27Feb 2025 by admin
Recap: School Food Supplier Workshop

Recap: School Food Supplier Workshop

Event Recap, News
Recap: School Food Supplier Workshop On January 22, 2025, Land to Table Network hosted a School Food Supplier Workshop in Vernon, sponsored by FeedBC. This full-day event aimed to connect local food suppliers with school food purchasers from districts across the Okanagan and Columbia/Shuswap regions. We were fortunate to have ‘all the players’ in the room - from School District administration and school meal coordinators, government, non-profits (i.e. meal program providers), food suppliers/distributors, chefs, caterers, and farmers! The day consisted of group brainstorming using a World Café model to gather feedback across sectors on key concerns related to procuring and supplying school food - creating a clear picture of the landscape we are all operating within.  A school food coordinator panel featured representatives from school districts 67, 22, 83, 19,…
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24Feb 2025 by admin
Recap: Wholesale-Ready Workshop Series

Recap: Wholesale-Ready Workshop Series

Event Recap, News
Recap: Wholesale Ready Workshop Series Land to Table’s first Wholesale-Ready Workshop Series was held on January 30 and February 20, 2025, in Vernon at Community Futures North Okanagan (CFNO) with generous funding support from CFNO, the Regional District of the North Okanagan, and Feed BC. The workshops were designed to support small and medium-sized farmers in exploring wholesale market opportunities and developing “Action Plans” to grow and sell their products to wholesale markets. The series facilitated networking amongst farmers in the region and provided tools and insights into growing for and selling to wholesale markets, including distributors, institutions, processors, restaurants, caterers, and schools. This initiative sought to help existing farmers expand their operations and market reach, while equipping new farmers with the knowledge to integrate wholesale readiness into their business…
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11Dec 2024 by admin
Recap: Indigenous Food Sovereignty Workshop

Recap: Indigenous Food Sovereignty Workshop

Event Recap, L2T Updates, News
Recap: Indigenous Food Sovereignty Workshop In November, Land to Table co-hosted an Indigenous Food Sovereignty workshop on the "From the Ground Up: Toolkit for Indigenous Food Sovereignty Planning" in Revelstoke with the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty (WGIFS), the Indigenous Friendship Society of Revelstoke (IFSR) and the Revelstoke Local Food Initiative. The toolkit is a comprehensive guide developed by WGIFS, who brought three staff to facilitate the three-day workshop. The event gathered Indigenous food champions for facilitated discussions and activities and built shared understanding within a network of organizations and people leading Indigenous food projects. Participants included staff from Interior Health, School District 22, The Lower Samilkameen’s Ntamtqen Community Garden & Food Hub, Xeni Gwet'in Climate Readiness Initiative, Colville Tribes Language Program, Indigenous Rise Up Wellness, the Cwelcwelt Kuc…
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02Dec 2024 by admin
Community Conversations: Vernon Seniors Share Ideas to Improve Food Security

Community Conversations: Vernon Seniors Share Ideas to Improve Food Security

Event Recap, News
On October 30, 2024, NexusBC Community Resource Centre and Land to Table Network Society hosted a lunch session at the Schubert Centre with 22 local seniors to discuss food security.  The purpose of the event was for seniors to share their experiences, perspectives, and feedback to help both hosting organizations to advocate for, plan, and deliver programming that supports seniors’ food security.  During registration for the event, of the 36 people who registered, only 30% of seniors indicated that they were familiar with the term “food security,” and when asked why they attended the event, nearly half of the participants stated it was because they wanted to learn and share ideas about food security.  The session provided both an overview of what food security is and how Land to Table…
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17Oct 2024 by admin
​​Community Food Security – An Election Highlight and Hopes for Shuswap MLA!

​​Community Food Security – An Election Highlight and Hopes for Shuswap MLA!

