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Action Track 1. How to balance promotion of Agri-tourism versus maximizing the use of land to scale up organic crop and animal production Action Track 2. Promotion and awareness campaigns towards healthy and sustainable consumption patterns need to be accompanied by ensuring those healthy foods are readily available and affordable. Action Track 3. The challenge remains on how to balance the economic and ecological dimensions of organic agriculture for sustainable food production. Costly 3rd party certification remains a challenge. The new law on Participatory Guarantee Systems should be suppor... Lire la suiteted and studied closely how best it will serve organic farmers, animal raisers and small-medium processors and enterprises. Action Track 4. How to make agriculture profitable without sacrificing the principles of organic agriculture (care, health, ecology and fairness) Action Track 5. The combination of natural and man-induced (anthropogenic) disasters is a huge challenge for an archipelagic country like the Philippines. The expansion of GMO corn production by clearing vast upland sloping areas in typhoon-prone heavy-rainfall areas of Northern and Southern-most Philippines frequently result to massive floods due to swollen rivers rushing through several towns and provinces. The loss of lives and livelihoods is daunting. How do we appeal to the conscience of promoters of these “modern” technologies to be accountable? Lire moins

Action Track 1. - Improve Research and Development to address real problems of organic producers. Ensure new technologies and research results reach farmers, processors and consumers. - Promote application of digital technology. - Strengthen competency of stakeholders through knowledge-sharing and access to science-based information on organic agriculture, nutrition, food safety, health and sustainable food systems plus economic, environmental and social value to boost demand and encourage farmers to increase availability of organic products for all. - Mobilize resources to level-up organic ag... Lire la suitericulture supply and value chains through effective partnerships and linkages among industry players, local authorities, academe and government. Action Track 2. - Mobilize youth groups to spearhead action and to improve the visibility of healthy, safe and nutritious organic products via capacity building (i.e., training, discussion series, farm visits, information campaigns) and via social media to motivate demand and shift of consumers to sustainable consumption patterns. - Collaboration among academe, private sector and government agencies such as DA-ATI, BAFS, BPI and BAI. - Create information hubs to link consumers and producers on the distribution of healthy and safe food (i.e. Agri-Aqua Hub Project of PCAARRD). Action Track 3. - Prioritize early age youth environmental education that highlight the role of organic agriculture in promoting Biodiversity Enhancement and Environment Sustainability (BEES), climate resiliency and with economic gains. The academe and organic agriculture enterprises should actively and continuously engage in information dissemination. - Make organic agriculture a profitable livelihood. Strengthen the marketing of organic produce by linking the producers to the right market. - Implement the National Organic Agriculture Program Roadmap (2017-2022) more effectively. - Synergize roles of local authorities, organic enterprises, farmers and academe, to lead people into community action through systemic solutions to food systems problems. Action Track 4. - Facilitate collaboration, synergy and technology-sharing among farmers, NGOs, private sector and academia. - Review and implement policies to enable stronger support to micro, small and medium enterprises. - Give incentives for greater private sector investment in agriculture. - Promote multi-stakeholder collaboration to provide inclusive, holistic and system-wide participatory analysis of problems and action planning to upgrade agricultural systems. - Plan strategies for better disaster resilience and risk management, provide crop insurance and other financial instruments. - Update or redevelop the existing elementary and secondary school Basic Education Curriculum to strengthen the integration of youth entrepreneurship and financial literacy in agriculture. Action Track 5. - Strengthen people’s organizations through leadership training and financial literacy for livelihoods and disaster preparedness. - Strategize securing food resources and farm production inputs for quick recovery from disasters. - Provide climate-resilient infrastructure for farming communities. - Provide financial and innovative technical support. Promote off-season farming. - Capacitate local authorities on the unique socio-economic and environmental benefits from organic agriculture to get their support for enabling policies and programs. - Educate consumers about organic agriculture so they will demand for it. - Localize training and knowledge products adopting relevant indigenous knowledge systems. - Multi-stakeholder partnerships for continued capacity building for self-reliance of indigenous peoples and upland farming communities while promoting forest protection and conservation. - Create various communication platforms in hard-to-reach-conflict areas. - Provide safety-nets for farming communities (i.e., scholarships for farmer’s children). - Put up farmer field schools that integrate climate resilience and sustainable organic farming. Lire moins

