Proventarians

Say what?
We think we have made up a word - Proventarian - meaning ( to us anyway) that we care about and understand the provenance of where something comes from.

For us it means knowing where and how our grain is grown, or where something is imported from. As a commercial, albeit small, enterprise we do have to consider the need to proivde consistent supply of products for customers and from time to time that might mean that we have to buy non-organic ingredients to continue production. And to be honest there are some local producers who are not 'certified' organic but who we trust a lot more than some of the imported, allegedly organic produce. It's an interesting conundrum.

On a personal level it means that we always find out where our food comes from before we buy. It isn't always easy and the lack of labelling in NZ doesn't help - Country of Origin Labelling would certainly throw up a some surprises for lots of people. Consider the lack of transparacy in pork products that has received publicity recently. How many consumers really realise that the cheap shaved ham they enjoy is mostly grown off-shore under 'who knows what' conditions and pumped full of water?
When we get more time this is an area we want to become more active in.
Meantime, have a look at this if this subject interests you;
http://www.cool.org.nz/

As Proventarians it naturally follows that we prefer to buy locally grown food whenever we can. The current surge of Farmers Markets is revealing a whole load of Kiwi's growing and making food that they now have an outlet for, which is fantastic.  We are always looking for new suppliers for our bakery and hope to be able to build some new relationships based on this idea. It is always going to be easier ( and probably cheaper) to buy bulk, commodity grown ingredients, but that's simply not what we are interested in. As a small business we love supporting other small businesses and buying from like-minded people.

The increasing availabillty of Fair Trade ingredients is another option that we want to take advantage of for those ingredients that can't be grown here. 


We shall be adding more thoughts and musings to this page as we get more time, and would love to hear from you if you have a similar philosophy.