Our region has been made aware of the insecurity in our food supply a number of times over the past few years; notably during the 2017 wildfires that closed Highway 97 and more recently with the continued highway closures due to flooding in the southern part of our province. The panic-buying of various food items, particularly dairy products and fresh produce, associated with these recent climate change related emergencies has made all of us conscious of just how quickly the food we take for granted can disappear off the shelves of our grocery stores.
However, for too many Cariboo families, food insecurity is a way of life. The Quesnel area has an historically high rate of individuals and families who do not have sufficient household incomes to adequately meet both their basic housing and their basic food needs. The recent closure of the Salvation Army’s Warrior Café and the loss of the Christmas Food Hamper program these last few years has made it very difficult for these vulnerable members of our community to supplement their dietary needs with donated food.
Over the past couple of years, Quesnel City Council has worked with the Canadian Mental Health Association to support a Food Security Coordinator position in our community. As a result of the early work of this coordinator we have a better understanding of the food security needs in our area, particularly among our most vulnerable populations.
But, it’s not sufficient to simply understand what our local food security issues are, we must make every effort to address them. While the Salvation Army’s Warrior Café has reopened, its sudden closure last month highlighted the need to accelerate the development of a more robust and coordinated approach to addressing food security issues among vulnerable populations in our community.
In the New Year, Council will be facilitating a discussion among all the social service agencies about how we can build a made in Quesnel food distribution system that will help address the ongoing food security issues of our vulnerable community members.
Like most communities, Quesnel doesn’t necessarily have a food shortage issue, we have a food re-distribution challenge. Most grocery stores, restaurants, and primary food producers consistently have a lot of food that may no longer be suitable for the shelves or tables but is still nutritious and needs to find its way to those in need. Our new Food Innovation Hub (Sprout Kitchen) can play a vital role in this local food re-distribution system, as it gives us the ability to process organic food that may be past dated for the grocery stores but can still be stored and processed into nutritious meals and snacks.
Sprout Kitchen can also play a critical role in addressing the provincial food insecurity issues we’ve all experienced recently. While still in its start-up phase, Sprout Kitchen is, by design and intent, an effort to create a more local food supply chain, making us less susceptible to major disruptions like those we experience when our major highways are compromised or closed altogether.
Food insecurity affects us all at different levels, for some it is a daily challenge, for others, an issue only when the global food supply chain is interrupted. However, we’ll all benefit from a more local and regional food production, processing, and distribution system. And, a more local approach to food is a good climate change solution too.
Learn more about Sprout Kitchen at www.sproutkitchen.ca
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