The Government of Canada released their 2024 budget earlier this week. Some of the changes the budget announces will significantly impact if, and how, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians access food.

Let’s take a look.

How achievable is it to adopt a “grocery store” model? And how can conventional food banks move away from pre-packaged hampers when they rely on limited public food donations?

We did some digging and found a bunch of examples of food programs from across the country. Each program shifted from the traditional pre-packed hamper model of food charity to a model centred on client choice and autonomy.

Join Food First NL and Community Food Centres Canada (CFCC) to learn more about the Community Food Centre model and explore its potential in St. John's.

The holiday season is filled with calls for generosity, with food banks and food drives regularly making headlines and news feeds. This focus on charitable food giving can be uncomfortable for people focused on long-term solutions to food insecurity. We know that food insecurity needs income-based solutions. Yet the fact that food charities are not the answer to food insecurity does not lessen the fact that many people access them for food.

This month's read feed is about holiday giving, short-term responses, and long-term solutions to food insecurity.

PROOF’s latest Food Insecurity in Canada report is out, reporting on Statistics Canada’s Canadian Income Survey (CIS) data from 2022. The results are clear: food insecurity is getting worse.

22.9% of households in Newfoundland and Labrador experienced some degree of food insecurity in the previous 12 months, amounting to 116,000 people. That’s the highest rate in any of the ten provinces.

The province announced its new Poverty Reduction Plan earlier this month. The announcement included a variety of program additions and changes and largely focused on childhood poverty, supporting seniors, income support, and employment support.

The Poverty Reduction Plan is a fine first step and could have a positive impact on those who are most vulnerable but, in this current crisis, that’s not enough.

In the past month, Food Banks Canada released two stellar reports: the 2023 Hunger Count and the Poverty Report Card. Both reports describe national trends and province-specific information. This blog highlights N.L. and nationwide data from both reports and what it means for our province.

The Provincial Government has just released the updated cost of a 2022 Newfoundland and Labrador Nutritious Food Basket. It highlights the costs of nutritious food in our province, and is the second release of data using the updated food basket developed for 2021, allowing us again to make year-to-year comparisons.

The Nutritious Food Basket is a standardized tool used to calculate the weekly cost of meeting the nutrient requirements for a family of four, consists of 61 foods from the 2019 Canada Food Guide, and is based on the National Nutritious Food Basket.

Food First NL is inviting proposals for our annual audit, starting fiscal year ending March 31, 2024. The contract period is for the next three fiscal years, starting 2023-2024.

There's a real focus on labour right now, with labour organizing in the news and the celebration of International Labour Day on May 1st, including a large May Day rally in St. John’s. So this month we're focusing on food insecurity and decent work.

This content first appeared in the May 2023 newsletter.

At the end of March, 2023, the Community Food Helpline will be closing. Here’s more information about why, which services will be available until the end of March and beyond, and how to get involved.
We would like to send heartfelt thanks to all of our partners, supporters, and staff of the Helpline over the past nearly three years. We couldn’t have done it without all of your dedication and contributions.

Back in October 2022, Food First NL partnered with PROOF, Nourish, and the Coalition for Healthy School Food to submit our recommendations for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Social and Economic Well-Being Plan. Our public policy recommendations approach social and economic well-being through a food systems and food security lens. Our hope is that these recommendations will encourage the provincial government into immediate and bold action as they develop and implement the plan.

An update on what we’re seeing (and expect to see) with food prices in NL

The climate crisis’ impacts on our food systems in Newfoundland and Labrador are complex.

Leo’s family has been fishing for a living for 200 years. His video focuses on preparing fish.  He goes beyond removing the fillets, to showing us all the other goods available from fresh cod that, for too long, were being discarded as waste, including one of Leo’s favourites – the nape – which is a thin slice of belly meat. 

Donna and Garth were married before their town had electricity, and therefore refrigeration, so bottling was a common practice to preserve foods. The video shows us how easy bottling is, by walking us through Donna’s recipe for bottled beets. She even reveals her own prized recipe

Warren jokes that upon retiring as a fisherman at 60, he installed a root cellar to make work for himself. As his video demonstrates, you don’t need a traditional root cellar to keep your veggies over the winter. Warren’s father built one under their house, because he never had a basement, whereas Warren built one below his shed.

When Garfield’s father-in-law asked him to promise he’d keep the community garden green in Port Blandford, he picked the right man for the job. This video is full of very simple, but very effective tips for home gardening

Marg taught grade 6 before retiring. In this video she teaches us how easy it is to grow your own potato patch year to year without having to buy your own seed. She's kept her own garden patch since she moved to Gander in 1964

Unlike most of us, Hope & Lewis never have to run to the store for a bottle of jam, because they grow a bounty of berries in their backyard. In this video, Hope walks us through her technique for making freezer jam; an alternative to cooked jam.