It reveals how transporting food across and between countries generates almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector – and affluent countries make a disproportionately large contribution to the problem.

Although carbon emissions associated with food production are well documented, this is the most detailed study of its kind. We estimated the carbon footprint of the global trade of food, tracking a range of food commodities along millions of supply chains.

Since 1995, worldwide agricultural and food trade has more than doubled and internationally traded food provides 19 per cent of calories consumed globally. It’s never been clearer that eating local produce is a powerful way to take action on climate change.

The concept of “food miles” is used to measure the distance a food item travels from where it’s produced to where it’s consumed. From that, we can assess the associated environmental impact or “carbon footprint”.

Globally, food is responsible for about 16 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year – or about 30 per cent of total human-produced carbon emissions. The sources of food emissions include transport, land-use change (such as cutting down trees) and the production process.

Our study used an accounting framework we devised in a platform called the FoodLab. It involved an unprecedented level of detail, spanning:

• 74 countries or regions
• 37 economic sectors
• four transport modes – water, rail, road and air
• more than 30 million trade connections: journeys of a single food from one place to another.

We found global food miles emissions were about three billion tonnes each year, or 19 per cent of total food emissions. This is up to 7.5 times higher than previous estimates.

Some 36 per cent of food transport emissions were caused by the global freight of fruit and vegetables – almost twice the emissions released during their production. Vegetables and fruit require temperature-controlled transport, which pushes their food miles emissions higher.

Overall, high-income countries were disproportionate contributors to food miles emissions. They constitute 12.5 per cent of the world’s population yet generate 46 per cent of international food miles emissions.

A number of large and emerging economies dominate the world food trade. China, Japan, the United States and Eastern Europe are large net importers of food miles and emissions, showing food demand there is noticeably higher than what’s produced domestically.

The largest net exporter of food miles was Brazil, followed by Australia, India and Argentina. Australia is a primary producer of a range of fruits and vegetables that are exported to the rest of the world.

In contrast, low-income countries with about half the global population cause only 20 per cent of food transport emissions.

To date, sustainable food research has largely focused on the emissions associated with meat and other animal-derived foods compared with plant-based foods. But our results indicate that eating food grown and produced locally is also important for mitigating emissions associated with food transport.

Eating locally is generally taken to mean eating food grown within a 100-mile (161-kilometre) radius of one’s home.

We acknowledge that some parts of the world cannot be self-sufficient in food supply. International trade can play an important role in providing access to nutritious food and mitigating food insecurity for vulnerable people in low-income countries.

And food miles should not be considered the only indicator of environmental impact. For example, an imported food produced sustainably may have a lower environmental impact than an emissions-intensive local food.

But there is much scope to reduce food transport emissions, especially in richer countries. Potential measures include:

• carbon pricing and import duties
• investing in less-polluting vehicles
• encouraging businesses to cut emissions in their production and distribution chains
• planning laws that allow more urban agriculture projects.

Consumers also have the power to reduce food transport emissions by adopting a more sustainable diet. For instance, next time you go to buy fruit out of season, which may have been grown overseas or on the other side of the country, perhaps consider whether a local alternative might do.

The problem of food transport emissions will only worsen as the global population grows. Governments, corporations and everyday people must work together to ensure the production and consumption of food does not make climate change worse.

Arunima Malik is senior lecturer in sustainability, University of Sydney. Mengyu Li is a postdoc research fellow, University of Sydney.

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The field in question, with a street address of 55 M Street, is on the 10th storey of an office building overlooking the U.S. capital. It is one of Up Top Acres’ 18 rooftop plots, totalling almost three acres.

Members of the ag sector have long bemoaned the disconnect between urban residents and the farm — an issue that, closer to home, has sparked initiatives like Open Farm Day or Ag in the Classroom.

“We grow everything from small leafy greens all the way up to (dwarf) tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, watermelon, squash — really any type of specialty vegetable,” Grina, one of the three founders of Up Top Acres, told journalists attending the North American Agricultural Journalists’ (NAAJ) annual awards reception April 25. “We do all kinds of culinary herbs, all kinds of cut flowers.”

