Besides, we want to protect our children from difficulties and stress, don’t we?

Yes, we know in the backs of our heads that this approach might make our children less resilient as adults. But really, there’s time to think about that tomorrow. Today is today. Let’s just get through it.

Well, maybe not. According to Dr. Michael Ungar, a resiliency researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax, it’s true that an excess of trauma and stress can be damaging, but it’s equally good for our kids to be exposed to at least some risk.

It’s why Ungar recommends giving children age-appropriate opportunities to experience manageable levels of stress. This, he explains, is how we nurture resilience.

As parents we should be thinking about preparing our children with the lessons they will need for success in life. While they are still under our wings, we can help them and coach them through what could otherwise be arduous tasks for the uninitiated.

Recognizing that too many students are graduating from high school lacking basic skills, some schools have begun offering “Adulting 101” classes. These courses emphasize the importance of avoiding gender stereotypes. Men need to know how to cook and clean and, likewise, women need to know how to do basic repairs, for example.

It’s something we can do on the farm too, and below are some ideas of what to cover in your own “Adulting 101” classes with your kids or grandkids. Keep it age appropriate, but also keep the end goal in mind.

Do they know how to do laundry, clean a toilet, clean the hair out of the shower drain, sew on a button, scrub a floor, pick up their wet towels after a shower, replace the toilet paper roll, take out the recyclables and garbage, and use basic tools such as a hammer, screwdriver and drill?

If the internet is down or their cell phone isn’t working, have them call tech support. You can coach them from the sidelines.

Have them use the internet to research a problem and possible solutions. Discuss what to look for in determining if the information they find is credible. Is it from a reputable source? How old is it? Does it make sense?

Have them pack their own bags for sports practices and vacations.

Have them get quotes for car insurance, make a hotel reservation, and check out the cost of renting or buying a house.

Have them book their own haircut and dentist appointments.

Financial skills are fundamental. Do your kids understand credit card interest, income taxes, RSPs and RESPs?

Have them create a budget including income, living expenses, school expenses, etc.

Have them pay for some of their own expenses such as clothes, videogames and movies.

Do they know what makes a phone call or email suspicious? Do they employ safe practices when using the internet and social media?

Can they prepare their own meals?

Three times a day

With parents strapped for time, passing on cooking skills to the next generation often falls by the wayside. Besides, as a parent, do you really want to eat what the kids would want to cook?

Plus, says Millbrook, Ont. cookbook author, Evelyn Raab, there’s all the takeout and processed food options these days. It’s so much easier not to cook.

Somehow we carve out time to teach kids to read and help them with homework priorities, but they need to know about food and about cooking too.

Teaching kids to cook is fundamental, says Raab, author of Clueless in the Kitchen: Cooking for Beginners. “Cooking,” she says, “is good for your budget, your health and
your friendships.”

“The best way to learn is by doing,” says Raab. “Assign them (your teens) to cook once a week or once every other week. They will get confident.”

Raab recommends starting with simple meals. “It doesn’t need to be fancy.” Some basics include knowing how to cook pasta, meat balls, soup and eggs. “Eggs are great when you are starving,” she says. “Scrambled, fried, poached, quiche or a frittata, eggs are an amazing thing.”

And with soup, once you get confident, you won’t need a recipe, continues Raab. “You will be able to throw it all in a pot.”

Raab plans her meals around what’s on sale at the grocery store. “Go to the store with a list but don’t be afraid to try new things,” she says. “There are so many recipes online. With experience you will recognize right away whether you will like a recipe or not.”

Raab’s tips for success in the kitchen include:

• Read the recipe from start to finish.
• Make sure you have all the ingredients and equipment needed.
• Make sure you have enough time.
• Chop and measure all ingredients.
• Clean up as you go.

Children also learn cooking skills by watching adults, says Raab. They will model our behaviour so Raab recommends being relaxed in the kitchen. Put on some music or a podcast, she says. Enjoy yourself.

Sausage and Lentil Soup

Serves 4. A full meal in a soup — in less than half an hour. You can do this.

• 1 tbsp. (15 ml) olive oil or vegetable oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 1 medium carrot, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 tsp. (5 ml) ground cumin
• 1 can (28 oz./796 ml) diced tomatoes
• 1 can (19 oz./540 ml) lentils, drained
• 2 cups (500 ml) chicken or vegetable broth (prepared broth or made from bouillon cubes or powder)
• ½ lb. (250 kg) kielbasa or any smoked sausage cut into ½-inch (1 cm) cubes
• ½ tsp. (2 ml) salt
• ¼ tsp. (1 ml) pepper

Heat the oil in a large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat, add the onion, garlic, carrot, celery and cumin, and cook, stirring once in a while, until the vegetables are soft and beginning to brown – about 10 minutes.

Add the diced tomatoes and all the juice in the can, then the lentils and the broth, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and let the soup simmer for about 15 minutes, or until vegetables are tender. Add the sausage, salt and pepper, and continue to cook for another 5 minutes, or until heated through.

Serve with some good bread, and ta-da!

Vegetarian alert!

Omit the sausage, use vegetable broth as the cooking liquid and double the lentils for a hearty vegetarian version of this soup.

[Recipe excerpt taken from Clueless in the Kitchen: Cooking for Beginners by Evelyn Raab, with permission from Firefly Books]

Resources

• A free financial literacy course from McGill University
• Clueless in the Kitchen — Cooking for Beginners by Evelyn Raab
• Free online cooking classes at kitchn.com and bbc.co.uk.

The post Adulting 101 appeared first on Country Guide.

It turns out it’s the usual. Is anyone gluten-free, vegan or vegetarian? We all smile and tell him we’re good, and it’s not long before the waiter is back with the first dim sum item.

Moncel clearly knows the territory. He’s city manager at Culinary Adventure Co., which bills itself as Canada’s leading food tour company, with eight different tours here in Toronto, plus tours in Ottawa and Winnipeg too.

You get the sense from the name Culinary Adventure that this is a business that knows its target clientele and how to promote itself, including with the slogan “Every Bite Tells A Story,” a line that clearly works with this audience.

They also know that the tour-goers want to know about more than just the food, so Moncel explains that when he took over this culinary tour, he started by meeting the owners of the restaurants and food stores on the tour to find out more about their own histories. It makes this three-hour food tour — a tour of Spadina Avenue and Kensington Market in Toronto — more than a food tour: It’s an immersion course into the people, businesses and neighbourhoods.

The ticket is $69, which isn’t exactly expensive in this city, but it’s high enough that you want some value for it. And some tasty food would be nice too.

But we’re confident. Forbes Magazine rates this as one of the best nine food tours in the world.

From the East

Dim sum is a Cantonese-style brunch that consists of a succession of servings of mostly bite-sized food. Moncel tells us that while dim sum is the name used for this style of meal here in Toronto, in other parts of the world you might find it called “yum cha,” which means to drink tea. Whatever you call it, it’s a drawn out social meal with lots of sipping.

Several of us on the tour associate dim sum meals with carts of food wheeled around the restaurant for diners to choose from. There are none here. This restaurant has a focus on efficiency — and with no carts they can fit more tables. It’s just one of the many story bites that Moncel sprinkles throughout the tour.

As we wait for our next dish, Moncel and another guest, Norm, who is visiting from Western Canada, talk about the use of honorifics in the Japanese and Korean languages. It turns out Moncel, who loves cooking Asian food, trained as a chef. He spent time teaching in Korea — while Norm taught in Japan. They both have favourite recipes to share.

