Exchanging and Creating Knowledge for a Local Food Emphasis

Findings suggest that individuals who buy local food tend to have been exposed to learning throughout their life time about the merits of knowing where their food comes from. Most participants grew up on farms or had close connections to farming (for example, grandparents) and were intimately involved with food production processes. Only one participant indicated that the technical skills for food production (gardening, cooking, preserving) were acquired in adult life. Participants embraced a notion that local food included supporting a local economy of farming while fostering the skills involved in food processing, cooking, gardening, and so on.

Of relevancy here is the importance of local lay knowledge in management of local agriculture systems and ecosystems as well as technical skill uptake on food production. Local knowledge is declining as fewer farmers reside in rural areas leading to less focus on natural rhythms, soil and biodiversity composition.

Although challenged in some literature, local food is generally championed for travelling less from farm to fork and thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions in transportation. Local food, when it is built on a trust relationship, can be a win-win for producers and consumers. Consumers have opportunity to purchase healthy, local food - free-range chickens, for example - while producers receive fair pricing for their production. Growing social cohesion from such local economic activity - farmers markets, farm-gate sales and community-supported agriculture (CSA)* - has also been a positive result.

In Saskatchewan, local food interests are appearing in diverse quarters. In early March, Saskatchewan Economic Development Association (SEDA) offered a two-day conference to explore aspects of local marketing, new technologies and farm stories emphasizing Saskatchewan's local food opportunities. Throughout the province and throughout Canada, farmers markets are sprouting up in many small communities, CSA is becoming a commonplace term in food circles, and the People's Food Policy, among many other groups, are advocating localizing food networks as an ethical choice to building food security and creating resilient food systems.

Local food is promoted through on-line directories, information websites, restaurants, chefs and retail outlets emphasizing local food's promise of fresher produce, fair prices for producers, economic diversification and a deeper appreciation of socio-cultural relationships to food.

In a province with a rich agricultural history it is rewarding to see that local food has found a " home. And potential is even greater. Perhaps we will see a day when city planners incorporate urban agriculture into its development plans, where community gardens enable urbanites to have an opportunity to grow part of their food locally. 

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