Farmers union finds new local food and beverages strategy unclear

The provincial government put out a new local food and beverages strategy this week, but farmer Rébeka Frazer-Chiasson said it resulted in more questions than answers.

Frazer-Chiasson said she went out of her way to attend the announcement of the new plan and was disappointed to learn "absolutely nothing."

"I was left feeling, 'why did I drive an hour and a half and reorganize my whole day to be here just to hear talk of how great buying local is," said Frazer-Chiasson, who sits on the board of the National Farmers Union in New Brunswick.

"Everyone that was there was already pretty convinced of that."

After getting a chance to look over the report, she found there were some aspects of the plan she was happy to see. Her problem was they weren't properly explained.

"The wording is nice. The logic is there," said Frazer-Chiasson. "But it doesn't seem like a super coherent plan as to how we're going to change some of those problematics."

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Frazer-Chiasson was pleased to hear there was a unified logo for local foods in the province.

"What we want is farmers is to use this and use it with pride and create that sentiment of pride behind New Brunswick products."

But Frazer-Chiasson said even that wasn't fully explained. She wants to know how that will be implemented and how it will be marketed so local food producers will want to use it."

She also wants to know how use of the new logo will be monitored.

"We can't just throw around the logo so that anyone can use it or anywhere can use it, or else we're just in the same situation as before where the New Brunswick logo goes on bananas that are sold at farmers' markets," said Frazer-Chiasson.

She also was happy to see an initiative to bring local food into schools, but that left her with questions as well. National Farmers Union president Ted Wiggins was pleased to see that as a goal as well, but he wants to know the planned timeline for that initiative.

"The devil is going to be in the details in terms of how that's implemented and how long it takes to implement that part of the program," said Wiggins.

Unaddressed

Wiggins said a big problem for local farmers that wasn't addressed in the strategy was helping farmers get their products into big grocery stores.

"It doesn't address the barriers to accessing large grocery stores for farmers," said Wiggins.

"It's very hard to get into large grocery stores and that's where most people, or at least a lot of the food purchases take place."

He said the goals of the strategy reflect what the National Farmers Union wants and it's a good start, but he would like to see more details.

"This kind of policy, this local food strategy is a step in the right direction, but it really has to be advocated or pushed forward by the government as well as farmer organizations and the public."