Dim Sum at Rol San

We’re in Rol San Restaurant. A banner hanging outside the restaurant advertises all-day dim sum. With a narrow storefront, it seems like a small restaurant from the street — but Moncel explains it can hold 240 people because of the large room we’re sitting in at the back.

As he refills our tea, Moncel says that the restaurant opened in 1994. “This is a real neighbourhood institution,” he says. The family that who it is from Guangdong Province in southern China.

Moncel has arranged for us to sit here in the back so he can point out some of the things that make this restaurant unique. For example, there are bins of numbered clothes pegs behind the counter across from us. We’re table 32, so the server will take clothes pegs that are marked 32 as he delivers our order to the kitchen. In the kitchen, in full view of the cooks, are signs for each of the dishes on the menu. The server affixes clips with our table number to the signs for the dishes we’ve ordered. It saves the server writing down instructions. Everything is efficient. It has to be.

The waiter arrives with a plate. “The whole idea here is to give you a contrast,” Moncel says as he talks about the crispy dough fritter wrapped with a soft rice-flour wrapper.

As we finish the wrapped fritter, a plate of dumplings arrives. “This is like the margherita pizza of the Cantonese kitchen,” he says, pointing to the shrimp wrapped in rice wrapper. “The mark of a really nice one is that you should see the pink of the shrimp shining through.”

We finish with barbeque pork buns. Moncel says these are leavened with yeast — like bread — but instead of being baked, they are steamed. He offers to pass the hot chili oil if anyone wants any. He says to dig for the crushed peppers from lower down. They’re hotter.

One last story bit is that there is a condo development slated for this site. Having heard the story of this restaurant, I’m interested to know what will happen to it. They don’t yet know.

Congee at Kings Noodle House

The next stop along Spadina Avenue, Kings Noodle House, has barbecued ducks hanging in the front window. Before we go in, Moncel points to the kitchen in the front window where someone with a cleaver chops barbecued meat. He asks us to think about all of the chopping that has made the board concave.

There is tea before the congee arrives. Congee, Moncel explains, is a savoury rice porridge. Ours has green onions and ginger. “Add the other dishes to your congee and treat it like a stew,” he advises.

As we await more food, he gives us a cultural tip. It’s customary to tap the index and middle fingers on the table as a way of expressing gratitude — it represents a bow.

An order of deep fried dough arrives. “This has the role of a muffin in western countries,” he says as he explains that, like muffins, it’s easy to eat on the run. Then he tells us the legend behind the name, which translates as oil-fried ghost.

“The principal characters in the yau ja gwai story are Yue Fei (the general) and Qin Hui (the scheming prime minister.) Qin Hui is still a very hated figure in Chinese lore — think of Guy Fawkes to the Brits or Benedict Arnold to the Americans.” It’s the scheming one who gets made into the oil-fried ghost, cut up, served and eaten.

As the barbecued pork arrives, Moncel points out that the five-spice rub used when cooking this pork often has more than five spices — but the name doesn’t change because five is a lucky number in Chinese culture. There is one piece of pork left that nobody takes. Most Canadians won’t take the last item from a plate, even when prodded, he says.

The same husband-and-wife team, Grady and Stanley Lee, have operated this restaurant since 1984. When they arrived, they found the city lacked authentic Hong Kong-style Chinese food. That’s their focus. They are now serving the grandchildren of their original clients.

As we leave and walk up Spadina Avenue, we peer into the window of a dumpling shop. Moncel points to the guy rolling dough into little round circles and asks if we know why they leave the dough thicker in the middle. Answer: It’s the load-bearing part of the dumpling.

We’ve finished the first leg of our tour, with tastes — and stories — of Chinatown under our belt. We turn onto a side street and are in Kensington Market.

Kensington Market

We shelter under an awning as Moncel points to shops across the street and explains that the market area today has many recognizable elements from the early twentieth century.

Eastern European immigrants arriving in Toronto in the early 20th century found a city that was not welcoming. As a result, many came to this neighbourhood, then an inexpensive part of the city, where they sold wares in front of their homes, eventually adding an awning, and, over time, turning the main floor into a shop. Eventually, homes became shops — and the cluster of shops became Kensington Market.

He’s had people ask him where the market is, expecting a stand-alone market building. “You’re in it,” he tells them.

The synagogue across the street is another clue. The neighbourhood today is diverse. We walk past Rasta Pasta, run by a Jamaican-Italian husband-and-wife team. Nearby is a Portuguese bakery. There are fishmongers, cheese shops, greengrocers and a thriving vintage clothing scene.

Cactus Sandwich at Torterĺa San Cosme

As we grab stools in a Mexican torta shop, Moncel talks about the owners, and how they have sourced a lot of the ingredients for their Mexico City-style street food here in the market.

We will be tasting a Nopales torta — a cactus pad sandwich. He goes behind the counter to ask one of the staff for a tin of cactus packed in brine, which he brings to show us. He explains how the skin and spines are removed, describing the taste as being “like a green bean crossed with an aloe plant.”

Putting the sandwiches in front of us, he points out the refried pinto beans, avocado, caramelized onion, a firm Mexican-style cheese and green salsa.

The savoury part of the tour is done, and we finish off with stories of sweets. First to CXBO Chocolates, where we hear how chef Brandon Olsen got into chocolates, and how his wife, designer Sarah Keenlyside applied her talents to make the jewel-like chocolates. The Ziggy Stardust Disco Egg, a dark chocolate shell filled with aerated milk and white chocolate pieces, is mine.

Our tour finishes off at Wanda’s Pie in the Sky, a bakery-café. Wanda, who has had a life-long love of baking, grew up in the Niagara area, so it’s fitting that we have sour-cherry pie. Moncel says that Wanda started by delivering pies by streetcar, and eventually opened this café.

The tart cherry pie he orders has little cherry cut-outs on top of the crust. The unique thing about this pie, he says, is the almond extract, adding, “That nuttiness just rounds out the tartness of the pie.” The butter crust on the pie is explained by something written on a chalkboard on the wall: “We’re a vegetarian café, but we don’t beat you over the head with it!”

With that, our tour comes to an end. We’ve talked the entire time about food and about the people responsible for it.

And I haven’t seen or heard the name of a Canadian farmer the whole time, not even once.

The post A food tour of Toronto’s Kensington Market appeared first on Country Guide.

At the same time, food waste is a growing concern, leading some to argue there’s already enough food being produced in the world, and the real solution lies not with producing more, but with doing a better job of ensuring it’s actually consumed.

“So much waste happens at the consumer end of the supply chain. We have enough but we are poorly handling what we have in the Western world,” said Andrew Ive, managing director and partner of Food-X, a food tech accelerator.

Ive was part of a panel discussion on food waste and sustainability at the recent Global Food Innovation Summit I attended in Milan.

“For example, only about 50 per cent of bananas get to the consumer and a big chunk of those don’t get eaten because they go black sitting on counters,” Ive said.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, approximately one-third of the food produced for human consumption — about 1.3 billion tons — is lost or wasted. That costs industrialized countries around US$680 billion.

More than 40 per cent of these losses happen at the retail and consumer levels, not on the farm or in processing.

Canadians waste 396 kilograms of food per capita annually, according to a 2018 report by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an agency set up under the existing North American Free Trade Agreement.

