Beyond the supermarket

The above event was held today in Edmonton in order to promote better food options and their suppliers. The supermarket is certainly not the best choice for local, healthy food. The event was organised by Slow Food Edmonton http://www.slowfoodedmonton.ca/ and Just Food Edmonton http://www.justfoodedmonton.org, both organisations I had not heard about before but I am interested to find out more. After spending my morning standing along a race track in the cold though I did not actually go to this event which I regret a little now. But I still have the internet to research the participants. I am glad to know these organisations exist and that there's a growing interest in alternatives to supermarket food, that there are people seeking to find out where their food comes from and how it is grown or raised. Also, there's initiatives in the city that try to facilitate the growing of food through a city farm, community gardens and in schools. It's important that children grow up knowing that milk comes from a cow and vegetable from a field, not from the supermarket's fridge. It's even better if they can find this out with hands-on projects. This might also remind their parents that the convenience of a supermarket did not always exist.

Having almost finished the book Farm City I do miss the balcony we had at our last apartment where we had planted a few vegetables. The harvest was not big but worth a try. Admittingly, I did not research what would grow best in the conditions provided by our balcony. And having lots of burning sun did not work for everything we had planted. Novella is way more successful with her farm in the middle of Oakland, even raising chicken, rabbits and pigs. Having grown up on a farm was certainly to her advantage. In the books she points out how common it is in some Asian and Latin-American countries to have farms in the middle of a city in order to feed hungry mouths. The city of Edmonton that is intending to close the city airport does not think that far though. Instead of turning it into a park for recreation or a large city farm/ community garden they want more houses, more shops, more streets ... because this implies more revenue for the city, not necessarily better living for its residents.