2009 Keynote Address
“Organic Opportunities For Farmers & Consumers”
The Keynote address takes place at 9.00 am, Saturday, Jan. 24 at Rozanski Hall.
You must come into the Guelph University Centre room UC103 (registration) to pay for and pick up your ticket ($15). Then you walk approx. 150 yards east of the U.C. to the Rozanski Building. When on campus, we will guide you to Rozanski once you have registered.

Keynote goes till approx. 10.40 am.

Wayne Roberts has worked throughout his life to link social justice, public health, job creation and environmental protection.

The author of the recently-released No Nonsense Guide to World Food, now selling briskly around the world, Wayne Roberts also manages the Toronto Food Policy Council, and is in the thick of the action when it comes to bringing together all the groups — from farmers and fishers to new generation processors, distributors, retailers, to community groups to government health, environment and economic development units to eaters who are building the new food movement inch by inch, row by row. He’ll be sharing his front-row seat on emerging trends with us.

Dr. Wayne Roberts, Ph.D Toronto Food Policy Council, Ontario Since joining the public health department in Toronto in 1999, he has coordinated the Toronto Food Policy Council, staffed the city-wide Food and Hunger Action Committee, co-authored its three reports as well as the city’s Food Charter (the second in North America, and the benchmark for many others), and successfully advocated for the first stream of municipally-funded Community Food Security Grants in North America.

To prepare a new generation of food professionals, he has taught the first Canadian undergraduate class on “food security research methods” at University of Toronto’s New College since 2003, guest-edited two Alternatives Journal special issues on food (one in 2003, and one in 2006), and co-wrote (with Ellen Desjardins) the Ontario Public Health Association statement on “a systemic approach to community food security.” To promote networking among food advocates, he launched Eaters Digest, an electronic information service on local food issues, now distributed to about 3000 Toronto-area food activists. He initiated and co-edits (with James Kuhns) www.foodforethought.net/, an e-mail service and website on global food security issues, circulated to about 10,000 food policy specialists internationally.

He served on the board of the (U.S.-based) Community Food Security Coalition from 2002 to 2008, has been on the steering committee of Food Secure Canada since its inception in 2002, serves on the advisory board of six local food organizations, and on the editorial board of two respected journals (Alternatives Journal and Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition).

He is regularly invited to speak on community food security topics across North America, as well as in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

He is the recipient of the first “Toronto Board of Health Staff Recognition Award,” the first NOW Magazine “Leading Toronto Visionaries,” the first Canadian Environment Silver Award for Sustainable Living in 2002, and the Planet in Focus Eco-Hero Award for 2008.

NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS TORONTO FOOD POLICY COUNCIL PROJECT COORDINATOR

• Managed the transition of the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) from the old City of Toronto to the newly-amalgamated Toronto (2000). Few of the new municipal councillors or staff had an experience with or positive attitude toward food policy councils; the TFPC is now an integral element of Toronto Public Health (TPH), and food systems and food security thinking are prominent in many TPH documents and in all geographic areas of the amalgamated city.
• Coordinated Toronto Public Health’s presence in, and City-wide staff engagement with the Food and Hunger Action Committee, which helped a newly-amalgamated and divided City Council move on to positive projects by adopting unanimously three major documents on food policy and a Toronto Food Charter, all of which I authored (2001).
• Represented Canadian Non-Government Organizations at the World Food Summit in Rome (2002).
• Represent Canada on the Executive Board of the Community Food Security Coalition, a North American-wide organization (2000 to the present).
• Represent food policy councils on the Food Secure Canada’s Steering Committee (2002 to the present).
• Worked with planners and farm organizations in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to help plan the formation of the GTA Agricultural Action Committee, in order to facilitate dialogue among farmers and Toronto consumers around local food issues (2004).
• Organized Toronto’s first local food conference in 2002, now an annual conference event co-sponsored with the rural-based non-profit Caledon Countryside Alliance, the non-profit Local Flavour Plus and the GTA Agricultural Action Committee. This annual event now includes economic developers, agro-tourism leaders and representatives from the Ontario Ministry of Food and Rural Affairs, as well as public health and local farm groups. In July, 2007, Toronto City Council adopted a motion prepared by the TFPC to purchase local and sustainable food; the TFPC is currently spearheading organizations to ensure that recent immigrants and racialized minorities have opportunities to grow local culturally appropriate foods.
• Worked with students and staff at Toronto’s three universities to launch a speakers series, “Food for Talk,” where students, academics and community experts present their food research – all part of an effort to develop the next generation of professionals prepared to lead community food security work (2004).
• Invited in July 2007 to deliver a recorded lecture on food security initiatives for individuals, community groups and governments, for Johns Hopkins University’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health.
• Currently contracted with Verso Press/New Internationalist Publications to write The No-Nonsense Guide to Food, scheduled for publication in 2008.