Municipal role in food security

August 02, 2026

Key points from this story:

• Food knowledge has declined culturally
• Many people struggle to afford food
• Yorkton food bank demand grows
• Backyard gardens have become rarer
• Municipalities own undeveloped land
• Suggests community-run food projects

The focus of the talk was how important it is at present to focus attention on personal and community security because culturally we have lost a great deal of our food knowledge. It is certainly apparent many people are struggling to continue to put food on the table each day. Even in a culturally-rural, small city such as Yorkton food bank demand grows. We know for example the annual demand for Salvation Army Christmas hampers has trended upwards for a few years now. Bottom line some people, even in Saskatchewan with thousands of acres of land capable of growing food, people go to bed hungry.

Next sit at a local coffee shop and it won't likely take long to overhear someone lamenting to the cost of food at the grocery store. While food costs have obviously spiked upwards, if you were to spend some time driving back alleys in the city you would find gardens growing vegetables are rare - certainly far fewer than when I arrived here as a journalist four decades ago. Losing interest in a backyard garden is part of the food security that came up at the interview. With fewer gardens so does demand for deep freezes - now nearly a special-order appliance.

And one wonders if a person were given a garden plot and had the opportunity to grow food do they have the knowledge to can, pickle, freeze and store what they grow? Of course the first step in the process of food security is access to food, and one wonders if municipalities don't have a bigger role they might play? Certainly municipal leaders will say food isn't their responsibility, but could it be? Is it better to invest millions in a golf course, or upgrading an ice arena, or do we need to see a direction change to more core needs like food? Many urban communities own undeveloped land. Sometimes they offer that land as a base for community fundraising initiatives, but why not some for larger scale gardens? And just maybe some of the homeless and unemployed in a community could work the garden.

Could the municipality then build a 'locker box' freezer facility where residents could store food secured from the garden? Then why not dream bigger, and suddenly then have a large free-range flock of chickens for community eggs, turkeys for Christmas dinner, hives of bees for honey, all owned and operated by the community through the municipality. Would that be a better investment for taxpayer dollars? A question worthy of greater thought and discussion against a growing disconnect for people and their food source.