FOOD 2002 GRASSROOTS ACTIONS TO HELP BUILD GREATER FOOD SECURITY

Food and Income
Food and Health
Food Access and the Food Industry
Food and Agriculture
Food and Consumers' Rights
Food and Community-Based Programs
Food, Cooking and Commensality
Food and Student Nutrition

Food and Income
1. Because Canadians remain deeply committed to universal health care, we should strive to work within this framework to build consensus for policies that provide every Canadian with enough money to buy the basic food they need

2. Canadians should explore community-based strategies (such as wholesale bulk buying clubs, cooperatives and Good Food Box programs) to extend people's food buying power.

3. Because gardening allowsfor partial income-substitution through the growing of some of one's own food, Canadians should engage in more community and backyard gardening.

Food and Health
4. Given the health implications of an inadequate diet, Canadians should pressure governments to make access to food a human right, and to create mechanisms by which people of all income levels can access nutritious basic foods at wholesale prices.

5. Community groups should develop and support local food security initiatives-- such as farm stands in low-income neighborhoods, community gardens and kitchens, wholesale food outlets, buying clubs, urban farmers' markets, cooking groups, and healthy-food cafes for street youth-- to increase access to healthy food.

6. Educational campaigns, stressing the importance of healthy eating in relationship to overall health, should be launched in schools, community centres, and workplaces.

7. Physicians should promote healthy eating by 'prescribing' increased vegetable, fruit, grain and bean consumption to their patients. Doctors' offices could model this by offering fresh foods (such as carrot sticks or apples) in waiting rooms.

Food Access and the Food Industry
8. Given that charity mechanisms promote dependence rather than solving food security problems in the long term, food security and anti-hunger activists should base our actions on the old adage: "Give a woman a fish and she'll eat for a day, teach her how to fish and she'll eat throughout her life and teach others to feed themselves."

9. Community-run food discount stores (similar to Goodwill used clothing stores) could provide better assurance that excess or dented foods will be managed to meet the industry's need for quality control, while also providing a non-stigmatizing alternative to food banks.

10. Communities should pressure the food industry to rethink it's response to hunger and its participation in charitable food programs.

Food and Agriculture
11. Communities should develop and support farmers' markets, community shared agriculture, direct farm-gate marketing, and local buying clubs in order to create a viable local food system.

12. Coalitions of farmers, environmentalists, food security activists and consumers should work together to pressure governments to support farm interests and restrict unchecked development of rural lands.

13. Whenever possible Canadians should buy local, seasonal and organic agricultural products to help sustain regional farming communities.

14. There are many lessons to be learned from those striving to create a sustainable agriculture system - Canadians should look to organic food growers for models to grow food both rurally and in the city.

Food and Consumers’ Rights
15. Canadians should pressure governments to legislate comprehensive labeling of fresh, processed and packaged foods, that includes attention to nutritional information, country of origin, fair trade, organic standards and genetially modified content.

16. Canadians should work with consumer, health, farm and environmental groups in urging the federal government to establish national organic standards.

17. Community groups and professional organizations should join with the Alliance for Food Label Reform in lobbying the federal government for labeling rules and active government regulation.

18. Canadians should engage in campaigns protesting the lack of labeling of genetically modified foods, and their increased presence in the marketplace.

Food and Community-Based Food Programs
19. Food security coalitions should be built at the municipal, provincial, federal and international levels, which share information, join together for advocacy, and participate in training sessions and conferences.

20. Agencies should strive to be more integrative of diverse and holistic food security strategies and practices.

21. Each community should create its own information clearinghouse for community-based food programs.

Food, Cooking, and Commensality
22. School boards should reinvigorate home economics classes for all students, making them fun and interesting, so that all high school graduates can demonstrate cooking, shopping and food budgeting skills.

23. Boys along with girls should receive cooking training both in the home and at school.

24. Community-based programs (such as cooking classes, community kitchens and ovens, cooking groups, and baby food making classes) should be established in order to facilitate greater commensality, nutritious eating and communal cooking, especially for the elderly, low-income, street youth, and specific ethnocultural groups.

25. Communities and neighborhoods should regularly host communal cooking events (such as barbecues, bread-baking, soup-making, etc.) to encourage greater cooking and eating together.

Food and Student Nutrition
26. Parents, student groups and social organizations should lobby the federal government for the creation of national student nutrition programs and policies.

27. Universities, nutritionists and researchers should conduct thorough research projects aimed at rendering visible the connections between school nutrition programs and better student health and academic performance.

28. Schools should work to transform their own environments and student eating practices by establishing schoolyard gardens, in which students can grow some food in order to supplement their diet during the school day.