Food Action Committee Projects

• Our Food

Past Committee Projects

• Food Miles
• Emerald Web
• Urban Garden Project 
• Food Connections
• Native Plant Pollinator Project
• Heliotrust (includes Musicians for Farmers)
• Halifax Landshare

Food Action Committee Activities

• Food Policy
• Public Education and Outreach
• Clothing and Textile Action Group (CTAG)

Our Food:
Reconnecting Food and Community

The overarching goal of Our Food is to strengthen communities' relationships to food. We believe that everyone should be able to enjoy and access good, local food. This is the foundation of happy, healthy communities and environments.

We work directly with communities. We talk with them about what food and garden related changes they would like to see happen and help them put the plans into action. This can be anything from hosting local food cooking classes, canning the harvest, building or learning more about root cellars, creating a garden, or building compost or greenhouses. In this way we are fostering what we call "positive food environments", where our foods, and those who grow it, sell it, cook it and share it are at the heart of the work.

All of these activites fall under two main areas: the Food Connections Project focusing on food preparation and preservation and the Urban Garden Project, focusing on gardening and community food production. For more information on either of these areas, please refer to these specific projects below.

Past Food Action Committee Projects:

Urban Garden Project

 Here at the Urban Garden Project, we celebrate food in the city. For us this means supporting garden projects and urban farms, cooking with local produce, offering workshops, connecting people and resources, and talking about what we need and what we want as a community. For more information on what we’re up to, click here.

Food Connections

The Food Connections Project is focused on rebuilding the necessary skills we need to fully enjoy the food that is grown here.  This project aims to increase our abilities to cook seasonally; to can, freeze, and store food for the winter; to take advantage of win-win relationships between farmers and consumers; to celebrate and enjoy our harvest.  For more information about this project, click here.

Native Plant Pollinator Project

This project aims to increase biodiversity in community gardens around the HRM growing native plants alongside our vegetables creating habitat for pollinators. We are building knowledge around the importance, care and propagation of plants native to Nova Scotia and working to support our pollinators. To learn more about this project, click here. 
 

Heliotrust

FAC is linked to Heliotrust, an organization whose mandate is to “explore, develop, conserve and share ecological farming systems” through actions such as farmland conservation and a farmer-mentor program.  See the Heliotrust page and blog.

Musicians 4 Farmers is a quarterly celebration of local food, farmers and great music, with ticket sales going to support Heliotrust’s important work.

Four times a year (once per season!), Musicians for Farmers honours farmers with delicious locally-sourced food from Terroir Catering and fantastic locally-sourced musical talent.  All proceeds go to Heliotrust.

Halifax Landshare

The Haliax Landshare project is run through the Halifax Garden Network. It is a tool to connect gardeners with land in their community. If you are in search of a garden space to share, or if you are interested in sharing your yard with another eager gardener, please visit the “Map” page of the Halifax Garden Network to see land that is available to share, and the “Toolbox” page for more information on how to participate.

Food Miles

The Food Miles Project is a research, education and policy initiative that delves into the Nova Scotia food system.  We are examining our current diet, made up up mainly imported food items and looking at the social, economic and environmental benefits of a more locally-based diet.  Our aim is to increase awareness of the impacts of our food choices.  To learn more about this project, please click here or download a copy of the report.

See the Local Food Procurement Policy Literature Review here.

Emerald Web

The Emerald Web is a new project of the Food Action Committee (FAC). Though it was conceived by FAC, it links all seven issue committees of the EAC. Nova Scotia is a province rich in natural resources, yet so often our communities face ecological threats in the name of economic development. The Emerald Web project aims to display and link the vast number of ecological initiatives taking place in our province, showing us that green initiatives can bring us economic prosperity. By bringing attention to ecological initiatives in Nova Scotia and linking them to create a sense of community and cooperation between everyone taking care of the earth, we hope to build this confidence throughout our communities.

For more information on the Emerald Web project and our pilot project focused on Kings County click here.

Food Policy

The food policy subcommittee of the FAC meets periodically to learn about, and act on, issues having to do with local, regional, national and global food policy. These issues often intersect with the issues taken on by other subcommittees (oftentimes, our education committee), so the makeup of this little sub-group is quite fluid.

In the past couple of years, we’ve looked at issues such as Terminator Seed technology and other GMOs.  We participated in organizing the Halifax leg of a nationwide panel on the social and environmental concerns raised by increasing agrofuels production. We have also done research on the use of biosolids in agriculture and have produced a position paper.  We are a group committed to learning as much as we can about food policy, how it impacts our and others’ food sovereignty, and how we can act to change policy.

Public Education and Outreach

The public education sub-committee is responsible for raising awareness of the importance of local, sustainable food choices. Our activities include movie nights, public talks, workshops, cooking demonstrations, and representing FAC at public events. We also coordinate the sales of FAC’s cookbook, Eating by the Seasons and we piloted a series of local, seasonal cooking classes.  Past events included three very memorable Harvest Festivals.  The energetic sub-committee is always looking for enthusiastic volunteers who love to promote local, sustainable food.

Clothing and Textile Action Group (CTAG)

The Clothing and Textile Action Group (CTAG) is a dynamic and organically evolving collective.  The group’s foci include examining issues of textile and clothing production, consumption and education in relation to the environment.  The scope is from local to global, affecting change on a personal and societal level.  Ongoing research, education and outreach projects keep the group vital.  For more information about this project, click here.