COLLABORATION ON LOCAL SUSTAINABLE FOOD TORONTO

AGENDA

We are very excited to be presenting this program where "it looks like you're outside, when you're inside," at the LEED Gold Certified Centre for Urban Ecology.

8:30am Registration & Coffee

9:00am Why Public Sector Leadership in Building Local, Sustainable Food Systems? Building the case for your institutions to lead - with Hayley Lapalme (My Sustainable Canada) and Kelly Hughes (Greenbelt Fund).

9:15am Stakeholder Mapping: Who’s Here, What are We Bringing?

10:10am Institutional Champions of Local Food: Case Studies from Healthcare & Campus. Successful cases of public sector leadership in local, sustainable food purchasing – with Wendy Smith (MEALsource), Lindsay Walker (Humber College), and Paul Sawtell (100 KM Foods).

11:00am Vision and Realities: Addressing Supply & Demand, and Gaps in Theory & Practice to Strengthen the Farm to Institution Supply Chain. Small group discussions and full group dialogue around emerging visions and the opportunities and challenges to build collaboration in the local food system.

12:30pm Local Seasonal Lunch in the Humber Room
A local, seasonal feast from the students of the Humber College Culinary Program.

1:30pm Open Space Technology: Working with our Overlapping Interests. Participant-defined, small breakout group discussions to go deeper into the nitty-gritty and questions of how to enable collaboration around strengthening local food systems.

3:15pm Debrief, Next Steps, and Follow-Up

4:00pm Depart

TORONTO IS A CITY OF PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS
WITH A WHOLE LOT OF BUYING POWER

How are these institutions working together with the local food value chain to provide leadership in building a sustainable regional food system? Where are the opportunities for these institutions to lead? What do local farmers and processors have to offer the public sector - and how do we fulfill the needs of both? What common interests do we have for collaboration?

Join us for this one-day workshop to connect institutional food buyers with the local value chain in a conversation around why, where and how to get more local, sustainable food into public institutions. Help us set the agenda by sharing your critical issue for cross-sector discussion in the registraton form.

WHAT TO EXPECT
These workshops are hands-on! Come for participant-determined discussion and real-time collaboration with your food systems peers.

Outcomes from previous Greenbelt-My Sustainable Canada workshops include:

• Understanding of common institutional challenges to sourcing/selling local food
• New relationships with institutional allies with common goals
• New opportunities to allign interests and collaborate, i.e. navigating the BPS Directive, the Local Food Act, CETA, or identifying desirable product innovations
• New producer/supplier-buyer relationships and networking with the local value chain
• Clarity to potential local suppliers about institutional requirements for food products
• Identification of community leaders and common points of interest for collaboration
• Identification of new market opportunities for local foods, suppliers, and distributors
• Best practices around sourcing, tracking, and incorporating local, sustainable foods into institutional menus in a cost-effective or cost-neutral manner
• Opportunities to troubleshoot access to institutional buyers

YOUR HOSTS
This workshop is generously funded by the Greenbelt Fund and hosted by My Sustainable Canada, the Greenbelt's 2012 Local Food Champions, in cooperation with Humber College, members of the 2014 Public Purse Procurement Mentorship Program on social purchasing of food.

BACKGROUND
There are a lot of food dollars in health care, schools, campuses, and correctional facilities. In Ontario alone, the public sector spends roughly $750 million on food annually. We've come a long way in recent years to recognize how we can put our institutions' purchasing power to work by asking for local food. Now we are taking it a step further and exploring how we can build stronger communities of regional collaboration to help make local food procurement easier to do. Through funding from the Greenbelt Fund, we're hosting a series of five workshops around the province to help build knowledge and collaboration in the public sector around why, how, and what to procure locally. We've already hosted workshops in Niagara and Sudbury - now Kingston and Toronto are up this fall. These workshops aim to strengthen regional communities of practice, to catalyze more coordinated and strategic demand for regionally available foods, and to build understanding between the local food industry and the institutions who buy from them.

WHY COME / WHO SHOULD COME

• Public institutions in the GTA - from campuses and health care to school boards and day care will have the chance to learn about and explore strategies for local food procurement. You'll also build relationships within the region and explore ways that the public sector can work in concert to fulfill its purchasing goals. This also provides a venue to communicate your needs to the local value chain.
  
• Producers, processors, and distributors around the GTA are invited to showcase their local products. They will also learn about the institutional marketplace and have the opportunity to connect with procurement leaders from facilities across the Region. Discussions will explore the needs within GTA institutions and reveal the corresponding opportunities to capitalize on this institutional market. Please contact hayley[ at ]mysuscan.org about bringing product for showcase.
  
• Distributors and other players in the GTA food system will be directly involved in influencing the direction of innovation in the food system, while also recognizing the part they play in supporting collaboration and building a more robust and innovative food system through facilitating easier sourcing and flow of local food to institutions.
  
• Community organizations, city councillors, MPs, and MPPs, this is a chance to get involved in helping to build a stronger and more resilient food system in your community, increasing its food sovereignty, possibilities for economic development, and to help guide the public dollar in creating the maximum public good!

Tickets including lunch are free with priority given to public sector institutions and value chain players based in the GTA.

AGENDA
The program will run from 8:30am - 4:00pm, including lunch, presentations of best practices from Humber College and others, group discussions, and the chance to meet local vendors and buyers. A full agenda will be posted prior to the event.

INTERESTED IN SHOWCASING YOUR LOCAL PRODUCT OR LOCAL FOOD IDEAS?
To share a short talk (pechakucha style) or to showcase your local product, please contact hayley[at]mysuscan.org with a short description of how your ideas or foods are relevant to getting more sustainable local food into Ontario institutions.
Use the email subject line: TORONTO LOCAL FOOD

DIRECTIONS & PARKING

By TTC from downtown Toronto it takes at least 90 minutes - bring a book! Use this tool via Google Maps to map your route.

By car, use these directions via Google Maps to get to the Queen's Plate Parking Lot off Janda Ct. This small lot is South West of the campus. A free shuttle will pick you up here at 8:15am or 8:30am to bring you to the Centre for Urban Ecology (Humber Arboretum).

Join us to explore how we can leverage the buying power of our institutions to stimulate more regional partnerships and new collaboration in Toronto to build a more resilient local food system!