Manitobas Food Systems (In-class blog question)

The food system in Manitoba is not currently not very strong. The city of Winnipeg does not have a large enough community supporting organic and locally sourced foods, so the prices on these products are often extremely high. If we want to see a change in price in organic foods, the Winnipeg community as a whole need to make a strong movement towards purchasing organic foods. In order to make any food system environmentally sustainable, the majority of food must be locally sourced. One of the biggest obstacles we face when trying to eat locally is our extremely long and intense winter conditions. The weather conditions we experience in wintertime make it impossible for us to grow many fruits and vegetables locally for over half of each year. In our growing season, the majority of our fields are used to produce grains and oilseeds. The “commercial food” grocery stores have set the standard to have all fruits and vegetables available all year round. The growing conditions are not constant enough for us to grow many of fruits and vegetables that we currently import. In order to break this “social norm” of having all fruits and vegetables available all year round, society needs to better understand that this is not possible in our climate. This concept must be more widely understood by Manitoban’s if we want to have an environmentally sustainable food system. The nutrition and taste of organic foods in Winnipeg is set at an extremely high standard, much alike everywhere else in North America.  Organic foods have been made available, however not at a price that most low income families can afford. I hope that moving forward we as a community in Winnipeg, can work towards an environmentally and economically sustainable food system.

Manitobans also heavily contributes to hog production, Canada is the 3^rd largest hog exporting country in the world and 60% of those hogs come from Manitoba. There are many environmental issues involved with such high rates of hog production due to the waste these animals create. Much of this waste is used as fertilizer for other agricultural practices. The main concern is nutrient runoff, which contaminates our lakes, streams and groundwater. ManitobaPork is working together with farmers and hog producers to protect our water.

Below is a link to the Environment Protection section of the ManitobaPork website, which has numerous videos explaining the different methods of environmental protection that are used in Manitoba. 

All videos in link below:

Environmental Protection Methods (ManitobaPork)