How Do We Feed Ourselves? Updated Edition Now Available

In March 2026, Food Producers Forum brought fourteen people from across Newfoundland and Labrador’s food system together at the MUN Botanical Garden. Farmers, fish harvesters, processors, researchers, policy people and community advocates spent an afternoon on one question: how do we feed ourselves?

The report from that afternoon covers what they told us: the barriers to growing and selling food here, the gaps in storage, processing and distribution, what the public does and doesn’t know about local food, and the policy changes participants want to see.

When the first edition came out this spring, we talked about it on CBC and VOCM. The province’s Department of Forestry, Agriculture and Lands heard us and reached out, and on April 22 we sat down with senior officials from its Agriculture and Food Security Branch. It was a generous, collaborative conversation, and it corrected some gaps in what we and others understood about provincial programs.

This updated edition includes a postscript on that meeting: what we learned, and where it’s leading.

Download the report (PDF)

The Think Tank and this report were paid for entirely out of FPF’s own operating budget, not by any project grant. Bringing people together, recording what they say, and putting it in front of decision-makers is core work, and it’s the kind that rarely gets funded on its own.

If you’d like to see more of it, please consider supporting our crowdfunding campaign: http://gofund.me/b13acbe95