Page 35 - RealDirtENG2020

Erika DeBrouwer
Loving local
Buying and eating local food is very popular in Canada. The de nition of “local” varies, however, and can refer to a region, province, or even the entire country.
The local food movement has resulted in more farmers’ markets, local food stores, and food hubs in all parts of Canada, and “buy local” campaigns encourage Canadians to support farmers and food producers in their areas by eating the fruits, vegetables, meat, cheese and yogurt, jams, honeys, or other goods that they’ve produced.
Not only does that support jobs and businesses in local communities, it can also reduce food’s environmental footprint if a product comes from a farm 20 minutes away, as compared to being shipped thousands of kilometres.
Food imports and exports
Career Pro le
Chef
Ilona Daniel
As a child of Hungarian and Armenian immigrants, meal time has always been important to Ilona Daniel. She can’t pinpoint exactly what inspired her love of food, but fondly remembers “sitting on the counter while my mother cooked a meal that was always
too big for our family, and absorbing everything I
was seeing.” She added, “It was almost as if I was learning to cook through osmosis.”
Daniel moved to Prince Edward Island twelve years ago to attend the Culinary Institute of Canada on a full scholarship. Now, an instructor there, her experience has come full circle. In addition to teaching, she
runs a culinary consulting business and contributes regularly to print and television media.
Her love of PEI has only grown stronger over the years, and she attributes some of that to the more intimate connection that islanders have with their food. “Everywhere you look there is a constant reminder of how food is produced,” she said, “people who grow and produce our food are deeply passionate, and their expertise spans their lifetime. Connecting with them helps us understand just how important our role is as consumers.”
Every crop is ready for harvest and eating at a different time of the year. In Canada, asparagus is one of the earliest-harvested vegetable crops in the spring, and peaches are a popular summer favourite.
You might not notice the seasonality of these crops though because today, we can buy imported strawberries, asparagus, or sweet corn at the grocery store all year long.
And there are other foods we love that we can’t grow here at all, like coffee, pineapples, cocoa, and avocadoes, so we import them from countries that are able to grow them.
We also produce much more of certain types of foods than we could possibly eat here at home—like pork, beef, lentils, peas, chickpeas, canola, soybeans, or wheat—so we export to other countries where they’re an important part of people’s diets.
Canola Council of Canada
Canola seed
Chapter 5: Food security, eating local 35 and the cost of food