The for-profit enterprise was founded in 2014 and patterned after Brooklyn Grange, a New York City-based rooftop farming enterprise, which, according to its website, is the world’s largest at 5.6 acres.

Up Top Acres, which now produces about 80,000 pounds of produce a year, started off selling through a community-supported agriculture model and through farmers’ markets and restaurants.

“We figured out that’s not a really good way to make a living,” said Grina, who has a bachelor’s degree in plant and soil science from the University of Vermont. “Those challenges are just a logistical nightmare and, as a result, all of our labour costs go up.

“So what we’ve been able to do is we’ve convinced the buildings that we are partnered with to throw in some money to cover our operating costs and we’re able to distribute our produce at a low cost to organizations that are working in D.C. around food access… so that’s where most of our produce goes now.”

Because of city regulations to reduce storm sewer pollution to Chesapeake Bay, new buildings, or those under major renovation, are installing ‘green roofs.’ Up Top Acres’ sale pitch to building owners is to let the urban farm maintain and enhance their roofs. The owners get good publicity; tenants have access to some produce during the growing season and their green roofs will last longer.

“Green roofs will double, if not triple, the standard lifespan of a (roof) membrane,” Grina said. “(Farming) protects it from all the elements — sun, wind, dust.”

A roof membrane, meant to prevent leaking, could last up to 50 years instead of 15 or 20, according to the argument.

Champions of the practice also tie farmed rooftops to reduction of city heat in summer and habitat for pollinators.

It also creates awareness, and the company hosts rooftop agriculture demonstrations.

As a photo of one of the company’s signs states: “Up Top Acres grows food on roofs. We turn neglected spaces into productive farmland in order to establish agriculture as a fixture of city life. Join us.”

But slowing down heavy rains so storm sewers aren’t overwhelmed, pointing back to those city regulations, is another big benefit, Grina said.

Down to the ‘dirt’

The growing ‘medium,’ or what anyone else might call soil, used for rooftop planting is a proprietary formulation sold by green roof companies that checks all the right boxes, Grina said.

“It’s light weight so as (to) not worry about structural issues, sufficient enough in organic matter so that we can grow in it and… quick draining enough so that when we get big rainstorms, we don’t deal with any kind of ponding or flooding,” he said. “It’s designed to hold water well up until the point of saturation and then, once it gets to that point, shed that water. We’ve had no ponding up here no matter all the crazy rainstorms we’ve had… ”

The ‘soil’ is tested annually and, if needed, granular chicken manure is applied to bolster nutrients to feed the crops. Compost is added semi-annually.

Only hand tools such as hoes are used and the soil is not turned over — the rooftop version of no till.

Crops are grown organically, but not certified organic. Grina said there’s not much point since, most produce is given away, so no organic premium is captured.

Weeds are hand-pulled. Soil is protected during winter by cover crops such as vetch and clover. In some cases, soil is purposefully trapped.

“We learned our lesson the hard way,” Grina said, alluding to past winter winds whipping the soil away. “The wind definitely affects what we plant. We select plants that are lower growing. The only tomatoes that we grow are dwarf varie­ties.”

The practice of farming roofs is also an exercise in dealing with the microclimates created by that setting. A growing area on the south side of a penthouse, for example, is sheltered from the wind and gets full exposure to sunshine.

There is also the issue of growing season.

“We basically don’t have shoulder seasons,” Grina said. “We have an endless summer. Summer starts now (April 25) and grows until frost, basically (mid-November). Once we get the sun angle up here, there’s nothing blocking it from sunrise to sunset and we don’t have the Earth as a cooling mass.

“At the other end, we don’t have the Earth as a warming mass. Once we are getting freezing temperatures, it gets cold and it stays cold quickly up here. So because of that, we mostly grow one-season crops.”

The elevation also provides great ventilation.

“Our airflow is incredible, so we plant one crop of basil in the spring and we harvest it until November and we don’t have any mildew, we don’t have any blight,” Grina said.

There are, likewise, fewer — although not no — bugs.

“I would say we replaced the four-legged pests with more birds,” Grina said. “The crows really have a field day up here.”

However, birds aren’t so bad as to require netting to protect crops.

