Health Sciences North plans to include more Ontario products on its menus for patients and visitors. The hospital will participate in the Greenbelt Fund’s Local Food Challenge to more than double the amount of food it purchases from Ontario growers and producers for patient meals. Click here to see the full article Source: Sudbury Northern Life Kelowna...Read More

In schools across Ontario, Student Nutrition Programs (SNPs) aim to provide nutritious snacks and meals to children and youth. The Ministry  of Child and Youth Services supports SNPs by providing approximately 30 million dollars in annual funding, which is administered by 14 lead agencies across the province. These agencies typically work with “Community Partnerships” to...Read More

Photo Above: A mural depicting the vision of the first Learning Lab on Haida Gwaii. Photo by Kiku Dhanwant. Haida Gwaii, an archipelago of islands on the north coast of British Columbia is home to fewer than 5,000 people (most of whom live on one of two main islands) and an abundance of local food resources....Read More

Photo above: Diversity Food Services chef Ben Kramer, “I’d rather buy raw food and pay people to process it.” Ben Kramer never thought he would end up working in a cafeteria kitchen. The chef started his career at Vancouver restaurants that catered to a clientele willing to pay top dollar for fresh and local food....Read More

Photo Above: Food activist and organizer Roberts: ‘Partnerships are the future of food policy.’ Wayne Roberts  describes himself as the “Mr. Magoo” of municipal food policy; often stumbling and frequently saved by luck (the kind that comes from years of practice.)  Roberts has decades of experience as a community organizer, and from 2000 to 2010...Read More

Patients in healthcare facilities are immunologically vulnerable, and it is essential to provide them with adequate nutrition to maximize healing and recovery. This concept is the driving force for an innovative farm-to-healthcare initiative at the University of British Columbia. In January 2014, The Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm embarked on a three-year...Read More

When Celia White first started digging into the campus food system at Vancouver Island University (VIU) in Nanaimo, British Columbia, she found passionate people, and big potential.  “There was a lot of interest in making the VIU campus a more sustainable place in terms of food,” says White. “But there wasn’t a lot of consolidated...Read More

Photo Above: Farmer Dona Madalena with a crop of passion fruit sold through the farm to school program in Tangara de Serra, Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo by Hannah Wittman. When Hannah Wittman first started traveling to Central Brazil more than a decade ago, she was astounded at the sheer tenacity of the small family farmers...Read More

When pioneering chef and advocate Alice Waters told the thousand-plus delegates at a recent Farm to Cafeteria conference that “the question of local food is deeply a question of equality,” she struck a chord that had been resonating throughout the conference all week. Sure, local food is about good health and the environment. It’s about supporting...Read More

Place-based learning.  Culturally Responsive Education.  Experiential learning.  Life-long learning.  Nice ideas, now what does that look like in the classroom?  Come and see how two teacher’s explorations into connecting students with their learning evolved into a Foods Program that spills across curriculum and enlivens the campus of a rural BC high school on the islands of Haida Gwaii. In the...Read More