The global innovation and technology community has been working on waste reduction solutions all along the food chain. The CEO of a Chicago food business incubator points to “upcycling” — taking something undesirable and turning it into something more appealing instead of just discarding it.

“We are seeing innovation around how to transform something that is equally nutritious but is considered imperfect; that’s where we see a movement of upcycling — transforming into something more edible or that we deem more appetizing,” said Natalie Shmulik of The Hatchery at the summit.

Cricket flour as a high-protein ingredient is more appealing to western consumers than the idea of eating the whole insect, for example. Other examples include turning overripe or waste fruit into juices or dried fruit snacks. A case in point is the coffee cherry. These are the fruits whose pit is the coffee bean. Until now, they’ve been dumped after the pit has been removed, but the cherries themselves are high in healthy anti-oxidants, and processes are being developed to transform them into a popular tea instead.

According to Shmulik, it’s also a matter of changing the terminology around food from “expiration” to “best before” dating, for example, to let consumers know food is still edible and nutritious.

“The market is excited and demanding the use of these products, but it’s also a matter of education and shifting the language — we’re much more apt to consume something upcycled than ‘ugly,’” Schmulik said.

That’s an approach used by Loblaw, one of Canada’s main retail chains, when it launched its “Naturally Imperfect” line of produce. This line costs consumers about 30 per cent less on average than their “perfect” counterparts and consists of misshapen or undersized fruits and vegetables that would previously have been discarded or not even harvested.

According to Ive, his accelerator also invests in upcycling ventures, such as U.S.-based Rise, a company that rescues spent brewing grains from going into landfills and turns them into low-carb, high-fibre and high-protein flour that’s marketed as a “super ingredient.”

Another U.S. startup, Fora Foods, has created a vegan-friendly butter alternative using the leftover water after cooking chickpeas. This water was also previously discarded, even though it’s high in proteins, starches and other soluble solids from the chickpeas.

“Upcycling isn’t just ugly fruit, it’s taking the derivative for existing production cycles that used to go into landfills and rivers and converting them into something useful,” Ive said.

There are a plethora of other technology-based approaches to reducing food waste too. Here is a sampling:

Feedback is a phone app that lets Toronto consumers buy restaurant meals about to be discarded at a fraction of the price. Participating restaurants post their offerings on the app along with the window of availability before the food is thrown out.

Phenix is a European startup that last fall raised 15 million Euros (C$23 million) for its turnkey service that helps divert unsold food from landfills to alternative uses like charities, animal feed or recycling.

U.K.-based Tenzo uses artificial intelligence to analyze data ranging from sales and inventory to social media and weather changes to help restaurants do a better job of predicting everything from booking staff to ordering food — all with the goal of reducing waste and lowering costs.

AgShift is using machine learning to build what it says is the world’s most autonomous food inspection system to assess produce quality and ripeness at food processing facilities, making internal inspections more accurate and consistent, and reducing rejection rates. Expansion into nuts and seafood is now underway.

Plus a Bill Gates-supported startup, Apeel, has developed a plant-based powder called Edipeel that fruit and vegetable growers can mix with water and apply to the outside of their produce before shipping. An alternative to the wax currently being used, the technology maintains freshness by warding off oxygen and maintaining moisture levels. It’s currently being trialed on avocados in grocery stores in the U.S. Midwest, including about 30 Costco locations.

The post Business opp appeared first on Country Guide.

Unfortunately, it is estimated that about half of Canadians do not get enough fibre.

Fibre has health benefits, and if you watch advertisements for fibre, it seems to be touted as a cure for everything. However, researchers have shown that good fibre intake actually does have the potential to lower cholesterol and to improve heart health, as well as to help you control diabetes, lose weight, and improve your bowel functioning.

Some studies have even shown that good fibre intake is related to reduced rates of some types of cancer, most notably colorectal cancer.

Fibre is the part of plants that your body cannot digest and therefore does not absorb. It is found mainly in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. There are two types of fibre, insoluble and soluble, which are defined by their ability to dissolve or not dissolve in water.

Insoluble fibre, such as bran, is the type that promotes the movement of material through the bowel and increases the stool bulk.

Soluble fibre dissolves in water to form a gel-like substance. This type of fibre slows the passage of food through the digestive system and is known to lower cholesterol and glucose levels. Gums such as oatmeal and fruit pectins are examples.

Often food sources contain both insoluble and soluble fibre.

If you want to increase the amount of fibre in your diet, start slowly by adding an extra serving of high-fibre food every second or third day.

Adding too much fibre too fast will result in adverse effects like bloating, abdominal pain, gas, constipation, or even diarrhea.

Also don’t forget to drink enough fluids to ensure the fibre doesn’t get “stuck” in your bowel. Some fibre supplements actually need to be added to water before taking.

Processing food removes much of the fibre. For example, an apple has more fibre than does applesauce, which in turn has more fibre than apple juice. Cooking can also reduce the fibre content, so cooked carrots contain much less fibre than do raw carrot sticks.

Whenever possible, don’t peel fruits and vegetables like apples, pears, peaches or potatoes because their skin has extra fibre.

Even then, in order to be sure you have enough fibre in your diet, you will need to read food labels. To see how much fibre you are consuming, keep track for a couple of weeks. And, if you need more fibre, try sprinkling high-fibre ingredients like bran or oatmeal on top of cookies, cakes or muffins before baking.

They will not only have added fibre, but have a crunchy texture. Choose brown rice, kidney beans, chick peas, and lentils when making casseroles, soups, or salads. For snacking, choose high-fibre foods like popcorn or nuts.

If you need a fibre supplement follow the instructions carefully. Some products need to be mixed with water. Others can be added directly to your morning cereal or even cookie or cake batters.

The adage an apple a day keeps the doctor away is certainly true when it comes to fibre, but don’t forget other fruits, vegetables, and grains too!

The post Guide Health: Are you getting enough dietary fibre? appeared first on Country Guide.

On a late August day, a delegation of Mexican business people has stopped at InfraReady for lunch. The menu features food InfraReady has a hand in producing, featuring burgers with a pulse extender and black bean brownies baked by Monica Deschner, who runs InfraReady’s lab.

Saskatoon entrepreneur George Barreras has a machine dispensing the hot oatmeal drink his company, Oat Deal, is trying to launch in the Canadian and Chinese markets. (Barreras rents space from InfraReady.) The Mexican delegates dig into the lunch, and seem especially impressed by the brownies.

Later in the afternoon, Mark Pickard, founder and president of InfraReady, takes me on a tour of the maze-like building. Behind the reception desk is a door to the lab where Deschner and her colleagues are checking samples for quality and food safety traits, complete with thorough paperwork. If it weren’t for the hand sieves and grain samples, it would look a lot like any other office space.

Pickard explains the company hires university-educated employees with a food science background for the lab. He wants a strong technical core in the lab, with staff who can spot food safety risks and ensure customers are getting the product attributes they want.

The food processing equipment lies beyond the labs. This is where the infrared machine works its magic. The machine itself — an off-white, hopper-fed contraption — doesn’t stand out to the untrained eye, but it represents much of what differentiates InfraReady from competitors.

The infrared system works a little like a microwave, emitting waves to heat water molecules within the food ingredients. This pre-cooks the grains and pulses without destroying the nutrients. It also drops the microbial count, extends shelf life, and improves digestibility and flavour.