Action Track 1. • Need strong promotion among children and adults on nutrition, food safety and effects on health. Provide nutritional information about organic products. Reduce food wastage. • Need to educate farmers and producers about underlying principles of organic agriculture beyond crop production. Need topics on entrepreneurship, marketing, organizational strengthening, as well as post-harvest technologies, packaging and processing of food and non-food organic products, organic standards and certification. Lack of competent trainers on relevant topics. • Farmers are still at the ... Lire la suitemercy of traders. • Much focus on Agri-tourism results to land not fully-utilized to scale-up organic crop or animal production. Organic crops are mainly for display and special food for paying guests. • Low technology adoption by farmers. Need conscious effort for results of Research and Development to reach farmers. Need for proper diagnosis of farmers problems and circumstances. • Lack of organic inputs like standard quality and enough volume of organic soil amendments and almost no local production of organic vegetable seeds. Some resort to imported inputs which are expensive. • Lack of certified slaughter-houses dedicated for use of smallholder organic animal raisers, cold chain facilities, refrigerated transport. Action Track 2. • Limited market and access to OA products which are more expensive than non-organic ones and not always available in the market • Inadequate institutional support system and incentives to producer groups that provide safe, nutritious and healthy food; • Limited appreciation of the consumers on safe, nutritious and healthy diets; to those who can appreciate, they cannot afford the higher price. They resort to buying cheaper non-organic products. • Need to enhance information dissemination via the social media educate the consumers about true cost accounting in organic production systems. • Need to lobby with the concerned government agencies for incentivizing the providers of healthy and safe food; • Strengthen collaboration with the different stakeholders to increase the public and consumer’s knowledge for informed decision-making when they buy organic products. Action Track 3. • Boosting nature-positive production is multidimensional. It cuts across ecological, education, policy, social and economic dimensions. Promote true cost accounting of ecological and societal benefits. • Despite the diverse ideas, participants agreed on a common goal of striking a balance between and among the five dimensions. • Promote the importance of soil health to food production, environmental conservation and addressing climate change. • Address threats to biodiversity and the environment due to habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution. • Commit to conduct youth education that integrate biodiversity in organic agriculture. • Open consultations among stakeholders • Need academe and private sector/industry linkages. Action Track 4. • Promote agricultural enterprise development with policy reform on labor wages and employment opportunities in agriculture. Need options to address seasonality of labor in agriculture. • Need adequate infrastructure support to address basic agricultural productivity constraints like farm mechanization, irrigation, post-harvest and processing facilities) and socio-cultural constraints to bring the community to act for change. • Need flexible and accessible financial instruments to wean farmers away from unscrupulous traders and money lenders. • New strategies to motivate the youth to agriculture. Action Track 5. • The Philippines ranks 3rd as the world’s most natural disaster-prone countries thus the strong need for disaster risk-reduction and mitigation (DRRM) strategies. • Increase participation of stakeholders including farmers in program planning, implementation and monitoring progress of DRRM programs. • Limited opportunities to earn supplemental income while waiting for crop harvests or during disastrous events. • Inadequate local government policies for organic agricultural systems, certification and participatory guarantee systems. • Minimal policy support for promotion and adoption of indigenous knowledge systems and practices. • limited knowledge and awareness on OA practices, related to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Lire moins

