Food Hubs: An Antidote to 21st-Century Food Problems?

Getting produce from grower to consumer made easier through 'Craigslist of food'

Workers with Really Local Harvest deliver fresh produce. Really Local Harvest is a food hub in New Brunswick that aggregates products from 30 local producers and distributes them to consumers, restaurants, and schools. Courtesy Really Local Harvest

The humble life of the average tomato reveals how broken our food system is.

The tomato starts out in Mexico, picked green and unripe by an underpaid farm worker then sprayed with chemicals to help it endure the long journey ahead while artificially “ripening.”

The first leg of the journey is a 2,500-kilometre trip by truck to California where the tomatoes are sorted, boxed and stickered. Then they are jostled into another truck destined for Canadian grocery stores, arriving a few thousand kilometres later still hard and mostly tasteless.

Meanwhile, a perfectly ripe, sun-warmed red tomato is waiting at your local farmer’s market, where the vendor, smiling and friendly, conceals the chronic stress of a life at the edge of bankruptcy.

We're facilitating that direct connection between local producers and consumers.

— Andrew Eisen, Guelph Wellington Community Co-op