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In response to growing concerns regarding food security, nutrition-related health problems, and environmental degradation, the marketing of "local foods" has gained popularity. However, before policy makers can promote local food security, they need knowledge of the local geography of food resources. In particular, they must know, within fairly small geographic areas, what foods are produced, under what financial and agricultural conditions, and in what quantities. In this paper we describe the development of a unique database used to frame a conceptual model for better determining local food resources using GIS and Census data from Statistics Canada. Specifically, we examine regional differences in agricultural land use, financing, and production in 2006, and consider province-wide trends since 1961. Our analyses show that a significant portion of invested capital and farm income is concentrated in three provincial regions, and that BC farming is heavily focused on beef and dairy production. BC is a large province; in order to reduce food miles, improve local food security, and address calls from health experts for higher fruit and vegetable consumption, it is essential that policy makers have basic information on agricultural and food production available for planning. Canadian health policy makers are focused on encouraging consumers to eat healthy, balanced diets obtained from local sources. This database will provide assistance by illustrating strengths and limitations of local food economics and production in BC.
En reaction aux preoccupations grandissantes concernant la securite alimentaire, les problemes de sante lies a I'alimentation et la degradation environnementale, le marketing des [much less than] aliments locaux [much greater than] a gagne en popularity. Toutefois, avant que les responsables des politiques puissent promouvoir la securite alimentaire locale, ils devront apprendre a connaitre la geographie locale des ressources alimentaires. Ils doivent en particulier savoir, dans des regions geographiques relativement restreintes, quels aliments sont produits, a quelles conditions financieres et agricoles, et en quelle quantite. Dans cet article, nous decrivons I'elaboration d'une base de donnees exceptionnelle utilisee pour encadrer un modele conceptuel visant a mieux determiner les ressources alimentaires locales en se servant du SIG (systeme d'information geographique) et des donnees de recensement de Statistique Canada. Plus particulierement, nous examinons les differences regionales de I'utilisation des terres, du financement et de la production en 2006 et nous etudions les tendances a I'echelle de la province depuis 1961. Nos analyses demontrent qu'une portion importante du capital investi et des revenus des fermesest concentree dans trois regions de la province et que I'agriculture de la Colombie-Britannique est grandement axee sur la production bovine et la production laitiere. La Colombie-Britannique est une grande province. C'est pourquoi il est important que les responsables des politiques aient acces a information de base sur I'agriculture et la production alimentaire a des fins de planification visant a reduire le kilometrage-assiette, ameliorer la securite alimentaire locale et repondre aux demandes des experts de la sante envers une consommation accrue de fruits et de legumes. Les responsables des politiques canadiennes en matiere de sante sont focalises a encourager les consommateurs a adopter une alimentation saine et equilibree composee d'aliments locaux. Cette base de donnees apportera une aide en illustrant les forces et les limites de I'economie et de la production alimentaires locales en Colombie-Britannique.
Keywords
Agriculture, local food, British Columbia, food security, GIS
Introduction
In a climate of growing nutritional health problems within the population, it is not clear whether the usual policy levers available to nutrition policy makers (located, at the federal level, mainly at Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and in, or associated with, provincial Ministries of Health) will prove adequate to meet emerging public health challenges. It is likely that a more integrated food and nutrition policy approach will be required to deal with 21st century nutritional health challenges (Ostry 2006, Rideout et al. 2007). This means that nutritional health policy makers will increasingly need to better understand food production, distribution, wholesale and retailing practices (i.e., food and agricultural policy) and, in turn, those in the food and agri-policy world will better need to understand the relationships between foods consumed and health and the role that "health" is increasingly playing in the public marketplace for food.
The sustainability of regional agricultural systems will increasingly be the bedrock upon which a coherent and joined-up food and nutrition policy rests. Some work has been conducted using regularly-gathered data at a small spatial level to better understand local food production; however, to ensure the sustainability of agriculture, it will be increasingly important to develop these tools further (Hiley and Michiels 2007). Given this need, we have developed a database for British Columbia (BC), using data obtained from Statistics Canada to accurately monitor and map what is produced in different regions in the province and how this has changed over time, and to provide an index of the financial health of the agricultural sector by region within the province.
We argue in this paper that establishment of a geospatial database is essential to move research on sustainable local food security ahead. Once established, this type of database can be updated to monitor changes in agricultural land use by region and can be supplemented with other data. This tool could also be used to produce easily accessible web-based maps and other educational outputs for use by various stakeholders. Using time series back to 1961, we illustrate how this type of database can be used to show how the nature and types of local food production have changed in the province over the past 50 years. We are interested in mapping historical trends for the period from 1961 to the present by Agricultural Census District (CD) as this is a useful way to demonstrate within a given region the major changes to agricultural land use, agricultural incomes and production that have taken place over the past 45 years. The illustration of these changes can inform people about changes to their regional food security base that otherwise would go un-documented.
Having a statistical picture of food production and conditions shaping farming within a relatively small local area could give communities the tools they need to better plan for food security. By knowing what is grown in their communities and the economic conditions that local farmers face, policy to promote food security can be based on local evidence which should help produce more sustainable food and agricultural policy in the long run.
The paper is organized as follows. In the next section we discuss in some detail the data and methods used to develop the data base. In the second section we illustrate some of the ways this database could be utilized. Specifically, we illustrate general temporal trends in BC agriculture since 1961 and we also present data showing regional differences in agriculture across the province in 2006.
Methods
To develop the database, we acquired from Statistics Canada their agricultural census data for the year 2006 (the latest year for which these data are available) by Agricultural Census District (CD) for the province of BC. These data were acquired through the University of Victoria's Data Liberation Initiative in early 2008. The types of data available include: 1) general farm statistics such as mean size of farms and the number of farms, 2) land use data such as the proportion of land in a CD that is planted, irrigated, laying fallow, 3) production data such as the number of livestock raised and the acreage devoted to different crops, 4) financial data such as gross operating revenue, value of capital investments on farms, and 5) sustainable land use such as the acreage devoted to organic farming, and the quantity of herbicide use.
These data are available every five years beginning in 1961. However, because the same variables were often not collected across census periods, there is a core of only about 250 variables that are common across the census periods from 1961 to 2006. This means that longitudinal studies using these data are limited to a restricted number of core variables. As well, because of CD boundary changes over time, the reliability of temporal comparisons is also compromised. However, for analyses in 2006, there is a list of over 1,000 variables that can be used to compare and contrast agricultural patterns across the province for that year.
In 2006, there were 28 CDs (Figure 1). Statistics Canada suppressed release of data from 3 of these CDs (Mount Waddington, Stikine and Skeena-Queen Charlotte). This is because there were few farms in these three regions and data confidentiality was a concern. The information in this paper is based on the remaining 25 CDs in the province. Spatial data files were obtained from Statistics Canada in the form of cartographic CD boundary files, which were joined to the tabular data described above. Choropleth and descriptive maps were created from these joined data, using ArcGIS 9.2. Data were classified into five categories using quintiles, where the highest 20% of the data are shaded as black, the lowest 20% as white, and shades of grey in-between. This classification system maximizes comparability between maps and avoids empty data classes. Since each CD is a different size in land area, data is normalized by farmland area or farm numbers where appropriate to ensure comparability between regions.
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