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Big Powers Missing in Action on Food Price Crisis but New Leaders Emerge
July 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
How government food policy got in your face but not in your heart
June 14, 2011 By 1 Comment
Cuts to Government Services, But not to Double Standards By Wayne Roberts Politicians at all levels are promising more cuts to government expenses without any cut to services. For politicians, this is better than a gift that keeps on giving. It’s a promise they can keep on promising. For most of the past 40 years, [...]
Thoroughly Modern Dorothy: Why I Remember Mealtime on Mother’s Day
May 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
My Mom and Dad came of age in Toronto during the “Dirty Thirties,” but even by the standards of that era, they had more than their share of bad breaks. Mom was given up for adoption as a baby, lost her adoptive mom at 14, and was rescued from the streets by a warm and [...]
Foods of Locality: Food With a Place in Your Heart
April 19, 2011 By 1 Comment
Food is a many-splendored thing, so the more we learn about it, the more we discover new ways to look for it, and come to appreciate why the centre of gravity for food thinking keeps lurching in different directions. This year’s Earth Day is time to name and celebrate a signpost on the latest lurch [...]
The Pillars of Cheap Food are Cracking
March 7, 2011 By 5 Comments
The worldwide price level of food is taking a great leap upward for the second time in less than five years. My bet is that this food price hike will match a rise in oil prices for wrenching impact on geopolitics, especially as the two are intimately connected. Food cannot be fertilized and shipped without [...]
The First and Most Important Thing to Know About Food
March 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Check out my lead-in to a special issue of Alternatives magazine on food; I give away the first and most important thing to know about food. Read More…
Wayne Roberts at Alberta Pathways 2 Sustainability Conference
March 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Wayne’s spoke in Red Deer, Alberta, at their exciting Pathways2Sustainability conference; a reporter’s preview of the talk is available here: http://permaculturebc.com/Wayne-Roberts-Food-Security-Organic Watch Wayne’s Keynote:
Are We Seeing the End of Supermarkets?
February 21, 2011 By 4 Comments
I grew up with the habit of Thursday nights as the time when family shopped together at the local supermarket, and I always assumed, for good or ill, that supermarkets were permanent. It’s now clear that old style super-markets are on their way out. Beginning this month, Wal-Mart Canada kicks off its one-year agenda to [...]
Is being vegan the only green option?
January 18, 2011 By 2 Comments
Join the discussion on how green and vegan issues relate; see my intro to the issues in this debate with PETA member Bruce Friedrich: http://www.newint.org/argument/2011/01/01/vegan-green-debate/
RESPECTING VOLUNTEERS OF THE GAIA CITY
October 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Politics has changed so much since I grew up that I still have trouble coping with modern conservatives who are usually outraged by the way things are going and are very militant and venomous about the need for abrupt changes. I find today’s radicals equally out of character with my memories. Many old-time Toronto activists [...]
It’s An Ill Wind That Shows Local Food Is No Longer Debatable
September 21, 2010 By 3 Comments
Driving from Toronto to Halifax last week to help move my daughter Anika into King’s College, I had a lot of quiet time to rehearse a rant against a recent flurry of attacks against local food systems by right-wing extremists across North America. I was pretty happy with some of my vitriolic lines until we [...]
Northwest Territories Gardeners and Farmers Work Together For Local Food
August 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Yellowknife and Hay River “We’re so far behind up here that we’re ahead,” Evellyn Coleman told me, explaining why her Territorial Farmers Association, the first in North America to consider accepting backyard and community gardeners as full members, was inviting me up to speak in the Northwest Territories. Just south of the Arctic tundra, where [...]
Agro-Ecology Is the Oldest and Newest Form of Bio-Mimicry: Count the F Words
August 23, 2010 By 1 Comment
Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and the intricate form of food production practiced by peasants through much of Asia and South America still express that flattery in relation to Nature. In the Global North, all food production except hunting and gathering is commonly referred to as agriculture. But in the Global South, the [...]
The Stress of Food Bank Food
April 22, 2010 By 2 Comments
“If Id Known You Were Comin…” The Role of Food and Hospitality in Community Development
March 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The Problem Behind the Obesity Problem Keeps Getting Bigger
February 4, 2010 By 2 Comments
Video: Food Policy and the New Urban Vision
November 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment
TIME FOR AN ALTERNATIVE TO CHEAP FOOD
September 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Let me be the first to say it: I think it might be okay for you to eat that mango?
August 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment
I’m out on this limb because, when it comes to making green food choices, the beginning of wisdom is knowing how complex the whole matter has become. While the 100-mile diet makes for a dramatic storyline and expresses the green aspirations of today’s shoppers, it doesn’t necessarily say a great deal about sustainable or equitable [...]
LOCAL FARMERS HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT THEIR CHAINS
July 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment
A crack lets the light in, the song goes, and a first crack has just appeared in the corporate walls of Canada’s top food retailers. Sobeys — a chain that flies the banner “the Hometown Advantage,” and which ten years ago took over a chain that called itself “Hometown Proud”– now confronts nine formerly locked-in [...]
Flic This! What Farmers and Food Artisans Can learn From Hollywood North
July 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment
If only food were like the movies. If anyone in the Ontario government should ever want to do something to encourage quality jobs in local food production, there’s no need to look any further than the government’s own Ontario Media Development Corporation and its Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit, which has just boosted the [...]
Red Ink: A Canadian View of Food Inc.
July 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Feed the economy by eating locally and sustainably
June 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Video: Interview with Wayne at Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
April 28, 2009 By 1 Comment
I was asked to speak to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in April 2009. IATP works locally and globally at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems and I was pleased to speak to them about local food systems and policy building. Wayne’s presentation [...]
Stimulate This! Whole New Field of Vision for Farm Environmental Services
April 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Fusion Power
April 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment
From Wayne’s archives. Fall 2008. I’m hanging out in the crowded back yard of a community recreation centre in Toronto’s west end on a warm and sunny fall day, listening to the reggae/funk/country sounds of a local band called Nine Mile, getting ready to cheer on two cooking teams in an Iron Chef competition featuring [...]
Buycotting
April 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment
On the occasion of its 40th birthday in November 2006, This Magazine asked 40 past and present contributors—and some distinguished guests—for a big idea whose time has come. This is my idea. In a knowledge economy, few people know how to make things that can actually be used. That’s why shopping has a bright future, [...]
Changing the Food System is Just What the Doctor Ordered
March 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Sharing Food and Work Creates an Upside to the Economic Down
February 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Hopeless Romantics Do Valentine’s Day Chocolate One Better
February 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Traipsing through the jungles of Mexico in January with Michael Sacco, a Toronto-based fair trader partnering with Indigenous people in Oaxaca, I got a taste of the bittersweet romantic adventure behind the romantic and sweet treat recently branded to symbolize Valentine’s Day. Chocolate goes to the heart of the Indigenous experience in Mexico, a testimony [...]
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