The Independent Dialogue we organized was titled, “E-Dialogue on Organic Agriculture for Sustainable and Resilient Community Food Systems” (OA-FSSD 2021). This Food Systems Summit E-Dialogue aimed to provide a platform to: (i) Share and synthesize knowledge and experiences, science research outputs, indigenous and traditional knowledge systems, good practices, opportunities, and innovations by which organic agriculture contributes to the five UN Action Tracks (i.e. ensuring food security; shifting to sustainable consumption pattern; boosting nature-positive production; advancing equitable ... Lire la suitelivelihoods; and, building resilient communities); (ii) Identify strategies and pathways to mainstream organic agriculture’s significance towards building sustainable resilient community food systems; and, (iii) Promote innovative collaborative mechanisms to strengthen community food systems towards sustainability and resilience through organic agriculture. Among other agricultural systems, there is growing advocacy towards sustainable regenerative organic agriculture and food systems (Moyer, et al., 2020). Significant contributions to sustainable regenerative and resilient community food systems can be made possible through the four principles of organic agriculture namely, health, care, ecology and fairness. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) promotes Organic3.0 “to enable a widespread uptake of truly sustainable farming systems and markets based on organic principles and imbued with a culture of innovation, of progressive improvement towards best practice, of transparent integrity, of inclusive collaboration, of holistic systems, and of true value pricing” (IFOAM 2016). Points of convergence between Organic 3.0 and the UN FSSD Principles of Engagement can be identified as points of complementation, respect and commitment to contribute to the SDGs. We focused on community food systems since this is where each of us in our communities can be the starting point to make the changes towards contributing to the SDGs. Investments at the grassroots community level can directly benefit marginalized people. We believe in using participatory development approaches and synergism to support programs that will engage people towards self-management as well as sharing responsibilities and sharing the benefits. We covered all the five Action Tracks to provide our participants a holistic and systems perspective of food systems. As this event carries the name of the UN FSSD, we also conveyed the message that the challenges of food systems as a worldwide concern can start with transformations and changes locally, at the household and personal level. Lire moins

One are of divergence we as organizers encountered was one between advocacy and action. Some participants felt strongly that action oriented solutions, such as our “Food Corps,” were best suited to tackling the current food crisis. Others in attendance saw political advocacy as the most effective method of change. As organizers we attempted to structure the dialogue so that participants could hear from speakers with expertise in both advocacy and action, and then choose breakout sessions related to which topic they preferred.

Session Three The final session was spent organizing what next steps the participants could take to bring action to the previous sessions’ discussions. Participants broke up into three breakout groups: one focusing on direct action, one on local/regional policy, and one on international policy. The group on direct action focused on developing and growing our “Food Corps” team, which provides small-scale farmers with volunteering support and hungry urban communities with access to healthy food. The regional policy group discussed strategies for working with our municipal and provincial go... Lire la suitevernments to address our urgent food crisis, through such means as our open letter (attached). The third group discussed how to involve ourself in the UN Food Systems Summit itself. Lire moins

Group 3: Black Food Sovereignty and Cultural Food This group began by talking about everyone’s ancestral background as well as where each of the participants was coming from in their work. They discussed the history of food on this land and how colonization also brought foreign food which did not naturally grow here before. The great diversity on this land, both in food and in the people living here today was of particular significance to this group. Upcoming actions and events around Black food sovereignty were also mentioned as a way for participants to keep the ball rolling.  Group 4: Cl... Lire la suiteimate Change, Urban Agriculture, and Infrastructure This group talked about problems with zoning, red tape, and bureaucracy when dealing with accessing growing space in the city. They also talked about ongoing actions to mitigate the impacts of climate change on our communities, such as St. James Town Community Co-op’s OASIS Food Hub. Another possible solution discussed was to partner with existing institutions who already have access to space, such as schools, businesses, or faith buildings.  Another issue the group outlined is the lack of support from local politicians who too often say all the right things but have not been following through on their promises to our organizations. Ways of applying pressure to politicians such as creating campaigns were also discussed.  Group 5: UN Food Summit and Canadian Policy The group first went over the 5 UN Action Tracks, then built on that with some of their personal experiences working in food policy.  Participants mentioned the belief that our local governments in Ontario are actively getting in the way of helpful initiatives, as opposed to other places in the world which can sometimes be more welcoming and supportive to their citizens. The group talked about the human rights abuses going on in Canada and proposed actionable solutions for holding our own dialogues and getting our story out there.  Group 6: Open Letter/GTA/Ontario This group talked about the open letter which can be found at the end of this report. The letter was written as a result of the previous Emergency Food Forum; consequently, part of the group’s discussion centred around how the letter has been used in the past year, how many individuals and organizations have signed on, and how to work on advancing and actioning the letter’s demands. Despite the government’s perceived eagerness to address our current climate crisis, the group felt that their local representatives were not doing enough to address the real needs of their constituents.  Group 7: Black Food Sovereignty  This group talked about the importance of engaging Black communities, especially Black youth around Toronto and the GTA in Black food sovereignty initiatives. The group stressed the significance in listening to communities who know what the problems are and often also have great plans for how to fix those problems.  During the pandemic, the government showed a lack of strategic planning and the importance of local, grassroots movements was evident. The group also discussed how to organize Black communities, especially in the context of the ongoing pandemic. Lire moins

