Clear those supermarket shelves-sustainable, local, and organic foods are the wave of the future.
That was the main message at The Real Dirt on Food, a day-long conference at Hart House organized by students from the Environmental Studies program. Students, activists, health-conscious consumers, and profs all gathered together to listen and exchange thoughts on the current state of consumer foods.
The day began with a keynote speech by Lori Stahlbrand and in the afternoon two lectures ran simultaneously every hour and a half, each featuring a speaker from a different organization or company involved in promoting healthy eating and living. A vegan lunch served in the Great Hall boasted flavourful organic and local food.
Vendors and student organizations had tables in the room-capitalizing on the increased traffic. Nora Saks and Maciej Jamrozik, two U of T students, talked up their new program, called Food for All Equally, which aims to bring organic and sustainable foodstuffs to campus.
The conference’s keynote was Lori Stahlbrand of Local Flavour Plus, which was hired by U of T last fall to supply some of campus’s Aramark-run cafeterias. “Go the distance so your food doesn’t have to,” LFP’s posters proclaimed.
Stahlbrand talked about the need to increase availability of locally grown and organic food at public institutions in Canada. She cited student-run initiatives at the University of Edinburgh and Portland State University, which have brought agriculture directly into the lives of students through organic food programs and community gardens. Currently, there are over 200 farm-to-campus programs in North America.
Dr. Rachel Schwartzman, a naturopathic doctor, talked about the benefits of flax seeds, garlic, and beans. U of T professor Dr. Leslie Jermyn, founder of Global Aware, an independent media outfit, gave a one-hour history of the globalization of food throughout the last 5,000 years. Her talk linked agriculture to things such as the steam engine, the industrial revolution, and urbanization.
Desite tremendous growth in organic produce sales in recent years, a U.S. $30-billion a year industry, only 1.5 per cent Canadian famers are certified organic, said Tanmayo Krupanszky of the Canadian Organic Grower’s Association.
The conference united several fields of study. Joanna Jack, a conference organizer, said the idea came to her group after having been assigned a project in a third-year environmental studies course.
“We wanted to make this accessible to as many students as possible, and create a community-oriented experience,” she said. “We wanted to bring people together, and this has been an amazing success.”
