Food Policy Encounters of a Third Kind : How the Toronto Food Policy Council Socializes for Sustain-Ability

This chapter examines and promotes a sustainability-driving food system innovation that changes people. It empowers them, helps them work with new problem-solving skills, and thereby transforms the everyday functioning of governments all to the benefit of sustainability in the food system. Many governments have an agriculture policy or a rural policy or a nutrition policy or a food safety policy or even a health promotion policy, and sometimes even appoint an official responsible for putting such half-baked policies into practice. The food policy councils work of supporting community food security and sustain-ability begins with the selection of food council members. The Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC) model of personal membership recruitment on the basis of individual talent contributes to sustain-ability by highlighting the centrality of the public interest, not just market interests, as drivers of sustainability measures.