Food and Farming Canada » consumers

Local food made easy

Lilian — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:00:42 +0000

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 [...]

The farm labour side of local food

Lilian — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:46:30 +0000

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 [...]

Where potato chips are grown

Lilian — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:55:50 +0000

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 [...]

Getting local food into our public institutions

Lilian — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:54:33 +0000

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 [...]

New cluster promotes Ontario food and farming

Lilian — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:53:51 +0000

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 [...]

People could use a little reconnecting to the farm

Lilian — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:57:37 +0000

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 [...]

Wait for local Ontario asparagus is over!

Lilian — Tue, 24 May 2011 12:55:24 +0000

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, [...]

A difference in 10 minutes a day

Lilian — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:50:33 +0000

Farmers – are you frustrated by people who don’t understand what you do on your farm? Do you wish more consumers knew how food was produced or more politicians had a sense of the realities of farming? Many of us in agriculture have had these sentiments at some time and often feel helpless to do anything [...]

The whys and hows of building trust in our food

Lilian — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:59:20 +0000

Few relationships are more personal than the one we have with our food. We trust that what we eat will sustain us, nourish us and help keep us healthy.

In Canada, public trust in our food supply is high, a fact that’s been proven repeatedly in studies carried out by Ipsos Reid for AGCare and the Ontario [...]

Food, farming and condoms

Lilian — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:53:50 +0000

You’re probably wondering what the connection could possibly be between condoms, food and farming.

At first glance, absolutely none – but the humour and the challenge in this little situation made it a bit too bizarre not to write about.

As a blogger and freelance journalist, I receive pitches all the time from PR folks and [...]