This year’s USC Canada World Food Day Forum celebrates the growing local food movement and brings together three lively food advocates and practitioners for a free public event: From Field to Fork: Building a Better Food System, Thursday, October 13th at 7pm  at St. Paul’s University Amphitheatre. 

Sarah Elton is a journalist -- Maclean’s, Globe and Mail --  food commentator and author of Locavore , which documents how Canadians from urbanites to farmers, chefs to gardeners all across the country are creating a new local food order that’s healthier, more dynamic, and more fair. “If we want to maintain a good quality of life while living within our ecological means, then our food system must change,” Elton asserts.

She will be joined by Susan Jessup, an Ottawa chef and owner of 42 Fine Foods who has established a close working  relationship with many local food producers, and Colleen Ross an organic farmer from the Ottawa region.  Jessup and Ross are also active in the food movement at the local, national, and international levels through Susan’s work with Slow Food Ottawa-Gatineau and Colleen’s work with the National Farmers’ Union and La Via Campesina, an international peasants’ movement representing over 200 million small-scale farmers around the world.

Each will speak of  their personal relationship with local food and the larger food revolution, and some every day ways to change the way we grow, eat and think about food.  “Our Seeds of Survival program works with small farmers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to build healthy and resilient food systems,” says Susan Walsh, USC Canada Executive Director.  “But with our fields, our forks and our food, we need to build a better system in Canada as well.” 

Event details:
Mix and mingle in the foyer, starting at 6pm. Sample a beautiful array of cheeses produced by Canreg Station Farm and Pasture Dairy in nearby Finch, Ontario. Enjoy fairly traded beverages from our event sponsor, La Siembra as well as from Bridgehead Coffee. Get to know the folks from Just Food and Canadian Organic Growers. Peruse the fine books on offer from Octopus Books. And don’t miss our Name that Seed contest – there will be prizes!

Admission is Free.

St. Paul University, 223 Main Street, Ottawa – Amphitheatre
7 pm (Marketplace @ 6 pm)