Eating Close to Home: Fostering Local Food Production During COVID-19

Eating Close to Home: Fostering Local Food Production During COVID-19

Building Resilient Food Systems During COVID-19 and Beyond

Eating Close to Home: Fostering Local Food Production During COVID-19

As COVID-19 outbreaks and restaurant closures have exposed the fragility of the industrial food system, local food producers are stepping in to pick up the slack. For many local farmers, processors, restaurant-owners, and community workers, COVID-19 has opened a window of opportunity to put control back into the hands of local communities. Join Éliane Verret-Fournier, Manager of Market Development for the BC Ministry of Agriculture, Emma Bryce, an expert in regenerative farming practices and small-scale meat production, Dr. Lenore Newman, author of “Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food” and is the Director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, and Katie Koralesky, PhD student in the UBC Animal Welfare Program, as they share their reflections on how we can seize the moment to call for a more localized, resilient, and sustainable food system.

About the Presenters

Éliane Verret-Fournier

Éliane Verret-Fournier is a Manager of Market Development for the BC Ministry of Agriculture. Her work is aimed at building the local market and encouraging British Columbians to purchase local foods. She delivers on the Buy BC program, the province’s domestic marketing program, promoting B.C. food and beverages to ensure consumers can easily identify and enjoy local food products, while supporting farmers and businesses throughout B.C.

Emma Bryce

Emma Bryce serves as treasurer for British Columbia Young Farmers (BCYF). After completing her Bachelors at Kwantlen in 2013, Emma moved to Chilliwack and began her studies at the University of the Fraser Valley, earning her Certificate in Livestock Production and Diploma in Agriculture Technology. While studying at UFV, Emma worked in a range of agricultural fields, including managing a small lavender farm in Abbotsford and milking at a dairy in Rosedale, then became an Assistant Agriculture Technician at UFV. Emma also owns a small farm in Ryder Lake, where she has raised a variety of animals for meat including pigs, goats, chickens, ducks geese, and turkeys.

Dr. Lenore Newman

Dr. Lenore Newman the author of “Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food” and is the Director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Food Security and the Environment. Dr. Newman researchers global food trends, farmland use, and emerging agricultural technologies.

Katie Koralesky

Katie Koralesky is a PhD student in the Animal Welfare Program. Her research focuses on the human dimension of animal welfare. Most recently, she has used realistic evaluation to understand how interventions work on dairy farms and institutional ethnography to understand how animal welfare law enforcement and sheltering shape what happens to animals.



The Building Resilient Food Systems During COVID-19 and Beyond series is brought to you by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS), the BC Food Web, the Faculty of Land and Food Systems (LFS), and the Royal Bank of Canada. This webinar series focuses on answering fundamental questions about the resiliency of our food system during and beyond COVID-19.



Essential Labour, Essential Lives: Migrant Agricultural Workers and COVID-19

Building Resilient Food Systems During COVID-19 and Beyond

Essential Labour, Essential Lives: Migrant Agricultural Workers and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped many Canadians’ understanding of essential labour. Now, more than ever, it is undeniable that undocumented and migrant workers form the backbone of our economy. At the same time, migrant workers in the agricultural and food processing sectors are being denied access to basic rights and protections, and are contracting COVID-19 at alarming rates. If migrant labour is essential, why not migrant lives? Join our panel of community organizers and researchers for an exploration of the barriers facing migrant workers, and the protections that are required to ensure their health, safety and dignity.

La pandemia de la COVID-19 ha modificado la forma en la que muchos canadienses entienden el trabajo esencial. Ahora, más que nunca, es innegable que los trabajadores indocumentados y migrantes forman la columna vertebral de nuestra economía. A su vez, a los trabajadores migrantes de los sectores de la agricultura y de la elaboración de alimentos, se les niega el acceso a derechos y protecciones básicas, y contraen COVID-19 a una velocidad alarmante. Si la mano de obra migrante es considerada trabajo esencial, ¿Por qué no así la vida de los migrantes? Los invitamos a unirse a nuestro panel con organizadores comunitarios e investigadores para explorar las barreras a las que se enfrentan los trabajadores migrantes y la protección que necesitan para garantizar su salud, seguridad y dignidad.

