MEDIA LAUNCH SPEECHES
Monforte Renaissance and the New Politics of Food in Ontario
by Brendan Howley
Good evening. I’m Brendan Howley. I’m Monforte’s minister without portfolio for this event – I opened my big mouth once too often about what we’re doing...and here I am.
By now, I trust you’ve grasped there’s more than just cheese going on.
What’s actually happening is simple. We’re dedicated to the proposition that if Barack Obama can deploy passionate volunteerism, an extraordinary online fundraising prowess, and a simple, positive online message via blog and Facebook and Twitter – and win the White House and be named the US’s Marketer of the Year...
...then we ought to be able to run Ruth and her cheeses as the Renaissance candidate.
So we are. We can see, ever less dimly on the horizon, a new kind of politics of food in this province. It’s getting closer. You can feel it in the farmers’ markets and at the LCBO and at the dinner table itself, which is where it matters most.
Renaissance 2010 is here to revive and amplify a conversation about the future of food
here in Ontario.
Make no mistake: this isn’t about agricultural policy. That’s top-down. We’re bottom-up – we want to change the politics of food in Ontario for one simple, almost too-obvious a reason: food culture in Ontario, a heritage tradition about Ontario and its abundance, from seed stocks to pork breeds to cheese itself – has almost disappeared.
Canada is a young country, with all that comes with that blessing. But our youth also means our culture, while vibrant, is sometimes thin on the ground.
That’s particularly true of food. Entire fruit growing industries in Ontario are either imperiled or extinct, while we ship fruit from California and Chile.
It’s a kind of madness, because oil won’t stay at $40/barrel for long. Try $200. That’s The Economist magazine’s latest prediction for 2012. That’s not a carbon footprint issue – it’s a food supply issue.
A century ago, traditional cheesemaking was a local affair; there were dozens of cheese
factories within a hundred miles of Toronto, producing manifold varieties of cheeses, some
of them mediaeval recipes, brought here from France, England, Germany, all over Europe.
Back then, no one gave much thought to the notions of sustainability or appropriate land
use – for one thing, the province’s agricultural landmass had been virgin forest barely sixty years before.
But today that scale of diversity – and thus economic security and ecological stability – is
long gone.
When Ruth started Monforte, I was her second recruit. I drove the red Mazda pickup with one bald tire, chatted up the chefs and cheesemongers, did the deliveries, winkled stories about Monforte into Toronto Life and the Toronto Star and generally exhausted myself trying to keep up with Ruth.
Ruth is, you must understand, a force of nature.
And I went to the Mennonite farms and watched Ruth negotiate [often hilariously] with the taciturn shepherds.
I learned how refrigeration worked when there was no hydro – you cut ice from the pond and stack it in sawdust, where it keeps for months. I learned how sheep love to be milked by hand and produce better quality milk that way. I learned that chefs loved the weight of her cheeses, just holding in it the palm of their hands.
And I learned about Ruth herself, an education in integrity and passion.
That’s why I’m here tonight, to speak my particle of truth about Monforte.
It’s all true, you know. Ruth has doubled sales, every year. It’s all about word of mouth and passion and scrupulous attention to quality...plus that ineffable, unquantifiable additional ingredient: Ruth herself.
So that’s our marketing and media plan. Obama and cheese and Ruth.
And we have a little catchphrase we like: FLOCK EWE.
All in all, we think it’ll work. We think we can edge the conversation about food, sustainability and micro-production into a better place.
Thanks for coming. And typing. Live and be well.
MICHAEL HAY’S SPEECH >
RUTH KLAHSEN’S SPEECH >
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