Where does your food come from?

Traditionally, feeding the family has been women’s work. Once upon a time men hunted and women cultivated or foraged for food. But nowadays, the job has morphed into shopping in a grocery store for something to prepare that fits into our food budget. People in North America have lost touch with where food comes from and what it takes to actually produce it!

I had a privileged head start learning about where food comes from and what it takes to actually produce it. As part of a back to the land movement in the ‘80’s, I moved from Montreal to the Eastern Townships with a group of friends and our goal was to subsist with little income while growing our own food and cutting our own wood on a farm we bought. How naïve we were, but what a learning curve we embarked on! That learning continues to this day. Even after 40+ years of practice, the school of nature is always teaching me. Growing food is a spiritual practice for me. It feeds my soul to be in the garden, touching the earth, connected to the weather and the seasons in an intimate way.

 It takes a lot of work to produce enough food to eat year round, but I know my food is good quality and I love the work. I have learned a lot about growing and preserving healthy organic food. I have also taken a journey into the world of agriculture and food production. When I founded a company to make microbial bio stimulants (probiotics for the soil) I had the opportunity to travel around North America learning about the realities of large scale farming. That showed me that the cheap and abundant mass produced food we can buy in the grocery store comes at a cost to the environment. Agrochemicals pollute the soil and the water. Fossil fuels are used to transport  food great distances from where it is grown. Plastic packaging is accumulating in soil, water and in the bodies of people and animals globally.

It shouldn’t be that we have to destroy the natural world to feed humans. Working with Regeneration Canada since I retired, a non profit organization promoting the transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture, has taught me that we can do better. Regenerative agriculture and local food agroecology movements have shown me that we already know how to grow food while regenerating ecosystems. What we are building is an alternative food system, one where local farmers and consumers join forces and support one another. We raise awareness about how our food choices affect the environment. Local consumers know where their food came from and how it was grown. We can also try growing some of our own food. This connects us to the land and helps us to appreciate the work that farmers do.