Westside Food Security Collaborative Meeting Minutes

Tuesday Apr 20, 2010

Present: Catherine Leach, Spring Gillard, Lisa Ross, Diane Ash, Karen Dar Woon,
Chelsea Calder, Ellen Wickberg, Lindsay Clark, Zsuzsi Fodor, Nicole Mireau, Ross
Moster, Charlotte Roth, Sally Spears, Dellie Lidyard.

Guest: Herb Barbolet, Farm Folk City Folk and Laura Castrejon, UBC SCARP Student.

Regrets: Lisa McCune

Guest: Herb Barbolet

• Move to Vancouver from NYC in the 70s, to work in Community Development.
He became interested in urban planning, specifically focussing on the ALR.
He formed the Farmland Defence League to push up against land developers.
The problems that were present in the 70s are the same as now, except
worse.
• Created Community Alternative which was an urban-rural coop that owned a
farm.
• In the 80s, during the ‘me’ generation, he founded the Cooperative Housing
Federation and developed the Education stream.
• Started Glorious Garnish and Seasonal Salad Company to educate people
where their food is coming from. Found that is was harder to sell to those
who wanted cheap food.
• Founded BC Association for Regenerative Agriculture.
• Started Folk Farm/City Farm which was the first to link urban and rural with
food, social justice, etc.
• Now works with SFU, focussing on local food, developing a business plan for
food because we need to shift to working within the larger system. We need
to work from the ground up, top down, sides in. We need to bring groups
together instead of continually creating new smaller groups doing separate
things.
• Local Food First is a group of local organizations involved in the local food
movement who have come together to develop a solution. They want to find
a place that demonstrates food from seed to reuse: indoor/outdoor, year
round market, storage, processing, distribution, and to spread the year out to
give all small farmers a profit.
• Want to promote food democracy because we now have lost control of our
food – federal policies have wiped out all the work smaller groups have done,
we need to work at the grassroots level as well as from the top down. Citizens
have been so disenfranchised, but need to educate about our rights and
responsibilities.
• Community Gardens have become very common in the city with many
entrepreneurial gardeners doing urban agriculture. Gardens are good,
necessary and essential but not sufficient – city land is too valuable.
• Food Hub Project – New City Market proposed for Mai and Terminal area, with
food precincts (WSFC, Renfrew Collingwood). The food precincts would act as
the “kitchen of the community” with education, training, gardening and
 pocket markets. Right now the project is at the stage of fundraising for its
capital fund and developing business plans. Estimated $15M +, needing to
secure financial instruments to get the public support (bonds, stocks, shares).
The problem is not that there is no money for this type of project, but that it’s
difficult to harness it to be able to use it.
• Questions: How do we connect Vancouver Food Policy Council (VFPC) to
neighbourhood groups? The VFPC needs to be more connected to local food
systems that are working . The VFPC works mostly at the policy level to
empower the smaller groups to do what they are doing well. Need to
promote more gender equity amongst working groups.
• Sometimes it is overwhelming when you consider how interconnected all the
problems and issues are. A solution is to link with other groups and look at
successful projects that provide food democracy.

Lisa Ross
• May meeting will be around governance, would be great if all members
could attend the meeting

Catherine
• Greenest City Grant: project based focussing around food recovery and
connecting up groups who are making food available with group who are in
need of food donation. This project will include: knowing what food is
available and how to distribute it, who needs it and how to get it and a mini
market in collaboration with Craig Heighway.

Zsuzsi and Lindsay for the Pocket Markets

• Have developed an evaluation toolkit with pre and post surveys,
backgrounder for the Pocket Market, including lessons learned
• Zsuzsi has completed her community interviews with seniors around how the
food geography has changed, what the current food patterns for seniors are
and what they want to see if the pocket markets.

Spring
• Thank you to Zsuzsi and Lindsay for all the hard work they have contributed
to the Pocket Market project
• The vouchers from the pocket market will be given to member social service
agencies to distribute to their participants/clients. There are 25 per market
for $5 each voucher. These vouchers are targeted for low income seniors.
Please let us know if you would like to distribute these vouchers.
• We decided to stay with the local farmers – Craig Heighway, Kitsilano Farms.
He will be the main supplier and provide us with local produce at wholesale
prices. We will pay him to deliver.
• The granting period has been extended from Aug 30 till Sept 30 so we can
hold markets in Sept and have time to finish our final report to United Way.

Chelsea
• Garden Collaborative is in full swing. We have a core group of about 8
community members who have come together to create the garden this year.
 • Got a huge pile of compost donated from the city. The garden isn’t able to
use if all so please let all your networks know that they can come and take
some. Come soon because it’s going fast.
• Earth day Apr 24 at Jericho Beach. Kits House will be there with the building
redevelopment team and a gardening activity.
• Jane’s Walk documentary event featuring “Urban Goddess: Jane Jacobs
reconsidered” May 1, 1pm-2pm at Kits House. Register online or call Allison
at Kits House. Event is FREE, snacks and drinks provided.
Laura Castrejon
• Her research is around turning public roads into green spaces and urban
agriculture spaces. She plans to actually have something like this happen,
not just in her report but in real life so she wanted to hear from the group so
we can help inform her research. If you have any additions, comments,
feedback to these questions, please email Laura at
laura.castrejon@yahoo.com.mx
1. What could you use from this research?
2. Location?
3. Comments

Sally (update sent by email)

• It's been a very long month with lots of things happening. Lisa McCune and I met
with the Musqueam band at the end of March. I am just waiting for them to decide
what to do next. When we spoke to the social worker, he gave us the impression
that they would be ordering many boxes. Currently, he is away on holidays. So I
guess I'll find out more when he gets back.
• As you are aware, we are under renovations. Sometime during the end of February,
early part of March I had my place broken into. We believe that this was done during
the renovations of my suite. As I had been staying at another suite. Anyway, the
reason that I'm sharing all this with you is because during the break and enter the
person stole the Fruit and Veggie money of $ 125.00. We are holding a Fund raising
Tea to see if we can make up some of the loss.
• The Tea is on Tuesday, April 27th at 1:30 at Steeves Manor in the library area all are
welcome to come and enjoy a cup of tea as well as supporting a worthy cause.