Local food growing in importance

Do you know where the ingredients of your dinner are from?

As demand for local food grows, more and more people do, in fact, know where the ingredients for their meals come from.

Some get their produce at their local farmers market. Some shop local in the aisles of their grocery store.

Others? They sign up for a season-long share in the farm’s harvest, a community-supported agriculture (CSA) box. The acronym also sometimes stands for community-shared agriculture.

The provincial government has even gone so far as to try and bolster the local food industry with recent legislation, Supporting Alberta’s Local Food Sector Act.

“Overall it’s an opportunity to support what’s local food, what’s grown in Alberta, to celebrate that. It has been a growing part of the sector for some years now,” said Alberta Agriculture and Forestry Minister Oneil Carlier in an interview.

He said his department estimates local food was worth about $1.2 billion in the sector last year.

“It’s mainstream,” he said.

The legislation has three parts. The first sees Alberta adopting the Canadian Organic Standard for organic foods. That means food produced and sold in Alberta labelled as organic would now have to meet those standards, something that didn’t apply previously if the product wasn’t being shipped over provincial borders, Carlier said.

The second is establishing a local food council. Carlier said he’d let the new council decide what its priorities would be, but examples of the areas it could look at are marketing or food distribution.

Finally, the popular Open Farm Days weekend will now be part of a weeklong event in August called Local Food Week.

“It’s a whole week, an opportunity to celebrate local food,” Carlier said.

Kris Vester of Blue Mountain Biodynamic Farms said he’s happy with the organic certification standards.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a very positive change,” he said. “For most people it doesn’t make any difference.”

At least, it doesn’t for those who were already being certified by a third party as organic. Vester said it will impact people who are using the word “organic” to market their product without being certified.

Vester’s farm and many other local growers -- including Eagle Creek Farms near Bowden -- offer CSAs or participate in group CSAs so they can market their products straight to consumers.