustainable economic project with productive small food businesses that promotes education and research. Of note, their aim is to eventually use only renewable energy generated onsite through a digester and turbine, harnessing the unused waste for power and to be zero waste.
In the nearly six years Crudessence has existed, the sustainable food services landscape has evolved tremendously, and continues to do so in an encouraging way. With an increase in awareness and demand, there is significant opportunity arising for restaurants and other food service players including catering, counters, and transformed foods available in other retail locations or for home delivery. I believe there is also room for others to work alongside Lufa in partnering to grow their network, in addition to replicating similar models elsewhere.
Together we can continue to build out a secure and truly sustainable food system, contributing to individual health and a beyond-sustainable community.
More info Santropol Roulant's new
peri-urban farm.