Nova Scotia Food Summit

NNOOVVAA SSCCOOTTIIAA FFOOOODD SSUUMMMMIITT SSEECCUURRIINNGG FFOOOODD FFOORR OOUURR HHEEAALLTTHHYY FFUUTTUURREE TH TH OOLLDD OORRCCHHAARRDD IIINNNN –– OOCCTTOOBBEERR 1188TH TTOO 2200TH ,,, 22000099 GGrreeeennwwiiicchh,,, NNoovvaa SSccoottiiiaa BBrriinnggiinngg TThhee PPeeooppllee AAnndd TThhee PPiieecceess TTooggeetthheerr THE PEOPLE AND PIECES CITIZENS - FOOD PROVIDERS - HEALTH EDUCATION - FOOD SECURITY ENVIRONMENT - ECONOMY http://www.friendsofagriculture.net/foodsummit_2009_12.html [email protected] 1 Sponsors: Gold $2000: The Arthur C. Irving Academy for the Environment; Stewart Organic Farms, Alderbrook Sales; Old Orchard Inn, Pete Luckett; NS Department of Health Promotion and Protection, NS Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Aquaculture Silver $1000: Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture; COOP Atlantic; Farmers’ Market Investment Cooperative; Gaspereau Vinyards Bronze $500: Taste of Nova Scotia; Farmers’ Market Cooperatives of NS; Kings County Rural Development Agency; Rural Delivery DvL Publishing; Ross Creek Herb & Flower Gardens; Just Us Coffee Roasters Co-op; Friends of Agriculture in Nova Scotia $100 - $500: Perry Rand Transportation; Great Valley Juices; Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada, Gaspereau Press; KELCO Consulting; Valley Stationers; Paddy's and Rosie's Restaurant; Pizzazz Bistro; Meadowbrook Market; The Tempest; TapRoot Farm; The Port Pub and Bistro; Agrapoint; Environment Canada; Nova Scotia Agricultural College; Angelhoeve Farm; Longspell Point Farm; Lil MacPherson - The Wooden Monkey; Nova Scotia Fruit Growers Association; Acadia University, Chartwells Acadia; Capital District Health Authority; Between The Bushes Restaurant; Health Canada; MLA Jim Morton; Sheila Stevenson; Light & Lens Photography; Ken Bezanson; Members of the Rand Family; Andy Flynn and Ariana Nasr; Linda Al’Hamwi, Al Smith; Linda O’Neil Volunteers: Linda Al’Hamwi, Jeff McMahon, Thomas Krausse, Donna Crawford, Al Smith, Linda O’Neil, Marianne Gates, Alex Redfield, Hillary Barter, Stefan Morales, Heather Cosidetto, Sarah Pitoello, Joe Pittoelo, Pierre Cloutier, LeAnne MacDonald, Richard Melvin, Janice Stewart, Av Singh, Michelle Murton, Lindsay Corbin, Don Black, Mark Austin, Ralph Martin, Jamey Coughlin, Gordon Michael, Ken Rice, Tina Killam, Rita MacAulay, Wanda Hamilton, Stephanie Hughes 2 NNoovvaa SSccoottiiaa FFoooodd SSuummmmiitt October 18 – 20, 2009 Old Orchard Inn, Greenwich, NS Report Ken Rice Stephanie Hughes Heather Cosidetto Stefan Morales Linda Best With support from Corrie Melanson and Janet Rhymes Co-chairs: Alan Stewart, Dr. Edith Callaghan, Linda Best Local Committee: Linda Al’Hamwi, Jeff MacMahon, Donna Crawford, Marianne Gates, Dr. Janet Eaton, Pierre Cloutier, Thomas Krausse, Alex Redfield, Stefan Morales Provincial Committee: Dr. Av Singh, Mark Austin, Michelle Murton, Jen Scott, Don Black, Marla MacLeod, Darren Leyte, Gordon Michael, Wanda Hamilton, Lindsay Corbin November 24, 2009 3 Special Thanks to Sponsors 2 Table of Contents 4 Summit Goals 4 Executive Summary Reflection on the Summit by Stefan Morales and Heather Cosidetto 5 Welcome 6 Panel and Discussion - Identifying the Pieces 7 Panel and Discussion - Providers of Food 15 October Flavours Tasting Dinner - Keynote speakers 20 Panel – Food Ideas and Issues 22 Panel and Discussion – Food Security 25 Panel and Discussion – Food and Health 29 Panel and Discussion – The Environment 35 Panel and Discussion – Knowledge and Skills 40 Panel – Food Ideas and Issues 46 Panel and Discussion – Localizing Food 48 Panel and Discussion – The Way Forward 57 Closing Lunch – Putting the Pieces Together 66 Messages from the Organizers 70 Participant Comment Cards 71 Biographies 73 Nova Scotia Food Summit Goals: Foster understanding that we’re all in this together Present focused information to increase all participants’ knowledge and understanding of the food system Facilitate discussion between citizens and leaders Disseminate information and outcomes from the Summit to create wider support for a more robust local food system Provide the impetus for the formation of a Nova Scotia Food Policy Council (NSFPC) Executive Summary to follow. It was Ray Ivany, President of Acadia University and guest speaker at the Summit, who may have best described the outcome of the 2009 Nova Scotia Food Summit: “history will tell us”. 4 Puzzling Over the Pieces – Reflections on the Summit By Stefan Morales – Political Science Master’s Student, Acadia University, Nova Scotia Heather Cosidetto - Program Director, Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, Nova Scotia It’s amazing how many diverse ideas and issues arose from the 2009 Nova Scotia Food Summit’s focused undertaking. It became clear as the discussion unfolded that food encompassed the obvious practices, such as growing and eating food, as well as less obvious practices, such as childcare, nursing, education, policy-making, and so on. According to many at the summit, we were all talking about a food system that was broken. How could we fix it, how could we ‘put the pieces back together?’ As Linda Best repeated again and again—and what became ever more apparent as the days wore on—was that the Food Summit was a broad attempt at just this: ‘putting the pieces back together.’ This metaphor is interesting and it presents a number of ideas that the Food Summit underscored. First, it draws our attention to the possibility that the food system is a puzzle. Our food system is an often paradoxical network of practices, constrained or unconstrained by various forces—ecological, legal, economic, social, cultural, and so on—and it tends to operate counter to itself and other sectors of society. What the Food Summit brought to participant and presenter alike was the awareness that the complex food system necessitates a collective effort of reassembly. We must make unconventional alliances, as many presenters suggested, between those working in health, economics, farming, marketing, social work, hospitality, gardening, policy-making, education, and so on. Above all, we must forge unconventional alliances with an ecosystem that we have ignored and worked against for many, many years. If we want to move towards transforming our food system into 100% local and sustainable, we must expand our work beyond the confines of our comfort and expertise (our ‘silos’), which in-turn will expand the collective effort of reassembling the almost unrecognizable puzzle that industrial processes have made of our current food system… reassembling this puzzle into a more sustainable whole. Second, ‘putting the pieces back together’ implicitly assumes that this puzzle can be put back together (without the puzzle box to refer to!) and that each piece has its counterpart, requiring only our thoughtful exploration of each piece in relation to the other. As the Summit wore on, however, participants, presenters and organizers alike tended to balance between approaching the puzzle as either a hopelessly complicated mess or an exceedingly straightforward task. Perhaps when things looked simple, we were only assembling the easy pieces at the edges of the puzzle and when things looked complicated, we were dealing with the very centre of the puzzle, the very heart of the matter. What of those puzzle pieces that didn’t seem to fit with any of the others, those difficult ones we knew were part of the picture, but couldn’t quite seem to fit with any of the other pieces? Will we ever bring all of the pieces together into a whole picture? Many were torn between embracing, on the one hand, an ethical outlook that humbled itself in the face of a complicated and paradoxical food system (with complex solutions that required coordinated efforts between disparate elements of civil society, global and local markets, and so on), and on the other hand, an ethical outlook that forged ahead in the face of this complexity (with simple solutions like ‘start a backyard kitchen garden,’ or ‘always support local farmers,’ or ‘join a CSA’ and so on). It is doubtful that we will ever be able to complete such a complicated puzzle, but it is entirely believable that we can get quite far by approaching the task of reassembly with both the humble and the brazen approaches together. Why? This is perhaps the third meaning we can take from ‘putting the pieces back together,’ and it is this: we are talking about nobody else but ourselves… we are the pieces that must be reassembled into new configurations. It is ultimately about commitment to reassemble and connect, which is another way of saying, our ethical commitment to a new, perhaps never-before-seen community around food. This is not an abstract community, but a community founded on intimacies of taste, smell, compassion and so on. A community that is founded on a respect for social and ecological principles… a community that we had only just begun to build at this year’s Food Summit. 5 Day One: October 18, 2009 Opening and Welcome: The Summit opened with a presentation of Food Matters, written by Stephan Morales and preformed by Sue Smiley and Linda Wheeldon, members of Women of Wolfville, whose production this year is based on food. Linda Best, Co-chair, welcomed the audience to the 2009 Nova Scotia Food Summit stating that we “come together as friends to help insure that we have healthy food for the future”. The tone was set for what would become formative conversations about food, agriculture, health, our environment, our politics and how we must come together to foster more than just change; action. The Food Summit was organized by Linda

Load more