Agriculture Week and Thanksgiving show gratitude for our farmers

You've probably seen the bumper stickers: "Farmers Feed Cities."

It's fitting that Thanksgiving, though a distanced celebration this year, is aligned with the last weekend of Ontario Agriculture Week.

Perhaps more than any other year, this is a good one to reflect on that bumper-sticker message and thank the farmers who grow the food we eat.

An initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, Ag Week celebrates the more than 49,000 farms and 860,000 agri-food jobs in Ontario. In Waterloo region, there are hundreds and hundreds of such farms and food processing facilities that get food to our tables.

Look at a map of Waterloo region; there are three cities — Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo — surrounded by four townships: North Dumfries, Wellesley, Wilmot and Woolwich.  

Indeed, farmers feed cities; that map I imagine as the townships wrapping their arms around the cities in a sort of "hug" that helps sustain us with the food they produce. 

During the early days of the pandemic, farmers and farmers' markets suffered setbacks and had to shift gears to stay alive. There were moments when people who usually don't think about where their food comes from were feeling a tinge of food insecurity. 

But agri-food has persevered and the harvest has proven to be a good one, according to local farmers.  

Bumper crops locally

At Herrle's Country Farm Market, Trevor Herrle-Braun says the fields are plentiful with great fall produce such as beans, pumpkins and squash. He adds that there is still corn available and even peas in the pod.  

That caught me by surprise because I thought peas were a spring and early summer crop. If you thought like me that the hottest days of summer would make it hard to plant peas for fall harvest, think again: fall peas, according to farmers, can be successful and may even taste superior as they grow and ripen in cooler fall conditions. Leave it to farmers.

In New Hamburg, Jenn Pfenning at Pfenning's Organic Farm is hard pressed to pick just one favourite crop coming out of the ground right now.

"Carrots are one of our best loved crops, and they are really great right now," Pfenning says, adding the that their red kale also "really shines" at this time of the year. 

That time includes at night when we start to see a bit of frost. The bromide about rutabagas and turnips being better when "nipped by the frost" holds true, as Pfenning alludes.

"The broccoli right now is also seriously beautiful because it likes the cool weather. It has just a kiss of purple on the tips of the buds because of the frosts bringing the anthocyanins out. It's extra sweet because of that too."  

Apples rock at this time of the year, and the season is proving to be a solid one, according to Peter Katona of Martin's Family Fruit Farm in Waterloo. 

"The crop is shaping up to be decent this year and similar in volume to last year, though perhaps a bit better in quality," Katona says. 

He adds that it was "an up year" for Honeycrisp, a variety which alternates in the strength of its yield. Martin's will be harvesting through the end of October. 

Home cooking and preserving on the rise

The bounty of the harvest supports the newly found home cooking and preserving interest that people have embraced and which started with the lockdown.    

The pandemic has prompted people to bake bread, cook more of their own meals and even be more cognizant of rummaging through the fridge to gobble up leftovers. 

However, on the other side of the coin, the amount of food waste by Canadians is likely growing too. According to research released by Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab in September, people are wasting 13.5 per cent more food than the two kilograms that they tossed away, per week, pre-COVID-19.

The study cautions that, "it is not clear whether households are generating more waste than before the pandemic, proportionally, given that Canadians are eating more often at home."  

Surprising is the fact that 10 per cent of Canadians responding in the study said they threw away food because they believed it was contaminated with coronavirus, a concern for which there is no scientific evidence. 

It's all food for thought during this harvest: our farmers have worked hard in trying circumstances to produce some of the best food in the world. This is a good time to reflect on that and be thankful for it — at the same time we should do our best to not waste it.