I ate my last three pieces of American romaine lettuce last week. They were the small inside leaves, still crunchy after a couple of weeks in the fridge which is why romaine has, until now, been my default lettuce.
No more. Until I can grow it or buy it from a B.C. or Mexican farmer, I’m done. Three weeks ago, as U.S. President Donald Trump yanked our chain with on-again, off-again tariff threats and remarked on Canada becoming the 51st state, I decided not to spend money on American products.
I’m not much of a shopper, so it won’t be a huge sacrifice, for the most part. I’m well-stocked with Darn Tough wool socks and can get books from the library or buy them from Canadian bookstores. But everyone’s got to eat.
That’s where it gets trickier, especially for anyone trying to move toward plant-based cooking. In the winter months, the bulk of the produce on our grocery shelves, here in B.C., comes from the U.S. And while Mexico, no doubt, grows many of the same vegetables, they often aren’t for sale here.
Up until this past month, our connection to the California food supply chain made sense for all kinds of reasons. Before the U.S. government went off the rails, there was no reason not to support California farmers, certainly outside the Canadian growing season. It’s closer than Mexico, meaning the carbon footprint associated with transportation is lower. Heck, a pear picked in Washington can be in Vancouver in mere hours, a cauliflower picked in California in less than two days.
But now that our former friends to the south have turned mean as a rabid dog, I am trying to avoid spending even a loonie to support their economy. Now, I’m under no illusion that my picayune consumer vegetable protest will deliver the death blow to Trump’s trade war. That is the role of our government and its much bigger clout.
But it makes me feel a little less powerless, which is not nothing. So, what has this new obsession meant to our pantry and fridge?
Eggs, meat, dairy, grains and many pulses are all readily available from Canadian suppliers.
And B.C. has a thriving greenhouse industry, so local salad ingredients, like lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes, are easy to come by. Our local farmers’ markets have the long-lasting vegetables that carried our forebears through winters: onions, beets, shallots, garlic, parsnips and sunchokes, not to speak of fresh-baked croissants which aren’t strictly vegetables, but are very hard to resist — particularly when combined with the heady glow of fulfilling our patriotic duty. And there are also some frozen vegetables like corn and spinach that were grown in Canada.
For a small fortune, you can buy blueberries from Peru, and mangos and asparagus from Mexico. Also from Mexico are affordable greens like gai lan, popular in Chinese cooking. I now have a supply of lemons from South Africa, but am feeling a lot of guilt over that carbon footprint. I found Mexican limes and cauliflowers in the market one week, but not the next.
An employee at one local green grocer said their store is trying to source more Mexican produce to meet consumer demand, but the shops can only get what the warehouses bring in. I’m certainly not the only one checking labels to avoid U.S. produce. Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard other fellow shoppers squeal with delight over a bin of B.C. apples, and my friends are sharing tips about which stores have what. There are a number of helpful shopping apps guiding shoppers to Canadian products.
Until this past month, I have not been a farmers’ market regular. The prices are much higher than the shops, and the parsimonious side of me has balked at paying them. But just as the pandemic illustrated the importance of food security, this more recent tariff spat has further driven home the point.
The last two months have convinced me that going forward, it’s time to shop local, even though it will mean paying more for food. For those who enjoy a surprise, there are Community Supported Agriculture boxes that send you an assortment of locally-grown vegetables, delivered to your doorstep. That’s a titch too random for my taste.
Right now, I’m off to score a Mexican cauliflower which a friend told me just turned up again at the green grocer down the street. And when the farmers’ market nearest to me reopens this spring, I’ll join those who saw the light long ago and head to the stalls, shopping bags and loonies in hand.
Comments
It's not just that a single F-35 (~$100M) costs as much as 33,000 tonnes of cauliflower (assuming $3.33/kg).
It's that the F-35 has a profit margin in the tens of percent, versus cauliflower at a few percent. You'd have to not-buy a couple of hundred thousand tonnes of cauliflower to hurt American industry as much as cancelling a single F-35.
It's also that you can hurt American farmers and food handlers, or you can hurt the American armaments industry.
Every journalist should be calling for the cancellation of every F-35, and many other American arms purchases. The agricultural issue is so much smaller, and so much less relevant to America's military psychosis, that they are just distractions.
Most people do not buy F-35's, but millions of us buy lettuce or cauliflower. The imposition of tarifs on our exports will raise prices in both countries. So, since we are in for a price rise we may as well pay the higher price for produce grown in Canada and keep our money on this side of the border. Moreover, with stricter environmental regulations and enforcement, Canadian produce are better and safer than those from the US (and also from further south). After comparing strawberries grown in Canada in winter with strawberries from the south, we have happily accepted the higher price of the superior berries.