Group 2: Co-operative, Alternative Food, and Land Access  This group discussed concrete ways of getting around lack of access, such as collective ownership models and land trusts. They gave examples of organizations doing this work like Local Food and Farm Co-op, St. James Town Community Co-op, Liberating Lawns, and the Eco Just Food Network. They also enumerated obstacles farmers face to land access such as bureaucratic red tape and zoning requirements. 

Session Two The second session was meant to get participants not simply talking about the problems we are facing, but “cultivating solutions” to those problems together. The first set of breakout rooms encouraged folks to think of solutions together, while the second set focused on “driving policy change” in the food system.  Group 1: Time Banking & Alternative Economies This group started with an overview of the Eco Just Food Network’s Food Corps program, which connects folks from urban communities to rural farmers in need of help. This led to a discussion of the program’s us... Lire la suitee of a time bank, as well as of how that time bank connects to the St. James Town Community Co-op’s time bank. The reciprocity of this relationship, as well as reciprocity as one of the foundational concepts of time banking was also discussed. The group also talked about how living inside a capitalist system shapes our attitude towards work such that we need these alternative economic systems to make it easier for us to recognize and reward the labour that keeps our communities and our food system going.  Lire moins

Group 5: Food System Resilience (Framed by action Track 5) This group started off by looking at resilience as a historical system built over time, but also shared different views of what resilience can look and feel like. Two important questions came up: 1. Do we need new systems or do we need to work with what we already have today? 2. How can we do both? The group agreed that our current agricultural system has made us less resilient, and that there is a great need for education about all of this, as well as a need to organize together. The group ended with a discussion about the power of st... Lire la suiteories and storytelling and the importance of grounding our work in our material conditions and our lived realities. They emphasized that the food system needs to be a system of relationships and not rooted in elitism and corporate power. Lire moins

Group 4: Work, Income, and the Food System (framed by Action Track 4) First, this group identified two trends in agriculture today:  1. Regenerative agriculture: low tech, lots of manual labour and 2. Digital/automated agriculture: high tech, data-driven. The group discussed the need to embrace helpful technology while also fostering employment and keeping a sacred connection to the land, this being particularly true for communities in Northern Canada. Farmers talked about how difficult it can be to get started or to even gain a foot-hold in the food system. There is a simultaneous need in ur... Lire la suiteban communities for healthy food and often an abundance of it for farmers at harvest, so what is necessary is to bring these folks together. Time banking, as well as the Food Corps program being offered by the Eco Just Food Network, were discussed. Some of the concerns around time banking were issues around trust, reciprocity, as well as the difficulty of getting folks to move away from values based on our current economic system. Lire moins

Group 3: Ecological Production (framed by Action Track 3) This group started by defining ecological production, as well as talking about the importance of mother earth and grandmother water. Different forms of economies were also discussed by this group, focusing on sharing economies, but also talking about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology as decentralized, egalitarian ways of sharing equity. The group then moved to a discussion of land and land use. They talked about seed sharing, genetics of plants and animals being held in a commons, getting more people to farms, getting young peo... Lire la suiteple on farm land, providing resources and access to land, as well as the importance of shifting subsidies away from big agriculture and to supporting local, enriching farming practices. Lire moins