Eat Local and Build Community for your Next Meal!

6 Ways you can combat the Global Corporate Take Over of your Dinner!

Farmers Markets

As agriculture becomes more and more industrialized and controlled by large agri-business, the natural growing of food and or raising of animals is virtually eliminated. Farmers markets encourage and support small scale family farms. In their support of small-scale family farms, farmers markets emphasize a return to buying products that can be grown naturally in the climate within which consumers live. It is in large urban centers where the supermarket giants have gained control over the food system by increasing the distance between the production of food and its consumers. By reintroducing farmers markets in urban areas, the gap between farmers and communities is narrowed and reconnecting to bioregions, is subsequently promoted.

Community Shared/Supported Agriculture:

Many of the alternatives to the corporate driven food system rely on reconnecting individuals with the natural growing cycles of their bioregions. Community Shared Agriculture (CSAs) go beyond connecting consumers to the cycle of food production by connecting individuals to local farmers who grow the food which they eat. Individuals, thus, share in the risks, the benefits and the production processes of growing food. By contributing funds at the beginning of the growing season they are guaranteed a percentage of the harvest throughout the growing season. This type of system provides a unique opportunity for city dwellers to participate actively in their rural neighborhoods.

Field to Table Food Boxes:

By providing community delivery of locally grown, often organic, produce, consumers are reintegrated into the cycle of food production. There are several of these box initiatives emerging in large urban centres across Canada and the United States. The goal of such projects is to avoid the corporate grocery chains, to support local harvests, as well as to encourage the consumption of organic and transitional produce.

Community Gardens

Community gardens are rapidly emerging across North America in order to reconnect individuals to sources of food as well as to food production. They raise awareness while concurrently integrating communities into regional ecological cycles.

Children's Gardens

Schoolyards are often seen as open lands, which are often paved, becoming devoid of life. Many schools, however, have recognized the learning potential of this land. School gardens reconnect children to the ecological processes in growing, harvesting, and composting food. Understanding their place in this process helps the children forge a solid ecological identity in their young minds.

Children's gardens incorporated into already existing space on playgrounds, not only have the potential to reintegrate natural processes into cities and communities, but they also have the opportunity to educate children, parents and teachers on how this process as well as the processes of food production takes place.

Edible Landscaping and Forest Gardening in your own Backyard

One of the most simple ways of re-introducing natural food processes in urban areas is to rethink the grass covered lawns which predominant landscapes surrounding residential homes. By planting areas around homes with native edible plant species you are reintroducing native plants to their original soils.

By making alternatives non-existent hard to find, the dominant food system (controlled and dictated by organizations such as the WTO) attempts to de-legitimize and obscure local knowledge. Although government influence is important, changes can begin to be made where our governments are failing to act. The process will begin from the bottom, from within each of our communities, through a re-connection, not only to our cycles of food production but also to our own places within the ecological system.