Sustainable, Just and Healthy Food

Why was the Coop started? Why local?

The Ottawa Valley Food Coop creates an alternative to the mainstream food system (where food produced at a distance is transported to the Ottawa Valley through a series of unknown retailers). By contrast, the food coop enables us to have relationships with the people who produce our food directly and that means: sustainable, just and healthy food.
Locally produced foods travel short distances, and use less fossil fuels to get to our table. This reduces our personal contributions to climate change and helps us prepare for a time when fossil fuels are less available.

All of our local food will be fresher and more nutritious. Finally, if food is grown locally and distributed locally it is possible to virtually eliminate the dangers of contamination of the food supply.

Farmers and producers of local food are friends and neighbours, and pricing is expected to reflect a fair value for their work. When we buy from local farmers and producers, the money circulates several times before it leaves the community, Strengthening the local economy for all of us.

The Food coop supports every form of local food exchange. It is meant to complement local farmer’s markets and farm-gate operations.

So Many Reasons to Buy Locally Produced - Ottawa Valley Food Cooperative

Good for the Consumers!

• fresher food
• more nutritious
• better tasting and higher quality
• healthy eating supports a healthy lifestyle and improved quality of life
• good conscience – food choices that reflect our values/morals
• knowledge of the history/story of the food we eat – where it’s from and how it’s produced
• reduced health risks of food from other countries with different food safety laws/practices
• safer – less opportunity for exposure to contamination which can occur during mass production, long distance transportation, and longer storage

Good for the Farmers/Producers!

• supports family farms to stay in business
• fair compensation for food produced reflecting fair value for their work
• consumer support for sustainable farm practices
• new opportunities to produce quality food crops for locals (rather than volume commodity to ship elsewhere)

Good for the Community!

• money stays in the community
• supports the local economy – new employment/business opportunities
• builds direct relationships between consumers/producers/neighbours
• food system education – understanding how our food choices affect the quality of life for everyone
• supports regional food self reliance

Good for the Planet!

• environmentally friendly
  • fewer fossil fuels
    • reduced contribution to air pollution and global warming
    • less demand for a declining resource with related geopolitical consequences – read about “peak oil” for more information
  • supports organic, sustainable farming/food production practices
    • reduce pesticides or insecticides
    • reduce any other conventional or mainstream practices with adverse effects on the environment (e.g. large scale monoculture)
    • protect, replenish and improve the quality of the soil
    • eliminate hormones for livestock
  • less waste - e.g. reduced efforts involved in transporting long distances, unnecessary packaging, and spoiled food
• fits universal human values/morals
  • humane treatment of animals
  • labour rights (work conditions, fair pay, justice)
  • good food as a human right not just a commodity
• money/economic power towards a sustainable food system (rather than the current corporate dominated model)

8 Reasons to Buy Ottawa Valley Food
Christina Anderman

1. It keeps money in the local community.
    
   A large proportion of the money spent on food each year in the Ottawa Valley leaves the area almost immediately. When you buy from local producers and processors, that money stays in the local community and benefits everyone.
2. You get better tasting, higher quality and fresher food.
    
   For example, it’s not an accident that supermarket tomatoes taste like watery mush. Agribusiness tomatoes are grown from varieties selected, not for taste and nutrition, but rather for their abilities to be picked green and shipped long distances. Your local grower chooses varieties that taste good, and often a much wider variety including interesting heritage varieties.
3. You know where the food is coming from and how it was produced.
    
   When you buy hamburger in a supermarket, or from a chain, fast-food restaurant, who knows how many different animals contributed to your serving, or where they came from, or what conditions they were raised under. When you buy from a local farmer and deal with a local custom butcher, you can see everything for yourself. No mixing of the meat of animals from many different provinces plus foreign countries.
4. If we don’t support family farmers, there won’t be another generation of family farmers.
    
   The best support we as ‘eaters’ can give them is to buy food directly from family farmers. Consolidation in the food production and distribution system is rampant. A supermarket looks competitive, with many different brands, but in fact most of them come from only 5 giant corporations, and those 5 corporations are in the process of coalescing as two. A similar consolidation is going on in the retail grocery market, as chains like Loblaws and Wal Mart drive out independent grocers. As long as we continue to pay for this process, it will continue. It is critical that people increase their direct purchases of food from local farmers and processors so that we can preserve economic diversity and family livelihoods in rural Ontario.
5. Meats, eggs, dairy and poultry from family farmers tend to be produced and processed under more humane and natural conditions than products derived from the ‘Confined Animal Feeding Operation’ Industry. (CAFO)
    
   Cafo animals and birds spend their entire lives in tiny pens; chickens have their beaks burned off, their cages are stacked so poultry wast falls on the birds below. If there was truth in labeling, supermarket chickens would have a label that reads; "Contents: one small tortured bird". This is not the way our grandparents treated their animals. But as long as people reward animal cruelty with their grocery dollars, it will continue. Its better to deal directly with farmers whose free-ranging flocks and herds produce better quality meats, dairy, poultry and eggs.
6. Family farmers need our help.
    
   The last twenty years have been hard on family farmers. The average age of an Ottawa Valley farmer is 61. Government policies that are supposed to help family farmers turn out to have the perverse consequence of encouraging consolidation and larger operations. Billions of government dollars are funding the displacement of the family farmer. Hidden behind these statistics are the brutal costs that economists ignore because they are ‘off the balance sheet’. Ghost towns are dotting the Ontario rural landscape. The fact is, you get what you pay for. And this is what our agribusiness dollars have wrought on the rural landscape.
7. Eating is a moral act.
    
   Much of our food is imported from foreign countries. In many of those countries, poor farmers have been thrown off their land, with little or no compensation, so that big US companies could come in and open factory farms to supply the North American market. Water is diverted from peasant agriculture to these farms, and the people who have farmed the lands for centuries become urban squatters in the big slums on the outskirts of third world cities. Agribusiness foods grown in the U.S. (some of which is exported to Canada) are harvested and processed by exploited migrant labour. The workers receive below minimum wage, no benefits, and are exposed to high levels of pesticides and other dangerous chemicals. The exploitation of these people is a scandal, and it is funded by the agribusiness industry and your supermarket grocery dollar.
8. Actions have consequences.
    
   Food choices we make have practical consequences. By targeting as much of our grocery dollar as possible toward locally grown, sustainably produced food, we are ‘voting’ for more prosperity, security and a higher quality of life. Our grandparents knew the importance of supporting the local business community, and that includes the farmers. Food is such a critical aspect of life that we would be foolish to turn the food producing and distribution system entirely over to agribusiness. The right to choose means little if all the choices are dictated by faceless corporations with offices on five continents. The wave of the future is direct local relationships between rural producers and consumers. That’s what the Ottawa Valley Food Cooperative is all about. Bon apetit!

(adapted with permission from the Oklahoma Foods Co-op website: www.oklahomafood.coop)