The Ontario government presented the Bite of Brant program with an Excellence in Agriculture Award during the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto on Saturday, November 2, 2024.
According to the Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness news release, the Ontario government’s Excellence in Agriculture Awards recognize businesses, individuals and organizations that have raised the bar for excellence in the agriculture and food industry, and demonstrated leadership in their field.
Bite of Brant, which takes place at the Burford Fairgrounds every spring, is an agricultural awareness program for Grade 5 students from Brantford, the County of Brant and Six Nations of the Grand River, in both the public and catholic school boards.
Jean Emmott, a Bite of Brant committee member, said that event was designed as a way to help students and teachers develop an appreciation and an awareness of locally produced food, and its role in the local society and economy.
“It’s a two-day event and what happens is, each class is split into two groups and so one half goes to one building, and the other half goes to another,” said Emmott. “There are ten stations in both buildings and they spend 12 minutes at each, and then when they get back to the classroom they get to share their new-found experiences and knowledge with each other.”
During the annual event, participants get to learn about a variety of agricultural practices going on around the County including pressing apples into cider, growing mushrooms, harvesting honey from bees, plant and soil needs, the maple syrup process and the care that goes into raising livestock and the processing that comes with it.
“Agriculture is the number one industry in Brant County and all five food groups are produced, as well as processed in some form or another here” said Emmott. “As a retired teacher myself, I think kids learn a bit better in a short amount of time when you provide a hands-on learning experience.”
While the educational program will be celebrating its 30th anniversary next spring, Emmott said that the origins of the event dates back to the late 1980s.
“Prior to the Bite of Brant program, back in the late 80s and into the early 90s, the Milk Producer Committee of Brant hosted a program called Dairy Days where the Grade 5 students would visit just six learning stations,” she said. “In 1990, Brant County hosted the International Ploughing Match (IPM) in the Paris area, and after that was over, an Agricultural Awareness Committee was formed and it was decided that we should expand the Dairy Days to include other commodities in the County.”
Emmott said after several years of planning, and with a name finally in place, Bite of Brant was launched in 1995.
“We didn’t start planning until a year or so after the IPM finished up and then about four years after that we were able to officially get Bite of Brant off the ground,” said Emmott. “Other counties were doing similar types of things, so there was Wedge of Wellington and Grown in Grey, and that alliteration kind of set a pattern and so at one of our meetings, someone spoke up and suggested Bite of Brant and that’s actually how we ended up with the name.”
Now, nearly three decades later, tens of thousands of students have gotten the opportunity to not only learn about where their food comes from and how to be better consumers, but they’ve also had the chance to learn about potential career opportunities in the agriculture-food industry.
“We hope that while they’re at the event, they gain something for their future too because in Grade 5 they’re starting to kind of get introduced to the idea of careers and such,” said Emmott. “There are so many opportunities in the agri-food industry in the job market today and so we always like to have a careers station set up so they can start thinking about what kind of steps they need to take as they go through high school.”
Speaking about their recent Promotional Excellence Award, which recognizes nominees for their work in encouraging consumers to buy Ontario grown and made agriculture and food products, Emmott said that the nomination came as a complete surprise.
“In the middle of this July I actually received a letter saying that we were being nominated for the award and it totally came out of the blue,” said Emmott with a laugh. “I spent the next five days kind of burning the midnight oil, filling out all the information and getting everything ready to submit and then we didn’t hear anything back for a while so initially, I figured we didn’t get it and carried on. Eventually, around the middle of October, I got the email that said we were the winners of the category and it was just a wonderful surprise. I think we were just speechless because it’s an incredible honour for us, we were just thrilled to bits.”
Selected by the Honourable Rob Flack, Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, himself, Emmott and Lauren Miller, another Bite of Brant committee member, attended the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair to receive the award earlier this month.
While Emmott said the award is a testament to what the program has, and continues to accomplish, overall, none of it would have been possible without their dedicated volunteers who make the event happen year after year.
“It takes about 125 volunteers to plan, organize and present the program each spring,” said Emmott. “It’s a big event to put on, it’s not something you can just do in a couple of hours and so we just couldn’t do without all of our volunteers, it’s a real team effort and I think this reflects that work.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
