1. Applying community
food assessment and
economic development
in Community
Shirley Thompson, University of Manitoba.

2. Three of four major streams of
food flowing to communities
 1. The mainstream, market-oriented agrofood
system
 2. The charitable food assistance network (food
banks.
 3. Nutrition safety net programming targeted at at-
risk people (e.g., poor children and adults,
pregnant women and nursing mothers and
seniors).

3. Food Insecurity Interventions
1. Social policy (healthy minimum wages, healthy
social assistance rates, etc.)
2. Food & healthy policy (food charters, ACTNOW!
in BC requires food security be considered by
PH)
3. Community food programs CED (farmer markets,
community shared agriculture (CSA), buying
clubs or good food boxes, school breakfast
programs, community gardens, NHFI, food co-
ops, subsistence hunting subsidies, etc ).

4. Food Security Continuum
UNSUSTAINABLE SUSTAINABLE
Charitable
(food provision)
Community
(empowerment)
Sustainability
 Food banks
 Soup kitchens
 Community
kitchens
 Community
gardens
 Farmers markets
 Redesign of the
social, economic
and political
system through
sustainable CED to
enhance the local
food system

5. Community Economic Development
(CED), of Women and the Economy project, UN
Program for Action Committee (2006).
Using local resources to meet local needs while at
the same time creating healthy and economically
viable communities.
CED is about working with communities to develop
positive and sustainable processes, not imposing a
system from outside the community. CED looks at
all aspects of the economy, not just commercial,
and is a powerful tool in working towards happy,
healthy communities (UNPAC, 2006).

6. Some considerations
for Community food
programs
1. Production and use of local food and food services
(e.g., “make it, bake it, grow it”)
2. Establishment of stable social enterprises that
foster grassroots decision-making, active
participation and long term employment for
community residents.
3. Healthy and affordable food access – reach of
many low income people and affordable/
marketed to low income.

8. Cooking in your community with a
a community food assessment (CFA)
 A collaborative, participatory process to examine
food issues broadly to inform change actions to
make the community more food secure by looking
at resources as well as needs. Its:
 Community-based
 Involves diverse and key participants
 Emphasizes community participation to empower
 Examines a broad range of community food
security issues

9. Steps to Involve and
Empower the Community
Get diverse decision-makers and community
leaders talking to each other about what’s
important – food.
 Identify key stakeholders.
 Invite the community to input at a meeting.
 Get community to envision their community
food system.
 Develop solutions that integrate quality of
life, public health, nutrition, economic
development, environment, etc.

10. Community Steps for food
assessment
Organize
 Identify a group of key stakeholders
 Organize initial meeting(s)
 Determine the group’s interest in
conducting an assessment
 Identify and recruit other participants,
representing diverse interests and skills

11. Research
 Determine appropriate research methods
 Collect and analyze data from existing and original
sources
 Summarize assessment findings
Report
 Develop recommendations and action plan
 Develop communications strategy
 Clearly frame and articulate the message
 Disseminate findings to residents and policymakers
through meetings and materials
 Develop specific policy recommendations
 Evaluate and celebrate assessment outcomes

12. Potential Benefits of Community
Food Assessments
Involve and Empower the Community
 Engage residents in collaborative learning about food-related
needs and resources
 Build capacity for effective, collaborative action to improve the
community
Improve Existing Programs and Create New Ones
 Identify gaps and potential for improvement
 Increase community awareness and utilization of existing
resources
Develop Advocacy Skills and Change Public Policy
 Build residents’ skills to organize and advocate for policy change
 Educate media and policymakers with compelling, research-
based results
Improve Access to Healthy Foods
 Increase availability of local, fresh produce in stores, schools, etc.
 Improve the selection of products available in neighborhood
stores

13. Community food systems
assessments can be used to:
 Provide a comprehensive picture of the current state of the
food system
 Inform decision-making and public policy around the food
system
 Establish a long-term monitoring system with a clear set of
indicators.
 Improve program development and coordination
 Increase community awareness of and participation in
food-related projects.
 Help articulate a vision of what needs to be done in the
community to set priorities and goals to improve the local
food system
 Build new, stronger networks, partnerships and coalitions.

14. 10 Tools for Food System
Assessments
1. Using Demographic Data to
Identify Vulnerable populations
1. Focus groups with food vulnerable populations
2. Food costs assessment
3. Food resource mapping
4. Participatory Food mapping
5. Rapid Market Assessment
6. Community Garden Inventory
7. Institutional assessment of local food
8. Stability and Impact of Food-related Social enterprises
9. Food miles calculation

15. Food Access Model

16. Community Groups
 Imagine you are starting a food assessment in
your community.
 In groups discuss:
 Would you be interested in a food assessment?
 If not what would make you interested?
 Who would you go to if you needed assistance?
 Who could you partner with?
 Who are the key stakeholders?
 What are some limitations and how can you overcome them?
Have one person record and a different person present what
you discussed.

