Autumn is well established and although the public markets and rural kiosks have returned to their stalls, did you know that it is possible to eat locally, all year round?
Market gardeners act like the ant in the famous fable and work all summer and all fall to harvest the good vegetables from here in order to keep them for the winter months. Carrots, radishes, parsnips, beets and other local delicacies are available all year round in our supermarkets. In addition to these preservatives, lettuce, arugula, radish, spinach and other fruits and vegetables also grow all year round on our land, warm in the greenhouse.
If the concept of food self-sufficiency came into the public arena at the very beginning of the pandemic, when merchants and grocers were struggling to obtain supplies and the potential closure of borders with our neighbors to the South undermined the food security of our province – remember that a large percentage of the vegetables we consume in Quebec come from the United States – our food chain remains very fragile at the end of the fourth wave.
With greenhouses, hydroelectricity, Quebec creativity and innovation, more and more solutions are being developed that allow market gardeners and citizens to aspire to this unfulfilled dream of food autonomy.
In recent months, concrete actions have been taken, such as the government announcement of an investment of $ 91 million which will be used, among other things, to double the areas of greenhouses over a period of five years, as well as that aimed at reducing the electricity rate from $ 0.1 to $ 0.0559 per kilowatt hour. For many greenhouse growers, this announcement represents savings of thousands of dollars per year!
Refrigerated warehouses
This good news is encouraging, but there are still many challenges to overcome in order to be able to eat local vegetables all year round. The lack of refrigerated warehouses across the territory is one of these issues. By equipping itself with new efficient infrastructures common to several farms, it would not only be more possible to eat local and fresh all year round, but it would also be possible to perpetuate certain hires and promote year-round jobs instead. only seasonal.
Whether it is to support our own economy, by appreciating good products or simply because it is in our mores, more and more Quebecers are choosing to eat local. This change in behavior has had a major positive impact on farmers’ markets throughout the summer season, with membership in the organic baskets of the Family Farmers Network having grown by more than 50% since 2020. Now, fine that they exist, we notice less enthusiasm for winter baskets. The reduced number of winter baskets offered is due both to the lower interest of the population in preserving vegetables – well prepared, yet they are simply delicious! -, but also by the number of farms which simply have neither the equipment nor the resources necessary to cultivate, store or distribute year-round.
The multiplication of cold greenhouses, that is, unheated greenhouses, is also a simple solution to provide greens and other fresh vegetables during the winter.
In order for Quebecers to adopt the concept of choosing local products and eating local to grow in number, it is important that governments, producers, merchants and customers work together to balance the fragile ecosystem of supply and demand. By promoting education and citizen information rather than promotion, we equip citizens to choose food autonomy and sustainable agriculture. The more customers learn about the origin of food and ask for local vegetables, the more merchants will offer them, thereby increasing the local production needed to meet demand.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, PRESS ARCHIVES
The greenhouse of the research project of the National Institute of Organic Agriculture, attached to the Cégep de Victoriaville
The various levels of government must play a key role in this transformation of the supply and production chain for the benefit of local agriculture, in particular by supporting development and encouraging the proliferation of small farms. across Quebec as well as by funding the pooling and innovation initiatives that propel them.
This letter is intended as an awakening of consciousness, an invitation to take part in the discussion. There are three of us to sign it, but several actors who collaborate and participate in the proper functioning of the local food chain will recognize themselves in it. We leave you by inviting you to make a concrete gesture. Buy local. Request products from here, year round, from your dealer. Learn about our agriculture, its practices and its products in order to develop a culinary culture that gives it a prominent place. If these simple gestures are made by a fraction of the 8 million that we are in Quebec, it is a safe bet that food sovereignty will be at the heart of the priorities for the coming years.
Enjoy your lunch !
* Co-signatories: Ricardo Larrivée, chef and host; Caroline Poirier, president of the Cooperative for ecological proximity agriculture
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