A Dream of Affordable Food For All
Toronto Star, November 20, 1999

Debbie Field shares a dream with the Atkinson Charitable Foundation.

They would both like to see the day when nutritious food is available to all at an affordable price, improving everyone’s health and eliminating the need for food banks.

For the past seven years, the 47-year-old Field has been the dynamic executive director of FoodShare, a grass-roots food and self-help organization.

It was her work on the front lines in the battle against hunger that convinced the Atkinson Charitable Foundation to name her as project leader for Food 2002.

The goal of the ambitious five-year program - started in 1996 - is to design a plan that would make Field’s dream come true.

Formed in 1985 to co-ordinate emergency food services, FoodShare has evolved into an organization that operates collective kitchens and community gardens, as well as operating a co-operative buying system and selling 4,000 boxes of fresh produce a month at cost.

The current food system doesn’t necessarily promote access to healthy food, said Field in an interview.

"I’m trying to see if I can build consensus for a new way of looking at food in our society", she said. "It’s kind of a complicated process."

She has held talks with dozens of people- from private business, agriculture, from food retailers, restauranteurs, community food bank workers and officials representing the health industry and all levels of government.

She has also surveyed the food policies of dozens of other countries.

Food 2002 was started in 1996 when the Atkinson trustees became disturbed with the manner in which the food bank system was masking the systematic problems that were limiting people’saccess to healthy food they could afford, said executive director Charles Pascal.

The most obvious problem, as seen by anti-poverty activists and social policy analysts, is that too many people have too little money after the rent is paid to buy a basket of food, Field said.

"People should have adequate income to buy the food they need, or we should have a universal program for everybody," she said.

Changes have to be made in a society where between 5 to 10 percent of the population uses food banks and a "tremendous" number of people of all income levels become ill because they don’t eat the proper foods, she said.

With the second phase well underway, it is apparent that perhaps income redistribution is not the best way to ensure adequate food access to all, Field said.

And food banks and charitable responses to hunger can’t meet the need or provide sustainable, non-stigmatizing solutions, Field said.

So perhaps the food issue should be approached with the same concern as Canadians have shown for their health.

Maybe there should be a national food policy to provide the necessary foodstuffs to one and all at cost, or free, removing the stigma from those who have been forced to rely on food banks, she said. There could be farmers’ stalls or markets on every corner, she said.

Field cautioned that she was not advocating that people st/op giving to emergency food programs- at least "not until we have an alternative."

Even those who can afford healthy food eat too much fast food and processed products, often high in fat and salt, she said.

But top on her shopping list is a school meal program, to make sure no student goes through the day on an empty stomach. Field said Canada is alone in the world in not having a policy on student nutrition.

"If the child of a poor mother gets a really good nutritious, hot lunch, that’s really important," she said.

"But, actually, all the kids, including the double-income family, the lawyer’s kid, the anorexic girl, the kid who threw her mom’s breakfast out, , all of those kids would benefit from a solid meal at school," she said.

The challenge is to show that a general school nutrition policy and other radical changes in the way food is distributed "would be good for everybody, and then convince society to pay for them," Field said.

- Barnes