A local food initiative is underway in the Kootenay Boundary region that aims to grow, develop, and unify the local food economy. This is an undertaking of the newly formed West Kootenay Permaculture Co-op, a Slocan Valley based not-for-profit co-operative working on food security measures for the region.

The board is made up of young farmers and food business owners who have a vested interest in strengthening the food economy. The Co-op has formulated an inclusive unifying approach to bringing food stakeholders together to work on strategic development planning and implementation with the latest project, Farm Food Fork (F3). F3 is a two day event in Nelson on April 5 and 6 spearheaded by Shauna Teare (Vice Chair of the Co-op) and Malin Christensson. www.farmfoodfork.com

FESTIVAL + FEAST [Saturday April 5 @ Selkirk] This full day conference will feature dozens of inspiring expert speakers from near and far, the Lexicon of Sustainability art show (a 20 piece info-graphic photography show, image example attached below), food films, action fair, workshops, a Kootenay-made food marketplace, and our very own “grass-FED Talks” theatre presentation. A mid-day organic local seasonal feast will be served to attendee’s. This festival will be the largest food conference the region has ever seen; a true celebration of local food! All proceeds from the event go into a bursary fund for developing grassroots initiatives to build our food system.

FORUM + FEAST [Sunday April 6 @ the Hume] This is the stakeholders event, a strategic solutions based, action-driven facilitated day, aimed at bringing together the region’s experts on food, economy, planning, education, and logistics. It is open to anyone who works in food or economy building, but space is limited to 150 people, so folks who are keen to participate need to buy tickets ASAP! The day will feature another delicious, organic, and local seasonal feast. Participants will have the opportunity to both pitch a project that needs support and to VOTE WITH THEIR FORK, on how the cash bursary will be awarded to projects that address the needs of the community.

Both days of F3 will be facilitated by Vicki Robin writer and advocate of “simple living,” is best known for her best-selling book, co-authored with Joe Dominguez, Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence. Her most recent work, Blessing the Hands That Feed Us: What Eating Closer to Home Can Teach Us About Food, Community, and Our Place on Earth was published in January 2014. It is based on her own experience taking the locavore movement to heart, when she ate only food sourced within a 10-mile radius of her home on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, Washington.

In April, the F3 group will also launch www.kootenayfood.com, a food focused web umbrella designed to be used by all of the region’s food organizations, farmers and consumers. It will feature a fabulous directory of Kootenay food– from soil to sauerkraut and everything in between. Farmers and business owners can easily login and upload films, photos, and promote seasonal features. Users can seek out agricultural reports, chefs who focus on local food, find heritage animal breeders, and even advertise when farm help needed, while swapping garden surplus and homesteading tools with a classified function. The website will also feature an events calendar for an easy to use place to seek out food related events, festivals, AGM’s, and workshops.

Since January F3 has been conducting surveys asking specific needs to be identified by farmers, processors, consumers, organizations, and homesteaders. The same questions have been asked through various community level food forums + Food Hub days, initiated through different food-related groups. These results are being used to create content for the April events and to determine what areas need developing. These initiatives are big steps forward in making viable economic changes in the way we grow, sell and buy food. However, there is lots of work yet to come. We are on a wave of fresh understanding and motivation, which is propelling the food movement forward.

We hope to harness fresh energies and direct them into measurable actions that will ensure abundant local food is more accessible to consumers, food producers, restaurants, and institutions. Everyone stands to gain from increasing sustainable food production within this region.

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