Cultivating more sustainable food systems requires a wider grassroots approach and innovation that shifts people’s mindsets from being merely passive consumers to dynamic growers.
This is a key message that organizers of an upcoming symposium on building sustainable food systems want attendees to take away.
“Right now, there’s a lot of pressure not only on food systems, but clearly on families and households and students, as people are trying to find affordable, high-quality food,” said Peggy O’Neil, professor in the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences Leadership Studies at Brescia University College, and keynote speaker at the Building Sustainable Food Systems symposium to be held on Tuesday, March 22.
O’Neil sees the symposium as more than a one-day event and the first step towards answering key questions about food security, including what a sustainable community and sustainable food systems look like.
“And when we say ‘sustainable,’ we are envisioning an area that is fully compliant with the 17 United Nations goals for sustainable development that start with ‘no poverty,’ and then there’s ‘no hunger,’ but it goes on with infrastructure,” said O’Neil, a home economist and executive producer of Food for the Future on Global News Radio London.
“There is a lot of innovation and capacity happening here (in Southwestern Ontario) that could serve as models if we coordinated it and evaluated it,” she added.
Hosted by the London Economic Development Corporation, in partnership with Western, Brescia, Fanshawe College, and the Ontario Centre for Innovation, the symposium brings together food growers, producers and technology providers exploring innovations and ideas in pursuing food system sustainability
Panel participants will discuss a variety of topics covering the human resource, economic and environmental aspects of sustainable food systems.
Consumers to growers
The event comes as food security and food sustainability issues increasingly come into focus with prices of food and other basic commodities continuing to rise. On Wednesday, Statistics Canada reported inflation rate rose 5.7 per cent, up from 5.1 per cent in January and the highest it’s ever been in more than 30 years.
Empowering people with the right tools and resources to enable a change in dynamics and allow them to play a more leading role in food production is pivotal.
One key challenge is in facilitating a shift in mindset for people to see themselves as “creators” in the food system, O’Neil said.
“We’ve had a bit of a consumer mindset around food; we buy our food, we don’t necessarily grow it or make it. Being able to see yourself either as a home grower, or someone who participates in urban agriculture… is a concept of a way of life,” she said.
Urban farming – cultivating food on building rooftops and in backyards – has been a growing trend in recent years, particularly within Western and the London, Ont., community. Contributing to the shift towards sustainable food production, O’Neil said, are the City of London’s newly revamped urban agriculture policies and outlooks, programs by the London Environmental Network, the community gardens at Western and Brescia, and learnings from Indigenous communities about people’s relationship with their food.
“We are really trying to overcome the challenge and help more people see themselves as creators in food, as opposed to just consumers,” O’Neil said.
Agriculture shift
A discussion about food system sustainability will not be complete without exploring sustainability in commercial agriculture. The business case for sustainable production continues to grow as buying behaviours change.
In its 2021 consumer report, analyst firm Forrester Research found about one-third of U.S. online consumers say concerns about climate change affect their purchase decisions. About 85 per cent of consumers worldwide have shifted their purchasing habits towards more sustainable products in the last five years, according to strategy and marketing firm, Simon Kucher and Partners.
But are shifting consumer buying behaviours enough of a business case for commercial farmers to invest in capital-intensive innovation and sustainable technologies? O’Neil said it might take more than that to effect a major shift.
“There isn’t an unlimited fund that farmers and people in the agri-food system have access to. Sometimes the technology exists, but they’re cost-prohibitive for some of our smaller local producers – or even for some of the larger scale producers. I’m encouraged by the Canadian Food Policy and also Food Secure Canada to raise the conversation level about how we facilitate and support that process,” said O’Neil.
“It’s not going to be a ‘single social institution’ answer (to these challenges) – the economic realm needs to take care of it, government needs to be part of it, and families need to be part of it, too. We’ve got to work together. And it’s a process; we have to go for progress, not perfection.”
The Building Sustainable Food Systems is taking place virtually on March 22 from 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Registration is free.
Peggy O’Neil
