Vert-à-Go

(photo by Thomas Hawk)

When you buy locally-grown food, it’s not only farmers who benefit–it’s good for the local community and economy as well.

One of the best sources of high quality, super-fresh local food is the farmers’ market. Farmers’ markets are popular with customers who appreciate the chance to meet the person who grew and produced their food–in Saskatoon’s case in particular, they help to reconnect urban people to the (sadly, much-forgotten) agrarian heritage of the province. But markets also provide a higher financial return for the vendors themselves. Under the market model, farmers get to keep all the money from the sale of their food-rather than just a small fraction from selling it to a middleman, who then sells it to another middleman, who sells it the consumer for a profit.

Having a healthy number of local farmers means that larger grocery stores and supermarkets increasingly have a reliable source for local food and don’t have to truck in lettuce, herbs, or cucumbers from California during the summer. As fuel (and food) costs continue to escalate, sustainable local suppliers are going to become a more and more attractive option for stores and consumers alike. In turn, local farmers benefit by gaining access to a large and steady market for their food, increasing their profile and encouraging other people to get into the local food business. Farmers’ markets may be the pinnacle of the local food movement, but to feed an entire city, it is vital that chain and independent grocery stores also get in on the action.

Sustainable local farms also help to keep surrounding communities alive. Small Saskatchewan towns have been dealt a huge blow over the past 70 years by the ever-increasing scale and industrialization of agriculture. But money spent on local food provides local jobs and gives people a reason and means to stay in their community, stimulating all other areas of the local economy. A larger number of small farms can also provide a more even scattering of local jobs, not just a cluster at some massive pig barn or processing plant in the middle of nowhere that workers have to drive many miles to get to. They also help spread the risk, economically speaking-if one company or industry gets hit for whatever reason (as with the Spudco debacle or avian flu epidemic in BC), it has a much bigger impact on the local community than if something catastrophic happens to a smaller operation.

Finally, the recent upsurge in interest in local food has meant a huge economic boost for Saskatoon in particular. It’s no accident that when this city finally decided after 40 years to develop the south downtown, that a permanent farmers’ market was part of the plans for the site. The new main market at River Landing serves as a destination for local people and visitors for shopping, and is a vital piece in the overall strategy to encourage people to live in, work in, and visit the riverfront area and historic core neighbourhoods. What’s more, there has still been so much spillover interest in local food that another farmers’ market started up last summer to fill the gaps for the north, east, and south sides of the city, four days a week.

“We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free.”

- Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating” from What Are People For?

My great-grandparents’ homestead near Hawarden, SK

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, 1825

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

- Orson Welles

So what’s for lunch? Over the past few years I’ve become increasingly concerned about that very question. I’ve read one too many news stories about hamburger recalls, about e. coli in salad greens and mercury in seafood. I’ve read Fast Food Nation; I saw An Inconvenient Truth. I started reading about peak oil and the impact of rising oil prices on future food costs and availability.

It has became more and more obvious that the current food production and distribution system is not only potentially dangerous to me and my family right here and now—it is completely unsustainable and environmentally hazardous in the long term. We simply cannot continue shipping the majority of our food from 1,000 (British Columbia), 1,500 (California), 3,000 (Costa Rica) or 6,000 miles away (Chile).

I grew up on a mixed farm about an hour south of Saskatoon in the 1970s and 1980s. It was pretty typical for its time; my parents grew wheat and some barley, raised enough steers to keep a small circle of family and friends in steaks, and when I was old enough, my sister and I took over the small chicken and egg operation.

We also had the standard farm garden—lettuce, spinach, chard, chives, parsley and dill, corn, zucchini, peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, radishes, carrots, beets, onions, rhubarb, strawberries, a raspberry patch, chokecherry bush, crabapple tree, and a Saskatoon berry bush that never managed to do much of anything, to be honest.

A lot of that home-grown food went into our freezer or the cold room for the winter. But there were plenty of summertime meals where we looked down and realised that we had grown everything on the table (and in most cases, had just dug it up or picked it off the vine half an hour before supper). It always gave me a thrill of self-sufficient pride, and made the meal seem extra-special.

Since leaving the farm, I’ve lived in cities small (Saskatoon) and large (London). I’ve come to love food from all around the world, and eaten things that my farm-girl self would have thought unbelievably weird or exotic. But I never lost the taste for those first baby potatoes fresh out of the ground, the handfuls of raw peas scooped straight from the bowl, or the mouthwatering tang of chokecherry syrup drizzled over vanilla ice cream. So I started heading back to my roots—buying local food, raised how my mom and dad did it when I was a kid.

In many ways it was easier than I expected to replace food from far-flung places with something grown closer to home, especially in the summer and autumn. I already had a small city garden, and the farmers’ market could provide me with everything that I either didn’t have the sun, the space, or the expertise to grow myself.

But in the depths of February, I still found myself in a big grocery store reaching for a California green pepper or a head of garlic from China. I could do better next year, I thought to myself, if only I knew exactly what kind of food was still available right here and now, and where I can get it, or if I had more recipe ideas for winter vegetables, or if I knew what and when I needed to preserve in the summer to make sure that we didn’t have to live entirely off carrots from October to April.

Thus, Vert-à-Go was born! Over the coming weeks, I’ll be posting information on where, when, and how to get locally-produced food (eventually this will be a searchable database), and also what to do with it when you do find it. It can be more difficult to find local food, but it is not impossible—and you just might be surprised at what’s out there!

Susan Pederson-Bradbury (susan@vert-a-go.com)