To achieve true security, however, the food system must undergo a massive change, experts say. That means reducing its dependence on cheap fuel, which is fast disappearing anyway, and getting rid of redundancies — the importing of what we export, for example. Most important, it means elevating food to a loftier place on the priority list, and expecting to pay more for something better.

“Cheap food is the problem nobody wants to name,” says Wayne Roberts, acting manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council. “It’s forcing everyone to drive prices down, and it’s totally irrational.” Waltner-Toews agrees: “Rich people want protein, and they don’t want to pay high prices for it. The only way you can really do that is through economies of scale: instead of 500 or 1,000 chickens on a farm, you have 50,000 or 100,000; if you can make these birds grow faster, that also helps the price. You’re just creating epidemic conditions.”

Much of the food in grocery stores, schools, even hospitals, is distributed by just four or five global food service companies. It is cheap because it is bought in mass quantities from as few places as possible — imported from countries where labour costs are low. “Tell me how much Maple Leaf saved by having a centralized system,” says Roberts. “The system has no stability to it, because it violates every principle of nature and economics.”

The solution is painfully obvious and simple, most agree, but not so easy to implement. Many of the food issues of concern in the developed world boil down to the same things: not only do we want food to be cheap, we want it year round, whether it’s in season or not. So, again, we rely on a handful of global sources to bring us food from other countries, often at the expense of the content (the longer the wait between picking and eating a fruit or vegetable, for example, the lower its nutritional value), and often from places where farming practices are riskier. These methods force local, small-scale growers and processors out of business, which only perpetuates the problem.

Herb Barbolet, like many others, believes the necessary reinvention of the food system involves, in a sense, taking several steps backward — localizing, relocalizing, and/or creating from scratch. He farmed organically for a decade and co-founded FarmFolk/CityFolk, a non-profit society based in Vancouver dedicated to creating local, sustainable food systems. “There’s a lot of work going into creating demand for local produce,” he says, “but very little done on creating supply.” The latter is extremely complex and requires a sea change in respect for farmers, for farmland, and for water. “It challenges the ideology of the metaphysicists who call themselves economists that the market is what rules.”

Nonetheless, there are encouraging signs. Across North America, individuals and groups — food policy councils, community economic development centres, academics, health and nutrition experts — are working to improve the food system. Shoppers are starting to pay more attention to agricultural policy and, through local farmers’ markets, are spending more of their food dollars closer to home. At the moment, most of these efforts are disconnected; what is needed now, experts say, is collaboration at all levels. “We need a lot more entrepreneurs, a lot more skilled people, a lot more farmers and fishers and ranchers,” says Barbolet. “And to make it viable for them to stay in or to get in, we have to change the economic system we’re operating under.”

More than a year ago, Barbolet helped create a network of networks called Local Food First in BC, which facilitates collaboration and co-operation among everyone from restaurateurs and food purveyors to government representatives and private consultants. “It’s about linking up and trying to increase the efficiency of the various members — about reinforcing and supporting each of the separate initiatives,” he explains.

If you ask Barbolet what kind of model he has in mind, he names Emilia-Romagna, a fertile region of northern Italy known for its food industry. There, he says, the market is simultaneously co-operative and competitive. “They don’t understand Americans — they can’t imagine why you’d try to kill your competition.” Instead, they peacefully coexist, “and then compete like hell to have the best product possible.” In terms of food policies, Barbolet says Cuba has the most elegant in the world. Since 1989, when the country was suddenly plunged into a crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union (which had until then supplied food and provisions), Cuba has become one of the most outstanding examples of urban agriculture. Bearing in mind that much of its land is state owned and therefore not subject to competition, farming is managed by city residents on tiny plots, and provides fresh local produce for much of the country, as well as some 350,000 jobs.

