GEA launches 'This Land is our Land' land-use campaign
Monday September 22, 2008
Michael Walters
— Shake the Hand that Feeds You relational campaign supported for two years
When we imagine how our city will grow and develop in the coming decades, there is an important question to consider. Where will our food come from?
We can no longer take for granted that we can continue to roll our cars, trucks and vans into grocery store parking lots, load them up with all kinds of food without paying any attention to where that food came from, who produced it, processed it or how it was grown or made. This will not become a forgotten practice entirely, but it will become one that will require certain adaptation.
The local food movement has been with us for some time, but really as a middle- and upper-class luxury. It has been a consumer choice for those who are more concerned about the quality of food they eat and with an eye on the environmental costs of food production and transportation. It has been a small-market niche favoured by those with disposable income.
But as the price of oil climbs and food prices rise as a result, more and more people and municipalities are starting to seriously examine the role local food economies play in their long-term security and sustainability. Many municipalities even now employ food planners and strategists to be part of major planning decisions like land-use policy.
The Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA), which is an alliance of more than 30 organizations from faith, labour, community and small-business organizations, has been organizing through the issue of local foods now for two years. Our organizing campaign is called Shake the Hand that Feeds You.
It started for GEA, when Ebenezer United Church in west Edmonton became a member and wanted to take effective social action on reducing the amount of greenhouses gases the citizens of Edmonton are spewing into the air.
Ebenezer, through GEA, began a conversation locally about how the way we buy food contributes to climate change. They held a local foods dinner in the church and began to learn about the importance of reducing the transportation of food from the field to our forks. They began imagining building new relationships directly between their congregation and local farmers.
This led to another meal, with a dozen more congregations and a dozen farmers and farmers groups.
This led to a training session about how the food system works to favour large industrial farms and large multi-national grocery chains to the disadvantage of small producers and local economies.
GEA became interested in finding ways to create more access to local food and at the same time organizing increased demand for local food among our own members. We realized we needed to move from the idea of simply creating choices for individual consumers to treating people like citizens and organizing citizen eaters to do the political and economic work necessary to truly reorganize our unfair and unsustainable food system.
This led to more than 20 city organizations and 300 citizens agreeing to place an order for local food directly from four local farmers, as a demonstration of economic unity and to put our money where our mouths were. Internally GEA members needed to take the first step toward accountability.
But we also realized even if we got every Edmontonian to buy more local food and got every grocery store to stock more of it, without quality agricultural land near or in our city, the rest was a moot point.
This brought us to the This Land is our Land Campaign, which is working to permanently preserve the micro-climate land in northeast Edmonton as a start. The very northeast panhandle of Edmonton, which was annexed by the City of Edmonton in the early 1980s, is considered to be the finest farmland in Alberta.
Paving over prime agricultural land like that in northeast Edmonton is kind of like renovating your house and turning your kitchen into another bedroom.
GEA leaders will be working through this fall to organize ward-by-ward in Edmonton to engage more people in this critical issue.
The goals of our campaign are as follows:
Linda Robinson, a leader at Ebenezer United, and a First Nations person, reminded us early on about the Great Law. The Great Law asks us, when making any decision, to always consider the 7th generation while making that decision.
These are wise words that give grounding to an important debate that will take place this fall about Edmonton’s future.
To get involved in this campaign, visit our website at www.greateredmontonalliance.com or contact Michael Walters by e-mail office@gea-purl.ca or phone 780-982-4635.
-- By Michael Walters, Community Organizer
Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA)
When we imagine how our city will grow and develop in the coming decades, there is an important question to consider. Where will our food come from?
We can no longer take for granted that we can continue to roll our cars, trucks and vans into grocery store parking lots, load them up with all kinds of food without paying any attention to where that food came from, who produced it, processed it or how it was grown or made. This will not become a forgotten practice entirely, but it will become one that will require certain adaptation.
The local food movement has been with us for some time, but really as a middle- and upper-class luxury. It has been a consumer choice for those who are more concerned about the quality of food they eat and with an eye on the environmental costs of food production and transportation. It has been a small-market niche favoured by those with disposable income.
But as the price of oil climbs and food prices rise as a result, more and more people and municipalities are starting to seriously examine the role local food economies play in their long-term security and sustainability. Many municipalities even now employ food planners and strategists to be part of major planning decisions like land-use policy.
The Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA), which is an alliance of more than 30 organizations from faith, labour, community and small-business organizations, has been organizing through the issue of local foods now for two years. Our organizing campaign is called Shake the Hand that Feeds You.
It started for GEA, when Ebenezer United Church in west Edmonton became a member and wanted to take effective social action on reducing the amount of greenhouses gases the citizens of Edmonton are spewing into the air.
Ebenezer, through GEA, began a conversation locally about how the way we buy food contributes to climate change. They held a local foods dinner in the church and began to learn about the importance of reducing the transportation of food from the field to our forks. They began imagining building new relationships directly between their congregation and local farmers.
This led to another meal, with a dozen more congregations and a dozen farmers and farmers groups.
This led to a training session about how the food system works to favour large industrial farms and large multi-national grocery chains to the disadvantage of small producers and local economies.
GEA became interested in finding ways to create more access to local food and at the same time organizing increased demand for local food among our own members. We realized we needed to move from the idea of simply creating choices for individual consumers to treating people like citizens and organizing citizen eaters to do the political and economic work necessary to truly reorganize our unfair and unsustainable food system.
This led to more than 20 city organizations and 300 citizens agreeing to place an order for local food directly from four local farmers, as a demonstration of economic unity and to put our money where our mouths were. Internally GEA members needed to take the first step toward accountability.
But we also realized even if we got every Edmontonian to buy more local food and got every grocery store to stock more of it, without quality agricultural land near or in our city, the rest was a moot point.
This brought us to the This Land is our Land Campaign, which is working to permanently preserve the micro-climate land in northeast Edmonton as a start. The very northeast panhandle of Edmonton, which was annexed by the City of Edmonton in the early 1980s, is considered to be the finest farmland in Alberta.
Paving over prime agricultural land like that in northeast Edmonton is kind of like renovating your house and turning your kitchen into another bedroom.
GEA leaders will be working through this fall to organize ward-by-ward in Edmonton to engage more people in this critical issue.
The goals of our campaign are as follows:
- To protect prime agricultural land so to maintain local control over food supplies for the Capital Region.
- To ensure access to quality food for our citizens over multiple generations.
- To promote environmental stewardship through purchasing of local foods, which do not have to be transported thousands of kilometers from field to fork.
- To promote the strength and sustainability of local farmers and producers as well as our overall local economy.
- To strengthen the leadership and citizenship in our civil sector institutions and our communities.
Linda Robinson, a leader at Ebenezer United, and a First Nations person, reminded us early on about the Great Law. The Great Law asks us, when making any decision, to always consider the 7th generation while making that decision.
These are wise words that give grounding to an important debate that will take place this fall about Edmonton’s future.
To get involved in this campaign, visit our website at www.greateredmontonalliance.com or contact Michael Walters by e-mail office@gea-purl.ca or phone 780-982-4635.
-- By Michael Walters, Community Organizer
Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA)
Column ID#: 79
**Opinions expressed by guest columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of Connect2Edmonton members, partners or sponsors.**
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