“It’s easy to stay siloed,” said Myreille Fortin, the organization’s social innovation co-ordinator. The hub is a place to discuss different experiences and learn from others, she added.

Food Matters Manitoba is a food advocacy, resource and research organization. It launched its Food Action Hub online platform in mid-June.

The hub acts similarly to a social media site in that members can post, friend each other and join groups to co-ordinate and discuss. Users can also access resources and blog posts. Paid subscribers (the basic iteration is free) can host groups and courses on the site.

Food Matters Manitoba began developing the site in 2019, based on feedback from food-focused community groups. Group members said they wanted to meet more people and hear more perspectives but they don’t have time.

Organizations are also spread across rural and northern Manitoba and have, in the past, struggled to participate in events.

When the Co-operator spoke to Fortin and Kate Anderson, the organization’s development co-ordinator, on June 22 about 90 people had signed up to use the hub.

The main user group comprises people who do direct, in-community food programming, said Anderson. However, she said public health dieticians were also interested to use the hub to connect with groups. Educators, academics and people in agriculture, both at a local and corporate level, have also expressed interest, said Anderson.

As development began on the site, the pandemic pushed many events online. Anderson said that while this reinforced the need for online platforms for connection, it also highlighted the need for “us as people taking the time to reach out to partners individually.”

“Eventually they’ll meet and they’ll get to collaborate,” said Fortin. “That connection piece is what we really want to focus on before we think about bigger things.”

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“Food Matters Manitoba has an excellent track record of deliver- ing programs and services in the community, and have been an essential partner in getting the Winnipeg Food Council off the ground,” said St. Vital councillor Brian Mayes, who chairs the food council, in a news release. “Collaborating with them on this next phase of work makes perfect sense.”

The Winnipeg Food Council, an 11-member citizen committee created in 2017, advises Winnipeg’s city council and supports the work of the community to enhance food security and public health.

Food Matters Manitoba will launch two projects for the Winnipeg Food Council over the next six months, which will form the groundwork for a food strategy, Food Matters policy director Rob Moquin told the Manitoba Co-operator.

The first is a framework to assess and monitor city policies to see which policies relate to food, what is already in place, and what is missing. Moquin said some of the work will centre on what areas of food and food security are the city’s jurisdiction.

This might include zoning and transportation, Moquin added.

The second initiative is a tool kit to conduct a ward-by-ward city food survey. Moquin said this will likely take an assets-based approach, looking for what food resources each community has. He said that while some of the city’s food needs seem obvious, there may be some surprises as neighbourhoods can sometimes hide pockets of food insecurity.

Food Matters Manitoba is slated to begin work mid-July and expects to release more details in the next six months.

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To better reflect the organization’s focus, Food Matters Manitoba has updated its bylaws and broadened its scope.

“We’ve made the shift to be more broad when we talk about accessibility to food …. just that focus on providing education about food isn’t enough,” said out-going chair, Angela Chotka at the organization’s recent annual general meeting in downtown Winnipeg.

The stated purpose of the organization is now “to work with people in Manitoba to increase opportunities for people to eat good food.”

Chotka said it was important to expand beyond the education mandate that the organization began with some years ago, because so much of the work being done was now tied to access to food.

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That was the approach taken by Food Matters Manitoba at its recent annual general meeting in Winnipeg, where youth from one of the organization’s outreach programs served up their new skills by preparing creative dishes for attendees.

“I think that it was really important for us, because we want to ensure that the participant voice is heard,” said executive director Loraine Nyokong. “But there’s no better way to really get a sense of the work we do in our program than to experience it, so this venue really provided a perfect opportunity for folks to… watch the kids and see the enjoyment they get from cooking.”

Half a dozen youth from the Seven Oaks School Division’s Wayfinders program, which partners with Food Matters, were on hand at the Kitchen Sync in downtown Winnipeg to prepare food as the meeting progressed.

