Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the Vancouver Food Policy Council’s Forum, which was a nice immersion into the larger world of what’s happening now that my class has ended. It seems like almost half of all our dialogue semester’s guests for the term were at the event (and half of those are now members of the VFPC), so it was nice to get back in touch with them, and to hear about what other people are doing. (I also bumped into Al, who’s been keeping touch through the blog. Who knew, I have readers?)
The VFPC event was subtitled, “Toasting our successes – Recipes for a Food Secure Future,” and went over the projects that the VFPC has been working on, such as…
- the 2010 Community Gardening Initiative, which aims to put in 2010 community garden sites by the Olympics;
- the Bridging Borders Towards Food Security Conference, which took place October of last year (note: their original domain name seems to have expired and is being squatted on; the link is to the site on their hosting service);
- the Vancouver Recovered Food Assessment Report, which examined edible and inedible food waste, as well as recommendations for improving their capture;
- and the Vancouver Food Charter, which was adopted by the City of Vancouver in February 2007.
As a side note, the event was at the Van Dusen Garden’s cedar room, and going back to the Oak and 37th area brought back some fond memories. (In fact, I tend to tear up a little going anywhere in Vancouver that isn’t downtown, lately. Who knew you could be homesick in the same regional district?)
They also had tables set up for the EcoDensity Initiative and the city’s Social Development Plan. I grilled the Eco-Density people on a bunch of stuff, like what kind of outreach they are doing with non-English speaking communities, and whether e-governance is anywhere in that plan (it’s not, but it’s a very geeky question anyway and I thought of it as a whim).
I caught up with Jason O’Brien to get an update on what’s happening with the Richmond Garden City Lands urban agriculture proposal. He seemed cautiously optimistic to me that people in Richmond “get it.” (For more information on what’s happening there, this article from Tooth and Dagger sums up the situation with the City of Richmond, the Richmond Food Security Task Force, et al.) I know there was some concern in my class about the perspective of the Musqueam First Nations in this, and I share it.
I don’t think I’ll make it to the council’s meeting this month, but I’ll be buzzing around this topic for a while, I’m sure…
