Visiting the grocery store used to be so easy, but while perusing the produce section I encountered an unexpected dilemma. Two kinds of apples caught my eye; both begged to be eaten, but one was grown in Ontario, the other in New Zealand. I questioned whether this New Zealand apple should take a ride in my grocery cart. Could the locally-grown Ontario apple be the better choice?
The local eating movement has recently grabbed the media’s attention and public interest. Spurred by ‘locavores’ who prefer to eat food that is locally grown and harvested, the movement has entered mainstream culture with the help of people such as Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. Their book, The 100-Mile Diet, follows their year-long commitment to eat food only grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver home. Not surprisingly, it became a national bestseller. Local eating has a strong impact environmentally, economically, socially and, of course, on one’s personal health. Food grown and produced closer to home has traveled a shorter distance than imported food and thus, has used fewer fossil-fuels and non-renewable resources. Indeed, this informs the nutritional content of locally-grown food; the further your food travels to get to your plate, the more nutrients that are lost from the final product. Ontario-grown and produced food is not only better for your health, it’s also great for your palate. (It tastes fresher because it is fresher! )Locavores support the local food economy and in the process build food systems that are sustainable. This is the story Barbara Kingsolver tells in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, chronicling her family’s yearlong experience of only buying food grown and raised in their local region or by themselves.
Changing food habits may seem like a daunting, even scary thought for students who have enough to worry about with classes, assignments, and social lives. Besides, how could someone who’s dependent upon their college cafeteria change their eating habits even if they wanted to? Luckily, you’re probably eating locally to some extent and didn’t even realize it. The University of Toronto has done the work for you by partnering with Local Food Plus (LFP), a non-profit organization that links local Ontario farmers and processors with institutions. Since 2006, U of T has been working with LFP to incorporate local food produced through socially and environmentally sustainable ways into a number of cafeterias and residences at St. George campus.
If you’re hungry for more locally grown food, you need not go far. There are farmers’ markets in the GTA almost every day of the week. If you haven’t checked one out this summer, many markets stay open well into the fall season, some even into winter. Farmers’ markets feature fresh fruits and vegetables, and you’ll often find meat and dairy products as well. One of the greatest rewards of shopping at these markets is meeting those who grow your food, Ontario’s farmers. I was recently given such an opportunity with Ron VanHart, owner of VanHart’s All Organic family farm and frequent friendly face at the Bloor and Borden Street farmers’ market.
In a recent phone interview, VanHart made his case for shopping from Ontario farmers at local markets, saying supermarket chain stores are “buying cheap food from other countries and when you buy cheap food from other countries, you’re not supporting Ontario, you’re not supporting Canada.” Indeed, this is one of the reasons why so many family farms have stopped operating in Ontario. According to Statistics Canada, around 72,000 farms were operating in Ontario in 1986. As of 2006, there has been a loss of just over 15,000 farms in this province. For those farms that were able to stay in business, VanHart assured me it wasn’t easy. He aired his frustration saying, “We don’t get the big pay-cheque […] I had a career for thirty years to pay for everything that came on my farm and my wife still has a job,” adding, “Why isn’t there a standard of living for a farmer who competes in the local economy?”
VanHart and other Ontario farmers may one day have that standard of living, given the recent surge of media interest in eating locally. The public is hearing the farmers’ story and they’re responding, “because nobody’s heard this kind of honesty before and they never realized that it was as bad as it was,” says VanHart. As a witness to the dramatic changes the agriculture industry has undergone in the past thirty years, VanHart is finally seeing positive changes. “Attendance to all the farmers’ markets across Ontario have jumped leaps and bounds in the last couple years because finally, finally people […] don’t want to talk to the chain store [and] they don’t want to talk to a produce broker, they want to talk to the grower.” But people aren’t just coming for the conversation; they’re coming for the food. VanHart’s success is a testament to this fact.
VanHart realizes that many people don’t eat local because they simply haven’t been informed about the option. He aims to increase public awareness and knowledge about Ontario farming through film and television. The VanHart website will soon feature an extended commercial on his farm and family story. Ron’s father, John VanHart, was an innovator in Ontario organic farming and a pioneer of Holland Marsh, one of the best produce-growing areas in Canada. VanHart’s excitement for the commercial is quickly subdued as he points out he is not in this for the money. For him and his family’s farm, the commercial is a way “we can work on our audience and explain and educate.” This Ontario farmer is not a one-trick pony. “In terms of public relations we’re just in the beginning of the trail. Now that we’re getting an audience, we’re going to take it up another notch in the next couple years and we’re going to take our own innovations here [in film to grow] so that we can take agriculture to a new level that the public is just going to love […] and love to support.” By next year, he hopes to release a documentary on organic farming. These films are expected to offer a glimpse into the farming lifestyle VanHart believes is the “best for mind, body, and soul.” It is through endeavours like VanHart’s and other proponents of local eating that Ontario farmers are finally getting the attention and appreciation they deserve.
After talking to Mr. VanHart and learning that local eating is more than just a fad, I began grocery shopping with a different mindset. Now I shop with an understanding and awareness of how purchasing certain foods support Ontario’s farmers and the province’s economy. Buying groceries has become a way of protecting the environment and keeping my body healthy. Who knew local eating in Toronto offered so many rewards, and such delicious apples?
