On June 9, protesters gathered outside of Nunavut grocery stores and on Parliament Hill to decry Canada’s shoddy food security situation, highlighted in last month’s scathing UN report.  At the helm of the June protests is Leesee Papatsie from Iqaluit. Papatsie started the facebook page Feeding My Family, which now boasts 21,500 members. The page […] More »

UN condemns Canada’s lack of food security. If I’d pursued political cartooning instead of sociology, I would be sketching a picture of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney with his mouth full of cheap imported bananas. He’d have one hand over the mouth of UN rapporteur Olivier De Schutter, and the other  distributing food aid “to starving […] More »

Are we only interested in ourselves? The recent uproar over the provocative (dare I say titillating) May 2012 Time magazine cover on attachment parenting has got me thinking again about local food. The old joke among lactating mothers is that breast milk is the most local you can get. The other thing about the article […] More »

A ploughman’s lunch and a local craft brew in Antigonish, N.S., and you already paid the bill—two years ago. The community shared/supported agriculture (CSA) model has been around since the 1990s in Canada.  In case you’re not familiar with it, the idea is that consumers pay for their season’s produce up front, in the early […] More »

THE CLAIM: Plant-based packaged goods are sprouting up across Canada. Made from renewable resources such as vegetable oil and starch from corn or sugar cane, bioplastics, such as polylactic acid (PLA), are often touted as the earth friendly alternative to conventional petroleum or fossil-based plastics. Some products claim to be biodegradable or even 100 percent […] More »

For the past three years urban gardener and author (City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing) Lorraine Johnson has kept chickens in her Toronto west-end backyard. As Toronto considers ending its current ban on urban fowl, Johnson, 51, serves up her reasons for overturning the bylaw. THIS: What inspired you to get chickens? LJ: I […] More »

The organic food industry in Canada is booming. As of 2009, more than 3,900 certified organic farms were in operation across Canada, accounting for just under two per cent of the country’s total farms. This number is growing fast, too—along with knowledge and consumer preference for organic food. Retail sales from 2008 (the most recent […] More »

Yes, we must stop killing and eating animals. Vegetarians give up meat for various reasons—out of compassion for animals, to be healthy or to be more environmentally friendly. And now vegetarianism is more accessible than ever, says David Alexander, Executive Director of the Toronto Vegetarian Association. “There’s simply no compelling reason,” he believes, “for vegetarians […] More »

When the first Canadian case of Mad Cow disease was discovered near Wanham, Alberta in 2003, sensationalist news coverage sparked widespread fear over the safety of Canadian beef. Forty-one countries closed their borders to our beef, and in the following 18 months producers suffered $5 billion in losses. To date, only 19 cases of mad […] More »

When it comes to eating locally, it’s tough to beat food that’s growing literally in your own backyard. Since 2008, Not Far From the Tree, a volunteer group in Toronto, has been helping people do just that. Founded by New Brunswicker-turned-Torontonian Laura Reinsborough, the group picked more than 19,000 pounds of fruit from some 200 […] More »

The first time I visited The New Farm, Brent Preston and Gillian Flies’ bucolic 100-acre spread near Creemore, Ontario, the barn was kitted up with twinkle lights. Bundles of hay provided seating for a play and, later, for listening to the foot-stomping tunes of the Sunparlour Players. Professional chefs cooked up a delicious dinner with […] More »