Welcome to our Prairie Potluck. Come in, fill your plate with prairie-grown food, pull up a chair and let me tell you about this special edition of the Western Producer.
In this, our last issue of 2006, we’ve prepared a reading buffet that’s a bit out of the ordinary; something we hope readers can savour in this all-too-brief lull between Christmas and the start of 2007. It’s all about prairie-grown food and the people who grow it, develop it, move it, process it and sell it.
Our vehicle, as you can see, is the traditional and enjoyable potluck dinner, with each dish selected to include prairie-grown ingredients. We selected 11 menu items, which are listed on this page. They were chosen so we could profile wheat and durum producers, canola and pulse crop producers, potato and other vegetable producers, cattle producers, hog producers, poultry producers and dairy producers.
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It’s a broad but nevertheless incomplete list of agricultural produce, we know, but the heavy hitters of prairie agriculture are represented. Time and space, of necessity, limited the menu. Suffice to say there is no shortage of reporter volunteers willing to explore the intricacies of the barley and malting industry at a future date. Ditto the burgeoning field of prairie wineries.
In fact, some might even do a little homework on New Year’s Eve.
The initial plan was to trace the ingredients of each dish from the farm, through its various stages of growth, processing or development, until it reached the form where it appears on the dinner plate. Our reporters across Western Canada undertook that task.
And ran into a few difficulties.
Farmers, as always, were eager to talk about their work and their produce. Transporters and retailers were also pleased to discuss their roles in the food chain.
But the processors? With a few exceptions, our attempts to follow the chain from farm to plate were foiled at the processing stage.
Some of these large companies pleaded protection of trade secrets. Some did not return repeated phone calls. Some were just plain suspicious that our motives – to see and explain the processing of a particular food – weren’t as pure as we claimed.
It was an unexpected reaction, and one that gives an interesting perspective to food traceability. Though farmers are continually encouraged to provide identity preservation and complete traceability and be open to consumer queries about how food is grown, that expectation breaks down when those same consumers reach the processing level.
It’s something we need to explore further.
But let’s get back to the potluck dinner. While the entrees of this issue, so to speak, are the stories, we needed a full menu of photographs to illustrate the dishes and ingredients.
How to photograph a potluck?
Have a potluck.
And have Western Producer staff members cook and bring the food.
As I pointed out at the time, it’s in the job description, under “other duties as required.” We cooked, we brought, we photographed and we ate. And very nearly had to have a feast-induced snooze that afternoon. Heavy on the protein, what with chickpeas, beans, beef, pork, chicken and ham on the menu.
Michael Raine, the Producer’s resident photojournalist, did the photo honours, subjecting the dishes to minimal time under hot studio lights, the better to avoid food poisoning of the staff.
Raine also took his studio and backdrop to Canadian Western Agribition, to a hog barn and to various other locales so he could give this issue all the spice it needed.
After our news team had delivered a wealth of stories, the editors went to work – the people whose bylines you never see but make a mark on each and every issue. Terry Fries, Diane Rogers and Brian Cross edited and proofed. Catherine Rumancik and Michelle Houlden designed the pages.
We had a little fun with it, as you will see in the “what kind of pie are you” quiz, web-researched chicken jokes and a few other whimsical elements. The capable TEAM columnists provided information on appetizers, desserts and beverages to make our potluck menu more complete.
And that’s how we came to have a prairie-grown meal.
Though the vast majority of Producer readers are well acquainted with food production, there are many consumers in Western Canada who are several generations removed from the farm, and not nearly so conversant in food origins and production. For that reason, we offered extra copies of this edition to every school division in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Well, now it’s time to dig in.
Bon apetit and happy new year from all of us at The Western Producer.
