|  New food service marketing program expands markets for Ontario foods
If you build it, they will come. That’s the thinking behind a new marketing program being used by Gordon Food Service (GFS), Ontario’s largest family-owned food service distributor – expanding and promoting their offering of Ontario food products by making it easy for their customers to identify and buy local food. Earlier this year, the company was the recipient of a grant from the Broader Public Sector Investment Fund, a partnership between the Greenbelt Fund and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) that aims to increase the amount of Ontario foods purchased through municipal, school, university and hospital food service settings. Continue reading Local food made easy  Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak announced this spring that, if elected, he’d make convicted provincial prisoners work to clean up Ontario’s highways.
According to a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a variation on this theme was recently launched in Georgia, where teams of probationers are working on fruit and vegetable farms. Many farm workers there don’t have legal status and with a new law cracking down on illegal labour, many no longer come to the state looking for employment as they used to. Continue reading The farm labour side of local food  Mmm, there’s nothing quite like cracking open a bag of fresh, crunchy potato chips.
I confess to consuming more than my fair share of the salty snacks over the years and love seeing what new flavours will be coming out next. But one thing I’ve certainly never really thought too much about was how the contents of that crinkly bag get there in the first place. I mean, I know chips come from potatoes and that there are farmers who specialize in growing potatoes – but that was pretty much the extent of my potato knowledge. Well, as it turns out, there’s nothing easy about growing a perfect potato chip potato. And after spending a couple of hours with Ontario farmer Jack Murphy on his Alliston-area potato farm recently, I have a whole new perspective on the contents of that chip bag – and on the work that farmers put into growing those potatoes just right. Continue reading Where potato chips are grown  The Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation and the Greenbelt Fund are spearheading the grants and two other initiatives in an effort to connect Ontario’s farmers with public institutions like daycares, schools, hospitals, universities and long term care facilities.
Ontariofresh.ca, a new business to business website is being launched this fall to link buyers and sellers of Ontario food. The 2011 Ontario’s Local Food Champions report is currently available and nominations are now open for the next round of Champions. Continue reading Getting local food into our public institutions  Southwestern Ontario’s burgeoning agri-food sector received a boost earlier this month with the launch of the Ontario Food Cluster.
My alma mater, University of Guelph, along with the City of Guelph and others are partners in this new initiative designed to attract more foreign investment and creating more businesses in our agri-food sector. In addition to being home to some of Ontario’s best farm land and farmers that produce a multitude of field crops like corn, wheat and soybeans, as well as over 100 different fruits and vegetables – not to mention a wide array of meat, dairy and poultry – the Greater Toronto Area, Guelph-Wellington and Waterloo Region together boast more than 2,500 food and beverage companies. Continue reading New cluster promotes Ontario food and farming  The case of watermelons spontaneously exploding in Chinese fields made headlines recently. This coming weekend marks the annual Rural Romp in Wellington County – a county-wide food and farming open house of sorts. These two events are worlds apart, yet to me, they’re both part of the complex network our global food system has become.
Most Canadian farmers feel that agriculture is misunderstood and that the general public doesn’t “get” what they do. And they’re often a little amazed at how much people don’t know, especially about things that those of us in the food and farming world take for granted. How could they not know that oranges don’t grow in Canada, why we spray to control weeds and pests, and that there’s a season for sweet corn and peaches? My response to that is often the opposite – how could they possibly know when there’s little chance to learn? Continue reading People could use a little reconnecting to the farm  It’s become almost like an unofficial kick off to summer, sort of like our Victoria Day long weekend – an early anticipated milestone that marks the start of warm, sunny days. For me, that’s asparagus season.
Asparagus is one of the first crops of the new growing year that hits the market for consumption. Here in Ontario, that’s usually sometime in May. This year, I managed to score my first couple of bunches early last week – the store that had them sold out pretty quickly as demand was high and supply still rather limited as the crop was only just starting to be ready for market. Continue reading Wait for local Ontario asparagus is over! | |