17. Questions for stakeholders
meeting: Get Cooking
 Who’s feeding our community and what are
we eating?
 How can we build a stronger community
through better managing local food
resources?
 How should our local food system look and
work in the next five years?
 How should our local food system work in
2020?

18. Questions for
Community Meetings
It’s a human right to have adequate and
dignified access to healthful foods at all
times.
 What do community members do when
they don’t have it?
 What are the barriers?
 What are the resources?
 What should we do?

19. Prioritizing
 What is the extent of the problem?
 What is the level of concern?
 What is the support?
 What is the underlying cause?
 What is the community vision of your
food system future?

20. Cooking with the community:
Concrete action items to meet
concern around food
How difficult
How important
Easy Medium Hard
Extremely
Important
Very Important
Important

21. Improve Existing Programs
and Create New Ones
 Consider what your community needs to eat
healthy. Do existing programs get you there?
 Improve existing programs and plans and start
some new ones that will make the change.
 Increase community participation in shaping the
food system.
 Bring new partners in.
 Increase community awareness and use of
existing resources (e.g., food mail program,
MAFRI training, get dieticians to help improve
breakfast/lunch program, etc.).

22. What northern community
activists said: What do you need
in your community to eat healthy?
 “Need community to work together and to use
people who know how to farm, talk to farmers and
ask them if they could help person to teach how to
cultivate that land so that they can expand and
teach others or the farmers donate / rent tillers. We
can produce our own food and that’s what we need
to do.”
 “I’m hearing that people need to be educated and I
agree with that, our main staple is pasta there is so
much sugar in pasta and macaroni, that is where a
lot of diabetes starts, we need to educate.”

23. What Northern people said: What
do you need in your community
to eat healthy?
 “Going back to traditional ways of living, eating off
land and gardening, we have lost that and now are
recapturing it, we can teach future generations to
live off land like our ancestors.
 This is how we started getting chronic diseases by
using things we never used before, ancestors
gardened, smoked meat and fish etc. Elders are
passing on and are taking that knowledge with
them.”

24. Projected Number of People with Diabetes MB First Nations, 1996-2016
Source: http://www.gov.mb.ca/health/publichealth/ epiunit/docs/storm.pdf

25. Northern Healthy Food Initiative
Photocredit: Manitoba Food charter

26. 

27. Improve Access to Healthy Foods
 Increase availability of local, fresh produce in stores,
schools, etc.
 Improve the selection of products available in the store
in the community and/or start a gardeners/gatherers/
crafts/baked goods/fishing/hunting market once a
month, timed with paydays
 Encourage traditional activities (hunting, gardening,
fishing) at school and in community
 Get community events and school events to eat
healthy

28. FoodShift and Change
Public Policy
 Builds community members skills to
organize and advocate for policy
change
 Start programs
 Educate media and policymakers with
compelling, research-based results
 Participatory video

29. Need to Evaluate to keep growing
 Keep records of participants
 Get participants to write their evaluation
 Take pictures
 Talk to the press
 Invite community members to events
 Have contests to find out what kind of food
is grown and how big they are growing.

30. What you said: What do you need
in your community to eat
healthy?
 “Need garden, need fertilizers for gardens
(fish guts from town) at least you know
what you are eating when you get it from
someone you know, ie from fishermen.”
 “Important that we are educated as to what
we can bring to our communities, especially
when it comes to diabetes, to prevent it by
gardens and to educate them.”

31. What you said: What do you need
in your community to eat
healthy?
 “Food intake that promotes health to your body in
all aspects, not generic but individual to your body,
not everybody has same needs for food, bodies are
individual, we digest and adapt differently , depends
how your body is, diabetes, high blood pressure,
depends on individuals body.”
 “In Saskatchewan we started a ‘good food box
program’ in Meadowlake, provides 4 types of fruits,
4 veg, lentil and pasta , started with family and now
communities involved, buying in bulk makes it
cheaper.”

