(ಠ_ಠ)
2014-10-12 20:39:35 UTC
http://www.thestar.com/ Sunday, October 12, 2014
Why Canada may be heading into a food security crisis
When Ed Burt and his family sit down to Thanksgiving dinner this weekend, they
will eat turkey raised and slaughtered on the family farm, along with butternut
squash, sweet potatoes, a salad of cauliflower and broccoli, and Yukon gold
potatoes that Burt grew organically in his garden.
For dessert, there will be Burt’s famous apple crisp, made from apples he grows
on his Manitoulin Island property with a topping made from flour he mills himself.
It’s a scenario that will be repeated in only a tiny percentage of homes in
Canada, though it might have been much more common in the 1950s and 1960s.
Still, most Canadians will indulge in reasonably healthy, domestically produced
food, and crash into bed under the weight of turkey overindulgence.
For the millions of Canadians who experience some form of food deprivation,
however, Thanksgiving dinner may come from a food bank, or from a can or
package of imported food laden with additives. In the case of especially
hard-hit families, there may be no feast at all.
Just how did we get to the point where a G8 nation that happens to be the
world’s largest exporter of grains and so-called “pulse foods” —high-protein,
high-energy products such as beans, chickpeas and lentils that grow so well
here — one out of four Canadians is obese, type 2 diabetes rates are
accelerating, children go to school hungry and fresh, whole, nutritious food is
either too expensive or unavailable.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A 2012 study supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research,
“Household Food Insecurity in Canada,” found “four million individuals in
Canada, including 1.15 million children, experienced some level of food
insecurity.” This can mean anything from buying less or cheaper food to
skipping meals to going for days without food.
Invariably, food insecurity is related to low income, but lack of proper
nourishment is now occurring among students and people with jobs.
The way that food insecurity, along with an overabundance of processed,
high-sodium, high-sugar food, impacts the health-care system is evident in
Public Health Agency of Canada figures from 2009 to 2011. They indicated 26.2
per cent of Canadians over the age of 18 were obese and, among those 20 and
over, 4.2 per cent had elevated blood glucose and 7.8 per had elevated blood
pressure.
A 2011 study by the Public Health Agency found the nation rate for diabetes had
risen from 3.3 per cent in 1998-9 to 5.6 per cent in 2008-9.
Diana Bronson, who as executive director of Food Secure Canada is the face of
the movement for secure and healthy food in Canada, is campaigning for a
cohesive national food policy operating across three levels of government that
would link health, environmental, social welfare and agricultural issues to
fight a common cause.
Our less-than-sustainable food industry, she argues, means that “roughly half
of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada involve some aspect of our food system.”
We are losing farmland as retiring farmers sell their land for development
rather than pass it on to younger farmers, who recognize that farming in the
current climate is a brutal way to make a living.
According to statistics gathered by Food Secure Canada, farms are growing
bigger but less numerous. Food policy analysts such as Wayne Roberts and
growers such as Dan Jason cite data on the way the federal government boosts
big agribusinesses, thereby encouraging monocrops, in a way that favours trade
and economic goals over biodiversity and better food better distributed in Canada.
At the retail level, Food Secure Canada reports, “55,000 farms sell essentially
to four or five retailers who supply 85 percent of our food.” And 96 percent of
the meat supply in Canada is controlled by four companies.
Perhaps the worst news to come out of the food movement is the monopolization
of the seed supply, whereby 75 per cent of seeds sold commercially in Canada
are controlled by 10 companies, according to Food Secure Canada, and most of
those seeds are proprietary, meaning that farmers and gardeners must buy them
every year.
Saltspring Island seed grower Dan Jason gets a little hot under the collar when
he thinks of the disadvantages of being a small- to medium-sized organic farm.
He says big corporations such as Monsanto that capture most of the market in
the U.S. and Canada benefit from generous government subsidies.
According to a Farmers Weekly report cited by the Organic Consumers Association
in the U.S., nearly 70 per cent of U.S. soybean value comes from American
government subsidies to soy farmers planting genetically modified varieties of
soybeans.
