Eating local
Published Saturday November 28th, 2009
When you eat, do you ever wonder where that food comes from? If you want to eat local foods now, there is a way to find them.
The Conservation Council of New Brunswick has established a website that will allow you to find local food. Leah Anstis is the conservation council's local foods campaign co-ordinator. Some stores you shop in may indicate that their produce is grown close to home. But Anstis says in many cases what this really means is that those foods can be brought into the store within 24 hours. Local foods, in her opinion, are grown within 100 miles of your home, or even closer.
"Gagetown and Maugerville is where I get a lot of my produce."
It is possible to access locally grown foods year-round, she says. Eating this way means eating according to the season; green, leafy vegetables in the summer and root vegetables in the winter months.
Anstis started to concentrate on accessing locally grown foods for her family when she began the local foods campaign for the conservation council.
This summer she grew a garden at home. Her family ate the vegetables that grew in it and she shared its bounty with friends and co-workers. They, in turn, shared the produce from their gardens with her.
Every Saturday morning you will find Anstis at the Boyce Farmers' Market where she buys local foods. Then she goes in search of what else she needs from food producers who are located throughout the St. John River Valley.
She buys in bulk, makes large batches of food and freezes it for later use. In her freezer now she has fruits and vegetables that were harvested in the summer and early fall. It will last for the next several months. The knowledge of how to preserve foods through canning and freezing is a lost art that Anstis says people need to learn so they can eat food grown here year-round.
Eating this way requires thought and planning. She's had to adapt her menus to take advantage of the seasonal offerings. This new approach to eating has made Anstis more excited about cooking for her family because she knows where the food comes from and, she says, it is more flavourful than imported foods.
"Fun and delicious would sum up my journey since April. Food, for me, is about celebrating with my family, friends and colleagues. I think it's a really good way to build relationships and community."
Before she started to eat a local diet she gave little thought to where the food she bought and ate came from. Now that she is paying closer attention to what's on her plate and where it is grown, she is eager to know the people who grow the food she eats.
Food, she says, is a basic need that isn't being addressed in the government's self-sufficiency plan.
"We need food to live. A lot of times you will find that the system is so flawed that the farmers who do stay in business have to export their food in order to get a fair price. A lot of times you see the apple trucks from California and our apple trucks passing each other on the highway. They're shipping their apples to us and we are shipping our apples to them. That doesn't make any sense."
New Brunswick, she says, should be able to grow enough food to feed everyone who lives here but the number of farmers in this province is shrinking because they simply cannot compete in a market where food is imported from other provinces and countries.
"They can't even produce the food for the amount that it retails for at an average grocery store. That is the sign of a very flawed food system. We are not investing in our local food system."
This province relies heavily on imported foods and Anstis wonders what might happen should there be a disruption in the food supply for more than three to seven days.
As part of her research for this local foods website, Anstis compiled a list of what is grown and where. Then she looked for recipes that would lend themselves to the foods that are available.
The conservation council supports the local food movement because, it says, this is one of the best things we can do for our environment and our economy.
The more local food people can access, the less greenhouse gas emissions would be generated because fewer transport trucks are needed to bring food in from other provinces and countries.
Food produced and purchased in New Brunswick also stimulates the local economy. When we buy from our local food producers we are investing in our own community, Anstis notes. It also contributes to better food security.
"In other parts of the world they don't have the same kind of agricultural standards that we do."
Debbie Russell and David Cozac have eaten locally since the 1980s. When they opened True Food Organics they made a commitment to helping local food producers remain in business.
"I have seen farmers go out of business. There's just not enough money in it for them. All of the farmers that I know have a second job," says Russell.
They have noticed a growing demand for local foods. Cozac and Russell believe people want to reduce their carbon footprint and, as such, are making an effort to eat foods that do not have to be trucked long distances before it gets to their tables.
This is a more natural diet that includes more whole foods rather than processed and packaged ones. Eating this way requires some effort. Cozac and Russell's home is solar-powered so they don't have a freezer. They have a root cellar where they keep winter vegetables such as carrots, rutabagas, beets and potatoes. They will make fruit preserves and pickles in the summer to last through the winter months. Russell says she doesn't find it difficult or time consuming to eat this way.
"In the winter we eat more root vegetables and we eat more beans and lentils. We eat apples almost all year. Most of the things we eat (year-round) is fresh."
Cozac believes it will take a major food shortage before people start to consider where their food comes from.
"If there was ever something that prevented shipping or caused a food shortage there would really be panic because people who don't grow food wouldn't have a ready supply."
Russell has always been in the habit of having more than enough food in storage to see them through the weeks and months ahead.
Even before they grew vegetables, she was in the habit of buying produce in bulk.
It is a great source of comfort, she says, to know that the larder is full. Cozac, she says, calls her a squirrel because of her ability to store foods away for the winter.
"I really don't think a good (local) diet is that difficult but it is not as easy as pushing a cart around a grocery store."
For more information on how you can access locally grown foods, go to www.buylocalnb.ca
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