Food Insider

Brent Harris’ bean crop relies on South American seed. He’s not alone. Commercial vegetable growers in the province like Harris — who owns an organic bean, pea, barley and potato farm in Delta, B.C. — depend on seed from around the world. And despite a pandemic-induced global rush on seed, that might not change.

Brent Harris’ farm holds a world map — a map that grows. That’s because the Delta, B.C., pea, bean and potato farmer’s seeds were grown on farms from Chile or China — and places in-between.

Anastasia Fyke doesn’t have time for millennials. Sort of. The fourth-generation farmer (and a millennial herself) wants to help farmers transform agriculture from Canada’s sixth-largest greenhouse gas producer into a carbon sink. It’s an attainable goal — with enough investment. “I hear a lot of flak, especially from my own generation, blaming farmers for all these climate things,” she said.

In North America, bumblebees — a vital native pollinator — are estimated to have seen their relative abundance crash by 97 per cent, with the sharpest decline occurring in the past 30 years.

Silvio Lettrari has several billion pets. Pets he cannot see. That’s because they’re bacteria — and they have a crucial job to do in the baker and pasta-maker’s sourdough pasta factory. “It’s kind of like a relationship with a dog or something,” he said. “I’ve always treated them with respect because they’re alive — even if you can’t see the little buggers.”

Twenty-four weeks ago, COVID-19 brought Canada to a standstill. A wait that, for chefs, cooks, and other laid-off employees, has no end in sight. It’s a difficult situation, said Michelle Travis, a representative from UNITE HERE Local 40. “There’s no protection for workers to get their jobs back.”

Mounds of mangoes and pallets of peanut butter sit on a monochrome concrete floor. They’re islands of sustenance, dwarfed in the Greater Vancouver Food Bank’s cavernous warehouse — and a fraction of the roughly 40,800 kilograms of food that pass through the distribution center each week, explained the organization’s CEO, David Long.

Tyler Dyck lifts a dram of whisky to the light, musing that it holds a field — distilled. It’s the kind of taste the Okanagan-based distiller and president of the Craft Distiller’s Guild of B.C. says could spur renewal of B.C. farms — but only if there are changes to a tax that's deeply rooted in Canada’s history.

Paul Stewart cooks a thousand meals a day, none with American onions. That's no small feat: about four per cent of the onions consumed in B.C. are grown in the province. The remainder — 99 million kilograms — are imported, primarily from the United States.

On Thursday, federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau announced details of the $50-million Surplus Food Rescue Program, created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canadians struggling to get enough to eat will soon have better access to food that otherwise would be composted. On Thursday, federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau announced details of the $50-million Surplus Food Rescue Program, created to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yuko Suda is a farmer. A farmer who can’t afford a farm. Instead, she rents her land, an increasingly common practice for new farmers across B.C. — one she worries won’t be sustainable long term. It’s an issue facing most young farmers in the province, one that threatens both their livelihoods and Canadians’ long-term access to food.

Taylor said when she started fishing, she had to constantly prove herself in the male-dominated industry — on top of taking on tasks to keep the boat running. Things are easier now, but at a larger scale, problems remain.

Every summer, thousands of migrant farm workers flock to B.C. bearing painkillers and antibiotics. These personal pharmacies reflect workers’ concerns they won’t have access to adequate health care in the province, despite working in one of B.C.’s most dangerous — and essential — industries.

Broccoli sex is controversial. Especially organic broccoli sex. That’s because new gene editing technologies developed in the last 10 years have forced organic plant breeders, certification bodies, and farmers to re-examine techniques commonly used to breed the Lorax-like plants.