In total, Up Top Acres grows about 25 different small fruits and vegetables, 10 different herbs, plus flowers such as marigolds, strawflowers, statice, homunculus, roses and lavender.

Both flowers and produce are often used at events held at the same site as the NAAJ reception, including weddings.

The hurdles

Eight people, including three co-owners, are employed by the company, making labour its No. 1 expense, followed by insurance.

But one of Grina’s biggest complaints is that, even though Washington, D.C. is headquarters for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), there’s no local county office here.

That has led to issues applying for the same financial offerings available to rural farmers, and that Up Top Acres would also like to benefit from, according to him.

“We can’t even get a farm number here. It’s impossible. We’ve tried for years,” he said.

Instead of the subsidies open to other U.S. farmers, “we need to go find our own subsidies,” Grina said. “It wasn’t from the government, it was from the partner-property owners we’re operating from.”

Given those issues and the company’s experience so far, the question therefore becomes: Can future rooftop farming be profitable on its own?

“Maybe,” Grina said. “I think there is a possibility if you’re able to distribute produce (grown) on some of these larger roofs that we operate on within the building.”

At the same time, he added, “I don’t know that any agriculture in this country is really on its own. So my answer is, probably no, just like it is everywhere else.”

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Several top U.S. indoor farms say they are boosting production to a level where they can now supply hundreds of grocery stores.

Plenty, Bowery, Aerofarms and 80 Acres Farms are among young companies that see a future in salad greens and other produce grown in what are called vertical farms that rely on robotics and artificial intelligence, along with LED lights.

While the first versions of modern vertical farms sprouted about a decade ago, in recent years the introduction of automation and the tracking of data to regulate light and water has allowed them to get out of lab mode and into stores. Now they are trying to scale up.

Plenty and others say their customized, controlled lighting — some more blue light here, some more red light there — makes for tastier plants compared to sun-grown leaves and that they use 95 per cent less water than conventional farms, require very little land, and use no pesticides, making them competitive with organic farms.

And because vertical farms exist in windowless buildings that can be located in the heart of urban areas, produce does not have to travel far by fossil fuel-guzzling trucks to reach stores.

The companies’ expansion comes as plant-based burger makers Beyond Meat Inc. and Impossible Foods captivate investors and make inroads in high-end restaurants and fast-food chains.

But whether the sunless farms can compete financially with their field-grown brethren, given big upfront investments and electric bills, remains a question.

“We’re competitive with organic today and we’re working very hard to continue to make more and more crops grocery store competitive,” said Matt Barnard, chief executive and co-founder of Plenty, which is based in Silicon Valley.

Plenty’s salads sell on organic grocery delivery site Good Eggs for 99 cents an ounce, while a leading brand, Organic Girl, on grocery chain Safeway’s online site was priced at 80 cents an ounce.

Plenty said its new farm, dubbed “Tigris,” can produce enough leafy greens to supply over 100 stores, compared with its previous farm that could only supply three stores and some restaurants.

Bowery said its third farm coming online soon will help it supply hundreds of stores from dozens today, and Aerofarms, in New Jersey, said it is doubling its space to meet demand.

None of the three companies would give details about costs.

Former Vertical Farm CEO Matt Matros is skeptical that sunless farms can make economic sense. He invested in and ran Chicago-based FarmedHere in 2015, but changed its business into food processing.

“The issue with indoor farming was that you could really only grow a couple of things efficiently — namely basil and microgreens” Matros said. “But the problem is the world just doesn’t need that much basil and microgreens.”

80 Acres Farms in Cincinnati says it already grows and sells tomatoes and cucumbers, and Plenty is testing cherry tomatoes and strawberries in the lab.

Agriculture technology investor Michael Rose says vertical sunless farms are more expensive to run than modern greenhouses that rely on sunlight, supplemented by LED lights. He sees limited areas where it makes sense, such as the Middle East, where much of the food is imported, or China’s mega-cities where pollution and urban sprawl limit the availability of premium fresh food.

At Plenty’s new farm, robots put seedlings in tall, vertically hung planters. The planters move along a wall of LED lights for 10 days, and are then put through a harvesting machine that shaves off the leafy greens.

