Emily Lawrence advocated for buying local food long before the recent surge in patriotic grocery shopping.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
Long before the “elbows up” movement inspired Canadians to inspect the labels on their groceries to ensure they were made in Canada, Emily Lawrence had advocated for buying local. Filling up tote bags with carrots, kale, strawberries or whatever else is in season at her local farmers’ market is a non-negotiable weekly ritual for the Dartmouth-based recipe developer, artist and local food advocate, who also works with Farmers’ Markets of Nova Scotia.
Lawrence knows making the leap to shopping 80 per cent local like she does isn’t possible for everyone – in fact, she says the push to buy local can often be elitist and exclusionary. She offers advice on how to ease into shopping more locally.
What does food shopping look like for you every week?
For most of the year, most of my food comes from the farmers’ market. I’ll get my veggies there, my meat there, my eggs there. And then I round that out with shopping at my local bakery Birdies to get my bread. I’m usually going to either No Frills or Bulk Barn to do my pantry stuff.
Lawrence shops at farmers’ markets for much of the year, but supplements with visits to grocery stores including No Frills and Bulk Barn.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
A lot of what you’re buying are whole foods, but realistically there are going to be mornings where you wake up and you don’t have the energy to make something. What do you do then?
If I wake up with a migraine, the first thing I do is order a breakfast sandwich to my house from Tim Hortons. That’s pretty much the only thing I try to buy from Tim Hortons. No judgment, it’s just not something I really want to support. I’ve learned many times, in the spirit of self-care, that if I don’t do that, I’m not eating until 2 p.m. And that’s not the healthy thing to do.
If you’re giving advice to someone who is doing a big haul from Costco or Superstore, what’s the first step moving toward a more locally based shopping experience?
Identifying the few things that you’d be most interested in swapping out, and getting those some of the time, and then eventually most of the time, and then maybe even all the time.
Whether it is local meat that’s maybe more ethically raised and nutritious, a good sourdough bread or eggs – almost everyone can get behind fresh eggs.
Some people feel like those who shop at the farmers’ market are snobby and obsessed with the quality of their food and buy exclusively local. And they feel judged because they’re eating frozen broccoli from Costco because it’s cheap and convenient and accessible.
I want to ask you more about that. What does the “eat local” messaging get wrong?
Any time you are positioning an ethical choice or a lifestyle decision as “right” or “better,” you are speaking from a place of privilege and ignorance. What I’ve seen happen in that messaging is exclusion.
Even as someone who buys 80 per cent local, it makes me feel bad and I’ve had a hard time admitting I eat chicken fingers from Sobeys when I go shopping to get my staples.
For people who live in food deserts, or maybe there’s one grocery store in town, what’s the advice you offer?
If it’s not there, it’s not there. Messaging from the food movement and the nutrition community assumes there’s a choice and that there is more accessibility when there isn’t.
‘Buying local once a week or one week out of four weeks a month is better than not buying local at all,’ Lawrence says.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
What do you make of the last couple of months of the very aggressive Made in Canada-washing that has happened in supermarkets?
I wish that the people who are making such drastic changes to their lifestyle and shopping habits under the guise of nationalism would have other considerations moving forward, long term. If I were to make a minor shift to just focusing on Canada, that means I would be taking money out of my local community pocket and actually putting it to other larger companies Canada-wide. Once you’re faced with these ethical decisions about the oligarchs and the monopoly that they’ve created and the decisions they’ve made and how they’ve affected Canadians, it’s like, yeah, I want to put my money where my mouth is and that’s going to be supporting smaller businesses and supporting farms that I believe in.
In a recent earnings call with the CEO of Loblaw, he was asked specifically about ‘Buy Canadian’ and he said he thinks that long term consumers will give a 5 per cent allowance in price difference before they’re just like, “Who cares, I’m going to buy whatever the cheaper option is.”
We have data to support that prices at farmers’ markets have not gone up as much as prices at grocery stores since 2020. I’m always shocked by how much food I can stuff in my giant tote for $20. Produce, as long as it’s in season, is going to generally be more affordable.
A lot of us are like, hey, I want to walk every single day. And then the moment it’s raining or you have something else to do, we go, I already failed at doing that perfectly, so I’m not gonna do it at all. Buying local once a week or one week out of four weeks a month is better than not buying local at all.
I feel like I see that so much with CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) boxes. People get their first one, get overwhelmed, and they do it once or twice more and then they quit.
That’s a good example of finding the habits that suit your lifestyle – don’t try to make a new lifestyle. We’ve all learned you have to eat lettuce first, you have to eat the fish first. If you’re so excited about getting into that sausage and kale and potato for making a sheet pan dinner that you love, that’s actually the end-of-the-cycle meal. That’s a skill set and habit that takes time to develop. Obviously there are barriers, but I see an entry point for almost anyone at the farmer’s market.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
