Just another Day on the Farm

Per the  Star newspapper but alive on twitter and now on the CBC radio..

 An off-the-cuff remark by Galen Weston at the Canadian Food Summit has enraged the farmers’ markets community and local food lovers.

“Farmers’ markets are great. . . ,” Weston said Tuesday during a speech to about 600 people at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, but added: “One day they’re going to kill some people though.”

“I’m just saying that to be dramatic though,” he quickly added.

Weston is executive chairman of Loblaw Cos. Ltd, Canada’s largest food retailer, with more than 1,000 stores.

He was talking about building a long-term vision for food in Canada and how to capitalize on the demand for local food. Food inspections are crucial, he insisted.

Robert Chorney, the executive director of Farmers’ Markets Ontario, had to wait until the next session’s comment period for a chance to speak out.

“We strenuously object” to Weston’s remark, he told the delegates. “That was awful.”

Chorney later added: “What (Weston) said was really saddening. It really put a damper on the day for some of us.”

Ontario’s 175 farmers’ markets do more than $700 million in sales every year. Markets are regularly inspected and food is easily traceable because consumers know who they’re buying from, said Chorney. The association says that four surveys since 1998 have shown that 83 per cent of respondents feel market food is as safe or safer than supermarket food.

Weston’s comment set off a series of angry tweets under the hashtag #FS2012.

“A question for Galen Weston Jr: Have you ever been to a farmers’ market?” tweeted Gail Gordon Oliver, publisher and editor of Edible Toronto. “Have you ever REALLY spoken to a farmer?”

“Bold (and unfounded?!?) comment from Galen Weston: one day produce from farmers markets will kill us,” tweeted Sara Zborovski, a lawyer who focuses on regulatory and intellectual property issues in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries.

The two-day summit is being put on by the Conference Board of Canada, and Loblaws is the top sponsor. The event attracted people from government, agri-businesses, farms and community food organizations.

Some delegates whispered among themselves on coffee breaks that supermarkets sell most of the food that’s recalled by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). They reminded one another that it was Maple Leaf Foods and a Toronto meat plant — not a farmers’ market — that was at the centre of a 2008 listeria outbreak that left 23 people dead and led to a major recall.

Bob Chant, Loblaw Cos.’s senior vice-president of corporate affairs, later elaborated on Weston’s “side comment,” stressing it was made in the context of food inspections.

“The point is about food safety, not about whether farmers’ markets are good,” Chant said. “His thinking is that we need to make inspections happen throughout the entire system.”

Farmers’ Markets Ontario works with Ontario’s 36 public health units, each of which has a “champion” responsible for markets. It has a food safety manual on its website. Toronto Public Health inspects farmers’ markets.

The CFIA manages about 235 food recalls by manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers each year. When the product poses a serious health risk, it issues a public warning.

Spokesperson Guy Gravelle said the vast majority of recalls involve supermarkets and grocery stores, but the agency will investigate complaints linked to mom-and-pop shops and farmers’ markets. He didn’t have statistics available.

Canadian food activist Anita Stewart, a farmers’ market enthusiast who has worked at a grassroots level and with government, said retail operations are heavily inspected and she was willing to cut Weston some slack for his comment.

“I think his speech, by and large, was very eloquent and he has a lot to say,” Stewart said. “I think he just slipped up and I truly don’t believe that he meant it.”

Arlene Stein is director of community programs for Evergreen Brick Works, which runs a year-round Saturday farmers’ market with about 80 vendors. She was sick and couldn’t attend the food summit, but noted that supermarkets like Loblaws are promoting their organic and “fresh local” lines.

Her theory on Weston’s comment? “Farmers’ markets are the competition.”

Considering this is the guy that “when” I had my one channel last year was on the TV, promoting Canadian farmers and local food, I say.. What the ?

Now for a bit more postive news..  A whole town in England has turned all their flower beds, walkways,  front yards and basicly any place with dirt into a free garden space to grow food to feed the peaple! Clearly the grass roots movment of needing to create healthy and sound local food is reaching new levels.. to which I say.. GOOD!

Providing all goes well, soon a young but ready to start breeding Large Black Boar will be joining the farm (Mr. P) to have a date or two with our lovely Large Black Open Gilt Miss Piggy.

I knew that when I got her that this was a possablity, If I was postive that I wanted to eat that piglet, I would have gotten a altered male and into the freezer it would go at the right age but I had heard such good things about the large black pig breed, that I wanted the choice to consider breeding, and so I got a female piglet, and I have been most impressed with growth, temperment, however tracking down a boar of the same breed has not be that easy. I can find a typical little guy but it would greatly effect the color and flavour of the offspring, so I have taken the time to find a large black boy.

I am taking a risk doing this and I know it, being a small farm, I am hoping to get two litters per year, the average litter size is 6 to 8 but they can be bigger or smaller. Lets say that she has two litter of six, that is 12 piglets.. Now I hope to sell at least half the litter off the farm to let others grow them out, and keep half the litter to grow out myself, so that I can offer farm gate sales of pasture raised Large Black Pork along side my Lamb.

Thankfully the butcher who does my lambs for me can also do both pigs and cows, so I don’t have to find a new small local butcher, and my guy who does my hualing, has three area’s in his trailer, so I can put a pig or two in one section and lambs in another and a beef in the 3rd if I really wanted and they were all ready at the same time, not likely that everyone would be ready at the same time, but being able to double up a few pigs at the same time as the lambs, does save on the costs of getting them to the shop, as its a flat hauling rate, because I never have enough to pay for the per head price. I could get it even cheaper if I was willing to let my guys be loaded in a shared run, but to date, I have not done so and can’t see myself doing that.. my guy keeps his trailer very clean, high pressure washer between loads and with fresh bedding and that is one of the reason’s I really like him.

Now if the market is slow, I can keep it down to one breeding a year, but I still have to consider freezer space, time of year, very cheap pork available in the stores, always increasing costs of feed, and the space that will be taken up in the barn/pasture having the extra pigs. As well as the extra work that is required in the daily feeding times and the barn cleaning time etc.

The pro’s is that I do have a waiting list of regular’s for my lamb, who are already proven buyers and who are interested in getting pork from us as well. Just as word of mouth on our lamb has increased the sales, I am hoping that I will be able to do the same in regards to our coming plans for our pork. The second pro is that a few more little ones means that my piggy plows can get the job done faster working together.

My cow will come on line with a great deal of extra skim milk when I am making butter and cheese an the leftover’s will be able to go to the grow out piglets, and I have already worked out a deal from the local apple farm down the way, I can have all the windfall apples I want for a very reasonable price, so I hope to be able to finish my fall butcher pigs on apples along with their regular feed thus helping to create a “farmgal” flavour or that is the plan anyway.

I have done this before and been very pleased with the added sweetness to the pork meat that I felt I could taste and I got rave reviews from the folks that tried it.

The good thing about this plan is that I am going as Micro as possable, dipping a toe in the water to see how it works out, I can stop after doing just one litter of piglets an one cycle of grow out of a few for sale. Time will give me the answer on if it makes more sense to continue buying two grow out piglets per year or if it makes more sense to raise a litter or two a year.

The good thing about this plan is if I decide that I want to go back to just having my trained piggy plow, I can butcher out the boar, an offspring and go back to just having my one well trained pig and eat the rest over time.

So what do you think? Is adding in very limited but higher priced pasture pork for farm gate sales a good choice or one that needs a little more thinking on?