A berry strange tale
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 | 11:57 AM ET
by Kevin Yarr, CBCNews.ca
I was shocked on Saturday to pick up a basket of fresh blueberries in the supermarket and find — not that they were imported, I expected that — that they were not only grown in Florida but packed in British Columbia, before being put up for sale in Charlottetown.
What was the carbon footprint on those little blue pills?
If you read my post on local strawberries a couple of weeks ago you would probably have assumed I avoid imported strawberries largely because of the taste, and you would have been right. But with the local blueberry season only a week or two away — are we that impatient? — that little Saturday encounter really had me rethinking my motivation.
You see I also learned this month that the ubiquity of imports is not just about providing fruit that would otherwise not be in season. A few days earlier I had been greeted at the door of the supermarket by plastic boxes of California strawberries. I was disappointed at this sign that the local strawberry season was over.
But it wasn't. A little deeper in the produce section was a large table of Maritime strawberries. That supermarket is a business, and I can only assume it was giving the imports the prime real estate because it was somehow making more profit on the imports than on the local berries.
I was encouraged to find several people had dropped boxes of California strawberries in with the Maritime ones, presumably in trade.
We live in a country that at certain times of year is very limited in what it can supply in terms of locally-grown food. I'm not here to argue for any kind of extreme locavore diet. I'm not ready to give up bananas and oranges, or even peppers in January (though they don't have near the flavour of what will be available locally here soon).
But are there not some limits here? Can we not get by on strawberries and raspberries until the blueberries come along?
This ability to import, apparently more cheaply than growing locally, is particularly disturbing, and its impact is measurable. Canada's 2006 census of agriculture shows from 2001 to 2006 in Canada, hectares of strawberries in production dropped from 6,000 to 5,200.
Meanwhile, strawberry production in California is breaking records year after year.
That worries me. I would miss eating fruit that has some taste.
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From trends and culture to politics and nutrition, Food Bytes serves up tasty tidbits about food and the issues surrounding it that flavour our everyday lives.
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Amber Hildebrandt writes for CBCNews.ca in Toronto. Growing up on a farm in Manitoba, she acquired an insatiable appetite, but it was during a stint in Japan that she developed her discerning tastebuds and "foodie" ways.
Andrea Chiu is an associate producer at CBC Radio Digital. Though she loves to eat, cook and discuss food,
don't ask her to bake. It never turns out well. She tweets as @TOfoodie on Twitter and organizes food and wine events in Toronto called FoodieMeet.
Tara Kimura is the consumer life reporter for CBCNews.ca, covering a wide range of issues that range from rising food costs and the growing organic movement, to new trends in the marketplace.
Andree Lau is a CBC web reporter in Calgary. Her journalism career includes seven years as a CBC-TV reporter. Her own blog called "are you gonna eat that?" chronicles her eating adventures (including sampling snake and camel hoof tendon).
Jessica Wong is a CBCNews.ca writer who loves to eat and cook, as well as discuss, read and watch programming about food, sometimes all at once.
Kevin Yarr, CBCNews.ca's writer in Prince Edward Island, wrote about food and beer for national and regional magazines before joining the CBC. He acquired a desire for new tastes on his first trip to Europe, and an appreciation of eating locally and in season when he finally settled down on P.E.I.
Elizabeth Bridge is a writer with the CBC Digital Archives in Toronto. She first ventured into the kitchen as a child to indulge a sweet tooth by baking cookies and making fudge. A student budget compelled her to be a vegetarian (for a while) and instilled in her an ongoing curiosity about food and cooking.
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Comments
ES
Ottawa
For the record, I refuse to eat those nasty California strawberries. I honestly don't know why people bother with them at all, when the local ones taste so, SO much better. I'm quite happy to only have them once a year.
Reminds me of the time I went to Hawaii and found sugar packaged in Ohio on the table. I'm pretty sure cane sugar is not am ajor crop in Ohio; the abandoned sugar refineries all over the islands are rusting to pieces because it's cheaper to ship the cane juice to Ohio to refine??! But when we did get out to the local fruit stands, it was completely worth it: nothing beats fresh, local produce! I can tell you that starfruit off the tree tastes nothing like the ones we get in Canada!
I can't think of a better motivation to reduce your food carbon footprint than to remind people how much flavour gets lost in travelling. Local tastes better!
Remember: local tastes better!
Posted July 31, 2008 12:04 PM
Shifty Calhoun
Local (Niagara Region) strawberries are shipped 50 miles up to our local farmer's market. You can imagine my dismay when I saw that the stalls in the market that sold them were charging $4 a pint, while another stall had California strawberries for $2 a pint. If you go to a local supermarket it's 3 pints of California strawberries for $4!
I'm all for local farmers/retailers making a decent living, but you can't tell me that strawberries can be grown and shipped 2500 miles for half the price it costs local farmers to do so.
As long as local farmers/distributors/sellers try to use the "Buy Local" brand as an excuse for usury you'll see me bypassing their product at the stores.
Posted July 31, 2008 12:12 PM
Annoyed
It's called the global economy. Sure local produce tastes better and takes less time to ship, so it stays fresher longer, but blueberries and other fruit can be produced more cheaply in other countries that have cheaper labour and cheaper land, etc. than in Canada.
Posted July 31, 2008 12:52 PM
Tammy Fassaert
Buy from your local farm, as I did yesterday. Sure, they cost more, but they are better and safer. The only way to improve the world situation is to buy locally and avoid supermarket produce when possible (...like, in summer?...)
Another reason distant foods cost less is volume sales. By buying cheap, foreign food, you are supporting mega-agribusiness which perpetuates world hunger, pollution, and many other baddies. It's one thing to buy cheap clothes at Superstore made in sweatshops, but your food is your life! Think about it. It's worth the extra money. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want cheap food made in Canada then maybe we should all accept lower wages across the board. Local producers are not getting rich. Go and meet some!
TF
Posted July 31, 2008 10:32 PM
jimmy
pei
$4 a pint for local strawberries. try going to a u-pick. I went earlier this season and got 16lbs in about an hour. they only cost a $1.25 a lb. most u-picks also have rasberries in season.
Posted August 5, 2008 03:37 PM
farmers son
In Response to Shifty Calhoun: in fact often it does cost less for the distributors to push california or washington produce becuase of the export subsidies that exist in the US.
Posted August 5, 2008 05:59 PM
MM
vancouver
Regarding the impact of agribusiness on our food prospects, it would be worth anyone's time to view the documentary: The World According to Monsanto.
Posted August 5, 2008 07:31 PM
mynalee johnstone
If you shop at the SUPERstore you will be tempted by price. If you shop at the farmers market, you will taste and appreciate a really good product with some life force still in it. Its your choice. Dead or ALIVE (food).
Which do you want and who do you want to support?
Posted August 21, 2008 09:12 PM
karra
I went to the local farmer's market in Fernie recently (August) and there were NO vegetables on sale. The only fruit was cherries. I was told that there is usually one stand with some vegetables.There were no eggs, meat or cheese either. In fact, the only food I could get was breads, cherries and honey. So we had to go to the supermarket after. The farmer's market seemed to have mostly jewellery, pottery, crafts and tourism products - and, I must admit, lots of cherries, which were delicious. But it sure makes buying local produce difficult.
By the way, I really like the taste of California strawberries - am I the only one? To me they have that sharp rhubarb like tang which is gorgeous. Not to say I don't also like the sweeter homegrown ones, but I gave up on my strawberry patch a few years ago - too little fruit for the space and too short a season. The rhubarb patch is way better.
Posted August 25, 2008 10:39 AM