We received several thoughtful questions from the audience during this webinar, many of which the presenters didn’t have time to answer live. Click here to read their answers in our Q&A Roundup blog!

About the Presenters

Fuerza Migrante

Fuerza Migrante (previously Migrant Workers’ Dignity Association, MWDA) is an organization dedicated to fighting exploitation and injustice by building autonomous migrant power from below, through mutual aid and communal self-defense. Our struggle is multi-dimensional, understanding that ending capitalist exploitation is impossible without directly confronting all forms of oppression (particularly gendered as most migrant farm workers identify as male) and the theft of territories by colonizers. By pooling our skills and resources together we aim to transform the world and be part of the struggles for migrant liberation in the stolen lands incorrectly understood as “Canada” and throughout the world.

Min Sook Lee

Min Sook Lee has directed numerous critically-acclaimed feature documentaries, including: Donald Brittain Gemini winner Tiger Spirit, Hot Docs Best Canadian Feature winner Hogtown, Gemini nominated El Contrato and Canadian Screen Award winner, The Real Inglorious Bastards. Lee is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Cesar E. Chavez Black Eagle Award, and the Alanis Obomsawin Award for Commitment to Community and Resistance. Canada’s oldest labour arts festival, Mayworks, has named the Min Sook Lee Labour Arts Award in her honour. Lee’s most recent feature, Migrant Dreams tells the undertold story of migrant workers struggling against Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) that treats foreign workers as modern-day indentured labourers. In 2017, Migrant Dreams was awarded Best Labour Documentary by the Canadian Journalists Association and garnered the prestigious Canadian Hillman Prize which honours journalists whose work identifies important social and economic issues in Canada. Lee is an Associate Professor at OCAD University, her area of research and practice focuses on the critical intersections of art+social change in labour, border politics, migration and social justice movements.

Anelyse Weiler

Anelyse Weiler is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria. Her research explores the convergence of social inequalities and environmental crises in the food system, with a focus on struggles for migrant justice and decent work across the food chain. She actively contributes to several organizations advocating for food security, dignified employment, and migrant rights. Anelyse is a graduate of the Global Resource Systems program in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems and a previous Communications Coordinator at the CSFS.

Susanna Klassen

Susanna Klassen is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, and a research associate with the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC. Her research looks at policy and governance interventions to improve food system sustainability, with a focus on organic certification and the relationship between agroecological diversification and job quality in organic agriculture. She works at the intersection of scholarship and activism through her engagement with several food systems organizations, including as Vice Chair of Food Secure Canada. Susanna is from German Mennonite heritage, and grew up as a settler in Treaty 4 Territory. She is currently a visiting scholar at Colorado State University, in the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute Nations and peoples.



The Building Resilient Food Systems During COVID-19 and Beyond series is brought to you by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS), the BC Food Web, the Faculty of Land and Food Systems (LFS), and the Royal Bank of Canada. This webinar series focuses on answering fundamental questions about the resiliency of our food system during and beyond COVID-19.



The Role of Innovation in Building a Food-Secure Future

Building Resilient Food Systems During COVID-19 and Beyond

Webinar: The Role of Innovation in Building a Food-Secure Future

In early May, the Canadian government committed $252 million to help farmers and food processors manage through COVID-19, and it deemed workers in the food supply chain an essential service. Join Dr. Rickey Yada, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, Dr. Anubhav Pratap Singh, UBC Food and Beverage Innovation Professor, and Dr. Peter Dhillon, CEO Richberry Group of Companies, as they discuss how Canada can plan for a more food-secure future and ensure Canada is able to withstand future pandemics.

About the Presenters

Dr. Rickey Yada

In 2014, Professor Rickey Yada was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C. Prior to UBC, Dr. Yada was at the University of Guelph where he held numerous leadership roles, including Assistant Vice President Research, Canada Research Chair in Food Protein Structure, Scientific Director of the Advanced Foods and Materials Network (Networks of Centres of Excellence), and Founding Member of the Food Institute. He is, currently, the North American Editor of Trends in Food Science and Technology as well as serving on the editorial board of several journals. His areas of research includes: the structure – function relationships of enzymes (aspartic proteases) and carbohydrate biochemistry as related to nutrition and food quality.

