Organization's videos will showcase food and farming projects across Ontario

Thursday, April 18, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

Local, sustainable food will be front and centre next week when a provincial organization dedicated to promoting healthy food and farming unveils a series of 23 videos showcasing food projects across Ontario.

Carolyn Young, program manager for Sustain Ontario, says the Growing Good Food Ideas videos will be launched at an event on April 24 at the Ontario Legislature with Premier Kathleen Wynne. Along with Sustain Ontario, other partners in the project include Powerline Films and 17 other organizations.

Young says the videos address a variety of projects and components of the local food industry across Ontario, including: mobile markets in Toronto to help with food access; fresh water and forest foods in northern Ontario; Haliburton-area food producers; co-operatives and their importance in the food movement; and how communities make better connections around local food.

“There were a number of partners that joined on to this project to show what was happening in their communities around food and farming,” Young explains. The videos
“are broad examples of how people are working with food. They’re not just from the agricultural side of things.”

The videos will be made public on the Internet. “Our hope is that they will be shared widely to really highlight the amazing things that are happening in Ontario,” she notes. “Most of them are great ideas that if they catch on through social media or whatever they can help transform our entire system in Ontario.”

They will be available as of April 24 at: www.sustainontario.ca or www.ontariofoodvidoes.ca. BF