Kamloops Urban Food Land Report

We are thrilled to announce the release of the Kamloops Urban Foodlands Report! This report explores current urban foodlands practices and policies in Kamloops and aligns them with community visions and outcomes.

This report aims to understand what outcomes people in Kamloops hope to see from urban foodlands (not limited to growing food for sale), what policies could support those outcomes, and what barriers exist in reaching them.

The Kamloops Urban Foodlands Report is part of a larger provincial project that explored urban foodlands in Kamloops, Victoria, and Vancouver. This project aligns efforts across the three municipalities and uses the information gathered from each community to help coordinate urban foodlands policy advocacy across BC.

Read the Kamloops Urban Foodlands report here

Project Background

In 2020, the Public Health Association of BC, Kamloops Food Policy Council, Vancouver Urban Farming Society, and the Food Eco District in Victoria conducted case studies throughout their respective urban municipalities to explore current urban foodlands practices and policies and to align them with community visions and outcomes. A report was created to align efforts across municipalities to help inform the coordinated development of urban foodlands policies and practices across BC.

Read the other reports here:

This project was made possible thanks to our community partners ,Master
Gardeners, Permaculture Kamloops, Transition Kamloops, urban farmers, food social service
agencies, and Indigenous organizations. We’d also like to thank the Public Health Association of BC for coordinating the project and the Real Estate Foundation of BC for supporting this project. 

 

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June Network Meeting Summary

Our June Network meeting took place on 2nd of this month. Many familiar faces joined the meeting along with some new people. Bonnie Klohn our food policy lead and Emily Pletsch were the host of this meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss about the current situations or threats in the food system. We also paid condolences to the 215 victims of Kamloops residential schools. It is very devastating to know about small children who lost their lives. We asked the question, how are you reflecting on this news in terms of dismantling systemic racism today?
We were then sent to breakout rooms to discuss the two questions which were the base of this meeting. 1) What is something that you are pleased with in terms of where the food system is going? and 2) What is something that you are seeing that is more of a risk? Everyone had different views about these questions, but many noted that due to pandemic many people started growing their own organic veggie and fruits. This is a good example of people getting into growing their own organic food and having healthy home-grown veggies, which is beneficial for the food system of our communities.
We also observed that last year as the pandemic started there was an increase in growing food locally, but this year we saw that there are more plots in the community gardens which are empty, the reason behind this is that it needs more time, efforts, and hard work. As we can see that things are getting back to normal, there has been a slight decrease in the interest of growing organic veggie.
Another interesting view shared by members, included thinking about growing and supplying food locally as compared to regionally.
The meeting was concluded with the updates, from the staff members of KFPC on the facilitation of the Changing the Face of Poverty Meetings, the Gleaning Abundance Program, Butler Urban Farm, the Food Hub, as well as a food curriculum adult education roundtable held by the KFPC recently. We were also introduced to our new team member Manjinder Kaur Saini who recently started working at KFPC as administrative lead introduces herself to the network members. She also spoke about Farmer’s protest going on in India. Welcome Manjinder, and thank you to everyone who attended the meeting.

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