InfraReady uses the process on a wide range of crops, from pulses to wheat to quinoa, producing ingredients that end up in tortillas, flour, snack bars, cereals, crackers, soup mix, meat extenders, and just about any other food you can think of. InfraReady counts Nestlé among its clients. It also produces soup mix on a philanthropic basis for the Friendship Inn, a local community centre that runs a soup kitchen.

Beginnings

Back in the early ’90s, Pickard was working for the Sask­atchewan Wheat Pool. He looked at infrared technology, and he saw an opportunity. Using his food science and business background, he wrote a business plan and presented it to Milt Fair, CEO of the Wheat Pool. Fair was a chartered accountant, and Pickard was ready for questions on numbers.

But Fair only had one question: Who’s going to run it?

Pickard said he would.

With that assurance, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool provided the capital to incubate InfraReady Products. It wasn’t that Pickard had written an excellent business plan, he now says. It was because he was willing to invest his social capital, i.e. his career, in the venture. Every investment ends up being an investment in people, he says.

In 1994 InfraReady launched with three employees, no products and no customers. But they did have a business model so Pickard and his colleagues went to work, and succeeded with products for the baking industry.

But by the late ’90s the Sask Wheat Pool was shifting to a publicly traded model. The Pool had several small companies, and started evaluating what they should keep and what they should sell. The consultants’ conclusion on InfraReady was that it was “too small to make a rounding error difference,” says Pickard.

Pickard was given the option to buy the company. He could see a bright future for InfraReady, so he convinced venture capitalists to invest, along with a supplier, Bill Hetland. InfraReady gave Hetland a chance to integrate his seed farm and seed cleaning operation into the food processing supply chain, Pickard explains.

By 2003, the venture capital money was costing about 18 per cent per year. “It was like having a credit card balance you could never get rid of.”

So Pickard looked to his supply chain. He had a business relationship with Ken Davis, who was based in Singapore. Davis became “the third amigo,” and InfraReady used his investment to redeem the venture capitalists. Davis has exclusive rights to InfraReady’s products in southeast Asia, also bringing insight into those markets, along with a sales force and offices in several cities.

In fact, with Hetland, Pickard, and Davis, InfraReady has partners from supply through distribution.

And although the three of them don’t meet often, when they do, it’s productive.

The value-creation index

During InfraReady’s early days, Pickard had to do everything from learn how the production equipment worked to research and development.

“Even though you’re a small company, you have to have the functionality of a large one in a lot of ways to get that credibility,” he says.

So as the company grew, Pickard’s management style had to change. The people working at InfraReady were better at their jobs than he would be, he explains, and they carried the company forward.

“I think that’s when I learned not to be a micromanager,” he says. It’s about being selective in how you participate.

Since Pickard now has people to whom he can delegate, he invests more time working on the business rather than in the business. “I think that’s my role,” he says. “Nobody else in the company can really do that.”

Evaluating success means looking at factors beyond the bottom line, such as employee retention and customer longevity. Pickard also tracks key performance indicators showing how the company is doing against the plan. One he particularly follows is the value creation index, measuring value created relative to the labour.

Pickard has also become the corporate memory. He remembers stories such as how they hung in at a trade show until the last hour. A customer came, and that visit led to $1 million in new business. Or the competitor who was getting out of the business. He gave InfraReady his customer list because InfraReady’s people were friendly to competitors, Pickard says.

He looks back at one of his mentors, a man who was “quietly confident,” and thinks that’s what InfraReady has become. InfraReady’s people don’t need to make a bunch of noise, says Pickard. They know what they need to do, so they focus on executing it.

The right people

For a business owner to spend more time on the business, he needs employees he knows can handle the day-to-day, which raises a big question. Even if you can find and recruit those people, how do you hang on to them?

Pickard thinks about bosses he’s had, and others he’s observed. Good or not, he’s learned something from them. He also thinks about what good people look for. “They want some control in their work. They want to be the masters of their work.”

InfraReady needs employees with a range of abilities. On the food processing floor, two men handle the heavy bags filled with product, a job that takes strength and stamina.

The administrative assistant is the front-facing person not only for InfraReady but for Western Malt Distributors, another company Pickard has his hand in. Western Malt distributes malt by the bag to home-based brewers and companies as large as Great Western.

InfraReady also used to have a marketing manager and business development managers. But the company hasn’t had a business development manager since 2009. Over time, Pickard concluded that they made sales because of the whole organization’s teamwork.

Customers’ initial concerns are around technical aspects and product attributes. Once those concerns are met, customers look at business aspects such as pricing, lead times, and customer service.

“And so we found by having customer service and production planning together in one individual, when a customer contacts him, he can tell them where the order’s placed, when it’s going to be produced, and when it’s going to be shipped,” says Pickard.

These days, Pickard tends to recruit technical people and teach them marketing rather than the other way around.

It’s not just InfraReady employees that Pickard relies on. The depth and breadth of relationships with allies are key factors in any company’s success, he says. InfraReady only has so many people, and they’re trying to do many things.

That means looking at who else can get behind a project and how InfraReady can leverage resources at institutions such as the University of Saskatchewan. Those factors add up to the enabling environment.

“And I would say in Saskatchewan that we have a very good enabling environment.”

In many ways, that enabling environment has grown stronger since he started out, says Pickard.

He credits good provincial policies that support the processing industry. “If other people knew, they’d be coming here.”

Risk versus opportunity

There are some obvious risks to the food processing industry, with food safety among the biggest. But Pickard has encountered other business risks that aren’t so obvious, such as being hit by ransomware during a software upgrade, or having a landlord sell the building InfraReady was leasing at the time.

Opportunity and risk go hand in hand, so how does Pickard decide which risks are worth taking?

It’s about weighing risk and reward, he says, and expecting delayed gratification. If running a business like InfraReady was easy, there’d be one on every corner, he chuckles.

It’s also about mindset. “If you don’t think you can do something, you probably can’t. So if you get on the right side of your thinking, you probably can.”

When evaluating a new opportunity or food trend, Pickard says they look at whether there are recognizable benefits to customers or consumers, and whether InfraReady can create any unique features. For example, microbial content in food is a huge concern for any company making ready-to-eat products. Many food-borne illnesses start with raw products.

Risk is also an opportunity for InfraReady since the company’s technology drops microbial counts. InfraReady also provides a certificate of analysis stating that the ingredient is low in microbes. There’s so much litigation in the food industry that major brands will pay premiums to suppliers who can assure food safety.

Pickard says a sincere commitment to food safety is vital. That means having a strong technical core in the lab, and a management that supports a food safety culture.

Startups should prioritize accreditation for food safety, says Pickard. A company might still send its own auditors, but accreditation gets you in the door.

Still, one of the natural outcomes of being entrepreneurial is feeling sometimes like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, says Pickard. There are always some nights when you lose sleep worrying.

“That still happens now,” Pickard says. “I don’t think you ever get away from it.”

The post New business appeared first on Country Guide.

Last year’s breakthrough seems so much more pedestrian by comparison. It was a vegetarian burger that bleeds like a real meat patty on the grill.

Taken together, though, they show how people with money to invest in Canada’s highly competitive food market are convinced meat analogues are a good place to put that money.

