Thought About Food? A Workbook on Food Security & Influencing Policy

Completed Projects

This workbook was developed as part of a series of research projects on food security. As well as using research and experiences drawn from the Nova Scotia Food Security Projects, it incorporates ideas, insights and advice from people involved in food security issues and actions across Canada.

Thought About Food? is intended to provide tools and information to inspire communities to come together and act to make food security a reality for everyone. The next section Research Questions Behind this Workbook provides an overview of the background, activities and findings related to the research questions guiding this work.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Partnership Award

In 2011, the strong history of partnership between the NS Food Security Network and FoodARC (formally the Participatory Action Research and Training Centre on Food Security) were acknowledged by CIHR for bringing health research communities together to create innovative approaches.

Through the partnership, researchers, representatives from family resource centres and the Nova Scotia Nutrition Council, and people who have directly experienced food insecurity have come together to calculate the cost of a basic healthy diet in their communities and identify barriers to accessing safe, nutritious food. They have also examined the issue from the suppliers’ side, looking at the capacity of communities to produce their own food and support local farmers and fishers.

The partners have used this research to create a more comprehensive definition of food security and they have developed new tools to help communities and policy makers build better food policies. Two of these tools, a workbook called Thought about Food? and a DVD entitled Food Security: It’s Everybody’s Business, have been distributed to policy makers and resource centres in over 800 communities across the country. Please visit the CIHR website for more details.

Food Security: It’s Everybody’s Business

 

The Making of Thought About Food? It’s Everyone’s Business