On a smaller scale, similar supply systems are cropping up in Canada and the US. Nevin Cohen, an expert in environmental planning and an assistant professor of urban studies at the New School for Liberal Arts in New York, documents some of the many communities incorporating residential housing and working farms in the December 3, 2007, issue of The Nation. One of the most successful, he writes, is Prairie Crossing, a self-described conservation community about sixty-five kilometres northwest of Chicago. Connected to the city by two rail stations, its 359 single-family homes and 36 condominiums coexist with prairie grasslands, wetlands, and 62 hectares of organic farmland. “Carving out farmland and farmers’ markets in the midst of homes,” Cohen writes, “these communities offer unusually inclusive spaces where residents can bond with their neighbours and with the people growing and selling food. They enable residents to know, quite intimately, the sources and attributes of the food they buy, encouraging producers in turn to adopt more transparent production methods.”

Lori Stahlbrand has been thinking about food for a long time. The former cbc broadcaster and co-author of the book Real Food for a Change was working for the World Wildlife Fund Canada in 2000, trying to reduce pesticide use in Ontario agricultural operations, when she decided to start a program dedicated to establishing a sustainable food system. For the past three years, Stahlbrand has been president of Local Food Plus, an award-winning Toronto organization that links institutions with local food. “A lot of people out there wanted to support a new way of doing agriculture,” she says, “but the only way they could was through small-scale projects, like buying at a farmers’ market, or buying certified organics, which were increasingly coming from California or farther afield. If we wanted to give people a chance to support local sustainable food systems, we had to give them a way to identify them.”

Stahlbrand’s first target was universities. Like most large institutions, universities contract out to one of three major food service companies. Influencing how those companies did business, Stahlbrand figured, was the key. “Universities can have a really enormous impact,” she says. “They have buying power, they have clout, and they can start playing a role in changing the system.” In 2005, she found a willing partner in New College at the University of Toronto. The college was renewing contracts for food services, and Stahlbrand and her team helped write new requirements that 10 percent of the food budget be supplied from local sources, with a 5 percent annual increase. The changes went into effect in September 2006, enabling her to raise more money and approach farmers. In the meantime, other colleges at U of T have come on board, and Stahlbrand is now deluged by calls from schools wanting to set up similar programs. Last year, Local Food Plus moved about a million dollars’ worth of local, sustainable food to schools, and about two dozen restaurants and small retailers. Last fall, they added half a dozen medium-sized retailers to their stable.

Local Food Plus certifies farmers as local sustainable growers; they are rated, using a point system, on their production systems — crop or animal — as well as on energy efficiency, labour conditions, biodiversity, and animal welfare. Those who earn the requisite points are actively linked to supply chains, and get a 10 percent premium on their food.

Rebuilding actual relationships among suppliers, distributors, and buyers, and encouraging them to work in new ways, is essential. “Toronto Public Health did a study a while ago and found that Toronto would have three days’ worth of food if the borders were to close,” says Stahlbrand. “Meanwhile, we’re paving over our best agricultural land in southern Ontario. Can you blame farmers for selling out? It’s taken fifty years to dismantle the local food distribution system.” She is confident things will improve once this new way of business is established. “But we’re now working against the flow.”

Stahlbrand’s husband is coming at the whole issue of food from a different angle. Wayne Roberts’ food policy council, the first of its kind in Canada, is appointed by the Toronto Board of Health and made up of city councillors and volunteers from various backgrounds. Roberts and his group are trying to change the way government thinks about food. “You could read a lot of stuff and not read about food,” he says. “It would be nutrition or a compost department or a safety department, but it would never be food as a whole thing that goes from seed to farm fork to plate fork to compost. If you look at a city, or any government, it’s organized around the premise that there is no food. There is a waste pro-gram.” Roberts’ group reminds the municipal government that there are many aspects to the food issue. “And that enables us to come up with solutions that benefit many groups.”

Politically and socially, Toronto is ahead of the curve, with forward-thinking organizations, community gardening, and a community food security board. “We helped put green roofs on the North American agenda in the early 1990s,” says Roberts. The Toronto Official Plan of 2002, which just took effect last year, was one of the first in North America to deal with food. “Now the position is that city planners must respond to food issues.” Other food policy councils are on their way: one is operating in Vancouver now, and councils are forming in Montreal and Victoria and across the US.