1.6. Local food valuation

1.6. Replacement valuation of local food: approach and Nunavut example

​In a recently published article (Warltier et al. 2021), we developed a novel local food valuation approach that combines information on the amount and nutritional composition of local country food with the nutritional content and local price of store-bought food. This approach represents a replacement valuation, which reflects DeLury et al.’s (1975 page 238) recognition that food is a fundamental need that must be replaced and cannot be exchanged: “[Exchange] values may have some relevance to a commercial fishery but not to a subsistence fishery. If fish keep an individual from starvation or even hunger then the fish assume a unit of value not found in any monetary system. To obtain a meaningful value for the fish, the costs of substitutes might be applied.” Our approach also improves upon previous replacement valuations focused only on food weight by assessing the local, store-bought food cost of nutrient replacement, which also serves to situate country food value in a broader economic and nutritional context. Prior to presenting the results of this valuation approach applied to local food systems in Nunavut (Warltier et al. 2021) and Nunavik, we first discuss some pros and cons of this kind of valuation; why a replacement cost analysis might help to communicate value but, at the same time, devalue and misrepresent the value of a local food system that is, in many ways, priceless.

Why estimating the replacement value of local food could be a good idea. Although local food has long been recognized and communicated by Indigenous communities as a local sustainability and food security solution, it has been marginalized and, in some cases, compromised by economic, food policy, and climate change adaptation initiatives often envisioned and sometimes implemented from outside the region. Marginalization of local food systems may reflect broader and more complex dynamics rooted in legacies of colonialism, dispossession, a Eurocentric worldview, and modern power asymmetries. In this context, the failure to quantify and communicate the value of local food systems may both arise from and contribute to their marginalization; a positive feedback loop that causes the system to be undervalued and underappreciated except by those directly involved in the system. The following seems, to us, a reasonable hypothesis and expectation. If the lack of reproducible quantification and economic valuation of local country food has contributed to its discounting and marginalization in northern economic development, food security, and climate adaptation policy, and we can provide a reasonable valuation that communicates the magnitude and scope of its contributions, then future discussions and decisions related to economic development, food security, and climate change will be better able to situate the value of local food in descriptions of collective wealth and well-being, quantify trade-offs, and contemplate compensation when one economy is compromised for another.

However, there are also many reasons why estimating the replacement value of local food is likely a bad idea. Cross-system valuations are always contested and controversial. For example, ecosystem services approaches (especially payments for ecosystem services) are frequently criticized as a commodification of nature through which dominant political and economic views are allowed to define how we conceive of, communicate, and compensate for the value of biodiversity and nature. Kosoy and Corbera (2010) refer to this problem as commodity fetishism, arguing that monetary valuation of any biocultural system obliterates the social, cultural, and ecological qualities embedded in these systems, thereby failing to account for value in a broader sense. But despite their anthropocentric framing, an ecosystem services approach and natural capital accounting are also promoted as an argument for protection of nature, as means to support conservation and sustainable use, and as boundary concepts capable of connecting and distinguishing diverse perspectives and values. Communicating value and status across society-nature pluralities is always difficult because they are segregated in contemporary governance, policy, and assessment. In the particular case of local food system valuation, communicating their monetary value requires identifying something within them that can be replaced and equating that replacement to a monetized commodity. Yet his replacement, equivalency, and commodification is inevitably imperfect and incomplete. For example, the replacement valuation we describe here considers only energy and protein replacement and thus excludes consideration of all the additional macronutrients and micronutrients acquired through or associated with local food. Even more importantly, our focus on energy and protein replacement ignores all the values of country food beyond nutrition, including sharing, knowledge, culture, well-being, and identity. The non-nutritional benefits of country foods have been estimated to represent several multiples of their nutritional value (O’Garra, 2017), but are difficult to quantify, precisely because of their lack of substitutability and their irreplaceability. Fundamentally, you cannot replace something that is irreplaceable and you cannot put a dollar value on something that is priceless. Any one analysis can only scratch the surface of communicating the nature and value of local food systems (CCA, 2014).

In Warltier et al. (2021), we estimated the replacement value of local food harvested in Nunavut by combining information on the amount and nutritional composition of harvested wildlife with the nutritional content and local price of store-bought food. The amount of local food harvested across all Nunavut communities from 1996-2001 was obtained from Priest and Usher (2004) and combined with information on edible yield and protein and energy composition, as well as the price and composition of store-bought food (in the form of weekly Revised Northern Food Baskets; RNFB). Reported incomes and recommended dietary allowances were also used to compare the amount and value of local food harvest to wage economies and nutritional needs. Comparing the energy and protein available in reported harvest to nutritional needs indicates that Nunavut communities harvest enough country food to satisfy 100% of the total protein requirements and 44% of the total energy requirements of Nunavummiut. Food affordability is a globally recognized barrier to food security, with food costs that exceed 80% of income indicative of severe food poverty. Averaged across all Nunavut communities, purchase of store-bought food for a family of four for one year (including Nutrition North subsidization; 52 RNFB = $22,489) requires 81% of a single median income (Nunavut community average = $27,890). This index increases to 94% if the regional and territorial capitals of Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, and Cambridge Bay are excluded from calculations. Although store-bought food affordability is low in many smaller, more remote, and/or more traditional Nunavut communities, these communities tend to be characterized by higher than average country food wealth. A serving of typical Nunavut country food has a protein replacement value of $30.17 per kg, which increases to $41.16 per kg if Nutrition North’s subsidization of store-bought food is accounted for. Multiplying $41.16 per kg by the 5 million kg/year country food harvested across the territory, indicates Nunavut’s local food system annually harvests protein that would cost more than $200 million/year to purchase in grocery stores. This local food replacement value is 50 times more than the $3.5 million annual valuation applied to the hunting, fishing, and trapping sector by the Nunavut Bureau of Statistics.

In section 2.3, we adopt the same valuation approach described here to obtain a preliminary replacement valuation of local food in Nunavik.