Local Food movement facing growing pains

Jeff Green | Dec 08, 2011

At the Eastern Ontario Local Food Conference group of farmers, local food processors, and local food promoters met at the Agricultural College in Kemptville last Thursday (December 1).

The theme of the conference, which was sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs (OMAFA) was “scaling up our regional food system”.

Among the participants and panellists in the main morning session of the event, were representatives from groups and businesses from all across the region who have been slowing building up the variety and availability of small scale locally grown food over a number of years.

The next step is to determine how to increase production and distribution of local food to meet an ever-increasing demand.

Business oriented concerns about he logistics of warehousing and bringing food to market were front and centre at the conference, which stands in marked contrasts to gatherings in the past, including a large food summit in Kingston that took place a few years ago. At that time, discussions about fod sovereignty and the health and economic risks that come from mono-cultural agribusinesses were the main concerns expressed by presenters and participants alike.

While all of these concerns have not gone away, this conference, sponsored as it was by OMAFRA, had more of a focus on the near and mid-term future of Eastern Ontario and how it is that local food will be able to get onto more and more tables, and how it is that more people will be able to make a living producing food for the Eastern Ontario market.

The keynote speaker at the conference was Tom Stearns, the owner of High Mowing ‘organic Seeds of Hardwick Vermont.

He talked about the prevalence of locally produced, organic food in his pat of Vermont and in the State of Vermont in general. Co-operative ventures by small sample agri-businesses have brought local food into the main stream in Vermont, and have brought the formerly dying town of Hardwick into a state of growth and prosperity.

Other features of the Vermont local food scene are a preponderance of cheese producers, and local brewers and wine producers. In stark contrast to Ontario, not only are raw milk and raw milk cheeses legal in Vermont, but farmers markets are able to sell locally produced beer and wine to take home or consume on the spot.

“It makes for a more lively farmer’s market,” Stearns said.

Other features that Stearns stressed are a spirit of co-operation between food producers and the resulting ability not only to raise large amounts of money through grants, but to raise private capital for business expansion.

After Stearns address, a a five member panel took on some of the issues related to bringing local food to exponential growth in Ontario over the next few years. Panelists included Trissa McAllister, who works for the County of Northumberland. She was involved in the promotion of farmers market and farm gate sales in Northumberland and Hastings Counties, and is now completing a Business Retention and Expansion Study of local food producers in those two counties as well as Lennox and Addington, Frontenac and Lanark Counties.

Tom Manley from Cornwall is the principle of Homesead Organics, a grain producer. He is currently working on a project called Organic Central in 200,000 square foot building in on Sault Ontario. The project will include a new home for Homestead Organics, perhaps an Eastern Ontario warehouse for the Ontario Natural Food Co-op, and will have space for a number of other companies that would like to share in resources such as office and communications support, research kitchens, and perhaps a cheese-making centre.

“What we need to do in Ontario is tighten the supply chain between producers and consumers, share the cost of infrastructure and make a real difference in the price and quality of food that is available to people,” he said.

When an audience member asked what kinds of changes in provincial policy needed not change to foster local food, Manly did not talk about raw milk or restrictions on egg producers. Instead, he said changes to securities regulations to encourage small scale investment was the key to bringing his business plan to fruition.

Moe Richardson works in the not-for profit sector in Ottawa, with a community based organisation called Just Food. Just Food, which started out as a local food advocacy group in the Sandy Hill district of Ottawa, is now engaged in building what an “Agricultural Hub” on a piece of proerpty inrural Ottawa. It shares some of the goals, as a not-for-profit venture, with Tom Manley’s Organic Central.

Harris Ivens from Kingston/Frontenac based National Farmer Union Local 316 Path to Grow Research project, and Carole Lavigne from Eastern Ontario Agri-Food network, which is working to bring local meat to Eastern Ontario grocery stores, rounded out the panel.

The thrust of the panel discussion was that regional and provincial barriers need to be bridged to bring the local food industry in Eastern Ontario to a new level of sales and employment.

The fact that the conference was supported by OMAFRA, and 4 banks and 2 farm credit organisation were listed as sponsors as well, is in itself a demonstration that the local food, a concept that was looked at as he domain of young idealists and aging hippies, is now a vital and growing business sector in the region.