Black food solidarity | Press

After only two years of operation, the owner of Jardins Lakou, Jean-Philippe Vézina, recently won the market gardener of the year award for his cultivation of vegetables typical of Afro-Caribbean cuisines, at the Canadian magazine competition. on the way. The market gardener based in Dunham, in the Eastern Townships, not only provides products to restaurants or families who subscribe to his baskets, but also to organizations that donate them to members of the black community.

“I worked with the black community of Montreal, francophone and anglophone, and already, at that time, I was aware of the health issues related to the diet of families, and of the fact that they often had difficulty in accessing fresh and nutritious products. And there was also a question of adaptation, especially for newcomers, ”explains Mr. Vézina.

He cultivates in particular West Indian cucumbers, not found in grocery stores here “because it is a product that does not keep very long”, and amaranth leaves (called lalo by the Haitians) which, in the supermarket, are “either frozen. , or come all withered ”. And other vegetables typical of the cuisines of the West Indies, Africa and the southern United States, such as cavalier cabbage, okra, hot peppers, and varieties of squash typical of the West Indies such as kobocha, and giromon used for the joumou soup, “which is the soup of the 1^er January which underlines the independence of Haiti ”.

Mr. Vézina, born in Haiti and adopted by white Quebecers, has long worked as a manager and consultant in the community sector, particularly in the Côte-des-Neiges, Saint-Michel, Rivière-des-Prairies and Petite-Bourgogne neighborhoods. “Les Jardins Lakou is a bit like the culmination of this journey that I have started since the end of my adolescence,” he said, referring to his need to reconnect with his Haitian and African roots.

The lakou garden (for “the courtyard”), also called the Creole garden, is an agricultural model born with the independence of Haiti.

In addition to his business customers (around sixty families who subscribe to his weekly baskets, as well as restaurants), over the last two summers he has provided vegetables for households in Little Burgundy supported by the organization Desta, thanks to to funding from the McConnell Foundation. A small organization called ECI (L’Environnement c’est intersectionnel), founded by a Montrealer of Haitian origin, Lourdenie Jean, also offered baskets of vegetables from Lakou Gardens to people from the black and indigenous communities last summer.

For me^me Jean, who has worked in the community sector and still gives workshops there, food insecurity is “the issue which ensures that not everyone has equitable access to food”. “Whenever I talk about food insecurity, I talk about food sovereignty,” underlines this student in sociology and sustainable development.

His basket project targeted black and Indigenous people, because these communities are currently the most food insecure in Canada. But also because historically, “their ability to feed themselves has often been targeted in the colonization process”.

The baskets, delivered to a little less than ten homes, as well as an organized visit to the Lakou Gardens with ten people are “micro-projects”, recognizes the young woman. “These are proposals to the maximum of my ability, but eventually I would like to establish and inspire. ”

Lourdenie Jean does not yet have the necessary funds to be able to repeat the initiative next year, but “there are potential collaborations that are in my emails”.

Meanwhile, brewer Molson Coors has pledged $ 1.5 million to organizations that support Black, Indigenous and Colored people in North America over the next year. In Canada, this will be used in particular to finance scholarships for restaurants owned more than 70% by blacks (awarded by the association of black professionals CAUFP). Support provided by businesses to their communities (through donations to food programs, for example) was one of the selection criteria.

The Toronto precedent

In Toronto, where 9% of the population is black, it is the City itself that has taken the initiative to tackle the food insecurity of this minority. Noting that 36.6% of black children live in food insecure homes, and that black families are 3.5 times more at risk than white families, Toronto City Council this fall adopted a Plan to Black Food Sovereignty Plan, a first in Canada. This five-year plan provides for fifty actions aimed at supporting organizations, urban agriculture, farmers’ markets and businesses in the black community.

This strategy stems from a plan to fight racism against blacks, adopted by the City of Toronto in 2017, and the recognition by Toronto Public Health last year that this racism represents a public health crisis. .

In Montreal, the umbrella organization of the Montreal Food System Council (CSAM) requested funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada to collect data on people living with social inequalities. It is in order to have “a better picture of the situation and to identify suitable courses of action to improve access to healthy food for vulnerable people”, indicated to us the coordinator of the CSAM, Anne Marie Aubert. , by email. If ever the organization does not obtain this funding, it will continue to “find a way to achieve this essential step”, assures Mr.^me Aubert.

Three times more food insecure among blacks

Canadian black visible minority households are almost three times more likely to be food insecure than white households, researchers at the University of Toronto found with amazement in a study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health in June¹.

“Honestly, almost everything surprised me about this study,” commented one of the authors, Valerie Tarasuk, in a telephone interview.

This study, the first to compare the food insecurity of black and white populations in Canada, found a prevalence of food insecurity almost three times higher among black households (28.4%, compared to 10% among white households. ). The data comes from theCanadian Community Health Survey from Statistics Canada (2005 to 2014).

Professor Tarasuk, who has worked on food insecurity for decades, was particularly struck by the comparison between Quebec and Ontario.

In the food insecurity research community, it is recognized that the problem is less widespread in Quebec than in the other provinces.

A pan-Canadian study published in 2012, for example, showed that the probability of suffering from food insecurity was almost 60% lower among workers in Quebec than among those in Ontario, regardless of their level of education.². The hypotheses point to the social net, which is more generous here.

However, this Quebec protective effect does not seem to work for black households, shows the analysis of the University of Toronto.

While the probability of suffering from food insecurity is indeed lower in Quebec than in Ontario for white households, it is “almost identical” for black households in the two provinces.

“That questions me a lot,” said Professor Geneviève Mercille, from the nutrition department at the University of Montreal, who was part of the peer review committee for the article. “How is it that our social policies help certain population groups in Quebec so well, but not others? ”

Vulnerable owners

This is not the only factor that seems not to benefit black people. The fact of owning one’s home is also recognized as a protector. In fact, among black households, food insecurity is less present among owners, the study notes. Except that it is more present among black owners than among white owners. Their risk is even “almost identical” to that of white tenants, as if being a landlord meant less protection from want when one is black.

This study “raises questions about the role played by systemic racism,” said Mr.^me Tarasuk.

Recognizing that it “would probably be better if the ideas came from a black person than from a white woman”, she suggests in particular ensuring that social programs are equitable, and that there are effective remedies against the discrimination in the labor market.

A study on university bachelor’s graduates published last September by Statistics Canada found that the graduates who were most likely to have a job below their qualifications were those from black visible minorities (compared to those with bachelor’s degrees from other visible minorities and those who were not. members of a visible minority)³.

A Statistics Canada booklet also indicated last year that unemployment rates for the black population remained higher than those of the rest of the population, “even for higher levels of education” (2001 to 2016).⁴.

Canadian surveys should include racial characteristics, and oversample “under-represented groups, such as black people,” recommends M’s study.^me Tarasuk.