“They did a vegetarian gyoza and a duck gyoza, they did a pork and elk meatball, as well as a lentil meatball, they did a baguette with a squash purée and feta cheese crumble on top, and they did whole wheat bannock bites that we deep-fried then tossed in sugar and cinnamon and blueberry sauce,” said community food facilitator, Owen Campbell, who worked with the students. “They have been amazing.”

Program co-ordinator David Heinrichs, who teaches one of the seven cooking classes Food Matters offers to youth, said that they work to teach kids recipes that are both healthy and fit into various cultural traditions.

“We thought it was really the best way to really get that connection between the program we’re doing and the people who support us,” he said.

Food Matters offers classes and programs that focus on traditional Indigenous cooking, food gathering, hunting and have programs aimed at newcomers to Canada, remote communities like Leaf Rapids, Fox Lake and Shamattawa, as well as community gardens, composting and more.

To better reflect the organization’s broadened scope, Food Matters has also updated its bylaws and refreshed its purpose at the meeting.

“We’ve made the shift to be more broad when we talk about accessibility to food because we’ve realized that just that focus on providing education about food isn’t enough,” said outgoing chair, Angela Chotka.

According to the amended bylaws, the purpose of the organization is now “to work with people in Manitoba to increase opportunities for people to eat good food.”

Chotka said it was important to expand beyond the education mandate that the organization began with some years ago, because so much of the work being done was now tied to access to food.

“This is to broaden our scope, not to limit us,” she added, noting that over the last decade people have become far more aware of food insecurity. “We know that we need good food for healthy people and healthy communities.”

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Youth from the Seven Oaks School Division’s Wayfinders program helped Food Matters Manitoba showcase its food programming at the organization’s recent annual general meeting at the Kitchen Sync in downtown Winnipeg.

“They did a vegetarian gyoza and a duck gyoza, they did a pork and elk meatball, as well as a lentil meatball, they did a baguette with a squash puree and feta cheese crumble on top, and they did whole wheat bannock bites that we deep-fried then tossed in sugar and cinnamon and blueberry sauce,” said community food facilitator, Owen Campbell, who worked with the students. “They have been amazing.”

Program co-ordinator David Heinrichs, who teaches one of the seven cooking classes Food Matters offers to youth, said that they work to teach kids recipes that are both healthy and fit into various cultural traditions.

“We thought it was really the best way to really get that connection between the program we’re doing and the people who support us,” he said.

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Food Matters Manitoba wrapped up a public survey last week, asking residents for their thoughts on how a council could be organized. The results will be passed on to the city’s Poverty Committee in the coming weeks.

“The idea with the survey was to now open the discussion up to the public based on some of the things we heard from our stakeholder groups and put that information forward to the public so everyday eaters in Brandon can respond,” said Rob Moquin, policy manager at Food Matters. “What exactly that food council will tackle is still under debate and discussion, but there is clear indication that things like public education, working on access to food issues, are sort of top of mind.”

He said the goal of survey wasn’t to get into the nitty-gritty of what the council will tackle, but get a broad sense of how people would like to see it structured and organized.

“It’s more of asking: Is it a good idea to have a food council? Who should be on that food council? What are the general areas of concern that we should be looking at?” Moquin said.

However, he added that the process really began in 2014 when Brandon established its food charter and noted it wouldn’t be possible without the work of established organizations and the city.

“That sort of outlines our vision and policy, or position, in respect to food and food security in Brandon,” said Lonnie Patterson, Brandon city councillor. The establishment of a food council was one of the goals spawned by work on the food charter process, added Patterson, who also heads the city’s Poverty Committee.

She said the committee will review the results of the survey, as well as two stakeholder events held by Food Matters Manitoba, before passing the information on to city council.

“I think we’re going to get a wealth of knowledge from the report and hopefully it gives us a really good idea of how this could be pursued going forward,” she said. “When you’re approaching things from a real… community development aspect, you really have to be prepared for things to take a bit of time, because when community engages you get a lot of perspectives and information and it really is an ongoing dialogue to get to something that the majority of people interested in agree is a good way to move forward.”

