Award recognizes achievements in food industry

In 1972, American Al Slinkard took a risk and headed north from his safe plant breeding research position at the University of Idaho.On his first trip to Saskatoon, he liked what he saw.Canada was trying to develop a sustainable crop that would be an alternative to Saskatchewan’s dependence on wheat, which was then underpriced and in oversupply.The 31-year-old applied for a job as a pulse crop researcher at the University of Saskatchewan, convinced after his first visit to the province that some of those millions of wheat acres could someday be planted to pulse crops.”I just thought, there is such potential here,” Slinkard said last week. “I decided to move.”Thirty-eight years later, Canada thanked him when he received one of the first Nation’s Table awards during a ceremony at Government House in Ottawa.The 79-year-old won in the creativity and innovation category.Governor general Michaelle Jean and her husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, who conceived of the award, made the presentations at a gala that included a feast of Canadian cuisine June 23.The award includes a pin designed to resemble a kitchen tabletop and four chairs. The first 13 recipients ranged from researchers and restaurateurs to educators, food writers and farmers.Hong Kong-born Ricky Sze Ho Lam, now a master’s student at the University of Saskatchewan specializing in food applications for edible oils and fats, received an award in the youth category. He is 25.Rob McLaughlin, former dean of the University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College and former chair of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, was honoured in the education and awareness category.The awards are the first to recognize excellence, creativity, achievement and innovation in the food industry, which Lafond repeatedly stressed included the work, culture and ethic of the food business “from soil to the table.”They come with the pin, a framed proclamation signed by Jean and Lafond and a distinctive shield featuring overflowing produce and the motto: “To set the table with excellence.”Lafond, a Quebec filmmaker whose ancestors, including his father, were farmers in France, told reporters he first conceived of the idea when he was invited to speak to a wine conference in Ontario in 2005. He realized there was no award in Canada for the “culture of food,” even though other forms of culture receive national recognition from writing and poetry to film-making.During many months of consultations, the kitchen table emerged in Lafond’s mind as the symbol of the idea.”We have celebrations at the table but no celebration of the table so that was my idea,” he said. “Wars are ended around the table. Society and relationships are built around the table. This is a celebration of food and the culture of food.”Slinkard called the Nation’s Table award a monumental first.”Few people really put much value on food and the role it plays in society,” he said.”Everybody takes it for granted except for people in the countries where they are starving.”His trip from Idaho to Saskatchewan led to his development of the Laird and Eston lentil varieties and an expansion of pulse acres from a few thousand in the early 1970s to more than seven million last year.He said one of his toughest jobs in Saskatchewan was challenging farmers’ wheat mentality by convincing them that pulse crops were a viable protein crop alternative and in many years a more lucrative one.He said the breakthrough year was 1977 when a drought in the lentil-producing areas of the United States led to a strong demand for Saskatchewan product, and prices that soared above wheat.”That year woke a lot of people up,” he said with a laugh, recalling one wheat farmer who was prepared to let an irrigated field lie fallow for a year because he already had enough wheat in the bins.”I couldn’t believe it and told him so.”In the Rideau Hall citation, Slinkard’s award was described as a recognition of a century of accomplishment by Canadian plant researchers.”Their work, like that of Dr. Slinkard, has changed not only what our farmers produce but also what we eat.”