“Anybody trying to grow organically, in a sustainable way, without pesticides,
chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds, is penalized with a
costly, time-consuming certification process,” Jason laments.
Meanwhile, as Toronto food policy writer Wayne Roberts, author of 2008’s The No
Nonsense Guide to World Food, pointed out in an interview, there are no
programs to support for small-scale organic farming of fruits and vegetables.
Meanwhile, organic, sustainable farms producing clean, healthy food are
undercut by their own government’s trade policies. Jason gives a familiar
example: garlic. “Trade deals with other countries mean we get the crappiest,
cheapest food. The garlic sold in most stores they charge 15 cents for because
it comes from China. We can grow garlic and it’s far, far better, but we have
no access to the big supermarkets.”
In recent years, there have been numerous tainted food scandals in China,
including melamine in milk, rice containing cadmium and, this summer, expired
meat that had been relabelled as fresh.
Canadian governments hugely support the food industry through subsidies to
transportation, marketing boards and trade deals in a view of food that has
nothing to do with keeping the population healthy and everything to do with
making profits for big business, argues Roberts.
In his view, any food policy that tackled obesity and food-related chronic
diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancer would start
with reversing the paradigm that food is a production item and primarily an
integral part of our economy.
“We should be thinking about the end purpose of food, which is health, first in
the population and then in the environment,” says Roberts, who will be a
speaker at the Food Secure Canada conference next month in Halifax.
“Food is an enormous opportunity or an enormous problem.”
It’s a problem when it contributes to chronic health problems.
And it’s a problem when its production and transportation result in huge carbon
emissions. Journalist and author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma)
claims it takes 26 ounces of oil to produce a double quarter pounder with
cheese. He calculated the fossil fuel required for the pesticides, fertilizer,
transportation, packaging and other items down the line to the McDonald’s consumer.
“The hidden opportunity food represents is in renewable energy, reduced waste
and better growing conditions,” Roberts contends. “For example, what if you
compost your food scraps, thereby reducing the size of methane-producing
garbage dumps and put them on your garden to create better soil for the food
you can grow yourself?”
Food, he says, could deliver double the bang for the buck if governments simply
thought about it as life-enhancing instead of a money-making commodity.
In response, perhaps, to a growing awareness about how to feed ourselves better
— a trend to purchasing locally produced food, farmers’ markets in urban
settings and the spread of community gardening — in the last federal election
the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Green Party all had references to food
production in their platforms. All have formed or are developing some kind of
food policy.
No doubt they will address at least some of the problems raised in Food Secure
Canada’s 2012 report “Resetting the Table: A People’s Food Policy for Canada.”
The report calls for measures that would:
~ Ensure that food is eaten as close as possible to where it is produced and
support food providers shifting to ecological production.
~ Implement a federal policy to eliminate poverty so Canadians can afford
healthy food.
~ Fund a national program for children that would create meal programs, school
gardens, food literacy education.
~ Build public awareness and bring the public into decisions that affect the
food system.
Liberal agriculture critic Mark Eyking and his counterpart in the NDP, Malcolm
Allen, as well as Green Party leader Elizabeth May, agree on one point: the
main obstacle to getting a food policy for Canada is a lack of political will.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz was out of the country and unavailable for
comment. A spokesperson for Agriculture Canada was unable to obtain answers on
policy questions before press time.
May’s party has the most specific food policy, including more and better
monitoring by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency so that it detects a problem
first rather than learning about it from U.S. authorities, as was the case in
2012 with concerns over possibile E. coli contamination of meat from Alberta’s
XL Foods.
May happens to serve a constituency, Saanich and the Gulf Islands, where some
of the most promising kinds of farming are going on, and where interesting
community-based projects — such as the establishment of a local abattoir so
that animals do not have to be ferried to slaughter — are underway.
“It’s very clear what needs to be done,” she told the Star. “Canada needs to
reverse its mandate and instead of focusing on food exports, protect the health
of its citizens, so there are no more nightmares such as occurred in the XL
meat plant.”
Diana Bronson is predicting food will be an issue in the 2015 federal election.