Moquin agrees, noting this project has pulled many organizations together, and hopes a food council will bring a greater element of co-ordination to the tackling of food issues.

“I think it is really important that people realize there are so many great people in Brandon doing good work already and the idea behind a food council is not to sort of wrench that away from people who are doing awesome work around food,” he said. “This is really an opportunity to tap into that and have a little more concerted effort around food issues in Brandon.”

More than 60 Canadian communities, local governments or municipalities already have food policy councils in place.

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The food is served at its restaurants at Club Regent and McPhillips Station where approximately 9,000 meals are served weekly.

The uptake of local food purchases means increased demand from companies like Notre Dame Creamery Ltd. to supplying the corporation an additional 600 pounds of butter, adding over $60,000 to the milk processors’ annual revenues.

MLL will also be buying Manitoba fish, and is the first institution in the province to purchase Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) pickerel from Waterhen Lake Fishery, a third-party certification ensuring social, environmental and economic sustainability of a fishery.

“The casinos of Winnipeg are committed to using local, sustainable foods wherever possible,” Alain Dumonceaux, executive director of hospitality and entertainment services at MLL said in a press release.

It’s happening because MLL initially set a target for local purchasing within its food-service contract, then was able to meet it through innovative arrangements made with its distributor.

MLL is now Manitoba’s best example of an institutional buyer stepping up to the plate to commit to local food, said a spokesman for the registered charitable group Food Matters Manitoba that’s been working on local food procurement projects for the past two years.

Food Matters Manitoba began its Manitoba on the Menu initiative to identify barriers faced by larger institutional food buyers to switch their purchasing to local suppliers. Its research shows larger institutions are interested in switching to local, but are not doing so due to concerns related to price, availability, consistency and quantity of local food, as well as the added complexities of sourcing from multiple suppliers.

MLL is setting an example for how to overcome those hurdles, said Stefan Epp-Koop, acting executive director at Food Matters Manitoba.

“Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries is probably the best example of institutions that have really stepped up in the past year,” he said. “They are demonstrating that it’s possible to do this and do it with a mainline distributor. It’s a very direct example of how similar institutions can make those kinds of changes.”

The Manitoba government’s climate change action plan includes a commitment to dedicate 20 per cent of the government food procurement to local foods.

Epp-Koop doesn’t know what impact that would have, but said their own research shows the provincial procurement services branch is already buying about $10 million worth of local food annually and several post-secondary institutions in Manitoba additionally buy several million dollars’ worth.

“If you extended that to include all the hospitals and long-term care facilities we’re talking certainly tens of millions of dollars if not more,” he said.

“It would be a very sizable market for sure.”

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Thanks to Get Fresh, a networking event hosted by Food Matters Manitoba, producers and purchasers are now better able to answer those questions.

“The event is really to, hopefully, build relationships between the food buyers and the producers, because I think the thing we’re missing is this relationship,” said Leanne Dunne, the ‘Manitoba on the menu’ co-ordinator for Food Matters Manitoba, and the organizer of the Get Fresh event held recently at the St. Norbert Community Centre.

She said that institutions such as high schools or post-secondary institutions may have interest in using more locally produced food, but face some significant barriers.

“It can be very challenging; there are a lot of barriers that the buyers and the sellers tell me they face, such as time, resources, money,” she said. “And another big one is relationships, either that they’ve got extremely strong relationships with a representative from one major distributor for example, or they are lacking relationships with local producers, who are hoping to sell in the Manitoba retail market.”

Seeking local supplies

Despite being rescheduled due to inclement weather last month, Get Fresh had a strong turnout.

Aaron Bernstein of Bernstein’s Restaurant and Delicatessen in Winnipeg attended Get Fresh, seeking out new sources of cabbage, beets, carrots and other local vegetables.

