CCEDA continued its series of Conversation Cafés on Thursday December 7th at the Gorge Hall, to discuss the issue of “food security on Cortes Island.” Facilitated by Colin Funk and organised by Kate Maddigan, the event attracted over 20 participants.
CCEDA will be releasing a detailed report on the results of this guided discussion; in the meantime, Currents can offer our readers an overview and a few highlights.
After brief opening remarks by the facilitator, attendees introduced themselves and explained why they were there. They included local farmers and ex-farmers, gardeners, bakers, Coop staff, restaurateurs, land owners, community organisers, and parents — almost all of them full-time residents from the Whaletown area. (South Point and Manson’s were underrepresented).
The event format was a “brainstorming” session based on a list of four questions. Colin began with an invitation to participants to visit a table covered with photo cards and choose an image that in some way represented “food security” for them.
The images were used to kick-start a conversation: participants gathered in four smaller groups or “tables” to discuss their chosen images in the context of an initial question:
1) “What does a vibrant, sustainable local food system look like on Cortes?”
Each table discussion then shared its highlights with the room at large.
This table discussion was repeated three more times, with the following questions:
2) What is the current state of our food system, and what are some of the obstructions that keep us from achieving the vision of Question 1?
3) What are some specific opportunities for “getting unstuck” and moving forward for local food security?
4) Of those opportunities, what is the “one thing” that could move us forward, the idea that has leverage and could “move the big boulder”? What can we practically do, in the near term, as a community?
Like most organic, neighbourly discussions, this one became lively at times, veered off topic, returned to previous questions, and generally defied the tidy structure of the facilitator’s outline. Twenty-plus different opinions and understandings did, however, converge on some key points [direct or paraphrased quotes in gray italics].
I feel like we can expect major disruptions, systems breaking down, probably within the next ten years.
Most participants shared a rough consensus that the existing food system (industrial farming, long-haul transport, and large scale grocery chains) was fragile, and likely to falter or fail under the pressures of climate change and rising energy costs. More than one participant felt that the entire global system of money, banking, commerce and transportation might unravel “within our lifetimes,” or even “within the next ten years.” Climate anxiety was a strongly shared theme, with significant concerns specifically about water and suitable food crops for a changing climate. “Survival” was mentioned as a concern.
Sharing the Resources; Understanding the Resources
We need to know where the good land is, the good soil, where we can actually grow things. How much water we have.
Some participants felt it important to conduct a resource inventory or survey of the island, to find out how much arable land is available, where the best sun exposure is for various crops, how much water is available for farming and gardening, etc. Many acknowledged that food gardening and farming are (a) skilled trades that require expertise and dedication, and (b) much harder work than many people realise when they “romantically” imagine being food self-sufficient and “living off the land.” Labour and expertise are also limiting resources.
Some pointed out that the island would have to ramp up farming and gardening significantly to approach “local food security.” “We’re relying on relatively few farmers,” one participant noted, “and they are all working at capacity.” To increase our local food supply requires both more land, and more labour. More than one participant also noted that while many Cortes residents do grow a large percentage of their own vegetables, we are still buying our soil amendments (manure, compost, mulch etc) from off-island. “We need to close that loop,” as more than one grower said; “The inputs have to be secure as well.”
Couldn’t we match up people who want to grow food with people who have some good land but aren’t using it? Not everyone wants to garden.
There was a general acknowledgement that “not everyone can farm or garden,” and repeated discussion of ways to share land, or connect non-gardening land-owners with competent gardeners who don’t have enough land for crops. Garden surplus (during the growing season) was another common theme, with several suggestions about how best to share or redistribute it to avoid waste. Regular community dinners were a popular suggestion.
Corrosive Economics: Inflation, Gentrification, Tourism, Inequity
Local food has been gentrified as well as real estate. It’s not right that farmers are working for $3/hour, but on the other hand who can pay $100 for a piece of roast beef?
Farmers revealed how low their “hourly wage” would be if they sat down and calculated it. Some estimated they were earning about $3/hr, even when pricing their produce “too high” for many island residents. Everyone present seemed well aware of the heavy subsidies that make industrial food underpriced and attractive for consumers, compared to local produce. Some felt that governments would be wiser to spend that subsidy money on paying local farmers a living wage to encourage more people into that sector and increase local food security.
We [food business] can’t source our ingredients on-island. Our margin is razor thin and local food is too expensive.
More than one participant mentioned the pressure on farmers to rely on the tourism economy (the “boom bust cycle”) and focus on marketing high-value gourmet vegetables to wealthy visitors in the summer, rather than grow cheaper, more basic vegetables year-round for local consumption. One elderly resident said that he would like to be able to buy local potatoes and beets by the sackful for winter storage, rather than “pay $8 a bunch for kale.” Some older participants remembered “the potato co-op,” a local food initiative from some years ago.
It is not just here: I recently read that one in ten people in Toronto is using a food bank this winter. The demand increase for the Cortes Food Bank is huge. Especially since Better At Home started up, we are realising how many people in our community are literally going hungry.
Filipe Figueira spoke eloquently about the increase in food insecurity on the island and the very large increase in demand for the Food Bank. This triggered lengthy and detailed discussions of community food storage, “free food libraries” with unattended pick up and drop off, storage facilities, regular community dinners using local and surplus produce, etc.
It’s corrosive economics. The inequity is just getting worse. We are in Canada where health care is a human right — why isn’t food a human right?
Filipe also pointed out an uncomfortable reality: some of the Food Bank clients are employed with local businesses, and those businesses are not donating to the Food Bank. The food bank donors are, in essence, subsidising the local businesses who can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage given the current costs of food and housing. There was a general consensus that everyone was feeling “squeezed,” from small businesses down to farmers and individual consumers.
We’re Not Allowed To Do That: Regulatory and Zoning Barriers
We should be thinking about aquaculture as well as terrestrial gardening…. It’s actually illegal to sell our local shellfish to local buyers.
The negative effect of VIHA “safety” rules was mentioned in a couple of different contexts. One was the island’s inability to produce affordable shellfish for our own consumption; VIHA rules require the shellfish to be transported all the way to a processing facility on Vancouver island, then back again, before they can be sold to local buyers. Another was the illegality of distributing water from underutilised springs (“it’s just flowing into the sea 24 hours a day,” as one attendee said); any drinking water sold or distributed on Cortes, we were informed, must be trucked in from Vancouver Island from an approved source.
Targeted relaxation of some zoning and VIHA rules was repeatedly mentioned. Optimal use of land for food cropping, for example, would involve clustering homes rather than scattering them widely.
We should start with education. Anyone can grow at least a little food, some lettuces in a window box.
In light of such a predicament and so many challenges, Question 4 appeared to be the most difficult to answer: what is to be done? The room responded fairly consistently with some core proposals: The general public, most felt, are not sufficiently aware of how fragile our food system really is, and we should share that information more widely. We should teach more people how to grow simple foods, even on a small scale. We should find ways to share land as well as garden surpluses. Perhaps we should launch a local food initiative, with a coordinator to instantiate some of these ideas.
We don’t see it as a crisis, because it’s slow and cumulative.
These are only a few highlights from an hour and a half of four separate discussions. When CCEDA issues their formal report on the proceedings, Currents will print an update and add the report link to this article.
[Photo credits: Feature image and “card table” by Kate Maddigan, with permission. Inline images, as credited in captions. All other images by Midjourney, prompts by author.]