Better food access starts with sharing your gardening and cooking skills with your neighbours and friends.

That’s one of the recommendations the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition made after weeks of consultation with members of the Whitehorse community on the topic of food accessibility.

On Friday, coalition representatives were at the Whitehorse Food Bank to share their findings.

They consulted more than 350 community members through 12 workshops and one online survey.

“We wanted to get out to the community and stimulate discussions around strength and challenges around accessing good food in communities across Whitehorse,” the coalition’s Kate Mechan told a press conference.

“We were really trying to capture the voices of people who are low-income and marginalized citizens of Whitehorse,” she said.

The coalition recommends putting people’s dignity and choices first when working on food security initiatives.

“Lots of people were talking about having an agency so they can make choices around good food,” said Jodi Crewe, who helped organized the consultation.

That also means learning new skills.

“People are really grateful for the food resources out there,” said Mechan.

“But people want to be interacting with these programs differently: they want more skills so they can be more independent so they don’t have to be using them all the time.”

That includes gardening and cooking – and helping other acquire those skills.

“That’s a very basic thing we can all contribute to in helping one another,” said Charlotte Hrenchuk, the coalition’s co-chair.

“Then it becomes more of a community problem and a community solution.”

Sharing, however, remains at the top of people’s list when it comes to accessing food.

“Sharing with friends and family was the most vital way people are participating in their own personal food system,” said Mechan.

“We can’t be underestimating the power of sharing food.”

Wild meat harvesting is also at the top of people’s list, she added.

The coalition’s approach ensures solutions that will benefit people are considered, Mechan said.

“We’re doing a disservice by not making sure the solutions are coming from the ground up, as opposed to constantly assuming from over top that we know what people need to get through food insecurity,” she said.

“That was one of the most amazing parts of the experience for me, listening to people’s innovative solutions.”

Community freezers, soil banks and access to gardening tools were among the requests put forward by people.

The recommendations will be shared at the next food network meeting, gathering both government and community members.

“The agricultural branch is very interested to learn what’s come out of this in light of their food strategy,” said Mechan.

In early August, the Yukon government’s agricultural branch released a draft local food strategy.

Officials told the Star at the time the strategy’s goal was to make locally-produced food more accessible, affordable and convenient.

It was also about how to better preserving harvested goods for a period of time, noting the territory is suffering from a “feast and famine” effect, with the abundance of produce at the end of the growing season starkly contrasting with the long winter and its total absence of local products.