Dr. Yada serves in a leadership capacity to several research and industry organizations, some of which include Chair of the Board of Trustees, International Life Science Institute – North America; Board of Bioenterprise Inc.; Advisory Committee Member – Arrell Food Institute and Seeding Food Innovation Grant Program (George Weston Loblaws); Member of the Scientific Advisory Panel – Riddet Institute (New Zealand); and a Member of the Advisory Panel – AgResearch (New Zealand). He is also a Past President and Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology and the International Academy of the International Union of Food Science and Technology, and is also a fellow of the Institute of Food Technologists. Dr. Yada has an honorary DSc from the University of Guelph and was the 2019 Harraways 1867 Visiting Professor, University of Otago, New Zealand.

Dr. Anubhav Pratap Singh

Anubhav Pratap-Singh currently holds the BC Ministry of Agriculture Endowed Professorship in Food & Beverage Innovation. His research group in the Food Nutrition and Health Program of the Faculty of Land & Food Systems explores novel technologies for preservation and quality extension of food products. Prof. Pratap-Singh shall discuss the evolving role of innovative and emerging technologies in the food sector, and shall discuss the linkages between industry and academia.

Peter Dhillon

Peter Dhillon currently serves as Chairman on the Ocean Spray Board of Directors. As Chairman, he is an ex-officio member of all Board Committees. Peter has played an active role on many organizations and boards. He was the director for the Vancouver Airport Authority, B.C. Ferries (where he was also vice chairman), the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. He was also on the Board of Governors of Simon Fraser University, the audit committee of the Vancouver 2010 Organizing Committee, the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Vancouver Hospital and the UBC Hospital Foundation (where he was a board member). He was also chair of the Vancouver Branch of Right to Play, an international humanitarian organization for children in communities affected by war, poverty and disease.

Peter is also known for giving back to the community with his philanthropic and charitable service, which has spanned a wide variety of important areas including health care, child humanitarian support, education, and sport. He has made significant financial contributions to many organizations including Kwantlen Polytechnic University, the Canadian Red Cross, the Canadian Olympic Committee, Arts Umbrella, and the Khalsa Diwan Society. At the University of British Columbia, he established the Rashpal Dhillon Pulmonary Fibrosis Research Endowment and the Rashpal Dhillon Track & Field Centre in his father’s memory. Most recently, Peter established the Peter P. Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics in partnership with the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

Lennie Cheung, Moderator

Lennie Cheung’s doctoral research aims to help mitigate yield losses of potatoes and other staple crops by exploring their mechanistic interactions with disease-causing pathogens. A UBC Food Science alumni, Lennie was the first female and foreign researcher of Japan’s second largest natural gas provider. There, she spent three years helping set up a food science laboratory and building networks with partners from all across the food chain. Lennie also has work experience from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Summerland Research and Development Centre, and BC’s fruit and vegetable processing industry and food retailers.



The Building Resilient Food Systems During COVID-19 and Beyond series is brought to you by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS), the BC Food Web, the Faculty of Land and Food Systems (LFS), and the Royal Bank of Canada. This webinar series focuses on answering fundamental questions about the resiliency of our food system during and beyond COVID-19.



Bee smart: How I ended up pushing a weather station around campus in a baby stroller

Bee smart: How I ended up pushing a weather station around campus in a baby stroller

Jennifer Lipka is an undergraduate student with the UBC BeeHIVE Research Cluster researching bumble bee abundance and diversity on UBC campus. Read more about her research, and how it feeds into the Bee Smart program.

Check out the full article here.

Global News BC Feature: Susanna Klassen

Global News BC Feature: Susanna Klassen

“There is needed to be a rapid shift in where food is going and how its being processed and packaged and our food system isn’t totally set up to deal with this scale…”

Susanna Klassen, a PhD candidate working with the CSFS, recently said in an interview with Global News BC addressing the new COVID-19 funding for farmers. Check out the full piece here.

Check out the video here.

PWIAS Q&A: Dr. Hannah Wittman

PWIAS Q&A: Dr. Hannah Wittman

Since long before the COVID-19 pandemic, our Academic Director, Dr. Hannah Wittman, has been researching better ways to put food on tables in British Columbia and around the world. The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies recently did a Q&A with Dr. Wittman about how COVID-19 is affecting the food system.

Check out the full article here.