Buy Manitoba Program Set To Launch In New Year

Acampaign promot ing Manitoba food is almost ready to launch – just as soon as organizers nail down a definition of local food. “Local means different things to different people,” said Dave Shambrock, executive director of the Manitoba Food Processors Association, who has overseen the stakeholder group designing the Buy Manitoba initiative “From the food

Local Food Activists Urged To Seek Common Cause With Farmers

The modern warehouse-on- wheels food distribution system, with its just-in-time delivery from producers to processors, and finally to retailers, works just fine. But there is a dark side. Not only is it totally dependent on a smoothly functioning economy and uninterrupted supplies of fossil fuel for powering every link in the chain, it is also


Golden Carrots Lure Out Great Food Stories

If you need reminding that a whole lot of people care about their food, sit in on the Golden Carrots some time. This special ceremony is held each October at the Manitoba legislature, to kick off World Food Day and honour resourceful Manitobans who, in one way or another, are making the production, provision and

Province Launches “Buy Manitoba” Program

The Manitoba government is providing $742,100 for a two-year campaign to raise the profile of Manitoba products for consumers, Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives Minister Stan Struthers announced Oct. 18. “Locally produced foods are a fresh choice for our consumers and buying locally supports Manitoba producers and processors,” said Struthers. “Manitoba shoppers surveyed have told


Letters – for Oct. 14, 2010

Eating local can be done While there may be some accurate points in Ronald L. Doering’s recent articleManitoba Co-operatorOct. 7 article regarding “locavores,” energy consumption of production, processing and preparing of certain foods and how it outweighs transportation of food, you cannot make the subject so “simplistic” that it applies to all food. For example,

MP Proposes National Food Day

Farmers should be as much a part of Thanksgiving as family gatherings and turkey dinners, says NDP MP Malcolm Allen who wants the Friday before the holiday to be known as National Local Food Day. Allen, the party’s food safety critic, presented a bill to the Commons Oct. 7 to authorize the change. It was


Buy Local — But Ignore The “Locavores” Nonsense

You can’t open the food section of your newspaper these days without another sermon on the virtues of eating local. The eulogy takes as self-evident the moral superiority of the gospel of locavorism: relocalizing the food supply promotes sustainability because it reduces the fossil fuel needed to deliver the food. Buying local makes a good

Thousands Visit Farms On Open Farm Day

Tita Evangelista was astonished to discover there’s something else she might want to have for dinner some time: Manitobaraised bison. “The bison! I didn’t know you could eat that,” laughed the Winnipeg woman, who immigrated three years ago from the Philippines. She was one of a throng of Manitobans who took a trip on September


Urban Agriculture Growing In Winnipeg – for Sep. 23, 2010

The tomatoes are ripe, the salad greens have been sold and another growing season is nearly done at Almost Urban Vegetables in St. Norbert. Despite a fourth consecutive harvest under their belts, Bruce Berry and Marilyn Firth are reluctant to call their business a farm. It sounds a bit ostentatious. They prefer the term market