Less than five per cent of the food served at Canada's schools, hospitals and universities is locally grown, according to the Public Health Association of Canada.
But the association's Farm To Cafeteria campaign is slowly chipping away at that number, connecting farmers with schools and other public institutions, said Joanne Bays, national campaign manager for Farm to Cafeteria Canada and Farm to School BC. The association defines local as within 150 kilometres of the institution serving the food.
"One farm, one school, that's how it goes," she said. There are now 50 farm-to-cafeteria partnerships in B.C., up from zero five years ago. Four are at universities, four at hospitals and the rest at schools.
School board officials, trustees, hospital administrators and other public officials will gather in Richmond this weekend to hammer out local actions and a national strategy to double the amount of locally grown food served to students and patients.
They will be brainstorming ways to leverage the buying power public institutions wield. And because B.C. institutions are already leaders in Canada at sourcing locally, many of the speakers are local, including Richmond Coun. Harold Steeves, University of B.C. Food Services chef Steve Golob and Trevor Hancock of the University of Victoria's School of Public Health.
Canadian universities serve 130 million meals a year and spend $455 million on ingredients, according to a presentation last month by Dalhousie University to the Canadian Food Summit. Public schools spend $39 million a year on food, according to a report by the Centre for Science in Public Interest. Hospitals serve 149 million meals a year and spend as much as $321 million on food, according to research cited by the Public Health Association of Canada.
"This is a very simple notion, connecting institutions to local farms," said Bays. "But the potential economic benefits are significant."
If schools, universities and hospitals bought just 10 per cent of their food locally it would pump $70 million to $80 million into local farms, local distribution networks and local processing facilities. That, said Bays, would go a long way toward rebuilding the local infrastructure that has been dismantled by the globalization of the food business.
Farm to Cafeteria made its first inroads in B.C. when Dragon Lake elementary in Quesnel partnered with a local farm to supply produce for a salad bar in the school, Bays said. "That program is still running strong."
Some institutions, especially public schools, are establishing on-site gardens to supply some of the food for their cafeterias.
"Why shouldn't hospitals do that too?" asked Bays.
UBC Vanier Hall chef Steve Golob has seen how divorced from the ethos of fresh, local and seasonal food service can get and has undertaken a massive transformation of the sourcing and preparation of food on campus.
"When I arrived on campus 15 years ago, the cooks didn't have knives, they had scissors," said Golob. "They were just opening plastic bags."
Cooks who had all but stopped cooking are re-engaged with cooking fresh food and Golob has pressured his suppliers to source locally.
UBC Food Services is a customer with considerable muscle. Its 30-plus dining halls and food outlets sell $24 million in food and liquor a year to 50,000 students, faculty and staff. Food services run by the Alma Mater Society add almost $1 million more.
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