Northern Harvest:
Seeding Sustainable Futures Through Food and Collaboration
Honouring the Harvest,
Celebrating the Success.
The Public Health Association and Food Banks BC were honoured to have hosted our Northern Food Summit on the Traditional Territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nations. We want to acknowledge the 9000+ years of the Lheidli T’enneh Nation’s stewardship of these unceded ancestral lands, which are hosting us as we share and celebrate together while collectively working towards food security and food sovereignty in northern BC https://www.lheidli.ca.
The 2025 Northern Harvest Food Summit, Seeding Sustainable Futures Through Food and Collaboration, was held October 20–22 in Prince George, on the Traditional Territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation. Hosted at the Courtyard Marriott, the summit brought together 101 participants from 60 organizations across Northern British Columbia, including educators, farmers, Indigenous leaders, youth, and food system advocates.
Over three inspiring days, participants engaged in five keynote sessions, workshops, a youth panel, poster presentations, site visits, and a gala celebration—each designed to spark new ideas and strengthen regional collaboration. The event offered a moment to “feast on the harvest” of community-led initiatives supported through the Ideas Lab, Rapid Stimulus Grants, Large Scale Grants, and Rise Up! programs.
Together, attendees celebrated tangible progress across the North—from thriving community gardens and greenhouses to local food businesses, livestock processing, and dynamic youth leadership. This gathering not only reflected how far we’ve come but also the seeds of what continues to grow: a resilient, interconnected, and community-driven food system for Northern BC.
Thank you to all community partners, presenters, and organizers who made the Northern Harvest Food Summit a resounding success!
“This summit is a harvest of the work, the hard work, the ingenuity, the courage and the sheer bloody-mindedness of people in northern BC. This [food summit] is a testament to the power of the human spirit to tend the earth gently, to look after our neighbours. There is something about this land, this Northern BC, that seeps into your blood. This land is seeded with courage and resilience.”
– Dr. Theresa Healy, Public Health Association of BC’s Past President.
Northern Harvest Report
Executive Summary:
The 2025 Northern Harvest Food Summit, “Seeding Sustainable Futures Through Food and Collaboration,” was held on October 20th to 22nd at the Courtyard Marriott, in the Traditional Territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation – Prince George, BC.
The summit brought together 101 participants representing 60 organizations from across British Columbia, including the Northeast, North Central, and Northwest regions. Attendees included educators, farmers, Indigenous leaders, youth, food access practitioners, and food systems partners, to celebrate innovation, collaboration, and the shared outcomes of all food transformation community-led initiatives showcased at the summit.
The conference featured five keynotes, three workshops, two networking events, and one Rise Up! Youth panel, twenty poster presentations, two collaborative sessions, two site visits, and one dinner celebration and gala. Participants highlighted the breadth of learning, the high quality of workshops and presentations, and the inspiring chances to connect, exchange ideas, and build future collaborations.
The summit offered a moment to feast on the collective harvest of shared efforts—from seed to germination, rooting to growth—and to savour the fruits of that labour. It marked not only what had been collectively harvested, but also what continues to take root: a living, evolving transformation of food systems, grounded in the shared visions that communities bring to life.
Northern Harvest
was designed to:
Bring together diverse northern BC food system actors.
Build skills, relationships, and capacity.
Showcase the PHABC and FBBC-funded community-led initiatives.
Generate shared insights, lessons, and recommendations.
Attendance Statistics
| Geographic | Professional | |
|---|---|---|
| Burns Lake Coquitlam Fort Fraser Fort St. John Fraser Lake Ft. St. James Haida Gwaii Hazelton Hudson’s Hope Kispiox Smithers Nanaimo North Vancouver | Pouce Coupe Prince George Prince Rupert Quesnel Rose Prairie Sik-E-Dakh Squamish Surrey Telkwa Terrace Vancouver Vanderhoof Victoria | Consultants Educators Farmers Food access practitioners Indigenous leaders Indigenous community members NGOs Policy Makers Youth leaders |
Northern Harvest Program
Think Piece:
Understanding Community Food Security
Community food security occurs when “all community residents obtain a safe, personally acceptable, nutritious diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes healthy choices, community self-reliance and equal access for
everyone”. *
Community food security investigates the underlying social, ecological, and institutional factors that influence the quantity, quality and affordability of available food. Food systems encompass all the activities, outcomes, and underlying drivers that shape food consumption and nutrition, food production and markets, as well as the broader institutional food environment.
Using a systems lens in community food security shifts attention from individual, isolated components, to the relationships and wholes that make up the system. With this approach, we can see the interconnectedness and interactions among system elements, enabling us to see the complex underlying social and ecological contexts. Food systems transformation involves reimagining and reshaping mainstream food systems to ensure they are just, equitable, sustainable, and resilient.
There are multiple entry points to accelerate this transformation; informed by the latest research on food systems transformation and emerging evidence on food access organizations as change agents. The teams at FBBC and PHABC are undertaking several projects to support community food security and enable food systems transformation at various stages.
*Hamm, M. and Bellows, A. (2003). Community Food Security and Nutrition Educators. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, Volume 35, Issue 1, Pages 37-43
Featured Faces:
Meet Our Key Notes Speakers
We were honoured to welcome a lineup of inspiring keynote speakers whose stories and experiences grounded the food summit.
Posters
A project poster presentation was featured as part of the Summit, providing an opportunity to showcase 48 initiatives from the Rapid Stimulus, Ideas Lab, and Large-Scale grant streams.
All posters are downloadable in print format. Original posters were designed at 3ft by 4ft; as such, we advise you to print at a similar ratio to ensure text and images are as accessible as possible.
Key Outcomes
Strengthened Collaboration and Network Building
Elevated Indigenous Leadership and Commitment to Equity
Increased Community Capacity and Resilience
Youth Engagement and Leadership Development
Concrete Project Investments and Innovation
Participant Quotes
“It was perfect, and so inspiring to get an opportunity to meet people in food systems from across the province.”
“This was my first ever work conference and I was deeply inspired! Thank you so much for this opportunity.”
“Very well done. Very professional conference.”
“I would love to see a regional meeting annually or every two years.”
Funder Acknowledgement
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the many partners, funders, and supporters of the Community Food Systems Development (CFSD) program and Northern Harvest Food Summit, including:
- College of New Caledonia
- Government of British Columbia
- The Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction
- Lheidli T’enneh First Nation
- Tourism Prince George
- West Coast Seeds
- Food access organizations, Indigenous communities, researchers, multi-sector stakeholders, and regional partners across Northern BC
- Grantees and project teams engaged in the Rapid Stimulus Grant, the Ideas Lab, and the Large-Scale innovation partnerships