Out of the Mouths of ...Consumers?

This article simply points out to me the lack of disconnect we have with our customers. They want to buy from Canadian farmers. Canadian farmers want to sell to these consumers. Somehow, the stuff is NOT making it to the right market.

The culprits are large retail food chains, government policy or the lack thereof and farmers who imagine their issues and their products will somehow (by osmosis perhaps?) be available or even recognized by the buying public. This disease is endemic in all sectors of agriculture.

Processing capacity disappears, consumers are being hoodwinked and farmers are unable to compete, as Canada spirals into the status of a nation that may not be able to feed herself!-cg

Produce tasty policy we can munch all winter
Mar 16, 2007 04:30 AM
Joe Fiorito

My interest in Canadian food policy begins with breakfast and continues throughout the day. As you also know from previous columns, we are on the verge, as a nation, of developing new food policy.

Oh, momentous occasion.

I went to one of the public consultations a while back. There were many farmers in attendance; also many food processors and crop marketers, and a surplus of farm bureaucrats. But there were no home cooks and no supermarket shoppers.

That's a shame because we are the end users of Canada's agricultural policy.
Oh, I am sure Ag Canada knows that most of us can't take time off work to go to policy development meetings, but if they took us seriously, they would be asking questions up and down the aisles of my local supermarket.

You get what you pay for, I suppose.

I got a ton of mail from two previous columns on this subject. To summarize: We want good Canadian food at a fair price and we want our farmers to make a decent living.

Allow me to pass along some of my own urban observations, and to draw some city-boy conclusions.

Our growing season is short, but a winter-long diet of cabbage is out of the question. We therefore need tender lettuce, ripe tomatoes and sunny fruit; this is our reward for living in darkness half the year; we will always import oranges and kiwi fruit.

But how do we lessen our dependence on foreign growers? And how do we keep our own farmers in business?

Most of us, if given a choice, would happily buy Canadian produce. Oh, turn that on its head: buying Canadian ought not to be a choice, it ought to be the default position.

Alas, the big supermarkets seem to prefer to sign long-term contracts with foreign suppliers, even for foods that keep, like potatoes and garlic and carrots.

Our farmers suffer as a result.

Because we live in a harsh climate, you and I suffer at the table in the winter because perishable foreign produce must be picked before it is ripe so that it can be shipped; food picked before it is ripe does not taste good.

What to do?

It ought to be easy for us to eat well and locally in the summer. We are a smart and nimble people with a network of roads and rail lines. We should have no trouble getting our best seasonal stuff into stores when it is at its freshest.

An aside: Why isn't the last car on the GO train packed with fresh fruit in the summer and the fall?

What about the winter?

The priciest frozen berries and vegetables in my supermarket this past weekend were from Mexico, Chile and China. Do we not know how to freeze food in the land of ice and snow?
A nice woman spoke up at my table during one round of the consultation.

She is a member of the Toronto Food Policy Council. She said, "I have plum tarts in my fridge from when plums were in season." Good for her.

But most working people I know don't have the time – and few have the expertise any more – to put up a dozen tarts and store them for the winter. And yet the woman is onto something.
Our food processors should lock up all the surplus summer plums – not to mention the peaches and the raspberries – and add value by producing exceptionally high quality, reasonably priced frozen tarts, providing us with sunny comfort during our long and ugly winter.

Another woman at my table – she grows asparagus – said, "There were growers throwing away their asparagus last year. We were sending stuff to Michigan for processing." I rest my case.

As for the winter table, if the Dutch can grow the best and sweetest tomatoes in the world in their greenhouses, why on earth can't we do the same here?

Incidentally, I listened to four hours of talk about food policy and I never once heard anyone talk about juiciness and crispness, nor did anyone wax poetical about the sheer pleasure of the taste of the good food grown here.

Make a policy out of pleasure.

And be industrially creative. I rely on a premium brand of pasta, Rustichella D'Abruzzo. Inexplicably, it sells for the same price here as it does in Italy. This is not just wrong, it's wasteful and foolish, and it may be good for my belly but it is bad for the environment.

A modest proposal:

We grow the best wheat in the world; the Italians import our grain by the ton and they sell it back to us as priest-stranglers. Why can't Rustichella D'Abruzzo be enticed to set up a pasta factory here? If Toyota can turn a profit making cars in Ontario ...

Speaking of which:

The corner store went out of fashion when the car gave birth to the supermarket. We need a more efficient network for the distribution of produce throughout the city. Let the big grocers think small. Let them resurrect the corner store.

These are my modest thoughts on food policy.

Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email:

jfiorito@thestar.ca