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Putting the culture back in agriculture

Food is a many-splendoured thing, so the more we learn, the more the centre of gravity for localista thinking lurches in different directions.

This year’s Earth Day is the time to name and celebrate the latest lurch. Just past localism you get to “foods of locality,” a term introduced to me a few years ago by BC food theoretician Lenore Newman.

The idea surpasses the European concept of “terroir,” which originated in the wine industry but now connotes the special taste that comes from the soil, grime, sweat and ancient heritage of a patch of land and the special government protection that goes to an artisanal food lucky enough to have terroir coursing through its veins.

European governments protect the monopoly that regional farmers and processors have over a name with international brand allure, from feta cheese to Bordeaux wine, and spend freely to boost these brands. This effort plays an important part in pumping exports and tourism at a time when agro-tourism and culinary tourism are all the rage – not that there’s any recognition of this in Ontario.

Anyone who’s been to Slow Food gatherings in northern Italy and experienced the hospitality of the public authorities will know what I mean. In Europe, the terroir designation is sought after by producers because it triggers a series of government moves to protect their product.

My contribution to the growing discussion is a new term, “cultoir.” It goes beyond soil and geography to local food’s cultural legacy and thus adapts terroir to the New World.

Here, age-old traditions include the rich aboriginal food heritage of meats, fruits, vegetable and grains, as well as the timeless cuisines of recent diasporas – from Italian, Ukrainian and European Jewish to Vietnamese, Nepalese and south Indian.

Such cuisines are part of the heritage of at least half the population of North America, and this is one of the things that distinguishes this continent’s food and cultural politics from those of Europe.

Our governments currently do little to protect local farmers, and less to nourish local foods and food culture. No ministry has responsibility for this, and little is spent on food culture or tourism. In North America, producers can call food whatever they want, because they are on their own, and only the foods of multinational corporations get special tax breaks, subsidies and party favours.

What does our cultoir look like? To my mind, the term covers a variety of circumstances. For example, Ontario maple syrup, traditionally tapped in rural woodlots, is now also harvested from urban back- and front-yard trees, inspired in large part by the Toronto NGO Not Far From the Tree. The group aims to ensure that the bounty of the city’s trees and bushes doesn’t go to waste.

Syrup surely bears witness to local terra firma. But more than that, it comes from the cultoir of Toronto, which is buzzing with ways to make food real, authentic and a vehicle of self-expression, personal development and self-exploration, not just a consumable.

A particular brand of Toronto chocolate takes the idea of cultoir in a different direction. Upstart local chocolatier Michael Sacco of ChocoSol brings fair trade chocolate back from an indigenous community in Oaxaca and sells his artisanal product exclusively at farmers’ markets across Toronto.

The reason he gets into these markets is that the company has localized its goods not only with its labour but also with made-in-Ontario ingredients and concoctions, including local hemp seed and amaranth – a plant that originally hails from Central America.

For Sacco, what matters is that foods are intercultural, introducing relationships of mutual sharing – the opposite of foods exclusive to one territory.

A third kind of cultoir was served up to me by Sodexo executive chef Suman Roy at a celebration of a new book he co-authored, From Pemmican To Poutine: A Journey Through Canada’s Culinary History.

Roy, whom I worked with for many years at the Toronto Food Policy Council, cooked up finger-food snacks made from Ontario elk topped by Ontario goat cheese, enlivened by cumin and chili powder from his native India. “This is my perception of how food in Canada can develop,” he told me – not as immigrant foods or even fusion foods, but as foods that express the Canadian mosaic.”

The elk is not only Ontario-grown local and fed on native grasses and brush rather than less healthful grains of Indo-European origin, but also celebrates indigenous heritage and is topped by cheese from Ontario goats that is rapidly growing more popular as more farmers begin serving newcomer and immigrant customers. And on top of all that, it has another taste that’s part of Toronto profundo: spices from the Indian diaspora.

Then Roy changed the topic and started swooning while describing a recent meal of sweet potato fries smothered in elk ragout and cheese curds. “To die for!” was all he could say. How long will we wait before Toronto, Ontario or the federal government officially celebrates, cherishes, protects or promotes the producers of such foods?

news@nowtoronto.com

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