Margaret Webb – Author of ‘Apples to Oysters’

Margaret webs stories from soil and see
will change your next visit to the
supermarket hi and welcome to
watchmojo.com i’m your host Layla and
I’m it up with this author of apples to
oysters for her impressions on
contemporary farming can you please
explain the following terms organics
sustainable farming and industrial
farming well we’ll start with the worst
industrial farming that’s where you have
huge monocultures of crops like single
fields of corn where the farmer is using
a lot of inputs chemical inputs in order
to grow that crop sustainable farming
will be farming that is gentle in the
environment where they don’t use a lot
of chemical inputs that can flow off
into our waterways and organic farming
is a principle of using no synthetic
chemicals and also restoring the soil
fundamental principle of organics is
composting to continually rebuild the
fertility of the soil which is huge and
important because fertile soil feeds
plants which feeds animals which feeds
us so our fertility is soil fertility
like the pro chemical farms are
receiving the bigger budgets aren’t they
I think the principal with industrial
farming is that the government’s have
said for a long time go big produce a
lot of food of poor quality it as cheap
as possible and people are getting tired
of the food not tasting like anything
now people are saying no we want quality
food that actually tastes like food and
for that you need to buy local food how
did you discover the 11 quintessential
foods what I wanted to do was pick one
signature food for every province and
then go out and find a farmer who raises
that signature food and a passionate way
and then I went out and actually worked
on the farm for a week hung out with a
farmer and I did this for a couple of
reasons one is that I wanted to
understand physically and emotionally
what the challenges are to modern
farming and the other is that farmers
once you put them in a truck or a
tractor they really loosen up and
actually begin to tell stories so so I
did that to connect with the farmers as
well and how has it changed your palate
I want to equality food now and I want
to know who grew it when I go to a
restaurant I don’t like it if it just
says New York strip loin I want to know
who’s the farmer who grew that New York
Strip point we know who the
phys isn’t the farmer at least as
important if not more important because
you know the farmer is ultimately the
most important person in the food chain
I want to see the farmers name on the
food I want to know the farmer that i
buy food from and that way beyond labels
if I can talk to that farmer and discuss
what kind of growing techniques they
have then I could trust that food we
have our own doctors lawyers no
financial planners why don’t we have our
own farmer I really think that one of
the professionals that we should have in
our life is our farmer