They may be right. A new poll released by Dalhousie University shows that vegetarians and vegans — those who consume no animal-derived products at all — account for nearly 10 per cent of today’s Canadian market. And consumers under age 35 are three times more likely to consider themselves vegan or vegetarians than those over age 49.

“Flexitarians are consumers who tend to gravitate to eating a more predominantly vegetarian diet, and the meat industry has to contend with these people more than any other as they are becoming mainstream,” says Paul Uys, a director with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute and a former vice-president of innovation with Loblaw.

Food industry giants are definitely taking note. As just one example, Maple Leaf Foods bought two plant-based protein food companies in 2017, and Cargill and Tyson Foods, along with billionaires Richard Branson and Bill Gates, have made significant investments into Silicon Valley startup company Memphis Meats, a producer of lab-grown or cultured meat products.

“When you have top players in the food chain investing, it’s indicative of how serious this is,” Uys said while speaking at a forum on the topic in Guelph last month hosted by the Livestock Research Innovation Corporation. “We will have change in how we consume animal protein.”

Market research gathered by Guelph-based agri-tech accelerator Bioenterprise indicates plant-based proteins account for 57 per cent of the world’s protein consumption. In Canada, sales of those products are growing at seven per cent per year and represented a $1.5 billion market in 2017.

According to business analyst Alex Lazier, the new Canadian plant protein supercluster that was recently announced under the $950-million federal superclusters initiative is proof of government support for increasing production of plant-based meat alternatives. He also pointed to the latest iteration of Canada’s Food Guide, which is encouraging Canadians to consume more plant-based proteins in place of traditional meat.

Globally, humans eat close to 2,000 different insect types, and they are a favoured food choice in Asia, Africa and South America.

Insects require less land and water and leave a lower environmental footprint — and the global edible insect market is forecast to exceed US$700 million by 2024, driven in part by growing demand in Western cultures for cricket protein in cookies, crackers and chocolate.

“Most people assume we are eating bugs, but it’s actually about the enhancement and infusion of these powders into products like pasta sauces, for example,” Lazier said.

Cultured protein — in essence, meat grown from bovine stem cells — is expected to be in major grocery retail chains in the next five years. At a current estimated cost of US$11 per pound, cultured meat is not yet economically viable — but it has already come a long way since the first hamburger was grown in a petri dish in 2013 at a cost of over $300,000.

Like plant and insect protein, studies have found it has a much lower environmental footprint than traditional livestock production, and the fact it does not involve actual farming and slaughter has consumer appeal.

It still has hurdles to overcome, though. Production is not yet scaled to commercial levels, costs are high, and there is work to do on palatability.

Whether consumers will actually buy cultured meat has yet to be proven too, although U.S. consumer research conducted by Matti Wilks of Australia’s University of Queensland shows interest is there.

In all, 65 per cent of respondents said they would likely try cultured meat, and 32.6 per cent indicated they’d be likely to consume it regularly. And while they think it is more environmentally friendly and ethical, they also perceive it to be less appealing and tasty.

“People are cautiously optimistic about it, but have reservations about taste and price,” Wilks said. “People who already eat meat are more likely to try it, but less likely to see benefits. The inverse is true for people who eat less meat or are vegetarian, so the market for this product will be meat eaters.”

That’s precisely what concerns Ontario veal producer Jared Yantzi. As the University of Guelph student contemplates his future in livestock farming, he feels the impact on farmers of what is being called “cellular agriculture” will influence the definition of what is meat and what isn’t.

“Cultured protein companies all use the word “meat” in their names, and there’s now an international race to produce the most for cheapest price,” Yantzi said, mentioning companies like Memphis Meats in the U.S., Mosa Meat in the Netherlands and Super Meats in Israel.

The labelling precedent has already been set. The European Union has banned the use of the word “milk” on dairy-free beverages, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency limits use of the word to products of mammalian origin, and U.S. and Australian dairy farmers are trying to achieve similar protection.

While the extent of their impact is yet unknown, there’s no denying that alternative and cultured proteins are a rapidly growing field.

Yantzi believes research is key to the livestock industry’s preparedness for the alternative and cultured protein onslaught. That includes improvement in animal welfare and environmental footprint that currently give consumers negative perceptions of livestock production.

Uys similarly sees opportunity for the livestock industry in differentiation and responsible production, but sees no immediate clear solutions.

“People are already seeking alternatives… the industry will grow very quickly,” said Uys. “During the last 10 years of my retailing career, the change in consumers was dramatic, so what will it look like exponentially in two years?”

The post Meat-less meat takes a big step closer to becoming mainstream appeared first on Country Guide.

Why? The reason is partly what you might expect. Canadian demand for sweet potatoes has skyrocketed. Ethnic markets are booming, sales of new products like sweet potato fries are soaring, and the opportunity for future growth seems limitless, especially when retailers see an advantage to putting a Grown-in-Canada tag on their shelves.

With a hot market like that, who wouldn’t want to have their slice of the action?

But for the Van Berlo family near Simcoe, Ont., there’s another, more strategic reason too. In sweet potatoes, the farm saw its chance to become the recognized leader in the crop, not only giving them a path to grow their acreage but also making it difficult for anyone else to come in and displace their market share.

But to achieve that leadership, the family has had to dedicate themselves to the crop in ways that go far beyond what they’d have needed if they had opted for a future based on corn and soybean production instead. They’ve been dedicated to sweet potatoes for 20 years, and they’re dedicated still.

It’s the key lesson that gets talked about by sweet potato growers. If you’re going to succeed with an alternate crop, it has to be the right crop. And the farmer has to be the right farmer too.

“There’s going to be blood, sweat and tears,” says Nick VanBerlo, the farm’s COO and its marketing lead. But if you make the right choices along the way, he says, “there should be the opportunity of a better return.”

So, nearly 2,000 kilometres to the east, if you ever get a chance to visit the Keddy family’s farm in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, you’ll likely notice a lot of crop testing going on with their sweet potatoes. Amid their 50 acres of the southern crop, son Philip Keddy is forever running test plots with new varieties.

Some are planted at eight inches apart, others at 10 and 12 inches, and when Country Guide talked with his dad Charles, Philip was preparing to try a few acres planted with a thicker black plastic to see if he can warm his soil faster and get a larger crop earlier in the season.

“Most of it Philip just dreams up because there’s no one here devoted to sweet potato research,” says Charles. “We’re the only ones doing it.”

VanBerlo shares the feeling, saying sweet potatoes have such a need for high heat and a long growing season, that it could have been easy for them to simply say, “We can’t grow them here.”

Instead, the family looked at themselves and decided they had the raw material to make the crop succeed.

It’s been a commitment that affects every aspect of operations, VanBerlo says. “We’ve had to be our own research department for 20 years,” he says. “We’ve had to learn how to do our own variety evaluations, our own production research.

“And when we’ve had years when we had to learn things the hard way, we’re the ones who had to bear the financial strain.”

Frankly, it has taken courage too. The Berlo’s Best farm has learned that viability means not only understanding its retail customers and knowing their needs, but being big enough to make the VanBerlo farm efficient for retailers to deal with.

“When we first started, we felt good about growing 20 acres,” VanBerlo recalls. “But that was only two weeks supply in the market. We had to get bigger.”

Which is where the courage part really comes in. You can’t go to your banker and expect to walk away with the financing needed to make you a big player in a crop no one has grown before, VanBerlo says. “There’s no investors. There’s no Dragon’s Den. We had to be self-financed.”

