SCN - Food Security Watch

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Food Security Watch: Knowing Where Your Next Meal Is Coming From!

Food Security Watch, a project of the World Food Day Association, is creating a vision of food security for Nova Scotia. This vision links local and regional consumers and providers of healthy food in creating a self-reliant, vibrant and resilient (bio-)regional food sector. The food security vision is one of healthy rural and urban communities and environments with equitable access to, fair prices for and minimal waste of locally produced food.

One of the first steps toward creating food security is for people to buy, gather, cook and grow food together. Small groups of people around the province are doing just that, and their numbers are growing! Cooking together in small groups, for example, means people can prepare delicious and wholesome food inexpensively (while having fun too!).

Once the necessities become easier to provide, there are other fundamental problems and questions to address regarding food security. Some of the issues Nova Scotians involved in the Food Security Watch face are:

What are the different ways we can cooperate and work together not only to save money, but to create meaningful employment -- and meaningful community?
How can urban people on low budgets link up directly with farmers and other food producers for mutually beneficial trading? How can these people regain their ties to the land?
What would happen if food banks or soup kitchens were to run out of money?
What are the best strategies for growing food without polluting? What are some of the additives in food and how do they affect health?
How can we become more self-reliant and less dependent?
We need to work together to investigate these problems and find community-based solutions. In Nova Scotia, plans for '94-'95 are to extend the food security watch, create a provincial food policy council and share strategies for becoming more self-reliant locally and globally.
To get involved, contact
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		Jennifer Scott
	Food Security Watch Co-ordinator
		
		178 Red Bank Rd.,
		Centre Burlington, N.S.
		B0N 1E0						
		Tel.: (902) 757-1640
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The Food Security Watch is a program of the World Food Day Association of Canada, and receives funding from a broad membership base, trade union s, Oxfam, CIDA, Health Canada and Agriculture Canada.