The machines minimize labour needs, and Plenty says the speed of production also helps control pests.

“We use no pesticides,” said Nate Storey, co-founder and chief scientist at Plenty. “We don’t even have to use things like ladybugs, because we go so fast in our production that we out-race the pests themselves.”

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That’s according to Evan Fraser, the Canada research chair in global food security at the University of Guelph.

The Barton report of 2016 and followup work by various agri-food groups have boosted recognition of the sector’s economic importance, he told the Senate agriculture committee, resulting in an emerging consensus.

“We need to establish a pre-competitive Canada food brand that would demonstrate to our trading partners that when they buy Canadian food, they are buying the world’s most trusted, safe and sustainable,” he told the committee.

Achieving that status will involve being a leader in standards and developing information and technology systems such as blockchain that held steward and safeguard brand Canada, he said.

“Then we need to market our brand so that the Canada food brand becomes globally recognized and synonymous with safe and sustainable,” Fraser said.

To accomplish those goals involves building on the reputation of Canada’s food regulatory system to codify and solidify what safety, trust and sustainability mean, he said. While significant parts of the food chain have made progress, many of these systems are fragmented and we don’t have a full value chain sustainability assurance system, he added.

The Canadian Agri-Food Sustainability Initiative could set safety and sustainability standards that should be included in the national food policy council under development by the Agriculture and Health departments. Canada also needs information technology systems to ensure that Canadian food systems are transparent and cybersecure, Fraser said.

“This really moves our discussion into the realm of cloud computing, cybersecurity and blockchain,” he said.

When these steps are reached, Canada needs to ensure that we are rewarded by our international competitors for doing these things,” he said.

“That’s where a Canada brand comes into play to reach consumers around the world looking for the kind of food Canada is supplying,” he said.

The federal government can play a key role in establishing the Canada brand with trade missions, he said.

“We can build a Canada brand that will be used to demonstrate to consumers around the world that when they buy Canadian food, they are feeding themselves and their families the safest and most sustainable food that the world has to offer,” he said.

Good examples of trusted food products are identity-preserved soybeans, a non-GMO edible soybean for which Ontario soybean producers have created a high value-added market, specifically feeding the Japanese consumers’ demand for things like soybeans, edamame and miso, he said.

“There they have created this identity-preserved system which allows that consumer a clear line back to the farmer and an understanding of what happened at each step of the way,” he said. “That is what trusted is.”

Work remains to be done on improving our sustainable reputation as a way of demonstrating to consumers all over the world that when they buy Canadian food, they are buying something that is a bit special, he said.

One positive step would be the creation of a national food policy council with the “mandate to codify existing sustainability and safety standards and ensure that they are the most rigorous in the world,” he said.

The council or the Canadian Agricultural Partnership could establish national standards for pooling and aggregating agricultural data, he said.

“There is a very strong role for federal leadership to help ensure that our data is handled in a way that is safe, transparent and cybersecure,” he said.

While Canada enjoys a good reputation that can be built on, it cannot be taken for granted.

“I’m nervous that we don’t have an ability to protect that,” Fraser said. “In terms of global appearances and global perceptions, we are far ahead.”

Animal agriculture is in for some fundamental changes as people consume less meat, he said. Livestock production will decrease as a portion of overall diet, both for sustainability, health and simple market reasons, all tied together. Industry is bringing on new alternatives that consumers are finding really exciting. He cited the new-branded President’s Choice cricket protein, where demand exceeds supply.

“The industry as a whole has to realize that its total volume is going to shrink, but its profit levels can be maintained if it adopts a higher value-added product, by marketing as organic, free range or free from,” he said.

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These days however, it’s become an urban hobby and many proponents say they think it will be safer, fresher and more nutritious.

A new study from the University of California-Davis is calling that view into question. It suggests local ordinances aren’t adequate.

“Ironically, as people seek to take control over the way their food is grown, most ordinances fail to ensure basic health and welfare for birds and humans,” said Catherine Brinkley, primary author of the study.

The paper was recently published in the Journal of Community Health.