Between 2007 and 2012, Canadians doubled their sweet potato consumption, from 0.72 kilograms per person in 2007 to 1.43 kilograms in 2012. The rate of growth has somewhat tailed off in more recent years, but the numbers continue to rise overall.

According to Dr. Valerio Primomo, a vegetable breeding research scientist at the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in Ontario’s Niagara region, that increase is likely due to two main factors. One, public perception is that sweet potatoes are very healthy (they’re high in beta carotene, for instance). And two, there’s been a recent explosion of processed products, particularly sweet potato french fries.

To meet that growing demand, Canada has had to import between 50,000 and 60,000 tonnes of sweet potatoes per year in recent years, with most imports coming from the U.S.

For Canadian farmers to replace those imports, Primomo estimates that they’d need to grow a total of at least 4,000 acres and perhaps as many 8,000.

Translation: there may be more growth potential in the market for producers who can overcome the crop’s unique challenges and get Canadian buyers onboard.

Neither is simple.

New variety, new hopes

While Berlo’s Best continues with its own research, Primomo is also breeding varieties with an eye to producing a shorter-season crop that can still score high with retailers.

Thanksgiving is a seasonal market peak, and Berlo’s Best has learned how to sell crop into that market across the country in recent years. Now Primomo is targeting new genetics at the opportunity. Over the past five years his team has tested more than 2,000 seedlings and identified one that Primomo says can be harvested earlier with excellent yields.

“It also has a similar colour to other varieties — a nice deep orange — and our sensory and consumer analyses showed that people actually prefer it to the current commercial standard,” he says. “Growers also want to know that it stores well for eight months, and so far this variety stores well compared to the current standards. So it has everything going for it.”

The plan is to have it on store shelves by 2019. The Keddy farm has been one of the test sites for the new variety, and this year the family will grow a few acres of it. Based on what he’s seen, Charles Keddy is quite hopeful it will sell and also grow better than other varieties under cool conditions.

It all seems like good news, but is there any concern that too many Canadian growers will enter the market if some groundbreaking new variety should all of a sudden become available? This is a niche market after all, where, at most, only 8,000 acres of sweet potatoes might be needed to fulfill national demand.

“Not concerned a bit,” says Charles. “Here in Nova Scotia alone it would take 700 to 1,000 acres to fill the demand. And anyway, it’s a very labour-intensive crop and not everyone has that labour available to them. On top of that, you have to have very special facilities to cure and store it. I mean, we have a million dollars invested in that.”

VanBerlo is cautious too. Before he’d invest in any new variety, he’d have to see if it coincides with what the marketplace wants, he says. “Consumers buy with their eyes first and foremost, so if these looked slightly different, there would be a reluctance to buy it.”

From the stores’ perspective, they want consistency, he says. “They want something that people will come back to buy day after day. So this variety would have to build a real critical mass before it’s viable for one of these retailers to catch on to it.”

Buyers be aware

As VanBerlo and Keddy point out, the challenges of developing a thriving sweet potato market in Canada aren’t just about overcoming the climate with new varieties. A significant percentage of the crop typically doesn’t make grade, so a big challenge is finding alternative markets for byproducts.

Perhaps the biggest challenge, however, is how best to market a niche crop like sweet potatoes, says VanBerlo. “Once you’re able to grow a successful crop, only a quarter of your work is done. Now you’ve got to turn it into money, and that’s where I see a lot of farmers struggle.”

VanBerlo is wary of revealing his secrets for developing marketing initiatives that work, but what he can say is that most of his time is not necessarily selling the crop but building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with buyers.

In the end, though, he says that it’s about having a competitive price, something that’s tough when competing with U.S. suppliers whose labour costs are lower than his. “We all play in the same marketplace. It’s not just that you’re a local grower, that you’re from Ontario or Canada. We play in a global world where it’s the push of a button and a phone call for somebody at one of the big chain stores to bring in a product from anywhere in the world.”

Still, retailers are very open to buying locally grown sweet potatoes, says Primomo. That’s something he heard again and again from Canadian retailers during his research. In particular, they’d like a locally grown product for the huge Thanksgiving market.

That’s something Charles Keddy has consistently heard from his buyers too, including Sobeys stores throughout Atlantic Canada. “Most like that our sweet potatoes have a higher sugar content than those from the Carolinas, and that they are a non-spray crop, but everybody is glad to get a local product.”

But, he adds, local isn’t everything. “It’s not the case anymore that you can grow these things and expect to get buyers because they’re grown local. In general, buyers and the public want to support local — and they will even pay a little bonus for that — but they will only support local if it’s as good as a product that they can buy somewhere else and at a competitive price.”

A sweet future

Even more potential may lie within a new generation of processed sweet potato products.

“The fresh market has grown, but I don’t think it’s growing at the same rate as the processing side,” says VanBerlo. “We’ve noticed a big increase in the utilization of sweet potatoes recently — everything from baby food to chips to fries to purees to dog food. We supply all those guys, and it’s a really good outlet for our number twos, our non-cosmetically pleasing products.”

Primomo is seeing the growth on the processed side too, and believes it will continue to trend upwards. He also thinks that as our taste for sweet potatoes matures, we may see more varieties with different flesh colours on supermarket shelves such as white, yellow and purple.

For now, though, most Canadian sweet potato farmers are focused on the orange variety we’re all getting more acquainted with.

Back at the Keddy family farm in the Annapolis Valley, Philip and Charles are getting ready to grow upwards of 10 acres of that new made-for-Canada variety this summer. Their spirits are high but tempered.

“We think it’ll do well,” says Charles. “But there are always challenges with this crop. That’s why we’re always researching, always trying to improve. We just want to grow the best crop we can.”

The post Finding the right niche appeared first on Country Guide.

The list goes on and on with plenty of other examples of how producing a more finished product can add economic value to a commodity.

But “value adding” requires a different skill set than growing and selling a commodity. And it starts with the most valuable skill of all. How do you sort out whether your idea for a value-added product is viable?

Sima Gandhi, who teaches a Market Feasibility Bootcamp at Food Starter, a launch pad for new food products and food companies in Toronto, shares some of the concepts she covers in the 12-week course.

Gandhi, who is also an innovation consultant and entrepreneur, has been involved in entrepreneurship education for the past four years. While being an entrepreneur comes with many challenges, she says that being a “foodpreneur” comes with an extra layer of complexity due to all the rules and regulations that must be followed, such as nutritional labels, sanitation practices and packaging requirements.

If you are already selling direct to consumers, you know what your customers are asking for. But what if you don’t have that direct connection with potential customers — how do you evaluate your idea without investing a lot of time and money?

Spending time on social media is one easy and low-cost way to see how much momentum an idea has, says Gandhi. Look at related groups online and how many members they have. What are people talking about? This will also help you identify the key language your target community is using to describe your product.

However, it’s important to ensure that the market you are trying to hit is more than a fad. In Gandhi’s opinion, trends around health, aging, fitness, convenience and indulgence will have some staying power.

Gandhi has also identified what she considers to be movements, or ideas with some permanence.

The awareness of grains, fast and slow carbs and ancient grains falls into the movement category, she says. Other movements include an awareness of the health concerns of sugar and a move to eat more “natural” foods. These are foods captured by the comment: “if it wasn’t on your grandmother’s plate, don’t eat it.” Gandhi also sees plant-based proteins continuing to gain momentum.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking at what you can make instead of what the customer wants and needs. Gandhi recommends using the Value Proposition Matrix to help ensure that your idea, as she puts it, “solves a pain felt by a community of people.”

