FEBRUARY 2020 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


Feed BC program good in theory


but has limitations Province boosts transparency about its food needs


by TOM WALKER VICTORIA – BC agriculture


Minister Lana Popham has long had a stated interest of increasing the amount of BC food served in government- funded institutions, including hospitals, residential care homes, universities and colleges. It’s a positive goal, but neither institution nor BC food producers have known how to build relationships. “I get phone calls all the


time,” says Donna Koenig, support services manager in Oliver and Osoyoos for the Interior Health Authority. “Orchards will call me in the summer to ask if I can buy their fruit.”


She usually steers them in


the direction of her supplier, Sysco Foods, which purchases fruit for Interior Health from BC Tree Fruits. “There are people who still


don’t know about the GAP food safety protocols that we have to follow, and our traceability requirements,” explains Koenig. “We just can’t accept a truck of fruit from a local farm.” A recent call illustrates another difficulty. “A woman was enquiring about dried fruit – would that be something that the hospitals would buy?” recalls Koenig. “The answer was no, but I told her about our need for pureed fruit, something that we use all the time and are not able to source from BC producers.” Recent work under Feed BC hopes to make the path to market clearer. “It’s not as easy as flipping a switch and buying food closer to home,” says Popham.


“One of the big roadblocks has been awareness of what it is that hospitals need that BC producers could supply.” A working group met


numerous times in 2019 and developed a number of publications designed to help. For example, Feed BC has published a list of the top 20 food products BC health care facilities use that are currently sourced outside the province that local producers have the greatest potential to supply. Chicken, turkey, beef, frozen vegetables and frozen berries top the list, which also includes coffee, sugar, tea and rice. Often, it’s simply a case of letting producers know the format hospitals require. “We make yogurt in BC, but not in the individual patient portion sizes that hospitals use,” says Popham, who believes institutional demand is great enough for a processor to retool their packaging line to supply. “There was no incentive for them to do it because they didn’t know there was a demand for it.”


Another new publication,


Selling BC Food to BC’s Government Supported Facilities, also identifies the opportunities as well as illustrating the supply chain and outlines a producer’s route to market. “This booklet will help to


make the business opportunities more clear,” says Popham. The BC berry industry is in a position to take advantage of opportunities for frozen and pureed fruit, for example. “A domestic market always provides some stability,” notes


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BC Interior Health’s Donna Koenig, left, and Natalie Laframboise, BC Ministry of Health, are advocates for the province’s Feed BC initiative to get more BC-grown food into BC institutions. (BC MINISTRY OF HEALTH PHOTO)


Popham. “We have amazing growers who have invested in processing equipment; they just need to know what the institution’s requirements are.” Popham says she is often


asked why the free market hasn’t taken care of this.


“It doesn’t work that way


with government procurement,” she explains. “There is a lot of information that has not been shared in the past so there has been no way to know what products have been needed.”


But she believes that


entrepreneurship will come. “Now that we have more of an idea, I believe we will see more businesses spring up across the province,” Popham


See FEED on next page o


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