Day 5 - 309 -- Seeing the Bigger Picture

The day began very early as the field trip bus left at 7:30 AM -- not my favourite time of day. It was pouring rain for much of the drive into the city. We visited three food service operation sites. One a commissary kitchen style that produced about 5000 meals daily for many sites across the province -- all in a small production area with staggered scheduling. Another produced 900 meals daily for several sites in the city but with a larger staff and production area. The last stop was to a wholesale operation that supplies food and sundries to many food services -- restaurants, hospitals, longterm care centres and such. This was amazing -- 10,000 square feet of warehouse with 30 foot vertical storage throughout. Supplier trucks were completing their daily unloading as we arrived and into the evening trucks to the food service operations would be packed and driven out for early delivery tomorrow. The forklift operators move product into storage and then out of storage continually buzzing around the aisles.

This site visit can help students to see the larger operations that play a role in getting food from warehouse to customer. I've often asked people where their food comes from and received many differing responses. I'm not sure we always think through the farm to fork journey.  Nor do we appreciate the many steps along the way and all the people involved in moving food into our restaurants, grocery stores and institutions. Perhaps we may take this for granted. There were local foods involved in all places seen today, though the proportion drops in the winter months. Seeing the enormity of the system can help put things into perspective, like the questions that begin, "Why don't they just . . . " The complexity of the process just isn't as simple as we'd like to think.

The selection for the day deals with seeing things from a new point of view -- with greater understanding perhaps. This acoustic version of the song brings two wonderful voices together well. Enjoy!

Seeing Blind -- Niall Horan & Maren Morris