Local Food Infrastructure

Rebuild the processing and distribution infrastructure required to make more local foods available to local residents.  Also includes Farm-Institution programs.

Local Food Infrastructure
Increase local processing, distribution, and retailing opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses

The majority of our food comes through a globalized distribution network which is efficient and cheap, but which negatively affects farmer incomes, the environment, local communities, and our health. A more localized or regionalized food system would reduce the concentration of ownership in the food chain and provide more opportunities for small and medium-sized food businesses.

Farm-Institution Programs
Encourage public institutions to buy local and sustainable food

Public institutions like municipalities, universities, colleges, schools, and hospitals should establish policies that require a minimum percentage of their foods to be local and sustainable. This would build up a predictable base of demand that local producers and distributors could meet and would help rebuild a local food infrastructure.

Background Context
Right now, people who seek to buy local must make a lot of effort to gather food from many sources, whereas most people buy all their food from major grocery stores where not much local food is sold.  The system is simply not set up to facilitate smaller volumes of food going to local markets: for example, farmers find it hard to sell directly to nearby grocery stores, the last fruit cannery in Ontario was shut in 2008, and very few small-scale abattoirs and butchers can meet afford to comply with the burdensome and expensive regulations that are more suited to large meat processing companies.

Part of the problem that needs addressing is the concentration of ownership in the food industry.  The market power of the dominant supermarket chains, meat processors, and food manufacturers in Canada makes it very difficult for small and medium-sized food businesses to become established.  A myriad of government policies need to be amended to provide more opportunities for small and medium-sized food businesses.

One key way to help rebuild local food infrastructure is to establish food procurement programs that favour local and sustainable foods.  Public institutions like municipalities, universities, colleges, schools, and hospitals should establish policies to require that a minimum percentage of their foods be local and sustainable.  This would build up a predictable base of demand that local producers and distributors could meet.