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Ecology North project promotes food security
Co-ordinators gather in Hay River for workshop

Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, January 11, 2012

HAY RIVER
A new effort is underway to promote homegrown food in the Northwest Territories.

NNSL photo/graphic

A representative of Ecology North and community co-ordinators for a new project to promote Northern food production gathered in Hay River for a workshop from Jan. 6 to 8. The workshop participants – holding a banner proclaiming 'Together we can harvest all we need' – included, left to right, Teresa Chilkowich of Fort Simpson, Ecology North's Shannon Ripley, Kirsten Bradley of Fort Smith, Lone Sorensen of Yellowknife, Jackie Milne of Hay River and Susie Wegernoski of Fort Resolution. - photo courtesy of Ecology North

The initiative of Ecology North is called the Local Food Learning and Leadership Project.

"Most of all, it's to increase our capacity in local food production and food self-sufficiency," said Shannon Ripley, an environmental scientist with Ecology North, adding the project will support all NWT communities, particularly smaller ones.

The project was launched on Oct. 1 and will run to March 31.

One of its main focuses will be to support home gardens and community gardens.

"Most of all, we would like the work that happens in this project to be directed by people in their own communities and respond to the needs around food security that people have identified," Ripley said. "So we focus on community gardens and local home gardens partly because we have been getting requests from people around that."

The project recently held an organizing meeting in Hay River for local co-ordinators from the South Slave, Deh Cho and the North Slave. The Jan. 6 to 8 planning workshop brought together people from Hay River, Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, Yellowknife and Fort Simpson.

"This was the first get-together for the project," Ripley said. "Basically, it was the project co-ordinators getting together to brainstorm and plan."

She noted the co-ordinators have a lot of knowledge themselves and some interesting ideas to move forward in their communities.

"There'll be activities going on in a lot of different places now leading out of this," she said.

Jackie Milne, a co-ordinator based in Hay River, said the sub-theme of the project is re-creating the food system, noting the North has a heritage of growing its own food.

"We can take all of these things we know now and we can bring them together, and we can supplement our traditional methods of harvesting food here with hunting and fishing and then we can complement that," she said. "Now we know there are things we can grow here."

Milne welcomes the project, noting it's not just about food, but about health.

She said the workshop was very helpful to help create a clear, co-ordinated vision for the project.

Susie Wegernoski, the project co-ordinator in Fort Resolution, also attended the workshop.

"I just see that local food movements are the key to not only vibrant, healthy communities, but they're really what's going to take us into a lower-energy future and help us be resilient to make changes," she said. "The current food model isn't sustainable."

Wegernoski described the workshop as spectacular.

"It was such a dynamic group of people that were there, coming with really deep experiences already in the food movement and the environmental movement," she said, adding she came away completely energized.

Ripley said a number of ideas were talked about at the workshop, including creating a community garden on the Hay River Reserve, increasing the number of berry bushes in Fort Smith and establishing a discussion group in Fort Resolution.

Six community co-ordinators have so far been hired by Ecology North to work in part-time positions during the project.

The project will also be active in the Sahtu and the Beaufort Delta, and it is hoped that a community co-ordinator will be hired in Inuvik.

Ripley explained local food production helps protect against increases in food prices and presents opportunities for economic development.

She noted that, before improvements in the transportation system, there was a lot more food produced in the NWT.

"That's really motivating knowing that it is possible," she said. "In some ways it's just a matter of cultivating and returning to some of those skills and that knowledge that existed on how to do that."

Along with food production, the project may also cover initiatives related to harvesting, fishing, hunting and gathering.

Ripley noted the project's timeframe from October to March might seem odd, since it is outside the growing season.

"Even if it isn't the growing season, we are really hoping that the momentum generated through this project and building on momentum that's already happening in communities that we'll be able to continue working with people throughout the actual growing season this coming year," she said.

The project is supported by $100,000 in Health Canada funding, which Ecology North obtained through the territorial Department of Health and Social Services.

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