"Vancouver has the vision to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. To get there, we’ve defined 10 long-term goals, each associated with a 2020-target. After talking citizens and stakeholders, we’ve created a draft action plan to meet our proposed targets." That is how begin each short video presenting these 10 targets which are :

1.Green economy

2.Climate leadership

3.Green buildings

4.Green transportation

5.Zero waste

6.Access to nature

7.Lighter footprint

8.Clean water

9.Clean air

10.Local food

During my stay in Vancouver, I write about these targets. If you cannot wait to know more about it, here the official website of the project.

The tenth long-term goal of Vancouver Greenest City may be the most popular one. Eating local and developing local means of production, many Vancouverites believe it’s possible and involve in different actions to achieve it. André Larivière, from Manitoba, is Executive Director of the Green Table Network, a company which provides sustainable solutions to restaurants (strategies, consulting...). He was in the Local Food working group for Vancouver Greenest City. I met him to understand the different issues of this long-term goal. He spoke about local food systems, urban food systems, communities, globalization and Detroit.

In order to become a global leader in urban food systems, Vancouver’s authorities target to "increase city and neighbourhood food assets by a minimum of 50% over 2010 levels". Food assets are community gardens, individual or shared. The city allocated places for gardens, such as boulevards. "It became a key part of urban planning" in Vancouver, sustains André. Food assets are also in terms of where food is available, thanks to farmers’ markets for example. Vancouver still doens’t have any farmers’ market, so they are trying to develop it.

Urban food systems rely on urban agriculture, using lands to produce food for communities (especially underserved communities). It’s gardening at a community level. That brings a very important benefit : the more urban we can make our food system, the more knowledge about how our food is produced we’ll have. It builds communities around food, it brings a culture of food. Now, young people (like me) don’t know where their food comes from, and they don’t look for it. Urban food systems try to enhance that. "It’s an enhancement, not a replacement of other food systems".

One of the targets of local food systems, in particular in Vancouver, is underserved communities like downtown east side (poorer neighourhoods of Vancouver), where affordable fresh food has always been an issue. That’s part of reintegration of the neighbourhood. Greenest City team has been inspired on this point by what has been done in the States, like in Chicago or above all Detroit, where they started to build community gardens in abandoned lots to feed families (see this article in french). In California, there are entire neighbourhoods with no supermarket, no food store selling fresh food. "People’s grocery" is an association in Oakland (suburbs of San Francisco) that, with a truck, drives by these neighbourhoods to deliver some fresh food from community gardens and farms. So the situation is worse in the USA, but Vancouver was inspired by the solutions introduced there. And they also should be inspired by what has been done in San Francisco or Portland for food waste : there is no food waste program in Vancouver.

Local food not only brings solutions to climate change but it also brings high nutritional and economic value. It’s proved that money generated by these systems tend to stay in the community and serve the community. So it supports local food industry on the long-term, sustainable agriculture, food production and food processing in a regional scale. To put it in a nutshell, local food system can have positive impacts on communities economically, socially and culturally.

The potatoe paradigm

One of the bareers to local food systems is the loss of processing (transformation of food in products). It has been the most centralized, which is to say relocated out of small communities. André told me a typical story about that happened in Vancouver Island, where there was a potatoe farmer just next to a Safeway (famous canadian food store). The Safeway went to the farmer and said "we would like to buy your potatoes". The farmer said "ok" and delivered potatoes. Safeway shipped the potatoes to the main lands and then until Calgary, where it was processed (packaged), and sent them back to Vancouver Island. The potatoes finally costed a fortune because of all the transportation costs. It’s the logistic system. So André wonders : "how do we go from a system like that to a local food system, without adding more costs ?" That is the challenge.

Processing and also also means of production are missing. There is far more demand than capacity for local food. On the short term, they need to build more capacity to add more production and processing. And if the problem exists on the short-term, they have to solve it on the long-term. Thus, they must bring some "more long-term value in the communities", as André says. The third lack is farmers. They are less and less in particular in younger generations.

Why processing (like many other activities from the production process) has been centralized ? To respect strong demands of profitability imposed by... globalization. I cannot talk about local food systems without mentionning its antonym, globalization. Using my classic examples of bananas from Martinique (that we always confront in France), I asked André how he considered the dilemma in view of local products and products imported from communities living from these exportations. Between local apples and bananas from Martinique, can I prefer the bananas ? "It’s not about stopping globalization of food especially about certain commodities like bananas, sugar, coffee, tea". Then I won’t have scruples about eating my favorite fruit any more. However, it’s important to highlight that "from a purely sustainable point of view, it doesn’t make sense to ship greenhouse tomatoes from Florida to BC, and these tomatoes compete with BC tomatoes". Some things are driven only by the market or by logistic. Large companies are starting to realize that they need to develop higher socio-corporate responsibilities. Even McDonalds is understanding that local food has high value, according to André.

But of course, "local food systems are not going to save the planet". They are good for the education and open peoples’ eyes, but they are not an economic model, a community cannot survive just with this model. Especially not in Winnipeg, where André comes from, where "growing season is about 90 days". We just have to rationalize local food systems to "look where opportunities exist" and "engage growers to provide local communities so that they are not always driven by export market". There are not enough farms that provide local communities.

An element could progressively encorage producers to provide local markets : higher prices of local food. Two factors have contributed to higher apparent value of local food :
 uncertainty on the global food systems ;
 safety about local food, because we know where it comes from, the farm is not far, we can trust it because we know everything about the product they sell.

Higher prices, that’s a good thing for producers. But, dear readers, I know you are mostly consumers and not producers. So you must think "yes, and the consumer ?" You’re not wrong. "Right now, the challenge is that people are ready to pay a little bit more for local fodd, but it’s just a little bit more, so you can’t get all the money you need from consumers to build new capacities". It’s not simple at all. Vancouver wants to take up this challenge and "is looking for new economic models, how can they stimulate local businesses".

See you soon, Be green, Ben