Featured News, News, Regional News
Electoral districts (or ridings) don’t align with the regional government boundaries that often guide our food systems work. This has been the case for Land to Table (L2T) and Shuswap Food Action Society (SFAS), whose work spans two regions and four electoral ridings. This year, we are expanding L2T’s project boundaries across our shared food shed with the Shuswap and experimenting with a shared Executive Director for both organizations. In this article, Liz Blakeway, Executive Director for L2T and SFAS, shares her thoughts on how food security and agriculture are discussed in this election. The issue of food security is front and center for a lot of folks in 2024, including our Shuswap provincial election candidates. In fact, a 2023 BC study shows the responsibility for food systems is shifting…
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28Aug 2024 by admin
Support for Okanagan Tree Fruit Growers

Support for Okanagan Tree Fruit Growers

Featured News, News, Regional News
In light of the recent BC Tree Fruits Cooperative closure, we want to extend our heartfelt sympathy and support to our local Okanagan tree fruit growers. We have gathered some resources from our network partners to help you or any orchardists you may know through this challenging time. Below, you will find information on employment, gleaning, storage, and distribution opportunities. Please don't hesitate to reach out to these organizations for assistance. We’re here for you too! Let us know if you have any questions or ideas for how we can help during this time. Also please share these resources with anyone who might benefit.For those interested in learning more about the recent BC Tree Fruits closure and updates here are some articles: Penticton Western News - July 26, 2024 Castanet - Jul 31, 2024…
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26Apr 2024 by admin
Equitable Access, Nutritious Choices: Dietitians’ Guide to Food Bank Purchasing

Equitable Access, Nutritious Choices: Dietitians’ Guide to Food Bank Purchasing

Featured News, L2T Updates, News
Equitable Access, Nutritious Choices: Dietitians' Guide to Food Bank Purchasing We extend our gratitude to Seamus Damstrom and Linda Boyd, Public Health Dietitians with Interior Health's Healthy Eating and Food Security Program, whose expertise enriches this discussion. - During our Rural Food Banks Study project, it became apparent that food banks and food security organizations are having to purchase more food than ever before to keep up with program demands. Typically, food banks rely on food donations as the bulk of the food they distribute. As purchasing budgets increase and food organizations are forced to make food procurement decisions regularly, food banks and programs are finding themselves in a position of choosing what food is offered to their food insecure clients. Since most of these programs have historically relied on donated…
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26Apr 2024 by admin
Rural Food Banks Study

Rural Food Banks Study

Featured News, L2T Updates, News
Rural Food Banks Study Over the last year, Land to Table (L2T) with Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Institute for Sustainable Food Systems (ISFS) conducted a Rural Food Banks Study in collaboration with Community Connections (Revelstoke) Society, and 4 rural food banks, to help understand and co-develop solutions to the unique challenge of feeding people in rural communities in British Columbia, in the face of increasing demand for food bank services. As the demand for emergency food services increases country-wide, during a time when  public and private monetary and food donations have been at an all time low, these rural food banks decided that working together was the best way to address shared challenges including:over-stretched budgets and staff coupled with ever changing circumstances amid ever increasing demand. Funded by a generous, anonymous…
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26Apr 2024 by admin
Spring Reflections from a Local Farmer

Spring Reflections from a Local Farmer

Featured News, News
Spring Reflections from a Local Farmer Contributed by Kat Saxton, Farmer at Pilgrims' Produce Learn more at www.pilgrimsproduce.com - Somewhere between laying the farm to rest in late fall and launching into a bustling new spring, amongst snow flurries and deep darkness, we farmers get a unique chance to reflect during a quieter season. Lately I’ve been thinking about how fortified and fabulous our local farm scene is. We live in a beautifully abundant area where options for farm fresh foods are plentiful: from seasonal, organic veggies and fruits, to grass-fed meats, milk, cheeses and free-range eggs, from bee-foraged honey and artisan preserves, to freshly roasted coffee and baked bread. Not only are there plenty of food choices at the ready, but the ways in which consumers can access this…
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31Jan 2024 by admin
2023 Reflections

2023 Reflections

Featured News, L2T Updates, News
Another year has come and gone, and the learning and growing we experience at Land to Table persistently keep us on our toes. We remain genuinely grateful, interested, and engaged in local food systems work. In last year's reflection blog post, I used the phrase 'settling in' to describe Land to Table in 2022. During that year, we further clarified our role as a network through capacity building and fostering connections across many different organizations and sectors. We worked to ensure that more of the food grown here reaches the people who live here. We have always emphasized that without local farmers and their ability to grow farm businesses, our food security is limited. For that reason we will continue to draw links between the local food economy and community…
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