Written by Teghan Acres

Food and water security are inextricably connected. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of the world’s total freshwater withdrawal and 86% of its consumption. This is a massive proportion and provides a clear opportunity for water use reduction through innovative technologies and behaviour changes. However, there are many layers to this issue. We produce enough food worldwide to feed 10 billion people. While this seems untrue because 820 million people suffer from hunger, it is an issue of local access to food due to uneven distribution as well as poverty and inequality, not outright scarcity at a global scale. In Canada alone, 4 million people are food insecure, yet 63% of the food Canadians throw away could have been eaten.

Tammara Soma is passionate about eliminating food waste and creating a just food system in our cities. She has conducted research around the world to better understand these systems and how people move within them. Soma goes beyond the surface level solutions to this problem by researching human behaviour and ensuring that outcomes are inclusive and equitable. She does this at SFU as the Director of Research at the Food Systems Lab and an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment.

COVID-19 has brought the issue of food insecurity to the forefront of the media. While food banks are seeing an increased demand, there is also a counterintuitive spike in food waste. The closure of meat plants has caused the culling of millions of farm animals. Dairy farmers are dumping milk due to the lack of processor capacity. Vegetable producers are plowing their harvest back into the soil. Soma is acutely aware of these challenges and has pioneered a micro-solution in her neighbourhood. She connected neighbours with a local farm in Maple Ridge that normally sells a majority of their yield to restaurants that were suddenly closed. They are now supporting a local business, preventing wasted produce and learning about new vegetables that Soma, as a food system scholar, had never heard of herself.

Her work is trying to tackle these issues by building a closed loop food system. This means that there is very minimal waste and nutrients are retained to regenerate natural systems. A circular food system not only values natural capital inputs but also the human capital which translates to workplace rights and a living wage for migrant workers.

Soma shared what she finds to be one of the most exciting solutions to our food system challenges; a concept called ‘all my relations’. It is a principle rooted in Indigenous teachings, meaning that we are all interconnected. In reference to food, it is the belief that we are related to our food and it is not just a commodity to be consumed. Soma explains this as, “if we truly value the world within that paradigm then a lot of things will be better. We would treat farmers, workers, animals, soil, everything better because they are your relations. It changes your whole value system.”

Food systems are complex and there is not one solution to these issues. However, there are multiple pathways to a more just and sustainable future. This will not only be better for the health of our communities, but the planet and its waterways as well.

Learn more about Soma’s work by visiting the Food Systems Lab site and reviewing her publications. Follow along with the PWRC on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to learn more and stay up to date with our activities. 

We respectfully acknowledge that the PWRC operates on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.