Election Suggestion

Not that I believe in swaying the vote – I support all of you going out and making informed choices in our upcoming election – but if I was living in Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar I would choose Nettie Wiebe.

I first heard her speak at the annual Stapleford lecture at the University of Regina – where she spoke about food security to a packed auditorium. Here are some of the things she said back in 2005 in a lecture entitled “Who’s cooking the food system?”

• She says she believes the right to food is a basic right, putting her on one side of the International debate and she says the food system is about values, nutrition, culture, and increasingly about power.
• According to Weibe, a large part of the food system is knowing where the food is from and how far it has traveled.
• “If you are what you eat, you should know what you are eating, no?”
  
• She explained to a stunned audience that most of the food has traveled at least 2,000 – 3,000 km and that it has been packed, repacked, moved, and packed again. The human justice aspect plays a large role here.
• “You know less and less about your food the further it travels,” she said. “The less you know the less democratically involved you can be in it.”
• She says that in North America we are like those cheap toys found in dollar stores – made of 100 per cent unknown fibre. She said she thinks this is because “we have enough to eat.” Whereas 850 millions people in the world are food insecure, the politically correct term for starving.
• “We need to regain control of food at the local levels,” she said. “We need to know who we are and what we are eating.”

She knows her stuff when it comes to big phrama getting rich, ecosystem destruction, brutal human processes and money making empires. And can tell you story after story on them.
So all you in the Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar riding - get involved and you might have someone stand up for you.