Lynn Ogryzlo and Julie Johnston of Johnston Farms in Vineland check out some asparagus in the field. Ogryzlo is part of a group trying to make it easier for tourists and locals alike to buy Niagara-grown products.

Buying local shouldn’t be a difficult task. However, not unlike how a letter for a neighbour down the street is trucked to Mississauga before being returned to town for delivery, the bulk of food grown in Niagara goes up the QEW to enter the distribution system — with no guarantee it will make it back this way.

So it’s no wonder it’s hard to find local foods at your favourite local restaurant.

“We have distribution systems which favour imported foods,” explains Lynn Ogryzlo, president of Niagara Environmental Food Alliance and food columnist for Niagara this Week.

“Because everything here is trucked to the Toronto food terminal, if you wanted some St. Davids peppers you wouldn’t find them at any retail store or any farmers market.”

The product goes to the food terminal, the largest wholesale fruit and produce distribution centre in Canada, where it is sold alongside produce from across the continent and overseas. It is purchased by registered middlemen, ranging from large corporate grocery stores to individual restaurants or caterers.

It makes it difficult for local restaurants, for example, to offer Niagara produce.

“It could be (grown) five miles down the road, yet they’ve got to go to the Toronto food terminal to get it,” says Ogryzlo. “That’s a reflection of the distribution system.”

For five years now, the Niagara Environmental Food Alliance, a not-for-profit organization which aims to bridge the urban/agriculture divide, has been organizing the Niagara Culinary Trail.

Besides a map showing where locavores, those who buy locally grown food, can get a variety of products in this region, the group is also “reinventing the middle,” says Ogryzlo. They are compiling a list for local chefs to peruse and order from to make it easier for them to buy local — all delivered to their door.

The current distribution and food terminal system goes hand in hand with the industrialization of agriculture, says Ogryzlo.

“We took that (assembly line) model of efficiency and we applied it to agriculture, which is so wrong. Now we have giant, 1,000-acre farms growing one thing. When it comes to animals, we really invented a lot of the diseases, like mad cow.

“Now that we learned all the mistakes the hard way,” she continues, the eat-local movement has come to the forefront as people look for a local food source so they can trust where their food comes from.

“We’ve had enough of E. coli in our spinach and poison in our toothpaste,” says Ogryzlo. “We need to see someone face to face, we need to look them in the eye, we need to know that their kids go to the same school as ours.

“We need to have that sense of comfort and know that it hasn’t been picked green and travelled all the way across the world.”

“It’s just more of a sense of community again.”

The Niagara Culinary Trail map is being released later this month. The group’s website, niagaraculinarytrail.com, is also being re-launched this month.

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While there was a time when everyone understood where their food came from, it’s no longer common knowledge among today’s generation.

At some point in time, that information stopped being handed down to every child as part of their normal upbringing.

Today, many have never been to a farm to understand their milk or apples don’t just magically show up at the grocery store.

In a perhaps strange way, that has led in part to a rise in agri-tourism in Niagara, a growing sector of the agricultural industry.

“You’d be surprised how many kids haven’t seen a horse,” says Donna Warner, who along with husband Bill runs Warner Ranch and Pumpkin Farm in southwest Niagara Falls.

Warner’s not judging. She points out she grew up in the city with little idea what rural life was about, which could explain in part why the ranch is continually expanding its offerings.

From Belgian horse-drawn sleigh rides and a petting zoo to seeing how fruit and vegetables are grown, the Shisler Road operation aims to teach without being preachy.

“It gives the general public hands-on experience, learning about farming and agriculture,” says Warner. “You can come out and see where the apples grow.”

“Where else can people from the city go to do something like this?”

Not surprisingly, agri-tourism as it pertains to the wine industry continues to grow.

From their start seven years ago, winery tour operator Crush on Niagara has grown tenfold.

Andrew Brooks and his wife, Christina Bufalino, now employ nine people during the high season runs mid-May through to November, with more than 4,000 patrons coming in from the Toronto area and the rest of the province annually.

It’s a big jump from the early days of just Brooks driving and Bufalino giving the talks.

“There are more earth-to-table kind of experiences than ever,” Brooks says of the growth of the agri-tourism industry and the push for buying fresh and local food.

The market is ever-expanding, says Brooks, and Crush is expanding to compete.

This year they are starting their own vineyard so that next season their customers can get hands-on during their tours.

It’s all part of competing in the growing business.

“We’ve certainly been selling the term ‘experience’ for a long time,” says Brooks. “But I think every winery now is catching on to that. I think they realize they have to be a bit more than just a tasting bar and they’re offering a lot of different things.

“There are more options now than ever for the consumer.”