Lunch today was a little more educational than normal. Some good people at work invited Angie from the Working Centre to discuss the local farming, local food, and supporting the process. Basically, why you should buy into a Food Box or a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programme.

Farming + Money = Problems

Bottom line is most Ontario farms don’t make any money on the farming, and that’s totally messing up the farming eco-system in our area.  This is somewhat heinous, considering Ontario has well over half of Canada’s Class A farm land.  About a third of it is within viewing distance of the CN Tower.  Despite the availability of inexpensive, high quality local food, food travels a lot before it gets to us.  On average food travels about 4400 kilometers before it gets to our faces. That’s a lot of wasted money, time, and gasoline.

Supporting the local food production economy is good for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is maintaining the local economy and farming ecosystem.  From a personal benefit, local food is more likely to be of higher quality, nutrition, and have less preservatives sprayed on it, due to lower transport costs.  And it tends to taste better, as it’s not a requirement that the produce ripen in the dark, container truck. And if you look around, it can be cheaper and delivered in a very convenient way.

There are no guarantees of reducing environmental footprints, especially if you’re driving around town for 2 hours just to get your groceries that could be gotten locally from Sobey’s.   Thus, local farmers have to organise and distribute food in such a way that makes sense financially, environmentally, reduces waste, etc.

Where to Source Local Food?

This is where a Food Box or CSA programme comes in.  It “connects farmers with eaters,” gives farmes predictable income, and eaters predictable, high quality, well-priced local food.  There are a bunch of food box options in the area, some are pre-packaged, some are market-shopping-style.

Check Ontario CSA Directory to find a local CSAs.  These are some ones K/W:

There’s a local food search engine, FoodLink, online as well in case you’re looking for specific things like eating local, organic sheep or something.

High Tech Online Shopping!

If you’re not down with food box programmes, but are keen to order local food online, there are options:

These ordering options also include access to meat, cheese, diary, eggs, and that sort of stuff.

What’s Local?

We discussed what “local” means … especially given that Waterloo Region has more brutal winters and more bugs than, for example, Windsor or Niagara.  Windsor gets peaches, Niagara gets raspberries, Waterloo gets leek.  So depending on the time of year, it’s worthwhile to cast a broader or more narrow net for your definition of “local.”