Tag Archives: Food Security

Addressing food security in the Comox Valley

By Cloe Logan, National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A Vancouver Island community has seen a dramatic shift in how it approaches food insecurity — and hopes the change is here to stay.

Maurita Prado, executive director of LUSH Valley Food Action Society and co-ordinator of the Comox Valley Food Policy Council, lives and works in the Comox Valley

Continue reading Addressing food security in the Comox Valley

5.1 million Canadians experience food insecurity

By Marc Fawcett-Atkinson, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

About 5.1 million Canadians are food insecure, and many of them are struggling with mental health issues. And the pandemic has made the situation worse, according to a report released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.

Continue reading 5.1 million Canadians experience food insecurity

First Nations reawaken ancestral agricultural practises

By Marc Fawcett-Atkinson, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As a kid, Delbert Good remembers that he would come home from a day of picking potatoes to find a meal made from the fruits of his family’s garden.

“While I was growing up, we were pretty self-sufficient,” said Good, economic development officer for the Gitanyow Band and a lifelong resident of Gitanyow, a community northeast of Terrace, in northern B.C.

“We had garden plots everywhere. Our family stuck to growing potatoes — we had about 100 rows of potatoes every year — but everybody shared in the community and everybody had their own strengths when it came to growing vegetables.”

Not anymore. In the past hundred years, a suite of colonial policies suppressed traditions that were essential to many Indigenous people’s access to food, including agricultural ones that were practised for generations. For Good, reawakening them could help pave a better-fed future for his community.

Continue reading First Nations reawaken ancestral agricultural practises

Election 2020: Raising BC’s Self sufficiency

Though only a little more than 2% of the electorate voted for him in the last provincial election,  John Twigg is back. This time he is running for the Conservative party of BC – which has not contested this seat for decades. Twigg especially wants to talk about self sufficiency in food, policing and banking

Continue reading Election 2020: Raising BC’s Self sufficiency

Election 2020: BC’s economic challenge

“ … The challenge is the economics that is going to come home fairly quickly.  We’ve had too many people off business; off work. The bills are building and we must address that,” said BC Liberal candidate Norm Facey, in the only interview he granted Cortes Currents.

Continue reading Election 2020: BC’s economic challenge