If she’s right, there should be a lot more Canadians going to the polls next
October demanding more accountability for what’s missing in their daily diet.
Why Canada may be heading into a food security crisis
When Ed Burt and his family sit down to Thanksgiving dinner this weekend, they
will eat turkey raised and slaughtered on the family farm, along with butternut
squash, sweet potatoes, a salad of cauliflower and broccoli, and Yukon gold
potatoes that Burt grew organically in his garden.
For dessert, there will be Burt’s famous apple crisp, made from apples he grows
on his Manitoulin Island property with a topping made from flour he mills himself.
It’s a scenario that will be repeated in only a tiny percentage of homes in
Canada, though it might have been much more common in the 1950s and 1960s.
Still, most Canadians will indulge in reasonably healthy, domestically produced
food, and crash into bed under the weight of turkey overindulgence.
For the millions of Canadians who experience some form of food deprivation,
however, Thanksgiving dinner may come from a food bank, or from a can or
package of imported food laden with additives. In the case of especially
hard-hit families, there may be no feast at all.
Just how did we get to the point where a G8 nation that happens to be the
world’s largest exporter of grains and so-called “pulse foods” —high-protein,
high-energy products such as beans, chickpeas and lentils that grow so well
here — one out of four Canadians is obese, type 2 diabetes rates are
accelerating, children go to school hungry and fresh, whole, nutritious food is
either too expensive or unavailable.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A 2012 study supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research,
“Household Food Insecurity in Canada,” found “four million individuals in
Canada, including 1.15 million children, experienced some level of food
insecurity.” This can mean anything from buying less or cheaper food to
skipping meals to going for days without food.
Invariably, food insecurity is related to low income, but lack of proper
nourishment is now occurring among students and people with jobs.
The way that food insecurity, along with an overabundance of processed,
high-sodium, high-sugar food, impacts the health-care system is evident in
Public Health Agency of Canada figures from 2009 to 2011. They indicated 26.2
per cent of Canadians over the age of 18 were obese and, among those 20 and
over, 4.2 per cent had elevated blood glucose and 7.8 per had elevated blood
pressure.
A 2011 study by the Public Health Agency found the nation rate for diabetes had
risen from 3.3 per cent in 1998-9 to 5.6 per cent in 2008-9.
Diana Bronson, who as executive director of Food Secure Canada is the face of
the movement for secure and healthy food in Canada, is campaigning for a
cohesive national food policy operating across three levels of government that
would link health, environmental, social welfare and agricultural issues to
fight a common cause.
Our less-than-sustainable food industry, she argues, means that “roughly half
of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada involve some aspect of our food system.”
We are losing farmland as retiring farmers sell their land for development
rather than pass it on to younger farmers, who recognize that farming in the
current climate is a brutal way to make a living.
According to statistics gathered by Food Secure Canada, farms are growing
bigger but less numerous. Food policy analysts such as Wayne Roberts and
growers such as Dan Jason cite data on the way the federal government boosts
big agribusinesses, thereby encouraging monocrops, in a way that favours trade
and economic goals over biodiversity and better food better distributed in Canada.
At the retail level, Food Secure Canada reports, “55,000 farms sell essentially
to four or five retailers who supply 85 percent of our food.” And 96 percent of
the meat supply in Canada is controlled by four companies.
Perhaps the worst news to come out of the food movement is the monopolization
of the seed supply, whereby 75 per cent of seeds sold commercially in Canada
are controlled by 10 companies, according to Food Secure Canada, and most of
those seeds are proprietary, meaning that farmers and gardeners must buy them
every year.
Saltspring Island seed grower Dan Jason gets a little hot under the collar when
he thinks of the disadvantages of being a small- to medium-sized organic farm.
He says big corporations such as Monsanto that capture most of the market in
the U.S. and Canada benefit from generous government subsidies.
According to a Farmers Weekly report cited by the Organic Consumers Association
in the U.S., nearly 70 per cent of U.S. soybean value comes from American
government subsidies to soy farmers planting genetically modified varieties of
soybeans.
“Anybody trying to grow organically, in a sustainable way, without pesticides,
chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds, is penalized with a
costly, time-consuming certification process,” Jason laments.
