Although the group welcoming Heather to learn more about Neighbours Feeding Neighbours was small, the conversation was both multifaceted as well as fascinating. After Heather offered our land acknowledgement and told us of her “excitement and delight” with our long days, needed rain, and her verdant garden, offering her both satisfaction and challenges, we began to learn about this exciting project. 

Neighbours Feeding Neighbours is a 20-month pilot project of the Salt Spring Island Farmland Trust and funded by the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC (https://iafbc.ca/). While this funding is slated to end this winter, hopes are that some key initiatives identified by this pilot project will continue. With this funding, Heather and her team are laying the groundwork for developing an island-wide plan to address our food needs in emergency situations. They are building relationships with key players, planting the seeds of collaboration between growers and local buyers, and working with our CRD Emergency Program (https://www.crd.ca/programs-services/fire-emergency/electoral-area-emergency-management/salt-spring-island-emergency-program).

Neighbours Feeding Neighbours knows that food security (consistently having the food we need) and food sovereignty (having control over what we eat and how we procure food) are inextricably linked. Therefore, helping islanders prepare their food supply for both sudden, unexpected emergencies like earthquakes and wildfire, as well as for the slower-moving crisis of climate change and global instability, addresses both our security and sovereignty needs. 

Crucial in this endeavour is expanding the variety of local foods we grow as well as reducing their cost. That way, highly nutritious local food could be accessible to all. Neighbours Feeding Neighbours’ work has focused on: 

• better understanding what and how much we grow as an island;
• identifying gaps in our local food production and food infrastructure;
• increasing pubic awareness of the need for a strong, local food supply; and 
• encouraging emergency food preparedness with the certainty that our supply chain will be disrupted at some point in the near future. 

A daunting task, we found it helpful to discuss components of this initiative one-by-one to better understand the scope of the work being undertaken by Neighbours Feeding Neighbours: 

• Increasing pubic awareness of the need for a strong, local food supply has been a major activity of Neighbours Feeding Neighbours. Despite recent fears of international tariffs and expected breaks in our food supply chain, Heather has been surprised by a general lack of awareness about the vulnerability of our food supplies. Even beyond that, she has been surprised how many locals do not even know that they are in a pod designed to help them in an emergency. A large part of the team’s work has been to encourage folks to understand the importance of our pod program and find contact information for their pod leaders by requesting it from the SSI Emergency Program (ssiepc@crd.bc.ca). 
• Enhancing relationships: Neighbours Feeding Neighbours has been working with local farmers, gardeners, and other food producers to identify their challenges and encourage them to find a way to make local food inexpensive enough for all to afford. Our farmers and gardeners are embracing important food security programs like the Farmland Trust’s Food Share (https://www.ssifarmlandtrust.org/foodshare), and are being encouraged to develop relationships with their local pod leaders and members (https://saltspringexchange.com/2019/01/01/get-in-involved-with-emergency-response-join-the-pod-program-in-action/). Hopes are that soon, each pod will have identified a resident farmer who is prepared to provide local food to neighbours in both stable times and in crises.
• Identifying gaps in our local food production, and they are many! While we produce plentiful fresh vegetables and enough wine, cider, and other alcoholic beverages to keep us happy, our production of basic proteins and carbohydrates is simply not enough. Although chickens are plentiful, we have fewer sheep than in previous years and many of the sheep and pigs currently being raised here are not marketed but are used by their growers. While once the Embe Bakery building housed a thriving milk cooperative, there are currently no dairy operations on Salt Spring. Also, we do not grow enough food suitable for long-term storage, nor do we have enough storage infrastructure. What happened to all those root cellars in basements of years past that fed families for months? Although The Root facility on Beddis Road (https://www.ssifarmlandtrust.org/facilities) offers an amazing food hub, it simply does not have the community space needed to feed us all in an emergency.
• Encouraging emergency food preparedness is another aspect of Neighbours Feeding Neighbours’ work over the past year. The team has produced many resources for the community, all available for download from its website (nfnsaltspring.org). Some the most popular resources are the emergency plan templates developed for both individual households and farming operations. Folks are encouraged to download and fill in the plans, sharing them with all members of their household or property.

It soon became very clear that anything to do with local food security reaches across multiple areas of our lives to include politics, funding, climate concerns, water resources, transportation, education, and economics. With multiple players, each with an important role, the work of Neighbours Feeding Neighbours has identified the need for a coordinating body to work closely with multiple agencies and individuals to develop the robust local food sovereignty we need for the challenging times ahead. While it was suggested that CRD, already managing the Emergency Program, could perhaps take that leadership role, that is certainly another conversation, not to be solved in this gathering. 

But, given the daunting challenges to our food security, what are some solutions? 

• Some success has already been achieved in enhancing the relationships between growers, consumers, and others involved in our food system. Thanks to the leadership and tenacity of so many grower groups and individuals, we have a thriving Tuesday Farmers’ Market, plentiful local farm stands, and some amazing models of how it can be done with the Echo Valley community (https://nigelkay.ca/echo-valley-community-farm/), Chorus Frog Gardens (https://thequarryfarm.ca/chorus-frog-nursery), and We Are What We Eat- WAWWE (https://wawwe.com/) to name just a few of many. 
• We had fun identifying gaps in our local food production and coming up with some solutions. We learned about the successful land linking program bringing together enthusiastic young farmers and those with unused land, an initiative of Young Agrarians (https://youngagrarians.org/saltspring-land-link/). Interested? Sign up! We noted that we need a better understanding of the protein-rich foods thriving in our coastal BC environment. We discussed the plentiful food awaiting us in our forests, the richness of the sea around us, the many high protein plants we can grow in our verdant environment, and the potential for stewardship of our local deer and Canada geese. A fascinating discussion, we committed to an ASK Salt Spring gathering focused on the wealth of local wild foods. Until then, you can find excellent information from any of our local growing experts, including Linda Gilkeson (http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/), who posts growing tips on the Exchange every month.
• Neighbourhood pod parties (“podlucks”) continue to be a wonderful way to increase pubic awareness of the pod system and our need for better emergency food security preparedness. Interested in such an opportunity for your pod? Just contact Heather at: Heather.foodsecurepods@gmail.com. 
• Encouraging emergency food preparedness is an ongoing conversation. It was surprising to some that access to local foods is not yet a key element of our emergency preparedness, but Heather and her team are working to develop the local food emergency systems we need. Understanding that the Local Community Commission (LCC) is supporting several food security initiatives, like training for new farmers, much-needed abattoir staff training, the invasive chipping events, and identification of funds for better marketing of the Tuesday, it was suggested that enhanced and ongoing LCC support for food security is needed, another “to be continued” conversation. 

Many challenges but plentiful solutions as well. . . . 

Our time together over, we thanked Heather for a fascinating discussion and for her tenacity in the face of challenges, willingness to tackle a daunting project, and enthusiasm for the successes of this initiative. (Thanks, Heather and her team!)