Farmscape for April 17, 2008  (Episode 2818)

The Manitoba Food Processors Association says concerns over food safety and quality and a desire to support the local economy are prompting growing numbers of Canadian consumers to seek out locally produced food products.

Although locally produced food products often offer superior taste and quality the cost of producing those products is usually somewhat higher in Canada than in competing offshore production systems.

Manitoba Food Processors Association executive director Dave Shambrook says, while we as consumers are sometimes predisposed to buying the lowest cost products, there is a growing recognition that that can be harmful in the long run.

Clip-Dave Shambrook-Manitoba Food Processors Association 

The buy local movement right now is huge.

Consumers are saying we want to support local products.

We want to know which products have been produced or grown in my back yard so to speak or within 100 miles of where I live.

Part of the reason for sure is that there is a much higher level of comfort and confidence in those products, that they are higher quality, higher food safety regimes have been used and that kind of thing.

But what's really fascinating to me, looking at this from industry, is that all of the consumer studies that have been done, the number one motivation in consumers minds for buying local is that they absolutely recognize the importance to the economy of supporting local agricultural producers and value added processors.

In my mind it's been a really positive thing.

Because what's happening in Manitoba right now, we've got the entire value chain, producers, processors and retailers and food service folks sitting down at the same table and saying OK what are we going to do together collectively to address this opportunity and to address what our consumers are saying they want.

Shambrook says we are very fortunate in Canada and the United States to have such an excellent food supply and, in many ways, it's taken for granted.

He notes, in Europe for example, consumers spend 20 to 30 percent of their income on food purchases while in Canada it's less than 10 percent and it continues to trend downward.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council