The world is facing unprecedented threats to our food system from extreme weather events, looming tariffs, H5N1, and a record high of over 2 million people visiting food banks in Canada in one month. To respond quickly and efficiently at a local level, a comprehensive understanding of local food redistribution networks is vital to know where, how and what to do to support each other.
In mid-February, the City of Guelph, the Corporation of the County of Wellington, B12Give and the Arrell Food Institute convened Food Forward: Building Resilient Food Distribution Networks with participants from across the local Guelph-Wellington Food System.
This discussion focused on mapping out the food redistribution system looking for opportunities and barriers in various stages of the system (from storage, sources, transportation, prep/output). It also included a brief information session about the City of Guelph’s new pilot program B12Give.
Event Details & Reflections
In a world café style, participants circled through different stations on food storage, food sources, transportation and preparation.
Food Storage
The food storage station invited participants to share about current capacities, average weekly storage volume, cold storage versus room temperature storage capacity and seasonal increases/decreased based on different events and holidays.
Learning from this station included the acknowledgement of boundaries for accessing storage based on fluctuating needs depending on the season, while also ensuring accessibility of space and dealing with partial spoilage.
Food Sources
This station helped to map the current landscape of how food is coming into the redistribution network. Including the key input partners, if there were trade connections between network partners, how the food is then distributed and if there were current surplus.
Key learnings to highlight from this session included the importance of addressing diverse food needs (allergies, cultural meals, religions) and moving away from competition mindsets and into collaboration.
Transportation
The transportation station focused on understanding how the network transports food, what resources are currently available to different organizations, what vehicles are used to transport food and how cold storage is maintained (i.e. refrigerated vehicles).
A reoccurring desire for cold transportation systems was shared at this station. There was also an acknowledgement of significant personal vehicle use and a need to move away from relaying on that.
Food Preparation
This station focused on what different food redistribution organization’s capacity was for food manipulation and preparation, the difference in capacity between wet and dry food breakdown and if any organizations offer “sit-in” servicing.
This station identified a need for spaces to prepare, such as a shared commercial kitchens, and avoiding food spoilage.
Next Steps
- Advancing Collaboration and Redistribution
- Community Food Lead Pauline Cripps is continuing to dig into the event learnings from involved groups to explore deeper opportunities to collaborate. One such process is working collaboratively with local partners to develop a community food distribution center to support scale up processing, preserving and storing of overstock.
- Develop & Implement Visual Mapping of Local Emergency Food Response
- From capacity, infrastructure, transportation, storage, distributing and more, a comprehensive visual map is in the process of development. This will enable high-level overview of the food redistribution network to better understand where there are points of stress and opportunity.
- Build out a Resource for Future Project Replication
- To help encourage more communities to map out their food redistribution networks so that they are better prepared to respond to emergencies, we are in the process of designing a resource for other regions to be able to systemically address local system gaps one region at a time for overall improved resilience within the food system.
Interested in learning more about Community Food?
We are actively engaged in a variety of initiatives both locally and globally that promote equitable food systems, food justice, and community empowerment.
From supporting a national school food program to advocating food as a human right , we’re committed to creating a more just and resilient food system.
Explore our work and learn how you can get involved.