Meanwhile, as Toronto food policy writer Wayne Roberts, author of 2008’s The No
Nonsense Guide to World Food, pointed out in an interview, there are no
programs to support for small-scale organic farming of fruits and vegetables.
Meanwhile, organic, sustainable farms producing clean, healthy food are
undercut by their own government’s trade policies. Jason gives a familiar
example: garlic. “Trade deals with other countries mean we get the crappiest,
cheapest food. The garlic sold in most stores they charge 15 cents for because
it comes from China. We can grow garlic and it’s far, far better, but we have
no access to the big supermarkets.”
In recent years, there have been numerous tainted food scandals in China,
including melamine in milk, rice containing cadmium and, this summer, expired
meat that had been relabelled as fresh.
Canadian governments hugely support the food industry through subsidies to
transportation, marketing boards and trade deals in a view of food that has
nothing to do with keeping the population healthy and everything to do with
making profits for big business, argues Roberts.
In his view, any food policy that tackled obesity and food-related chronic
diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancer would start
with reversing the paradigm that food is a production item and primarily an
integral part of our economy.
“We should be thinking about the end purpose of food, which is health, first in
the population and then in the environment,” says Roberts, who will be a
speaker at the Food Secure Canada conference next month in Halifax.
“Food is an enormous opportunity or an enormous problem.”
It’s a problem when it contributes to chronic health problems.
And it’s a problem when its production and transportation result in huge carbon
emissions. Journalist and author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma)
claims it takes 26 ounces of oil to produce a double quarter pounder with
cheese. He calculated the fossil fuel required for the pesticides, fertilizer,
transportation, packaging and other items down the line to the McDonald’s consumer.
“The hidden opportunity food represents is in renewable energy, reduced waste
and better growing conditions,” Roberts contends. “For example, what if you
compost your food scraps, thereby reducing the size of methane-producing
garbage dumps and put them on your garden to create better soil for the food
you can grow yourself?”
Food, he says, could deliver double the bang for the buck if governments simply
thought about it as life-enhancing instead of a money-making commodity.
In response, perhaps, to a growing awareness about how to feed ourselves better
— a trend to purchasing locally produced food, farmers’ markets in urban
settings and the spread of community gardening — in the last federal election
the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Green Party all had references to food
production in their platforms. All have formed or are developing some kind of
food policy.
No doubt they will address at least some of the problems raised in Food Secure
Canada’s 2012 report “Resetting the Table: A People’s Food Policy for Canada.”
The report calls for measures that would:
~ Ensure that food is eaten as close as possible to where it is produced and
support food providers shifting to ecological production.
~ Implement a federal policy to eliminate poverty so Canadians can afford
healthy food.
~ Fund a national program for children that would create meal programs, school
gardens, food literacy education.
~ Build public awareness and bring the public into decisions that affect the
food system.
Liberal agriculture critic Mark Eyking and his counterpart in the NDP, Malcolm
Allen, as well as Green Party leader Elizabeth May, agree on one point: the
main obstacle to getting a food policy for Canada is a lack of political will.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz was out of the country and unavailable for
comment. A spokesperson for Agriculture Canada was unable to obtain answers on
policy questions before press time.
May’s party has the most specific food policy, including more and better
monitoring by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency so that it detects a problem
first rather than learning about it from U.S. authorities, as was the case in
2012 with concerns over possibile E. coli contamination of meat from Alberta’s
XL Foods.
May happens to serve a constituency, Saanich and the Gulf Islands, where some
of the most promising kinds of farming are going on, and where interesting
community-based projects — such as the establishment of a local abattoir so
that animals do not have to be ferried to slaughter — are underway.
“It’s very clear what needs to be done,” she told the Star. “Canada needs to
reverse its mandate and instead of focusing on food exports, protect the health
of its citizens, so there are no more nightmares such as occurred in the XL
meat plant.”
Diana Bronson is predicting food will be an issue in the 2015 federal election.
If she’s right, there should be a lot more Canadians going to the polls next
October demanding more accountability for what’s missing in their daily diet.