Where Does Your Food Come From?

In March of 2013 Dylan Gordon was selected as one of the Top 25 Storytellers in the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)’s “Storytellers: Research for a Better Life” contest. Dylan is a PhD candidate in Anthropology here at U of T, and I sat down with Dylan to record his 3-minute story on the Canadian wild food trade and to hear more about the Canadian wild food industry and how it works.

I confess, I had never heard of ‘wild food’ before. I have bought corn by the side of the road, purchased baskets of blueberries from kids emerging from the forest with blue stained fingertips and grubby clothes, and gawked at the price of fiddleheads during their short season at the grocery store. But the fact that there is an entire industry and movement surrounding the production of food that is ‘more organic than organic’ had never really occurred to me. I was not aware that foraged mushrooms from Canadian forests were being exported to places as far away as Japan.

Over the hour I spent with Dylan, we talked about the pickers and producers of the wild food industry, perceptions of wild food in popular media, and the global impact that wild food is having on the way we think about where our food comes from. Dylan spoke eloquently about some of the obstacles wild food producers are facing, from environmental pressures to economic ones.  You can listen to the full audio here on the blog, and please watch Dylan’s 3 minute story, “A Treasure Trove in the Canadian Wilderness” – its pure poetry and some great story telling. 

To hear my chat with Dylan, you can check out the audio file from this link!
Dylan Gordon on Wild Food