Local And Just

Statistics Canada released the latest inflation data this week, and the results aren’t good for anyone filling up a grocery cart.  Over the last year, grocery prices have jumped nearly 5% – much higher than the price increases for other goods.  While 5% doesn’t sound like a lot, that’s an extra $7.50 a week for [...]

Recently I had the opportunity to read Building a Housewife’s Paradise, a history of the role of gender in the creation and marketing of grocery stores in the United States by historian Tracey Deutsch.  Interestingly, societal understandings of gender, and particularly the role of women, formed the foundation for the development of the supermarket grocery [...]

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend a consultation session as part of the development of the Growing Forward 2 framework.  This federal-provincial-territorial policy framework.  Growing Forward 2 (GF2) will begin in 2013, and is the third agricultural policy framework negotiated between federal, provincial, and territorial governments.  The first, the Agricultural Policy Framework, [...]

Back in the fall I ordered 40lb of white flour, 50lb of whole-wheat flour and 25lb of oats from the Deruycks through a food buying club. Yes, I was overly ambitious with my purchase. It is a good thing I love to bake, because that, my friends, is A LOT of flour. And so I decided [...]

Stats rarely tell the whole story.  But for some, me in particular, they can be an interesting way of telling at least a part of the story.  And when there are websites that will generate these stats for you, it’s even better.  This is the story of what I learned from Google Trends, a website [...]

Let’s get food policy on the municipal plate. This summer I was introduced – at least for the first time in a meaningful way – to what I like to call “the food issue”. The complex set of issues umbrella-ed under the term has implications on us all – whether you’re a farmer or just [...]