LiveSmart BC Community Hero
LiveSmart BC Community Hero: Heritage Food Service
As a child growing up in wartime Scotland, Marjorie Stewart remembers the very first banana she ever ate, and she remembers the buzz of excitement from her community when a shipment of apples arrived from Canada.
She also remembers merchants from Spain with blue berets riding bicycles through her village, selling onions on a string.
"It was always such a treat," she said, "to have these foods arrive from faraway places. Items we could never get at home."
These days, food arriving from faraway lands is commonplace, so much so that local food has all but disappeared, taking with it farming practices, knowledge and farmable land.
"The pendulum has swung to ridiculousness," she said.
"It might be time we returned to basics, and that means caring again about growing food locally."
Farmable land on Vancouver Island is disappearing, and so are the farmers, whose sons and daughters are not willing to toil for a lifetime for meagre returns.
Through the Heritage Food Service, of which Stewart is president, the co-op is trying to establish an infrastructure for food distribution that was destroyed with the introduction of a trade-first food policy.
Through stakeholders like chefs, public institutions and the general public keen on buying local, HFS intends to promote local food across Vancouver Island as it was in the 1960s, when more than 70 per cent of food consumed here was grown here.
It won't be easy, but if people are willing to pay a little more for healthier, locally grown food, it is possible.
"Right now, local farmers sell 80 per cent of their produce for 20 per cent of their income.
"By selling locally, that could be reversed to selling 20 per cent of their produce for 80 per cent of their income."
She estimates that $2 million in funding would be required to create infrastructure, such as a co-packaging kitchen, that would allow local producers to process food.
Along with supporting local farms, distribution of local food also cuts down on transportation and the use of fossil fuels, and because of the reduced time from farm gate to dinner plate, local product is considered healthier.
"Food supply is a basic need," said Stewart.
"By supporting local farmers, that encourages farming practices to be passed on, it reduces greenhouse gases and it promotes healthy eating.
"It addresses several problems we face with one answer," she explains.
