1.3 Food Futures - with Brendan Grant of Sleepy G Farm

-Vote for the world you want to live in. If we really had the will to feed ourselves, it is a lot more possible than you might think. Thunder Bay district has a lot more agricultural potential.

- It's not about what you eat, what's more important is how it was made. Food is the most impactful purchase we make. And its the one we make the most often. When you purchase food, that's a vote you're casting for the world you want to live in. Nothing is more connected to the land than food.

-I'd like to see a regional food system actually be developed in a concerted and funded and directed way. I think it needs to start at the Regional level. We need to quit complaining and make it happen ourselves & set the example. 

- the name Thunder Bay is a bit of a misnomer. It is about as stable a place you could get. 

-There is no more important job in the world than farming simply by virtue of the fact that there is no basic human need than eating. 

-I am cynical about the international commodification of food because it only devalues it. That is wrong! It is destructive to our relationship with food. That is why our relationship to food in North America as a society is so poor as a society: we don't value food.    

- I know what we charge for our food and I know what it costs in the grocery store: there's almost no difference. There's no excuse not to buy local, you are feeding your family with a lower carbon footprint, you are developing a relationship with someone who has some accountability for providing you that food. 

-Cows are an amazing species. There are few others in a the world that can take a plant material that is otherwise not digestible (even Cellulose!) and in concert with the microbes in their digestive system are able to extract nutrients out of feed stuff that shouldn't sustain anyone!     

- I think we are going to see some pretty awesome farms of the future that are going to be able to produce food for the masses while having a very minimal impact on the land.

-One teaspoon of really organic living soil has about five billion microbes. In a teaspoon of soil! It's mind blowing.