One of the more reas­sur­ing aspects of the almost end­less amount of read­ily avail­able infor­ma­tion resources in this dig­i­tal day and age is that you can find reli­able and intel­li­gent news about just about any­thing. Nowhere is this more evi­dent than the infor­ma­tion we have access to about our food, where it comes from, the rev­o­lu­tions that are going on in the farm­ing and food pro­cure­ment societies.

True, there is a glut of main­stream dreck, the same old crap being pushed down our throats by huge cor­po­rate inter­ests whose bot­tom line caters to that most neb­u­lous yet ubiq­ui­tous money crunch­ing phan­tom, the insa­tiable share­holder, who seems to be the scape­goat that jus­ti­fies all man­ner of big busi­ness per­ver­sion defend­ing every­thing from fac­tory farm­ing sta­tus quo to spend­ing bil­lions dol­ing out mis­in­for­ma­tion and lob­by­ing all lev­els of government.

But the inter­net is full of inspir­ing, for­ward think­ing move­ments that are doing good; con­nect­ing peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties, chal­leng­ing the way we engage with food, shar­ing sto­ries, edu­cat­ing and “incu­bat­ing hope.”

In vast urban com­mu­ni­ties such as Toronto, we are some­times resigned to feel­ing dis­con­nected to our food, to farm­ers, to farms. This is some­what under­stand­able when many of us have never seen a pig on a farm, or eaten a car­rot right out of the ground.

As the crow flies, we may con­sider our­selves to be miles away from this expe­ri­ence. This is slightly ironic when one con­sid­ers how close we actu­ally are to some of the best farms and food­belt in the coun­try, when dri­ving in a few clicks of insane traf­fic on the 401 throws us into Ontario’s famed Greenbelt.

As the crow flies, you may be miles away from feel­ing con­nected, but the fact is, as the binary code swims, you are con­nected right now, in fact, you are only a few clicks away.

Sustain Ontario is an amaz­ing orga­ni­za­tion, and they have one of the most inter­est­ing web­sites around, fea­tur­ing videos and vir­tual tours, sto­ries and ini­tia­tives rang­ing from groups ded­i­cated to sav­ing small meat pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties, to ini­ti­taives pro­mot­ing the use of vouch­ers for low-income per­sons to be used at farm­ers mar­kets. This is from their web­site:

Sustain Ontario is a province-wide, cross-sectoral alliance that pro­motes healthy food and farm­ing. Sustain Ontario takes a col­lab­o­ra­tive approach to research, pol­icy devel­op­ment and action by address­ing the inter­sect­ing issues related to healthy food and local sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture. Sustain Ontario is work­ing towards a food sys­tem that is healthy, eco­log­i­cal, equi­table and finan­cially viable.