Since spring break, the North Okanagan-Shuswap School District has been making locally produced meat and vegetables available to students and their families at an affordable price, all while supporting the local food system.
Yankee Flats Meats, a Salmon Arm butcher that has a storefront in Vernon, has partnered with School District 83 to provide subsidized meat boxes to students' families. Since March, Yankee Flats Meats has been able to offer $30 boxes packed with $50 worth of meats. The school district allocated funds it received from the provincial government to be able to offer the subsidy.
Chelsea Keenan, co-owner of Yankee Flats Meets, said the program is available for any student and their family to take advantage of the subsidy.
"It doesn't really matter your income level, the price of groceries has gone up significantly," Keenan said. "Groceries are expensive for everybody."
In addition to the meat boxes, School District 83 has also partnered with Nature Delivered to offer subsidized vegetable boxes. Nature Delivered brings $40 worth of produce from its Shuswap Organics farm to students' families for $20.
Keenan said she is in talks with the Vernon School District about potentially offering the same program to Vernon families for the upcoming school year
"Should this program expand larger, we have the opportunity to buy from other farmers locally," Keenan said.
The boxes contain locally produced pork, chicken and beef, and Keenan says other sources of protein could be added in the future.
In total, the program is serving 26 schools, and the boxes are delivered to each school where they can be easily picked up.
Keenan said in addition to providing families with better food security, the program is a boon for local farmers, and as she says, "if there's no farmers, there's no food."
Heather Morris, manager of executive services for School District 83, said the school district decided to spearhead the meat and vegetable box programs because food affordability has become "a major concern in our community." Morris pointed to data from the 2022 Canadian Income Survey which suggests that 22.9 per cent of Canadians experienced some level of food insecurity in the past year.
The initiative also considered the burden farmers face, Morris said.
"On a local level, one of the challenges of food inflation is that the increased cost at the grocery store has not necessarily trickled down to the farmer, who is also having increased costs related to feed, fertilizer, fuel, packaging, and labour," she said. "The idea of the program was that we could increase the affordability of food in a way that re-invests the money in our community and builds the capacity of our local food system."
As of mid-June, the school district had about 850 meat boxes and 890 vegetable boxes purchased by families.
Morris said feedback on the program has included that it is still too expensive for some families. Others expressed difficulty paying for foods they were not sure they would like. However, most who participated appreciated the convenience, the opportunity to try eating seasonally, and the chance to support local farmers.