“We’re always open to trying new things and carrying local products on our shelves,” he said. “I’m interested in seeing what’s around, especially what’s around locally. We’ve worked with CSAs in the past, so I want to make sure that I have access to everything that’s out there, so I can bring it to my customers.”

Community-Supported Agriculture, or CSAs, are farms that rely on consumers to buy a share in that year’s production in exchange for weekly deliveries, usually of fresh produce.

Fort Whyte Farms happens to operate a CSA, and representatives were on hand to promote the program and meet with local business owners.

“The more interest we have, the better. A big part of what we do is our CSA program, and we’re always looking for more shareholders,” said Laura Lynne Hildebrand, a crew leader with the farm’s youth programming, which falls under the umbrella of Fort Whyte Alive.

“So far, today is going really well, it’s great to connect with other eaters and growers,” she said.

Hildebrand, who described the operation as a “social enterprise in sustainable agriculture,” noted pasture-raised pork and chicken are also produced, and may soon be part of the Sisler High School home economics program, thanks to connections made at the three-hour-long event.

Jon McPhail, co-owner of Jonnies Sticky Buns in Winnipeg, also participated. He was looking to shore up his supply of fresh produce over the winter months.

While McPhail has a good relationship with his suppliers, a poor harvest means that farmers he usually relies on might not be able to supply him year round.

“So I was hoping to get a few more people on my list that I can call up and sort of see what they have, and see if it’s what I need,” McPhail said. “And I think I’ve done that.”

As someone whose passion is for baking and not necessarily for business, he added that Get Fresh was also a good way to develop networking skills.

“It’s been nice to get my feet wet. I’m not very business with a capital “B” type of guy, and so this has been a bit of a stretch for me to do something like this,” McPhail said. “Now I’ve met some great people and got to know some really nice little farms I’m hoping to do business with.”

Many in attendance spoke about a growing pressure from consumers for local food, but it’s not the only thing on consumers’ minds.

“A lot of Manitobans really want to see value and don’t necessarily believe that local is worth paying more for all the time, but we want to help educate the public and move them in that direction,” said Bernstein. “It’s certainly better for the economy.”

For her part, Dunne was pleased with the way that producers were able to connect with buyers, institutional and otherwise.

“It’s certainly been very positive, more positive than we expected,” she said. “You’re dealing with incredibly busy producers and incredibly busy buyers, so it can be a challenge to find the right time for both parties, but I think overall it’s been a very positive turnout… we will get some feedback, and hopefully do this again.”

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It’s sponsoring the Manitoba Garden Makeover Competition to encourage more homeowners to start hoeing instead of mowing by creating an edible landscape. Balcony transformations are eligible too.

“There are hundreds of species of edible plants that can thrive in Manitoba. Imagine landscapes with colourful basil, red peppers, rainbow chard, or white apple blossoms,” it says in a release. “The best part is, once their beauty fades, the feast begins!”

“Manitoba Garden Makeover is one more way we are connecting Manitobans to good food and giving families a chance to discover how delicious their garden can be!” said Kreesta Doucette, executive director of Food Matters Manitoba.

The $1,000 in prizes includes custom landscaping and gardening consultations from local specialists Sage Garden Herbs and Urban Eatin’.

Last year Food Matters Manitoba held the First Annual Garden Makeover Competition. Over 40 beautiful and edible landscapes were entered. This year participants can enter in the Rural, Urban, Under 18, Northern or Newbie categories.

How do you enter? All it takes is an eye for finding beauty in edible plants, six photographs of your garden, and filling in a brief online entry form. The contest is open to all Manitobans and gardens of all sizes.

Once photograph submissions open June 15, gardens will be posted online for family, friends, and other gardeners across the province to enjoy. Viewers can rate their favourite landscapes to help us crown the 2014 Manitoba Garden Makeover winner! Visit www.manitobagarden.com to register and for more contest details.

Food Matters Manitoba is a registered charity working with northerners, newcomers, farmers and families to harvest, share, and prepare good food.

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