There’s a stereotype that everyone, at some point, realizes they’ve become their parent.
For me this year, as I pulled out the old canning skills to help beat back the grocery bill, it was more like temporarily becoming one of my grandparents.
It makes sense since, much more like grandma’s day than in the last decade, food and food prices are top of mind. In July, Statistics Canada put food price inflation at 9.2 per cent, and the hit at the grocery store register in the last few months has been a real sucker punch.
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It’s not unreasonable to assume that those lucky enough to have gardens have been leaning more heavily on them to keep food cost down. There has certainly been personal pressure to get as much out the garden as possible. The freezers and pantry shelves are filling up quickly.
Online, I’ve seen folks dragging out their grandmother’s depression-era cookbooks (with varying degrees of seriousness), and searching for ways to use up ingredients.
If nothing else, the resurgence of generational skills also means a greater appreciation for the garden, food in general and the work it took to produce it.
That connection has, of course, always been easier in the country, not only because of the proximity to agriculture but because gardens big enough to encourage large-scale processing are largely the province of the farm.
There are also the trends that, pre-COVID, suggested that even the connection with preparing food in some demographics was beginning to fray. A 2017 study from Dalhousie University suggested that 26 per cent of those surveyed nationwide did not have the work/life balance needed to prepare and eat meals at home, let alone devote a day to making jelly.
In 2019, the Toronto Star published an article featuring the rise of oven-less condos, a trend that, at the time, developers said saved space and targeted the increasing market of renters who do not cook at home.
If there is any silver lining from the last three years, it’s been the shift in those attitudes. Studies coming out of COVID-19 restrictions instead mark the number of people now working from home — 40 per cent doing so at least once a week, according to an editorial this past spring from Sylvain Charlebois, one of the names behind the 2017 Dalhousie University study — and therefore cooking at home. They’re noting the increase in consumers who have learned new skills in the kitchen or are getting more exploratory with their tastes.
With so much public attention on grocery shelves and all indications showing more interest in food in general, it’s hard to imagine a better time for agriculture to take advantage.
Agriculture has long acknowledged a need to re-connect a currently disconnected consumer with their food system. It’s the reason for organizations like Ag in the Classroom, Great Tastes of Manitoba, or the myriad of industry-pushed outreach and advertising campaigns.
Still, the average person has little to no idea of the stops that a cow makes down the value chain or (to pick at another sore spot for producers) that a higher steak price at the supermarket does not necessarily mean that the farmer got equally more for the cow it came from.
With “supply chain disruptions” so commonly cited for shelves having fewer options or higher prices, it seems an ideal time to de-mystify those supply chains.
Before the current media attention around a proposed grocery code of conduct, for example, it’s unlikely that the average consumer had ever heard of shelving fees or thought over-much about the centralization of ownership in the grocery sector. Pandemic pressures, however, brought those things to a head and now, at the same time as grocery prices are drawing the public’s gaze, those publicly obscure issues are getting air time.
The same leverage, the desire to talk about food, is there for the ag sector.
The challenge will always be reaching those totally removed from agriculture — whose social media overlaps with agriculture, who may have visited a farm once or twice, if at all, and whose own space for food production is limited to a window box of herbs or a community garden plot.
Certainly there will be consumers who have no interest in being reached, or who are militantly opposed to certain production systems or agricultural products. Outreach has always come with the chance for negativity.
But as they say, the opposite of affection isn’t hatred; it’s indifference. Whatever feelings consumers have about their groceries right now, indifference isn’t one of them.
