Tag Archives: Day 7

The conclusion of our Guest Editorial, Part 1: The Great Divide. I urge everyone to please read this one as it’s extremely inspiring. Thanks again Tina for your awesome contributions and support for the Challenge.

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Bridging the Gaps: Creating food systems for ourselves.
By Tina Thorsteinson, B.S.Ag

The Food Bank Challenge is such a great opportunity to bring people together around the issues of food and I hope that the challengers will rise up as strong (and loud) advocates for change in these issues around Saskatoon.  Hopefully we can maintain some momentum after the challenge ends.  I think that a number of people looking to the Challenge will be looking for things that they can do in their regular life, without making unrealistic reforms.  The good news is that if people make small choices consistently, they will collectively add up.  First the hard truth.

The only way to keep people from going hungry here and around the world is to put a great deal more energy and money into local food systems.  I understand that buying local organic from the farmers’ market might seem expensive, however if there were more people with disposable income doing so, then the farms could develop efficiencies and scale which brings costs down.  Focusing on what we can buy locally also takes pressure off of developing countries, reducing the hold of North American owned food giants on Sub tropical lands, which allows those local people to get back onto their own lands and provide food for themselves first, in their traditional ways.  This is also much more sustainable environmentally.   Aid does not work, allowing people to feed themselves does.

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