Northern Ontario farmers interested in growing ethnic vegetables are being presented with a “golden opportunity” to get in on a hugely underserviced market across Ontario and Canada. That’s the word of Johnny Kashama, a project manager and agricultural researcher with Collège Boréal in Sudbury, who shared details of his work with listeners during the fourth annual Northern Ontario Ag Conference, held virtually on Feb. 18.
Newcomers to Canada are looking to consume vegetables that they enjoy in their home countries, yet many aren’t varieties that are traditionally produced in Canada on a large-scale basis, Kashama said. “So, this abundance of new Canadians has the potential to transform the Canadian food system given their desires for authentic-tasting foods, notably vegetables, because when you compare immigrants from other countries, when it comes to Canada, and you compare their way of consuming vegetables, they consume more vegetables than normal Canadians,” he said.
“So the demand for ethnocultural vegetables is really considerable.” If producers grow the right products and promote them in the right way, it could represent “considerable” market potential, he said. Some examples include African eggplant, a white, smaller, and rounder version of the elongated purple varieties most Canadians are accustomed to eating, along with African basil, sweet potato leaves, and roselle, a flowering plant belonging to the hibiscus family.
Read the complete article at www.sootoday.com.