UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization Calls Food and Hunger a “Crisis Within a Crisis” of COVID-19 Food often suffers from the problem that it can’t get no respect as a public policy issue. But the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has been quick off the mark to produce a flurry of food-related briefings reminding people that food policy must stay front…
Category: Policy
Seeding climate action on Canada’s farms
Low-input sustainable agriculture is helping farmers store carbon underfoot Like everybody else, farmers talk a lot about the weather without doing much of anything about it – likely because there’s not much they can do. But after a decade of wild swings in weather patterns, crop prices and farm debt levels, some Canadian farmers are starting to look at ways…
Four ways COVID-19 will change food systems and food security
It’s too early for precise answers to questions about the coronavirus pandemic’s long-term impacts on the ways food is produced, processed, distributed, eaten, recycled and appreciated. But my experience managing food policy issues in Toronto for one of the world’s leading city-based public health departments gives me some searching questions that can help us prepare for possible outcomes. These open…
Bare essentials: T.O. org puts women’s underpants on Haiti’s aid agenda
On the second anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, let’s get down to a skimpy project that lays bare a whole lot about the men in charge of international emergency aid missions. This has to do with women’s drawers, and their new role in the agenda of global emergency assistance. The story starts here in T.O. at a fundraiser for…
The Pillars of Cheap Food are Cracking
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 imports of cheap fossil fuels,…
The All-But-Secret Trade Deal Between Canada And Europe Needs A Close Look
Robert Assange need to be free so he can create some wikileaks buzz around all-but-secret but all-but- done trade deals that will lock Canada into policies that ban most of the tools needed to protect a local and sustainable food supply, no matter who wins the next federal elections. Discussions leading to an all-embracing “bilateral” deal covering Canada and 26…
RESPECTING VOLUNTEERS OF THE GAIA CITY
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 seem moderately comfortable about the…
The Four Rs: Retooling Schools as Community Hubs
By sheer luck, I got a quick taste of the linked future of food and schooling last week. At the last minute, I was invited to fill an empty seat on a charter plane and come see a meal program in a First Nations Cree community of a thousand people in Fort Albany, near where the Albany River empties into…
Canadian Conservatives Scrapping of Long-Form Census Prevents Food Planning
It’s a pretty strong sign that we live in an information economy and society when the Conservative cancellation of the longform census became one of the hot button political issues of the summer season. I was stupefied when the Harper Conservatives dug in their heels, refusing to budge despite a chorus of harsh criticisms from senior planners, civil servants and…
Packaging “tax” — or is it fee? — comes to Ontario
Every time I see a shopper at the checkout counter stuff an armful of food into a purse or briefcase, I’m reminded how far Canadians will stretch themselves to save the five cent tax on plastic bags and do the right thing to cust back on packaging waste. Now we’re being asked to stretch some more. Since July 1, Stewardship…