32. Food Security and Community
food programs in Manitoba
and Saskatchewan
Is CED making a difference in food
security?

34. Child and Health Education
Program (CHEP) Good food box
 VISION: “Community where good nutritious food is always available for
everyone no matter what their circumstances, where there is care for the
environment, support for farmers, access to local food production, and
knowledge about making healthy food choices.”
 Karen Archibald, Executive Director of CHEP explains: “Poor people
have less money to risk and so the CSA model won’t work as if the years
farming failed people would lose all their food money. They need to get
good value and every week we show how much more the produce would
cost if bought in a regular store. Delivery with respect is provided when
there is need due to lack of transportation. The box is meant to balance
out food bank use, which is a lot of starches and no fresh fruit/
vegetables. A CED approach requires that we listen respectfully and are
responsive to our members needs”.

35. CHEP
 Buys legumes, fruits and vegetables in volume to:
 fill 1000-1800 good food boxes a month,
 community kitchens and
 provide 35 schools/organizations breakfast and/or lunch programs
daily.
 Delivered bi-monthly to 75 volunteer drop-off locations,
having a:
 $17 regular fruit and vegetable box,
 $12 small fruit and vegetable box,
 $30 organic box.
 $5 boxes to three aboriginal communities – Mistowassis, White
Cap and Beardee – in the Saskatoon area; and
 mini stores in seniors’ apartments.

36. CHEP funding
 Income from good food box sales provides about
two thirds of good food box funding.
 The Province of Saskatchewan has granted core
funding since 1991, and now provides about
$400,000 annually, almost one third of CHEP’s
budget of over $1 million.
 Other funding comes from the City of Saskatoon
and the United Way, as well as private fundraising,
donations and partnerships.

37. Pay the Rent or Feed the kids?
 Table 1: Maximum allowable rent rates allowed by Manitoba Family
Services on Welfare Cheque
 According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s October 2003
figures, the average cost of a 2-bedroom apartment in Winnipeg was
$645.
 Even the toilet bowl in our place had ice frozen over it… and I was
getting sick of living like that…being cold and running away from mice…”
For this house, lacking in basic sanitation and heat, Louise paid $500 per
month, $70 over her rent budget, with the extra money extracted from
her food money. “I was living on $225 [for food] with 3 kids and 2 adults.”
 Miko and Thompson, 2004.

38. Farmers Markets in
Saskatchewan
 Year round or extended period (4-7 months in Regina and
many other locations and year round 5 days/week in
Saskatoon)
 Premium prices enable farmers (including urban gardeners)
and food producers to decent incomes.
 Funding and support (e.g., $30 million River Landing
Development funded by all levels of government and owned by
Saskatoon City.

39. Farmers Markets in Manitoba
- No markets operate more than 3 -4 months (14 day
permit for food vendors (& Brandon market shut down)
has sent out the message that seasonal weekly markets
only allowed.
- 2007/08 started to have a Manitoba’s farmer market
association.
- Limited or no financial support from government. St.
Norbert market infrastructure funded through St. Norbert
Foundation wanting to revitalize their community.

40. Community Shared Agriculture
(CSA)
 System linking local farm to local consumers who
purchase subscription shares of the year’s harvest from a
local organic farm. CSA shareholders provide the start-up
capital necessary for farmers to purchase seeds, supplies
and soil amendments and share the risks for farming (e.g.,
poor harvests).
EXAMPLES:
 Earthshare CSA (out of business in 2007) provided jobs
for refugees and immigrants and 150 boxes for 12x.
 Weins farm in Winnipeg -- $400 for 100 boxes, 12-14x of
fresh organic vegetable with work for food option.

44. The Northern Healthy Foods
Initiative (NHFI)
 Community-based intervention funded by the
provincial government of Manitoba, which is
designed to increase access to affordable
nutritious food in Northern Manitoba communities.
 NHFI team includes:
 Aboriginal and Northern Affairs
 Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives
(MAFRI)
 Healthy Living
 Manitoba Conservation
 Healthy Child Manitoba

45. Food security issues in Northern
Manitoba
 High costs
 Decline of hunting and fishing
 Trading of traditional foods limited by Indian
Act
 Freight costs
 High diabetes and obesity rates
 Treaty Land Rights
 Northern Store monopoly
(Northern Food Prices Steering Committee,
2003; Usher, 2004, Thompson, 2006)

46. TO BE REPLACED BY
UPDATED SLIDE

47. NIHB Expenditures In Manitoba Region by Benefit
(FY 2003/2004
$2.8M
$17.3M
$53.5M
$5.6M
$48.5M
Total: $127.8 M

48. Conclusion
 CHEP and NHFI programs provide regional
models of how NGOs can focus efforts on access
to healthy affordable food that reduce population
level food security. They benefit all BUT need
some external on-going supports/funding.
 Farmers markets and CSAs provide limited or no
benefit to low income consumers – while being a
business incubator and providing local, more
sustainable food to middle/high income.