Calgary Food Assistance Organizations:
The Calgary Urban Farm Meeting @Crowsnest Room, McDougall Centre - 455 6ST SW @1pm on 26Jan10.
Please advise who will be attending from your organization.
Please call if you have any questions... 403.383.3420
As promised, project premise attached.
Respectfully,
Paul Hughes
Chair, Calgary Food Policy Council
Premise:
Calgary Urban Farm Project for Food Assistance Orgs & SAGA
Calgary Food Policy Council: Enabling Food Assistance Orgs (FAO) through the Calgary Urban Farm (CUF)
1. Food Assistance Orgs have food demands every day/month/year.
2. Demand has increased significantly.
3. Very dependent on industrial food system.
4. Many food drives this year. People asked to donate every year.
5. We are still giving people fish. We are not teaching people how to fish and we are not reconceptualizing the entire fishing industry, which is the focus of this project.
6. A one time investment that will give us a return every year? Planting the seeds of systemic and profound social change.
7. Reconceptualize our approach to food procurement. Presently, these orgs rcv donations (money/food) and buy, prepare and/or distribute to clients. We propose to grow the food in partnership with these orgs and provide yield to same. We suggest green infrastructure. The CUF & SAGA: Sustainable Agriculture Academy in Calgary. Focus is on staples that thrive in Calgary hardiness growing zone.
8. Sponsored CSA for your client. Expand knowledge base of clients. Expand reach of Community Gardens & teaching people to fish concepts
9. Generates revenue from subscribed CSA's. Revenue can go to purchasing other food stuffs outside of CUF production and allow CUF to function as a social enterprise .
10. Employee pool comes from unemployed, food insecure and those experienced with and/or specializing in Sustainable Urban Agriculture (SUA).
11. CUF would function as a partnership between the FAO's & CFPC and any other organizations that understand how this revolutionizes food security in Calgary. There is substantial urban/peri-urban land available to farm, with yields going to these programs. Development of a local food system that benefits the most vulnerable.
12. Request to Alberta Government and Premier's Office to rename TUC to TUF-C Transportation, Utility & Food Corridor
SAGA or The Sustainable AGriculture Academy
The design I suggest incorporates the most innovative and efficient ideas in Sustainable Urban Agriculture (SUA). It is a model for the many advances taking root in the 21st century small scale farming sector. I call the concept SAGA or The Sustainable AGriculture Academy. The vision is to work with the city, local business and the provincial government to create an urban ag institute in Calgary. Think of SAGA as the ag equivalent to SAIT or ACAD.
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The underlying problem affecting long-term food and freshwater security is population growth, the bulk of which in Canada comes from immigration. Our annual LEGAL immigration intake--over 250,000--is beyond any sane, sustainable level. (With 'temporary' and illegal immigration/visa overstays, the number approaches 400,000 annually.) Developers facilitate conversion of annexed rural land to residential use, by having their paid lackeys-in-council (i.e., municipal governments) pass restrictive, anti-agriculture bylaws.
Without a constant influx of warm bodies, there is no need for farmland-destroying housing developments. Most of the newer developments (e.g., Country Hills) are actually quite dense--condos and detatched homes with very little yard (actually, so little space between homes that fire departments have warned of safety issues). As the Calgary metro population rises toward the 2M mark, the problem of our already precarious freshwater supply.
The only solution is twofold: sharply reduce immigration and impose a FEDERAL ban on the rezoning of land for non-agricultural purposes, including a preemption of anti-agriculture bylaws. 'Environmental' groups like the David Suzuki Foundation are too gutless, politically correct and co-opted by corporate donations (in the DSF's case, BMO-Financial and RBC, both of which have lobbied for DOUBLING our immigration intake) to speak to the issue.
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