[getsmart-l] Discover Local Food] First course for local food group; Agricultural, culinary sides of business come together

[John O'Gorman]

First course for local food group; Agricultural, culinary sides of business come together 
 
Posted By JIM ALGIE
March 13, 2008
Owen Sound Sun Times

http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=942570

Rebecca LeHeup-Bucknell figures eating locally is the future of mass food distribution in Canada. 

Guy Anderson and Freeman Boyd would be happy, for now, to get more restaurant and institutional chefs in this area using produce from Grey and Bruce counties. 

All three were present when the new Grey Bruce Agriculture and Culinary Association held its inaugural annual meeting in Owen Sound on Wednesday following a lunch of local food prepared and served by Georgian College students. 

Anderson, a beekeeper from Kincardine, has headed an interim board for the organization, which has built a website (www.foodlinkgrey bruce.com) with links to 281 growers and processors of local food products. Boyd is the association's first employee and has helped recruit participants with financial and other support from the Grey and Bruce County tourism departments. 

The local group is just getting started with culinary tourism developments that LeHeup-Bucknell helped pioneer in Prince Edward County in eastern Ontario. 

LeHeup-Bucknell is the executive director of Prince Edward's 10-year-old destination marketing agency, Taste the County. She is also deeply involved in the county's 80-member Slow Food Convivium, a consultant in tourism training at George Brown College and co-chair of the Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance. 

She believes in the eating locally concept. 

"We're in trouble if we don't put some more dollars in farmers' pockets and if we don't put more focus on the importance of food and where it comes from," LeHeup-Bucknell said in an interview following her presentation to some 40 people at the culinary association luncheon. 

She's also convinced that a strong emphasis on eating locally is good for business in food-producing regions. 

Since Taste the County began bringing farmers and tourist operators together, the number of visitors has grown by 168 per cent and visitor spending jumped from $25 million in 1999 to $65 million in 2005. 

"It's great to have celebrity chefs. We need to have celebrity growers and producers, they're feeding us," LeHeup-Bucknell said.

"We should be eating local first, Ontario second and Canada third and don't leave our country until we've looked at what we have within it." 

Except for the coffee, the ingredients for Wednesday's meal - which began with roasted butternut squash soup with caramelized apples and fresh biscuits and wound up with apple pie - were grown or gathered in the two-county region. 

Johnson Creek Ranch of Kincardine supplied beef for medallions while Northern Woods Specialty of Markdale provided the mushrooms for a dark, smokey sauce. There was braised cabbage and root vegetables alongside potatoes Anna. 

There were contributions from 12 suppliers in all including: Almond's and Grandma Lambe's markets in Meaford, Bolle Farms at Allenford, Grassroots Organics at Desboro, Pine River Cheese, the Pickle Guy at Eugenia and the Williamsford Pie Company. Water came from the Natural Water Store in Tara and the coffee from Ashanti Coffee Ent., which roasts and sells beans in Thornbury from its farm in Africa. 

Georgian College culinary arts program director Jason Grasman is also a believer. Grasman, the proprietor and chef at Duncan's Cafe in Collingwood when he moved to Georgian four years ago, sourced local food for his own cooking and does the same now for his institutional programs. 

Georgian College students learn the importance of local, fresh ingredients. 

"It's changing whether we like it or not," Grasman said of the shift toward local, fresh food. "You have to accept change." 

The trend was pioneered in Ontario by well-known chefs such as Jamie Kennedy, who lives in Prince Edward County, and Michael Stadtlander, whose world famous restaurant, Eigensenn Farm, is in rural Grey County. 

"Their menus change a lot because that's what they do. They take advantage of what they've got at the time, what's available. That's the trend of utilizing local products," Grasman said. 

It's a clear trend other chefs will follow. "If they want to stay in business . . . they're going to have to do that," Grasman said. 

The agriculture and culinary association hopes to follow up its annual meeting with projects designed to recruit new members and boost public awareness of local food, Anderson said in an interview. "The business is promoting local food to be used by local residents and local stores, (to) educate the public," he said. 

That will likely include developing maps which highlight sources for locally grown food and organizing banquets that feature area foods and chefs. 

Boyd said he's concentrating on trying to get local food into institutional kitchens such as the Canadian Forces' training centre near Meaford and area seniors homes. 

The point is to get more money to local people. 

"I suspect it's a good deal less than 10 per cent of the food dollars spent in Grey and Bruce actually go to local producers and processors," Boyd said in an interview. "If we could make that 20 per cent that'd be great, 30 per cent even better."

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“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” George Bernard Shaw
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