Tech Support
Steve Izma
Here is the beginning of a collection of items I printed on Dumont’s Multi 1850 offset press.
Sometimes, with a little discussion and collaborative inspiration, a good idea can take root and blossom into a concept or a plan, and then grow into a tangible and valuable project. The Food Paper was just such an endeavour.
It was initiated as a collaboration between a couple Dumont staff members and several folks involved in setting up the Waterloo Food Co-op. We saw it as a kind of popular education tool not unlike the Ireland Paper which Dumont staff had produced two years earlier, designed to present a broad overview of the food industry, the changes in production, distribution, food quality and food security, and how independent local food co-ops could help consumers regain a greater level of control in obtaining better quality and less expensive meals for our tables.
That’s where we started, but of course it became a whole lot more than that. The volunteer group who researched, wrote and produced The Food Paper back in 1974 wanted to find the reasons why food had recently become a major public issue.
“When we first began plans for the paper, we also hoped to demonstrate the necessity for groups like the Waterloo Food Co-op as alternatives to present food industry structures. Although we still see such a necessity, we have come to realize that the difficulties would not end with a large-scale co-operative movement and proposing that everyone join a food co-op is too simplistic a solution to provide total answers. We can only hope that by reading the paper people will at least gain a clearer picture of the issues involved.”
Okay, so that part worked, The Food Paper was a huge success. We had to do a second press run. The National Farmers Union (NFU) distributed it to its members at their annual convention that fall. Oxfam Canada sent it out to their entire membership. It was initially distributed as a supplement to a number of university and alternate newspapers, and many nonprofit community groups and other food co-ops wrote to request copies for their own distribution.
But were we really all that successful? Forty-seven years later, all of the significant economic, environmental, corporate and social concerns we raised appear to have taken place. The family farm is essentially gone, agricultural soil quality is on life support, corporate consolidation and control has continued, international food sourcing threatens the sustainability of the planet. Yikes! It’s grim, but it’s not all bad. Local food security has become an important political issue. Some fights continue on… We did a good job with this project, and much of what we wrote is still valuable and important all these years later.
As we wrote in our introductory statement back in 1974: “Food is a basic necessity for sustaining life. The quality of life is very much dependent on the availability of such basics as good food. For people to be in a position where they cannot afford to buy food grown in a country as rich in agricultural' land as Canada is perverse. Farming is one of the few remaining occupations that maintains a balance with nature. To find farmers leaving the land because they can no longer make a living and to see urban sprawl eating away the countryside left behind is equally perverse. If we are not to be confronted with, large, mechanized farms, using all the latest industrial and chemical techniques, providing low quality food to huge metropolitan centres at high prices, then something will have to be done about present food industry trends very soon.”
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