What needs to happen, the author recommends, is laws that mandate vaccinations, manure management and general animal welfare in urban and suburban settings similar to policies and regulations imposed on commercial chicken operations.

“Provisions governing animal slaughter and routine veterinary care are rare, presenting a concern for monitoring and intervening in public health crises,” the study says.

The study was based on 100 municipalities in Colorado because the state has the most extensive records available and is a hotbed of the practice.

The most common guidelines for poultry ordinances pertain to housing design, placement and the sex of birds. Regulations pertaining to cleanliness, ventilation, and food ordinances governing the slaughter of backyard chickens are also non-existent or at best vague.

Regulations pertaining to the chickens’ health and welfare were also rare, with only two per cent of municipalities including poultry under animal cruelty and abuse regulations.

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Estonia-based ‘Click and Grow’ preview its latest ‘smart garden’ at the IFA tech fair in Berlin, a window box for the the modern age that grows vegetables and herbs automatically, as Matthew Stock reports for Reuters.

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Shannon Benner, CEO of 4-H Canada and chair of the Global 4-H Network, estimates that about 60 per cent of programs worldwide are focused on agriculture or food security. Food security is also high among the global network’s priorities, combined with sustainable agriculture to form one of the organization’s four “pillars” of youth leadership.

Kenya is among those countries where 4-H has taken a role in food security.

The country is expected to face “atypical high food insecurity” due to drought in 2017, according to the United States Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network. Already suffering from three years of unreliable rains, the failure of last year’s “short rains” season between October and December is expected to cut maize production by up to 70 per cent below average.

In March, The United Nation’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that over 2.7 million Kenyans were food insecure, with that number expected to reach four million by April.

• Read more: You are here: 4-H pitches youth GIS training

Vertical gardens

In the midst of this concern, school-based 4-H clubs are carrying on with projects such as multi-storey vertical gardens, said Neema Mutemi, one of the Kenyan delegation at the recent Global 4-H Summit in Ottawa.

“If they water the top level of the garden, the water goes down into the second level and the third level… they design the gardens themselves and construct them, so they learn skills to innovate from that level,” she said.

Mutemi said such vertical gardens have popped up in low-income urban areas in Kenya, part of the “enterprise gardens” that each club is required to develop. Past “gardens” have focused on animal husbandry or other topics. One of the more unique ideas introduced silkworm harvest.

“We try as much as possible to encourage them to develop the activities incrementally, so every year we want to see some progress,” Mutemi said. “They should be doing something different than what they did in the previous year.”

Top projects are chosen by 4-H Kenya, with winning club members sent to tour a university agriculture department.

In 2016, 4-H Kenya signed an agreement with Njoro’s Egerton University to attach agriculture students with local clubs throughout the summer. The clubs will test agricultural innovations introduced by the students and, if successful, those same projects will be published and introduced to local communities.

Farmers in select regions of Kenya will also have more access to weather data as a result of 4-H this year, Mutemi said. A partnership with Globe Kenya and the Regional Centre for Mapping Resources for Development has provided five weather stations to be distributed to member schools.

“The good thing is that one weather station serves a radius of 10 kilometres, so all the schools within that radius are able to monitor online what the weather patterns are within the same ecosystem,” Mutemi said.

Testing the waters in Burundi

Washington State University Extension hopes 4-H will be similarly successful in Burundi, where the United Nations says over 417,000 have fled to avoid civic unrest since 2015. The violence has led Transport Canada to advise against all travel to the east African nation.

The university has partnered with staff in Burundi and non-profit organization Trauma, Healing and Reconciliation Services (T.H.A.R.S.) to establish a school-based gardening program.

“They wanted to integrate a feeding system within the school program,” said Lauren Hrncirik, a University of Washington Extension specialist. “There wasn’t a school feeding system. Nutrition is, obviously, one of the highest needs for the young children there in school and so this was a way to not only incorporate 4-H and life and livelihood skill development, but also help them develop a school feeding program and teach some home gardening skills.”

The program’s curriculum was developed by USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It includes concepts of composting, variety selection, field planning and other techniques to increase efficiency and yield.

Four schools have signed on with the gardening program since it was introduced in 2016 while Hrncirik and her colleague, Mary Katherine Deen, hope to eventually expand to all eight schools where T.H.A.R.S. has a presence.

