Bicycles. Food. Bicycles and Food. Bicycles, Love, Food. Love. Food. Bicycles.
Once again, I was privileged to participate in an Otesha cycling Tour. This time, rather then a two month long cycling and performing tour to spread messages of hope, empowerment and environmental sustainability to students, we were embarking on a 9 day tour in the Ottawa area to visit mushroom farms, goat farms, grain farms, an abattoir, vegetable farms, organic and conventional, big and small. As a 14 person group the tour participants were discovering where some of their food really comes from, and engaging in discussions about food security, food sovereignty, and food choices. We had a diverse representation of a number of different ways to grow food, and also a diverse representation of how to treat food, how to appreciate it, and how to effect change in our visibly troubled food system where the reliance on outside inputs is extremely common. What does all this mean? It means interested people had interesting conversations about a number of topics like:
Migrant agricultural labour. Exploitation of employees at farms. It's quite possibly true that without short term migrant labour on Canadian farms, we would not have food on tables at the farmers market or at the supermarket. Agricultural workers are often not paid minimum wage. Canadians seem generally to be unwilling to do the labour involved with farming.
Aboriginal stories and connections with their food, and a bit about how that has been warped and changed by European influences. We had a wonderful guest from the Anishinabe (Ojibway) people, who shared traditional knowledge about how food has played a role and still plays such a large roll in his peoples life styles and traditions.
Food sovereignty. Sometimes referred to as food security. 1 in 6 people are food insecure. 3/4 of these folks are women. 90% of those that are food insecure are the farmers themselves. Monsanto and Cargill are two companies that basically control the entire food systems, by controlling seed stocks. We had a great panel of folks together to talk about food security at the international level, and at the national level (with a representative from Food Secure Canada and Ram's Horn), as well as the local level (one of the farmers at Roots and Shoots described the food system through his local lens as he organically farms the land). Please do click on some of the embedded links in the former sentences, the reading potential is endless on these issues.
Community Supported Agriculture is important to organic farmers. And boy do those farmers work freakin' hard. Exploitation ensues, even on these organic small scale farms. Because food prices in the grocery stores are artificially cheap, and those 'expensive' prices you see on farmers market food? Actually still way too cheap to provide appropriate compensation for growers.
Growing food takes inputs, and its amazing when farmers can have a closed loop at their farm, operating with permaculture at the centre of their practices, where all inputs are supplied by the land that you live on.
Consumption of animal products. If the meat animals are raised in an ethical, fair, healthful way, is is a sustainable and ethical choice to consume animal products? Animal protein does take more resources (think water, space, food) per kg to grow, compared to plant protein. More often then not, animals are farmed in commercial, large scale operations where inputs such as food, water, electricity, and medicines are used, and the animals are treated quite poorly. People have a disconnect with the animals life, and often don't feel as though they could actually kill the animals they so readily are able to eat. But, animal poop is quite important for nourishing soil, avoiding one stream of inputs from outside sources.
and the list goes on...
As we spoke among the group and one on one, everyone did so with passion, interest, curiosity and attention. Each person in the group created a safe and comfortable environment for folks to feel comfortable expressing where they are at in the spectrum of where they were in terms of food system knowledge and opinion. It felt great, supportive, at the same time silly and fun.
Along on the tour we had a videographer, in fact, an Otesha Olumni who I spent time with after my very first Otesha Tour. She created a number of short video blogs. Here are two of my favourite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbcNcSXL6WU&list=UU4GBmpk1hLiSIgISkQ5gfJA&index=1&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsiCXdsHO1s&feature=player_embedded
I'm still here in Ottawa, reveling in the post tour high, and also reconnecting with folks from last summer. Going for lots of bike rides, visiting swimming spots and farmers markets, cooking local yummies. It feels great, fun, hot, summery, fresh and old all at once. More on that later...
Love, Peace and bike grease always.
