The Rural Voice, 2003-11, Page 23and other diet -related diseases have
reached epidemic levels in developed
countries. Junk food is making us
sick. Those on low incomes are often
condemned to the worst diets, and
suffer the most from these diseases."
Many farmers would dispute the
easy assumptions evident in that
article of course but the problem is
those perceptions become reality for
many urban consumers. And
often there seems to be a
disconnection between what
consumers do in stores and
what they say to researchers.
North Carolina State
University conducted a study
called Food from Our
Changing World: The
Globalization of food and
How Americans Feel About
It. In a survey as background
for the study, 71 per cent of
consumers asked agreed they
would be willing to pay more
for food that was grown
locally where they lived
compared to from far away.
Of those surveyed, 70 per cent
said they trusted farmers
compared to only 20 per cent
for elected officials and 11 per cent
for business executives.
But which farmers? Of consumers
surveyed 82 per cent trusted the
United States Department . of
Agriculture but only 13 per cent for
foreign food agencies — food for
thought for Canadians dependent on
the U.S. market as compulsory
"country of origin" labeling
approaches.
Labeling is one of the approaches
that have been developing recently in
an attempt to put a face on the food
on the grocery shelves. A Drake
University in Iowa study called
Putting a Face on Our Food says:
"Five years ago, a person wpuld have
been hard pressed to find 'Iowa
grown' food on a menu or in a store.
But that is changing as the
proliferation of farmers' markets and
producers diversifying what they
raise and how they sell it changes the
Iowa food system. Menus featuring
Iowa -grown food and institutions
producing 'all Iowa' meals are other
important signs of this trend. Slowly,
but steadily, the food culture of Iowa
and other states is changing."
Aside from the organic farming
sector, most of the drive for this is
coming from consumers. A certain
segment of consumers is concerned
about the growing gap between
production of food and where it is
consumed. One of the articles in The
Guardian deals with the lengths to
which production of convenience
food literally goes in Britain:
" For £2.99 (about $4.50 Cdn) in
Neil Hamilton in the Drake
University study says there are
increasing efforts across the
continent to create direct marketing
channels to bring farmers and
consumers together focusing on what
the local food capacity is for new
markets and new foods and looking at
ways to use institutional purchases,
such as farm -to -school programs can
Fran and Tony McQuail (seen standing in their hoop
house in this file photo) regularly look their customers in
the eye.
Marks and Spencer, you could until
recently buy an elegantly small
plastic tray of baby vegetables, each
tiny bundle of asparagus shoots,
tender greens, miniature corn, dwarf
carrots, and premature leeks, tied
together with a single chive. The
chives were first flown out from
England to Kenya. The plastic trays
and packaging were flown out too.
There African women worked day
and night in refrigerated packing
sheds next to Nairobi airport, turning
the green stems into decorative
ribbons around topped and tailed
Kenyan produce. Then they were
cling -wrapped, and air -freighted back
to England again, a round trip of
8,500 miles."
In North America it has often
been estimated that the typical bite of
food travels 1,500 miles from where
it is grown to where it is eaten. As
the food chain lengthens, the ability
to get food at the peak of freshness
through the regular food chain
becomes more problematic. A certain
group of consumers is also concerned
about the environmental cost of
transporting food so far and the
social costs of loss of local farmers
because of competition from farmers
farther away. This has led to a
movement for local foods.
do.
One example of a U.S.
effort to build a local food
network is the Pennsylvania
Association for Sustainable
Agriculture (PASA), a
nonprofit organization set up to
improve the economic and
social prosperity of
Pennsylvania food and
agriculture. PASA works with
the farmers who grow the food,
the consumers who eat the
food, and those concerned with
the ecological well-being of
the environment and natural
resources.
Closer to home, Huron
County has been attempting to create
a local food program through the
Huron County Field to Table
Network, a coalition bringing
together the County of Huron
through its health unit and planning
and development departments, the
local OMAF office, the Huron
Business Development Corporation,
the Huron County Federation of
Agriculture and other food -oriented
groups.
n the past year the group has been
attempting to encourage further
processing of locally grown foods
and to reconnect consumers to the
local producers. Its efforts have
found most success in the Huron
Good Food Box program, which
provides boxes of quality fresh food
to county households at reasonable
rates once a month.
The health unit spearheaded
development of this program because
of food security concerns for seniors
and low-income families whose
grocery money might run out before
the month does. The Good Food Box
is not a charity program, however.
The cost of the products in the box is
covered by the price people pay up
front.
Field to Table is attempting to do
more with the Good Food Box
NOVEMBER 2003 19