How would you like to become a member of the royal family?
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Though The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair (running until this Sunday at Exhibition Place) isn’t the classiest way to spend a day, it is an undeniably good time.
Yes, there will be butter sculptures!
Running for its 86th year, it hosts over 300,000 visitor anually, and is the biggest combined indoor agricultural fair and international equestrian competition in the world.
It’s also a Toronto standard. Every year it hints that the holidays are coming and that the heavy hand of winter will be smacking us for the next few months.
Though the Exhibition Place is full of frivolity and dressage (and beef, pork, poultry and mutton), for the past few years there’s been an underlying serious tone behind the Royal.
Sobering displays from organizations like Farmers Feed Cities remind Torontonians that we are disconnected from where our 24-hour Metro gets its groceries.
The Agri-Food Innovation area, newly expanded for this year, also follows the trend of informing city folk about farming.
Put on by The Royal in part with the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the 30 000-square-foot area preaches the positives of locally produced products, renewable energy, and agriculturally-based bioproducts.
Spend an afternoon wandering through The Royal (your nose will get used to the smell, I swear), and remember where your food comes from, even if it’s in the form of a smelly 1 000-pound cow.
