Cannabis firm sues shipper
Check your travel medical
New orca rescue attempt
No bail in Ottawa killings 
Banks must say rebate 
Regulating power prices
Iran fires at attack drones 
World's largest election 
2 detained in Volkov attack 
Apple pulls apps from China
Oil and gas leases restricted
Indigo needs turnaround 
Warriors ready for Round 2
Kalamalka Bowl cancelled
Rockets live to fight on
Hilton teams up with Sia
Swift still 'can't forgive' Kim
Grimes to ‘cap the disarray’
Laura Kalina is passionate about a healthy food economy in her community. “I would love to see Kamloops food-secure,” said Kalina, author of Building Food Security in Canada and co-founder of the Kamloops Food Policy Council.
“Years ago, we had many canneries in Kamloops. My dream is to get back to what Kamloops was in the 1940s… they had apple orchards and tomatoes and just a really vibrant agricultural community,” said Kalina.
She is looking forward to “getting people excited about food security and the abundance that we have in Kamloops ” at the upcoming CommUnity Innovation Lab Feb. 3r-5 at Thompson Rivers University.
When Kalina first moved to Kamloops in 1987, she saw “a fair amount of food insecurity (and) a lot of single-parents not able feed their families. By the third week of the month, money was running out. So that prompted me (to start KFPC) because it was hard to believe that people really didn’t have the food available to feed their families.”
A couple of years later, she realized “everybody is food insecure. If there is an earthquake in Hope, we’d run out of food within three days.”
The KFPC, established in 1995 as an effort to strengthen the food economy, educates the public on food security issues and partners with local organizations to establish such things as community gardens, public produce and community kitchens.
KFPC has many partnerships in the community, such as the Gardengate Training Centre, which is run by Open Door, the Kamloops Public Produce Program, working in partnership with the City of Kamloops, and the Gleaning Abundance Program.
Kalina believes one of KFPC’s biggest accomplishments is getting city council working toward a healthy food policy. She hopes the Food and Urban Agriculture Plan will be in place by the end of the year.
“That’s amazing to actually get policy within the city to support sustainable food and urban agriculture,” she said.
Kalina's vision includes “more community gardens, more public produce and people who are growing food on their front lawn and at bus stops.”
Education is important, too. “Farm-to-school programs where we have farmers growing food for the schools, more community kitchens, and more education around food, cooking and canning” are some of the things KFPC works toward.
“Food security is such a mammoth job, and nobody can do it alone. It’s all sectors of the community,” she said.
To learn more about sustainable food economies and to register for the CommUnity Innovation Lab, visit http://freshoutlookfoundation.org
— By Racheal Estok