“I think the thing that we’re doing that’s really unique is that I have been to visit Burundi, but we as an organization have never been to Burundi to tell them how to do 4-H. It’s definitely coming from the ground up,” Deen 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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Exsilio, a Finnish company, has developed a high-tech solution for cultivating crops like salads and herbs in urban environments.

Its EkoFARMER system is a modified shipping container, stuffed with growing equipment.

“Our solution is ideal for restaurants and institutional kitchens wanting to produce their own fresh ingredients,” Thomas Tapio, CEO of Exsilio, said. “The modules also serve as an excellent solution for farmers to expand their traditional greenhouses.”

The unit forms a closed system that is delivered turnkey, requiring only water and electricity outlets. The level of humidity, water, and carbon dioxide can be controlled efficiently in order to produce the optimal yield and the best possible flavour, the company says.

In addition to restaurants and farmers, Tapio also envisions various other prospective industrial user groups for the modules, including research.

“EkoFARMER is an excellent option for business fields in need of salads, herbs, (edible) flowers or medicinal plants,” Tapio said. “The social aspect of urban farming is also prominent. For this reason, our solution is suitable for associations wanting to earn some extra income, or societies wanting to offer meaningful activities for the unemployed, for example.”

With a small footprint, the module can be placed “almost anywhere” and is also movable, the company said, adding it’s also a very efficient production model, noting it’s expecting production levels approximately three times that of a conventional greenhouse.

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The Mississauga, Ont., and Surrey, B.C., food banks recently launched vertical farms using hydroponics and aquaponics. The Regina food bank has a highly sophisticated LED-illuminated greenhouse. And more such projects are expected to be launched across the country.

The fact that more food banks embracing the supply chain and growing food could be seen as an act of desperation due to decreasing donations. But the trend can benefit many, starting with the food banks.

The change speaks to a seismic shift in how food banks perceive their socio-economic role.

Donations have been declining for a variety of reasons.

Citizens are hard pressed to give high-quality food away, although there’s plenty of peanut butter and Kraft Dinner on hand.

Food industrials like grocers and processors have forged incredibly generous partnerships with food banks across the country. And since food banks aren’t going to become obsolete any time soon, these partnerships are key to their survival. But such partnerships rely on donations of leftover food that nobody else wants.

And farmers are as generous as they can be, given that food safety regulations and other types of constraints sometimes get in the way. Some provinces now offer incentives to farmers to entice them to donate. But farmers need to have available product to give away in the first place.

While food banks struggle for donations, they’re also adjusting their long-term perspectives.

Historically, food banks have focused on providing food to those in need.

But, across the country, they’re experiencing an economic awakening. They’re no longer just about making people food secure. They’re really about the wellness of human beings. They’re no longer apologizing for existing, with the aim of being redundant over the long term. Food banks are here to stay because people will continue to experience changes in their situation and food banks simply respond faster than any government program.

For food banks, it’s now about nutrition security and providing hope to the victims of economic failures. Food banks offer sustenance, and are committed to healing and giving people a chance to succeed.

It’s a significant paradigm shift from just a few years ago, and greenhouses and gardens are consistent with this new approach.

Food banks are embracing the full scope of food systems. Gardens and greenhouses can provide the foundation of a curriculum around food. Cooking classes can be set up, including a sourcing component. More than a third of people visiting food banks are under the age of 18. Many of these young people are ready to learn to prepare their own meals. Food preparation at home leads to savings and greater food security.

Gardens also help connect food banks to the larger public, most of whom have never seen the inside of a food bank. Not many potential volunteers are attracted by the prospect of moving boxes and developing warehousing skills. Gardening, however, can attract a new flock of citizens wanting to make a difference.

Food banks are about connecting vulnerable and uncertain people with those who can help. Gardens can be portals for nurturing souls in dire need of care and nourishment.

Those who visit food banks have the right to good food – it’s a reasonable expectation for anyone. Nutritionally poor, highly processed foods don’t change lives. But education and quality foods can. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see more and more food banks aspiring to increase the nutritional bandwidth.

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