How food banks supplement food security efforts in Eabametoong

The chief of Eabametoong First Nation says people in his community have a growing interest in new food security initiatives to supplement traditional harvesting practices like hunting and fishing – but there will always be a need for help from organizations such as the Regional Food Distribution Association (RFDA). 

Eabametoong won the first ever Rural Ontario Leaders Awards in 2018 for Fort Hope Farm, which it launched two years prior with help from the federal government and DeBruin's Greenhouses in Thunder Bay, Ont.

Its sole crop the first year was potatoes, Harvey Yesno said. 

"I think they got something like 12,000 pounds," Yesno said. "That was a major achievement. People cried, you know, that they were able to do that. But the yields got better and better."

Since then, he said, the community has experimented with introducing other vegetables, a challenge given the north's short, growing season and discussed other possible initiatives, such as bringing in bulk flour and opening a bakery and bringing in chickens, livestock, and possibly bees. But people recognize it will take time to find partners who can help them succeed, he added.

Meanwhile, the environment around the community continues to support fishing and hunting for partridge, duck, goose, rabbit and caribou, Yesno said. In fact, it was a banner year for moose.

"I heard [a] number around 60 to 75, maybe more, were harvested this fall. So that has really contributed a lot to the community's sustenance," he said.

But not everyone has the means to live off the land, Yesno said, and that's one of the reasons that food shipments from the RFDA can make a difference.

[There's] always going to be a need for that kind of assistance in our community, because people that have the boats or snowmobiles that could go hunting, you know that they have the means to do that," he said. "But it doesn't always work out for people that are disabled or semi-disabled."

Also, he said, "there's always situations where you need, kind of, surge capacity."

People in Eabametoong only recently learned about food banks and hadn't ever been helped by one until RFDA executive director Volker Kromm reached out to them, he said.

Now, they're working with the RFDA and other partners to bring in food, while learning to deal with the logistical challenges of bringing large quantities of perishable items into a tiny remote community and distributing and using them before they expire.  

COVID-19 complicating food distribution

"We're trying to address that by having … temporary storage facilities, whether it's a freezer unit or a refrigeration unit," Yesno said, "particularly in the summertime, you know, when we get a plane load of a thousand pounds or two thousand pounds of vegetables or even fruit."

Yesno and his team are also looking at ways to ensure that foods that are unfamiliar to members of the community don't go to waste, he said. Notably, it's looking at offering more training in how to cook with different types of vegetables so that people can get the health benefits of including them in their diets. 

"We had peppers," he said, by way of example. "It's not like most households would be cooking that … I think we're used to lettuce and tomatoes and carrots."

COVID-19 has only further complicated a tricky process of bringing food donations into the First Nation because of the need for volunteers to stay physically distant while dividing up food, Yesno said. He's responded by asking at least one donor if they can divide the food into hampers before shipping it. 

Meanwhile, Yesno said, government could also take action to improve access to healthy, affordable food in First Nations, by, for example, reducing the bureaucracy involved in the Northern Nutrition Program, which subsidizes retailers who bring in healthy perishable items. 

"The smaller retail, the mom and pop shops, they don't have time to fill out this paperwork, you know?" he said. "First of all, they've got to buy the product, and then they're going to sell it at a discount. When are they going to get the subsidy? … So for a little operation, it's not worth it for them to take advantage of that program because of the paperwork [they] need to get into."

Government also needs to find other solutions to reduce the cost of food in communities that famously pay double-digit prices for basic grocery items such as milk, Yesno said.

"Everybody knows that alcohol is the same price in Moosonee as it is in Pickle Lake as it is in Brampton," he said. "So there's something wrong there, you know, in terms of priorities."