Toronto Board of Trade GUEST BLOG:

Eating Our Way to a Better Toronto

June 08, 2010
votetoronto2010

By Darcy Higgins

Toronto is now the 16th most livable city in the world, according to a study of 221 large cities conducted by the Mercer Quality of Living Survey. Clearly, we’re doing pretty well. We’re no Vancouver, ranked fourth, but not bad. The survey framed liveability upon a recipe including economic environment, health and sanitation, recreation, and natural environment.

One item takes root in all of these categories, but hasn’t been given much thought by government thus far: food.

How can you plan a city without considering a vital necessity that touches many parts of every resident several times a day?

These days many of us think about buying our food locally because it tastes better and supports our farmers, or we consider buying organic because we’re worried about pesticides and GMOs. We’re checking labels for carbs at the grocery store, picking restos that go lighter on the grease — sometimes — and even take up a little herb and vegetable gardening.

These are all worthwhile endeavours, and they show a greater desire by Torontonians to be more involved in our food choices as consumers, at different branches in the system.

Others in this City, however, can’t easily make those choices. One household in 10 is unable to buy healthy food on a regular basis. This lack of access is a result of many barriers including an inability to easily reach food stores, poor access to public transit, high cost of housing, unemployment and underemployment.

Most of us know something’s going wrong on food.

Many of our concurrent social crises all relate to the food system — obesity and disease, climate, farm incomes and land loss, biodiversity loss, and hunger.

We’re in a good place to be talking about food. There are many people thinking about how to do it better, and many more doing interesting things throughout Toronto.

Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. David McKeown has launched a process to create a food strategy for Toronto. Called Toronto Food Connections, City staff and key local food thinkers and staff have been consulting on the plan for the last couple of months.

The strategy envisions a system based in health and sustainability that allows people to afford the right kinds of food and support the environment, while helping to create the emerging green economy that the Board of Trade is encouraging.

The tasty truth is that there’s a lot government can do to get better food to our plates.

The City can make purchasing the right kind of food a priority. City Hall purchases food for some of its most sensitive residents, including those in childcare and long term care homes. By purchasing local, sustainable and ethically sourced foods, we can give the best to those who need it, while using our buying power to move the green economy ahead.

Council could also decide to make some better rules and spend a few dollars well by funding innovative projects led by local leaders that build social cohesion around food, such as neighbourhood gardens, community kitchens, school programs and food events at parks. We can use our public spaces and schools to do a whole lot more than we have, and there are people on the ground wanting to get into great stuff.

A lot of this isn’t new; the City has been talking about food for a decade. Earlier this month the Toronto Board of Health committee unanimously passed the Urban Food Strategy which aims to create food-friendly neighbourhoods, while connecting urban consumers to rural producers.

And this past May marked the 10-year anniversary of the release of a report from the City’s Food and Hunger Action Committee which led to a unanimous Council vote to become a food-secure city and develop a food charter. It was done for all the right reasons, but without enough backing to instil real change.

One of its commitments — striving to ensure personal income to buy adequate food for each household member each day — is not something we are closer to achieving.

But that need not stay the same. Over the last decade not only have people’s attitudes on food changed, but on the ground projects sprouted by organizations like FoodShare and The Stop Community Food Centre, show that good food works for Toronto, and that there is a political base to make change.

There will be much for our elected officials to do on the food file post-October, so let’s make sure we help them get it done. We can find out what our candidates plan to do with 2010’s food strategy, or give them some ideas along the way.

Placing food high on the shelf will mean a Toronto that can pride itself in its diverse culture and allow everyone to participate in making the city a more fun and healthy place in which to be.

By making food a priority, we start dealing with the high costs of disease, malnutrition and farmland loss. And a better food system might just move us beyond number 16 in liveability.

It’s not that 16th is bad. It’s just that the tourism people were telling me we need a “#1” to go beside the CN Tower on a glossy brochure.

Darcy Higgins is a project coordinator with the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance.

**Recently the Toronto Board of Trade published its own survey, Toronto as a Global City: Scorecard on Prosperity – 2010, a report that measures the Toronto region against other leading global cities. You can download it here and see how Toronto ranks against other world-leading jurisdictions.**