CONSCIOUS CRAVING
Local and organic food distributors report a surge in Torontonians hungry for their services,
It might have been the height of summer, but to Betsy Palmer, it was Christmas morning.
Perched on the front porch of her Little Italy townhouse one summer evening last year was a little brown bag awaiting her arrival home from work.
Palmer had no idea that inside the mystery package, snuggled into a nest of assorted fresh fruit and vegetables, was the best cantaloupe she had ever eaten.
“(I) revelled in the taste of it,” Palmer said.
“You know how Ontario strawberries just taste so much different than California strawberries? They’re juicier, they’re sweeter, they’re fresher. You can tell they were picked not long ago at all, and this cantaloupe was like that. I’ve never tasted cantaloupe like that,” she said.
Palmer has been part of a growing number of Toronto-area residents filling their fridges with organic and local foods by turning to online distributors such as Fresh City Farms and Mama Earth Organics. Both organizations, which deliver packages of organic, seasonal, local food to customers’ doors from small or medium-sized Toronto-area farms, have recorded rapid boosts to their customer bases over the past few years.
Mama Earth Organics sends packages to 5,000 customers from across the GTA every week, reflecting a surge in interest in the last few years, according to co-founder Alex Billingsley.
“People are sling-shotting back to just conscious eating and conscious living in general, like some of the European countries, I guess,” Billingsley said.
Fresh City Farms, according to creator Ran Goel, has seen annual triple-digit increases in membership since it rolled out its first deliveries in 2011. Back then, Goel said, a mere 12 members subscribed to his local and organic food delivery service. That number has since jumped to 2,000.
“It’s definitely more popular,” Goel said. “A lot of this has emerged in the wake of two sort of trends. One is an increased consciousness of local and organic (food) on the one hand, and also a move online more and more.”
A rise in demand for local food, according to Tammara Soma, a PhD candidate in the faculty of arts and science at the University of Toronto, may be born out of greater accessibility of “alternative food options” such as farmers’ markets, communitysupported agriculture opportunities and delivery services.
Convenience might also be a perk of the local food delivery services, but it’s awareness that the Fresh City Farms creator cares about most. He wants people to think and care about how they fuel their bodies and where that fuel comes from.
Eunice Lam cares. A longtime member of Fresh City Farms, she gets a bag of always-changing seasonal crops delivered to her apartment in the Trinity-Bellwoods area every week. “You can get groceries from anywhere, but (with Fresh City Farms) you can choose to support a company that . . . helps farmers in return,” she said.