Speaking and Workshops with Sharon Rempel

Growing Local Food Makes Cents

Sharon Rempel has worked with organic farmers and organic agriculture since 1987. She has designed agri tourism opportunities that are linked directly with value adding from local food. The 100 mile Diet has encouraged people to eat local food.

Specialty market opportunities abound for local produced products. There’s growing interest in wheat as a local crop and opportunities to do ‘value adding’ with artisan bread and other products.

The 100 mile diet identified a problem finding wheat within 100 miles of Vancouver. ‘Red Fife’ heritage wheat was mentioned in the book and ‘Red Fife’ has become popular thanks to the Slow Food nomination to the Ark of Taste. ‘Red Fife’wheat is being sold at 4 times that of regular wheat. It's one of the 8 foods that we can't live without in the December 2008 Globe and Mail Food Report.

Locally grown wheat can provide the grower with a good return both seed wise and financially. Some basic planning considerations will help ensure success through the whole process including climatic and economic considerations. We’ll explore ‘value’ and ‘green seed’ including water and carbon credit currencies and the ‘value’ of using landraces and heritage crops and how to match a crop to a field. It will answer the question ‘what should I grow’ in my field to make money.

Many folks ‘assume’ that local food means ‘organically grown’ and there is a process that can be designed to ensure that ‘carbon credit’ friendly food is the outcome of ‘local’ food production.

Main Points:

• Carbon credit values and considerations
• Climate change related to local food production possibilities
• Conventional and organic cultivation and marketing considerations
• Red Fife wheat as a model with opportunities for other products