December 2011
villagevibe News and views from the heart of Fernwood
Good Food for Fernwoodians Homegrown Good Food Society serves up affordable local produce
›› Sushil Saini
“Y
ou don’t need a silver spoon to eat good food,” reasons legendary chef and gourmand Paul Prudhomme but sometimes it feels like you need a platinum credit card to afford it. I have been working in food security for fifteen years—from chef to advocate to author and academic. But three years ago I started working for the Good Food Box program based here in Fernwood. The crisis to our food system—regionally and globally—is such a complex issue with the loci of power held by so many factions that creating any sense of how to solve it can be overwhelming and depressing. Which is exactly why I work for the Box: it is the most beautifully simple yet fundamentally radical method of addressing food security and social justice I have yet come across. The core problem with food production and distribution today is commodification—food is seen as a forprofit commodity, not the gorgeous life giving source of well-being that it is. Instead the bottom line value of food is a mechanism to make corporations a profit; not nutritional integrity, not the environment, and certainly not fair access.
This medium size good food box has 9 different kinds of local/regional organic and/or spray-free fresh produce for only $12. Also available are small & large good food boxes, as well as, snacking boxes, all fruit boxes and 100% organic fruit and veggie boxes. Illustration: Mila Czemerys.
unteer labour and rented community space to pack the boxes and we require no profit. The result is fresher, better food that is at least 50% cheaper than what you would purchase in a grocery store—not that you could find the fresh local produce we source at a chain grocery store. There are dozens of such programs across Canada but the Fernwood based Good Food Box run by the Capital Region Good Food Society ups the ante by ensuring we buy a majority of sustainably grown local and regional produce. When having to purchase outside our region we insure that produce is certified organic. November’s box, for example, featured 90% local sustainably grown fresh fruit and veggies with certified organic fruit like pomegranates and avocados rounding out the fruit boxes. Last month we put approximately $3,000 into the local farm economy in one day! This in turn created 370 boxes of food.
We offer six types of boxes that run anywhere from $6 to $18. Our most popular is the large fruit and veggie box at $18 which this month featured 11 different types of produce, 90% local and spray-free or organic; and sourced direct from three different local farms and two local purveyors. To purchase the items in our box yourself would take several hours of driving to shop at local farms and some specialty produce stores and still the price would be at least $28 for the same amount of produce. Moreover, our produce is picked within a few days of packing for maximum nutritional integrity and it does not need to be sprayed to maintain freshness on long journeys. It’s so elegant—remove the profit motive and replace it with a triple bottom line valuing of nutritional integrity, economic justice, and ecological sustainability. And the beauty is that it actually works; so well
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“You don’t need a silver spoon to eat good food.” Good Food Box programs take the forprofit mentality out of food distribution. In effect we create an alternative distribution system for produce outside of corporate food ownership. A grocery store has expensive overheads like buildings, staff wages, insurance, advertising plus a comfortable profit. The Good Food Box, however, purchases bulk produce at wholesale prices direct from local farmers and local purveyors to create fruit and veggie boxes. We use vol-
in fact that the program is going bi-weekly as of January and a new online ordering system will launch that same month. So when old colleagues asked me in their polite yet confused tone why I withdrew from my higher profile advocacy work to run a small non-profit I tell them that you can never underestimate the seductive power of effecting a positive response to a seemingly impossible problem. The Good Food Box is a non-profit alternative distribution system for sustainably produced fruits and vegetables including local, regional, unsprayed, transitional, and organic produce. Find more information and an order/pick up schedule at www.thegoodfoodbox.ca. Like us at www.facebook/goodfoodbox and order a box from the Fernwood Community Centre at 1240 Gladstone Avenue, (250) 381-1552. The next ordering date is December 14th with pick up (or home delivery) on December 21st.
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