In order to transmit the value of your innovation to the user, you need to clearly identify your product/service, identify your target customer and describe the value you provide. This needs to be specific to help you better market your product.

Once you know your target market, Gandhi recommends creating an avatar that represents the consumer. She sees her customer as a female, with a mid- to high-range income, who is concerned about nutrition. By imagining what this ideal customer does on her typical day, Gandhi gains insights into how to market her utensil.

Gandhi illustrates how the process works. Being concerned with health and fitness, this client likely does yoga which means that following the marketing of Lululemon, a popular brand of yoga wear, will shed light on what appeals to this target market. “It’s a blunt, easy way of understanding the values of a community,” she says.

With food products, going to stores and even to farmers markets will help you get a feel for your market, continues Gandhi. “See who buys your product, give out samples,” she says. “Or go to the grocery store and ask if you can stand in the aisle and ask questions.” Gandhi looked at marketing a tool to help rinse quinoa, so she stood in the quinoa section at her local grocery store to ask shoppers whether or not they washed their quinoa before cooking. “Women did, men didn’t, … that helped her define her target market as women,” she explains.

Sometimes it’s helpful to think beyond the obvious. One client brought back an artisanal pasta concept after visiting Italy. What goes better with pasta than wine? Sampling the pasta at local wine bars is a creative way to validate the market.

Doing a competitive analysis of your product will help you determine where your product fits in the market. By doing a comparison of serving size, price, available flavours, etc., you can see if there is a gap in the market. For example, a few years ago no one was making a single-serving-size gourmet frozen pizza, points out Gandhi. She notes that market gap has since been filled.

Her final message is encouraging, however. The timing is good for farmers who want to move their product up the value chain. The enduring interest in knowing where our food comes from is creating opportunities for farmers locally, while the internet and online sales have made it easier than ever to market products globally.

Common “foodpreneur” pitfalls

In her work as an innovation consultant and instructor for the Toronto Food Starter Market Feasibility Bootcamp, Sima Gandhi regularly sees would-be food entrepreneurs making these mistakes:

• Underestimating what it takes to create a successful business venture. Too many people who have developed a product think they can get it onto grocery store shelves in just a few months. Unfortunately, they don’t understand how grocery stores value their shelf space. If you go to the grocery store, you will usually see a whole line with a variety of flavours. “One product does not make a business. Making the product is the easy part these days.”
• Being too emotionally invested in an idea and having feedback only from family and friends. You need to seek unbiased input from outside your own network.
• Being unaware of the rules around selling food made in your own kitchen.
• Not having thought about your end goals. Many are too attached to manufacturing and selling their product themselves when selling or licensing the idea may make more sense. Ask yourself, what is your vision? Do you want your business to be big or small? To sell locally or nationally? What is your exit strategy?
• Not knowing your costs. There’s a big difference between making a batch on your kitchen stove and going into production.
• Not talking to partners and families. Launching a business will have a big impact on their lifestyle and finances too.

Resources

• Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, direct farm marketing resources
• AMI’s Transition Smart for those shifting from production to processing
• Georgian College food entrepreneurship
• Food Starter provides a range of services to help entrepreneurs commercialize and sell their food products
• Strategyzer Lean startup resources
• Innovator Lab blogs and ideas for working on your startup.

The post Step one to value adding: Evaluation appeared first on Country Guide.

In 2015, Deloitte Consulting LLP surveyed 5,000 U.S. consumers to determine the values that drive their food purchases. The report of this study, “Capitalizing on the Shifting Consumer Food Value Equation,” found 49 per cent of consumers listed food safety, impact of food choices on health and wellness, the social impact of food production, and even the experience of food purchasing, preparation, and enjoyment as the values that guide their food purchase decisions.

The impact of this change in consumer preferences can be seen in actual sales figures. The Deloitte study revealed: “For example, from 2009 to 2013, the 25 biggest U.S. food and beverage manufacturers averaged only 1.0 per cent annual growth, while smaller brands and private brand manufacturers grew more rapidly (4.9 per cent and 4.0 per cent, respectively).”

That study also found 55 per cent of consumers were willing to pay a 10 per cent premium for food products which they valued “healthy,” 23 per cent were willing to pay 10 to 20 per cent more, and three per cent were willing to pay more than 20 per cent. In other words, 81 per cent of consumers are willing to pay more for food they consider to be more “healthy.”

This is a premium well worth pursuing as an industry. Unfortunately, though, it is hard to pinpoint the exact meaning of “healthy.” It depends on each individual consumer and ranges from “organic” and “all-natural” to “fewer artificial ingredients” and everything in between.

The Nielsen’s 2015 Global Health & Wellness online survey of over 30,000 individuals mirrored the Deloitte results. This study found: “some 88 per cent of those polled are willing to pay more for healthier foods.” That report went on to conclude “Consumer mindset about healthy foods has shifted and they are ready to pay more for products that claim to boost health and weight loss.”

Farmers complain about a “cheap food policy” and consumers complain about the price of food, but when given a choice of cheap food or food that meets their values, most consumers willingly pay more.

Commodities too!

This is not news to farmers who direct market to consumers. However, a focus on value is just as applicable to commodity producers.

In 2009, the Dairy Farmers of Canada started labelling milk products with a “100 per cent Canadian Milk” symbol. This may seem redundant since, by law, milk and cream sold in Canada must be sourced within Canada.

Yet the 2016 study “Consumer Willingness to Pay for Dairy Products with the 100 per cent Canadian Milk Label: A Discrete Choice Experiment” by Shelicia Forbes-Brown, Eric T. Micheels, and Jill E. Hobbs found: “The results show that Canadian consumers are willing to pay more for milk and ice cream products that carry the label.”

Amazingly, the researchers found: “respondents are willing to pay an additional C$2.29 for a 2-litre carton of milk with the 100 per cent Canadian Milk symbol,” and “respondents also prefer ice cream with the 100 per cent Canadian Milk symbol, with an estimated WTP premium of $1.56 for a 2-litre carton of ice cream containing this label.”

This study also revealed that most study participants believed the 100 per cent Canadian Milk symbol indicated a higher-quality product, which is why they were willing to pay more. However, those respondents who knew all milk sold in Canada had to be Canadian sourced actually discounted the price they were willing to pay.

Furthermore, milk and ice cream carrying an organic label were also discounted by consumers. This differing reaction to a label shows it is not only important to truly understand the values of the consumer but labelling must be done in a way to position the product to meet those values.

Addressing consumers’ values is even more important in the Canadian grain system. Too often grain farmers see the grader at the local terminal as the end buyer, when in fact the grader is a middleman in a long food processing chain. Ultimately it is the consumer who eats the products who creates the demand. And unless we listen and respond to what they are telling us, someone else will supply their needs and possibly earn a premium for it.

Canada was very successful in branding its wheat as the best quality in the world. Canada also developed canola as a healthy vegetable oil crop. Unfortunately, producers have gradually moved away from embracing these values. Farmers have switched to higher-yielding, lower-quality varieties in a pursuit of higher production.

We are demanding access to pesticides which are not acceptable to consumers. There is a feeling that consumers need to accept what farmers do and grow rather than producing what the consumer is asking for. As a result Canada’s reputation as a premium producer is in question and we have lost quality premiums and markets.

