Schedule of films + speakers

Join us for six days full of festival goodness April 17-22, 2012. All screenings will take place at Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Simon Fraser University, located at 149 West Hastings Street in Vancouver.

WednesdayApril 187:00pm

In Organic We Trust

82 Mins/ 2012/ USA

We can no longer stomach our food system. It’s killing more and more Americans and costing billions in healthcare. 73% of Americans eat organic food, because they think it’s healthier. But is organic really better for us or just a marketing scam? When corporations went into the business and “organic” became a brand, everything changed. The philosophy and the label grew apart. Can gummy bears or bananas flown halfway across the world truly be organic? This film looks beyond organic for practical solutions for me and you. Local farmer’s markets, school gardens, and urbanfarms are revolutionizing the way we eat.

WEBSITE: www.inorganicwetrust.org

Screening at Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Simon Fraser University, 149 West Hastings St. in Vancouver map.

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Film sponsored by:

Speaker Panel

Tara McDonald, Executive Director, Vancouver Farmers Markets
Tara has worked in the field of community food system and social enterprise development for 15 years in communities across North America. As E.D. of the Vancouver Farmers Markets (VFM) since 2005, Tara has overseen the strategic growth of the organization to effectively meet Vancouver's increasing demand for fresh, locally-produced foods. Now among the largest farmers market networks in the Pacific Northwest, the Vancouver Farmers Markets has grown its operations to 6 weekly neighbourhood market locations, including a weekly Winter Farmers Market. Year-round, 250 000 Vancouverites have direct access to 200 local growers, food processors and artisan crafters, resulting in a tripling of vendor revenues - from $1.4 million in 2004 to over $5.4 million in 2011.

VFM is also recognized as a leader in developing progressive municipal and provincial policy to support a more resilient local food system. Currently the organization is a leading partner in plans to develop a local food hub designed to further increase Vancouver's direct access to local food & its producers, called the New City Market. With construction anticipated to start in 2014, the New City Market will provide a public service for the city featuring a year-round farmers market, supply aggregation & distribution support and commercial micro-processing kitchen. (www.newcitymarket.org)

Tara helped found the GetLocal Business Alliance and annual Meet Your Maker event, and has been a member of various boards and councils including the Vancouver Food Policy Council, Local Food First steering committee and the BC Association of Farmers Markets. Tara lives in East Vancouver with her husband and 9 year-old daughter, who grows herbs, tomatoes, flowers and 3 kinds of strawberries.

Peter Ladner worked for the Vancouver Sun as a journalist for parts of two summers while attending UBC. He later worked at newspapers on Vancouver Island and was editor of the Victoria alternative weekly Monday Magazine from 1981 to 1986. He has written for The Globe and Mail, Canadian Business and Saturday Night.

Peter Ladner co-founded the weekly newspaper Business in Vancouver in 1989 and continues as a Business in Vancouver weekly columnist. With a weekly readership of 60 000, Business in Vancouver is branded as Vancouver's leading source of business news, targeted at senior decision-makers. It is responsible for several prominent recognition events including the Top 40 Under 40 awards and the Influential Women in Business awards. Business in Vancouver Media Group also publishes Green Space magazine, which focuses exclusively on sustainability business opportunities, initiatives and challenges. Ladner is vice-chair of The Natural Step Canada board and the Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation board. He previously served on the boards of the Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society, Leadership Vancouver, the International Centre for Sustainable Cities, the University of British Columbia Alumni Association, New Media BC, the International Association of Area Business Publications, and the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs. He participated in the Vancouver City Planning Commission, the capital campaign committee for Vancouver Public Library and the Central Valley Greenway. Ladner is a long-time environmentalist, healthy living enthusiast, and advocate of the smart city concept of using technology to make government more efficient and effective. He blogs about the urban food revolution at urbanfoodrevolution.com and on issues of sustainability and civic governance in Vancouver and elsewhere on his website.

Seann J Dory is the Co-Director of SOLEfood Farm. Before starting SOLEfood Farm, Seann was the Manager of Sustainability at United We Can a Vancouver charity creating employment opportunities for inner city residents through environmental enterprises. Seann is a founding member of the Young Agrarians – an initiative to recruit, promote, and support young farmers in Canada. Seann is a graduate of the Sustainable Community Development program at Simon Fraser University and a member of the National Farmers Union.

SOLEfood is a non-profit, social enterprise that provides urban agriculture employment and training opportunities for Vancouver’s most vulnerable inner-city residents. In it’s first year the project has become one of the most successful and innovative models of urban agriculture in North America. Working alongside farmer/author Michael Ableman, downtown east-side residents are trained and employed to install and manage small production farms on leased urban lots. The farm provides a place to learn new skills and an opportunity for self-growth. Produce grown from the farms is washed, cooled, and consolidated at a central location, then sold to restaurants, at farmers markets and distributed to community organizations. SOLEfood is working to expand to multiple sites creating a network of farms that will help revitalize neighborhoods, provide meaningful employment to individuals with multiple challenges, supply fresh food to inner city residents, and present a successful self-supporting model of high quality innovative agriculture within the urban context.

Preet Marwaha, through his passion for food, health and saving the planet started OrganicLives as a means to facilitate change. A change that is required in the way that we connect with our food and the systems that produce our food, to enable an understanding of the impact these choices have on our health, that of the planet and all of its inhabitants. OrganicLives is the real life representation of ethical sustainable commerce that enriches lives from grower to consumer.

Preet’s personal journey of health began 21 years ago when he was battling an illness that nearly brought his life to an end. After one and a half years of what became routine emergency hospital visits and heavy doses of drugs, he checked himself in and refused to leave until a solution was found. Ten days of testing for what seemed like every disease known to the medical system led to their conclusion that there was something wrong with his brain (what they were really saying is that this was all in his head) and a series of CAT Scans were done. After finding nothing, it was suggested that he should be sent to a gastroenterologist, who after several hours of testing stated that the only course of action was to remove his intestines and provide him with a colostomy bag. This is where it all stopped and his refusal to have this surgery was met with criticism and a certain path to death. Preet, through a dear friend and reading John Robbin’s Diet For A New America, made a complete change in the the way he was going to eat, think and live for the rest of his life. Thirteen months later, his life was coming back to normal and the power of food had been fully engrained in his psyche and a whole new path and passion had begun.

Today, Preet is busy promoting and supporting these values through organic sustainable agriculture projects locally in BC and developing nations around the globe. Preet is a board member for RawBC, a board member for IOM and involved with numerous community & municipal projects. Preet is also involved globally on projects including the World Wellness Project, Safe Planet Campaign and the United Nations, where he has just recently returned from Thailand speaking to the UN about the impact agriculture is having on the ozone layer and will be a keynote speaker for their upcoming Organic Agriculture conference in India. Preet teaches Holistic Food Preparation and Nutrition And the Environment at The Institute of Holistic Nutrition Vancouver Campus.