I’m speaking in Duncan on Vancouver Island next Tuesday night. It’s the annual general meeting (AGM) for the Cowichan Green Community, an environmental group with a food security focus. At first I thought I’d haul out my current talk: Feeding Ourselves: How Do We Fare? I have a handout that accompanies that talk: 12 Things You Can Do to Strengthen Your Community Food System. Then I attended a film called, Food Security – It’s In Your Hands. Film maker and farmer Nick Versteeg features his own farm, Laughing Geese and many other Cowichan Valley farms. They’ve got chickens, they’ve got eggs, they’ve got veggies and fruit. They’ve even got a meadery for goodness sakes. All the farms and producers are nicely mapped on Cowichan Green’s local food map – the 2011 edition will be available at the AGM. So needless to say by the end of the film I knew I could not be talking to this crowd about how to strengthen their food system. On the Cowichan Green Community web site I also saw that the Valley has a food security plan and a charter. They are the model. So I shifted gears, and decided to use the homonym (How Do We Fare Fair?), slightly messing with the lovely publicity materials the Cowichan Green staff had already prepared. (Sorry about that!)
So now I will be talking about food equity – how we make fresh, healthy food accessible to all – and still allow farmers to make a fair living. It’s an issue I’m really struggling with in my community and I’m hoping this advanced crowd will be able to help me. I will venture into the environmental/social divide that has emerged in food security circles, keeping in mind that it is an environmental group that is paying me to be there.
If you can’t be in Duncan, be sure to check out the Cowichan Green Community web site which is great. On the home page, you’ll see an ancient picture of me in the little slide show. I don’t look that young anymore. Neither am I young enough to climb into compost bins anymore, unless there was a lot of cash involved.
Cowichan Green Community AGM
June 21, 2011 5:00pm – 7:30pm (my talk is from 5 – 6:15)
Duncan United Church, 246 Ingram Street
Doors open at 4:30pm Admission by donation.