We are at a crossroads. We must choose whether to regain our position as a quality leader, or to compete with lower cost producers in Ukraine, Russia, South America, and even Australia.

Transparency

The new consumer value which is likely to have the biggest impact on farmers is transparency of food production, and that extends right back to the farm. The Deloitte study rates transparency as “more important than any other value that producers have to be aware of. Driven by a variety of issues and events, consumer demand to know more about the food they eat has intensified. More than ever, today’s consumers want access to relevant information, when they want it, and in a clear, comprehensive, and understandable way to make informed choices.”

The study found clear and accurate labelling was second only to nutritional content as the reason why consumers make a purchase.

The Deloitte study also interviewed food company executives, finding “nearly all executives agreed that transparency is one of the top priorities for their respective organizations, and for the food manufacturing and retailing industries as a whole.”

But to provide such transparency poses a number of problems for food companies including: “ability to capture and verify data from multiple stakeholders across the value chain, consistency of data definitions and quality, concerns about sharing proprietary information or processes, introduction of brand risk or potential liability due to brand commitments or claims, and additional costs.”

Like it or not, scrutiny of our farms will continue to grow as consumers demand more information about where their food comes from, food companies seek production information so they can target niche markets with new labels, and governments respond to demands for more traceability.

Oklahoma State University in January 16, 2015 asked consumers if they support or oppose a number of food-related government policies. In all, 55 per cent of respondents supported a ban on the sale of food products made with transfat, 82 per cent want mandatory labels for foods produced with genetic engineering, and 86 per cent want mandatory country-of-origin labelling of meat.

Perhaps the most shocking response was support by 80 per cent of respondents for mandatory labelling of foods containing DNA. Since all known cellular life has DNA, I am not sure what information labelling a product as “contains DNA” would provide. But it does point out the demand for information, no matter how useful, from consumers about food. It also shows the necessity of the entire food industry to provide real information about the food we produce. Most importantly, it shows there must be better understanding by producers about the values consumers have regarding food, and for producers to address those values.

This does not necessarily mean farmers must produce new products or change production methods to meet those values. It may be simply showing consumers that what we produce and how it is produced now actually do meet those values.

But unless farmers understand what consumers are demanding and explain how current farming practices address consumer values, the farming industry will suffer. On the other hand, if food producers meet consumer values, there are potential premiums.

Regardless, the Deloitte study concludes: “Deloitte’s research clearly highlights a seismic shift in what consumers expect from the food and beverage industry.” This is a lesson farmers need to take to heart.

The New Consumer Value Equation

The following chart is reprinted from “Capitalizing on the Shifting Consumer Food Value Equation”
by Deloitte Consulting LLP. It breaks down the new values consumers hold toward food.

The post The new consumer value appeared first on Country Guide.

And while today most days are go-go-go, especially on the farm, hopefully there are times when you can slow the pace of life enough to savour a meal and enjoy the company of friends and family.

That’s the idea behind the Best of Bridge Sunday Suppers Cookbook. The original Best of Bridge Cookbook was self-published in the 1970s by seven Calgary friends. These women were home cooks, not celebrity chefs, and their recipes were simple and used familiar ingredients.

Those cookbooks went on to sell an astounding four million copies.

Now the torch has been passed to the next generation. Calgary food writer Julie Van Rosendaal went to school with some of the daughters of the original Best of Bridge ladies and grew up eating their food.

For the new Sunday Suppers cookbook, Van Rosendaal along with her two colleagues, Elizabeth Chorney-Booth and Sue Duncan, solicited their friends and family for their favourite recipes, with an eye for ones that were simple, tasty and used familiar ingredients.

The result, says Van Rosendaal, is a collection of recipes that celebrates what’s on the table — and who’s around it.

This cookbook goes well beyond the traditional Sunday dinner roast to include a range of main dishes as well as salads, soups and desserts.

Remember too that by making a big batch of soup, stew or chili, or by cooking a large cut of meat, you’ll have enough left over to serve another night.

Roasted Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup with Apple and Sage

Roasting the vegetables brings out the flavour but if you’re in hurry you can skip that step and just add them directly to the pot, says Van Rosendaal. You can also use winter squash in place of, or in addition to, the sweet potato. Van Rosendaal likes to add a handful of red lentils to the cooking pot for added protein and fibre. And, she says, puréed soups like this one travel well in an insulated mug so she often takes it with her to sip on for a healthy lunch or snack.

The sweetness of carrots, sweet potato and apple make this a deliciously simple fall soup. It also freezes well —
a great way to preserve the best of the season.

Ingredients

• 2 large carrots, chopped
• 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and diced
• Vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp butter (15 ml)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 tart apple, peeled and chopped
• 1 tsp dried sage (5 ml)
• 4 cups ready-to-use chicken broth (1 litre)
• 1 cup apple juice or cider (250 ml)
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup half-and-half (10%) or heavy or whipping (35%) cream (125 ml) (optional)

Method

Preheat oven to 450°F (230°C). Place carrots and sweet potato on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle with oil, toss to coat well, then spread out in a single layer. Roast for 20 minutes, until starting to turn golden on the edges.

In a medium pot or Dutch oven, heat a drizzle of oil along with the butter over medium-high heat. When the foam subsides, add onion and sauté for 5 minutes, until soft. Add roasted carrots and sweet potato, scraping any flavourful browned bits from the pan. Add apple, sage, stock and apple juice; bring to a simmer. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until everything is soft. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and purée with an immersion blender right in the pot until smooth (or let cool slightly and purée soup in batches in a blender, then return to the pot and reheat until steaming). Stir in cream, if you’re using it. Serve hot. Serves 6.

Buttermilk Cornbread

It’s nice to have a starch to go with a soup, stew or chili, and this cornbread is a snap to make. “This cornbread is quick to stir together and once you’ve made it once you’ll be making it all the time,” promises Van Rosendaal. You can dress it up with a handful of grated cheese, some finely chopped rosemary (or both), roasted garlic or chili powder. “Never underestimate the power of smell, of having something in the oven as people walk in the door,” she says.

Cornbread is so easy to make. Serve it with stews, Mexican fare or a hearty soup.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour (250 ml)
• 1 cup yellow cornmeal (250 ml)
• 1/4 cup sugar (60 ml)
• 2 tsp baking powder (10 ml)
• 1 tsp baking soda (5 ml)
• 1 tsp salt (5 ml)
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup buttermilk (250 ml)
• 1/4 cup butter, melted (60 ml)
• Liquid honey

Method

Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a small bowl, whisk together eggs, buttermilk and butter. Pour the buttermilk mixture over the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Scrape batter into a greased 8-inch (20 cm) square baking dish or a 9-inch (23 cm) deep-dish pie plate. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a tester inserted in the centre comes out clean. Let cool slightly, then cut into squares or wedges. Serve drizzled with honey, if you like. Serves 8 to 10.

Elizabeth Chorney-Booth is a blogger and food writer with over 15 years of professional writing under her belt. Sue Duncan grew up cooking and eating at every opportunity with her best friend, Julie.

Julie Van Rosendaal is a regular CBC radio food columnist, food writer and editor.

Recipes courtesy of Best of Bridge Sunday Suppers by Best of Bridge © 2017. Available where books are sold. 

The post The table and who’s around it appeared first on Country Guide.