I will not presume to have answers for the north, but from what I know, having talked to people who live in the north and do their research in the north, supportive initiatives are already happening on the ground. The Northern Farm Training Institute, for instance, has been delivering farm training to northern communities in a culturally sensitive way.
Thinking about moving farming, greenhouses, and gardens to the north is actually a very culturally sensitive issue for very significant historical reasons. Programs like the Northern Farm Training Institute and also programs that exist in northern communities that try to rebuild traditional access to country foods and to re-establish traditional diets are some of the critical points that are needed, in conjunction with the sorely needed reform of nutrition north.
With respect to your question about genetically modified foods, I'll reiterate that technologies are really, I think, a flawed approach to solving what are fundamentally social issues. We have social inequality and we're trying to resolve it through technology, and it's not going to work. If we want to realize that right to food, we need to think about social innovation, and we need to think about what the communities themselves see as a solution to their food access problems.
With regard specifically to GMOs, there is a scientific consensus right now that they're as safe to eat as any conventional food, but that does not eliminate the social and environmental consequences that are associated with genetically modified foods that are evidenced the world over.
I think the recent report, which you mentioned earlier, by Olivier De Schutter—the former UN special rapporteur on the right to food who led the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems—called “From Uniformity to Diversity”, is one of the most significant reports on food systems in the world right now. It really emphasizes that those new technologies that promote large-scale monoculture growth of basically three crops that form half of our world diet represent the most troublesome trend in food systems right now. It states that we need to look at diversifying, in terms of the types of practices that our food production entails, the scale, and the kinds of social organizations, including things like co-ops and thinking about the food industry as something that isn't just about business and corporate entities but also includes social enterprises and co-ops. It will be a really significant step if we want to take that seriously.
I hope that answers your question.