“Maple Organics is family owned and operated,” boasts a banner hanging from the ceiling on a recent visit to Whole Foods. This is one of several adorning the store, profiling farmers and manufacturers of the products they sell. As I continue studying the Maple Organics story, I learn that the family makes and markets their organic ice cream and frozen yoghurt themselves, in addition to milking the cows and growing their feed.

Oh, and I almost forgot: you’re even invited to visit their farm, located just West of Elora.

My only concern is that a 500 mL container of their ice cream retails for $6.39, a hefty premium when you compare it to the cost of an equivalent non-organic, non-local, industrially produced brand. Considering OSAP money doesn’t exactly grow on trees, why pay the premium?

My question was answered last Saturday when I had the pleasure of attending The Real Dirt on Food at Hart House, a full-day conference on food sustainability organized by a group of Environmental Policy and Practice students. As part of their second semester project for ENV320, they took the advice of their professor and, instead of writing an essay, decided to do something that would truly make a difference. The conference, aimed to raise awareness of the controversies surrounding food production, was extremely successful. The tickets were priced to ensure that the event was accessible to all – provided, of course, that they were snatched up early enough; due to popularity, they sold out weeks ahead of time.

More photos after the break.

Keynote speaker, Lori Stahlbrand of Local Flavour Plus, delivered a captivating lecture that explains the marketing strategies I observed at Whole Foods.

Traditionally, large corporations, such as SYSCO (one of North America’s largest food producers), focused on marketing their products as cheap, fast and efficient. But recently there has been a shift in strategies to reflect a new demand. Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned with trust (the relationship between the consumer and the producer) and romance (the story behind the product). The consumer wants to know how the item was produced or grown, and they want to sense a personal connection with the food and the farmer. In the process, consumers have voted with their dollars that they don’t mind spending a little extra for these perks.

The shift in demand is the result of a growing awareness consumers have about personal and environmental impacts of the traditional (cheap, fast and efficient) food structure: loss of taste and freshness, potentially toxic pesticide use, loss of food security (85-95% of our food is imported), and high carbon dioxide emissions due to heavy fossil fuel dependency when manufacturing pesticides, artificially fertilizing soil, and of course, transporting the food.

Stahlbrand cites that the average item on our plate has travelled an astounding 4000 km (or equivalently, the distance between Toronto and California.)

Determining whether or not it’s worth spending extra on organics and locally produced food, depends on how much you value improvements in taste, health and environmental sustainability (just to name a few).

Take Action!

The theme of taking action, in sync with the ENV320 students’ decision to organize a conference instead of writing an essay, really resonated throughout the entire day. There were even entire lectures devoted to how students can take the lead on promoting sustainable food practices at their own universities.

Here are some ways for you to get involved at U of T!

The Food for All Community Garden: Harvest your own free organic vegetables! Located outside the SAC building.

Hot Yam!: Yummy organic, vegan and local $4 dollar lunches every Wednesday in the International Student Centre. Mmmmm. Tip: If you don’t have time to sit down, bring some tupperware and take-out!

Local Flavour Plus (LFP): Be on the look out for LFP cerified products at any Amamark cafeteria on campus. LFP teamed up with U of T at the beginning of this school year, and serves as the link between the school and local farmers. Their certification system is based on farmers producing food in environmentally and socially responsible ways.

Many more cafes serving organic fare on campus can be found here.

For those of you who missed the conference, video recordings of select lectures will be posted on The Real Dirt website very soon.

Written by Natasha Baker, an electrical engineering student at the University of Toronto.

Photos courtesy of Vanessa Toye.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Food & Drink, On Campus, Wish You Were Here. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.