The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) recently secured a $5,000 grant from BC Healthy Communities to hold a local food policy forum this fall.
The food policy forum's goal will be to energize, organize and engage a range of stakeholders invested in the region's food system, with the objective to establish a fully functioning food policy council that can take actions to create a more food-secure Sunshine Coast.
"As with water and shelter, access to food is critically important to our community and way of life," said SCRD board chair Garry Nohr.
The BC Healthy Communities capacity building fund provides grants up to $5,000 per community to support local governments furthering the development of healthy community partnerships and to build capacity for healthy community leadership and action. The forum will bring together several food interests around one table.
"The main course of the forum will certainly be 'food for thought,'" added SCRD planner Gregory Gebka, who along with Vancouver Coastal Health community developer Eleonora Molnar and community nutritionist Meghan Molnar are organizing the forum.
Organizers envision an initial dinner event to kick off the forum. The Molnars suggest the forum will feature local food, emphasizing that, "while we celebrate our local food offerings, it's important to appreciate the numerous factors affecting our community's access to nutritious and sustainable food, and how this impacts so many aspects of our community and culture."
Representatives of the Sunshine Coast Food Action Network first advanced the need for a local food policy council in 2011 when meeting with the SCRD's agricultural advisory committee (AAC). Following these initial discussions, the AAC's terms of reference were modified to include a food policy council working group. The working group is expected to become part of a fully functioning food policy council that reaches across jurisdictions and boundaries by coalescing around a common theme - helping make the Sunshine Coast more food secure.
The food policy forum will dovetail with other public initiatives being organized as part of the Sunshine Coast agricultural area plan. Among those are a series of open houses and a public opinion survey gauging residents' views on their food choices and local agriculture.
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