As usual on a Saturday morning, Blair Lebsack (Cook '98) is hanging out at farmers markets in and around Edmonton. But as I discover when tagging along at City Market Downtown one cool day in June, hanging out is not a spectator sport for this chef, who joined the NAIT culinary arts department last January.

Besides picking up some luscious looking asparagus, cherries and granola for his own dining table, he's nailing down details for an upcoming farm dinner at Nature's Green Acres, where he'll don the white hat to roast one of the grass-fed pigs raised by Shannon and Danny Ruzicka, owners of Nature's. And he's lining up fare for Ernest's dining room at NAIT, where he'll be in charge of hot lunches in the fall.

Lebsack's enthusiasm for this food bubbles over as we graze 104 Avenue amid buskers and bustle.

At Mighty Trio Organics, where bottled canola, hemp and flax oils glint tall and elegant in the sun, he enthuses about the bright colours, nutrient value and "absolutely phenomenal flavours" co-owner Sean Superkoski achieves by cold pressing small batches of fine seeds.

At Smoky Valley Goat Cheese, he marvels at how quickly Holly Gale's hobby of making artisan cheese has become a full-time preoccupation as customers demand more.

At the Gull Valley Greenhouses megastand, he waxes eloquent about the Tiemstra family's tomatoes, his favourites bar none.

It's no accident that Lebsack knows the people behind the food. During nearly five years as executive chef at Madison's Grill in the Union Bank Inn, a steady stream of farmers flowed through his kitchen, stocking a menu that always leaned local.

He stands among a growing subset of chefs who recognize that eating local is more than a fad - it's essential.

Eating local is not primarily about calculating the distance from farm to table, Lebsack says, but about supporting the "artisan and specialty farms that showcase what our land can actually produce."

Besides upping the taste and nutrition quotient, eating local fuels our economy, reduces the energy consumed in transportation and, as today's tour illustrates, builds community.

Reducing our reliance on faraway factory farms also increases food security, Lebsack says.

"Edmonton is the farthest reach for California products, so if anything ever goes wrong in California, we're the first to be cut out of the loop." What's more, small-scale agriculture is less likely to become ensnared in the mass contamination that has forced recalls of products ranging from spinach to poultry.

But only if we support these artisan farmers will they continue to exist. Toward that end, Lebsack is launching a local chefs collaborative aimed at matching farmers with chefs to help move more local food into restaurants - no longer niche, but mainstream.

Slow uptake

As executive chef at the high-volume Shaw Conference Centre, Simon Smotkowicz has set a goal of doubling his use of 10 per cent local food by the end of 2012.

He knows the extra time involved, from scouting out suppliers to preparing potatoes that no longer come peeled.

He also knows that this food typically costs somewhat more than mass-produced fare, although that difference can be offset by choosing less popular cuts of meat and in-season produce. But diners appreciate the results, he says.

"It can be an edge for a restaurant, because these products are always much better quality."

Yet only a minority of area chefs is dedicated to using local food, says Smotkowicz, whose culinary leadership earned an honorary diploma from NAIT in 2003. As president of the Canadian Culinary Federation Edmonton Chapter, he is determined to change that. It's not a case of either-or, he says.

"Because we eat local doesn't mean we've got to say no to everything else. It's like being on a diet - use moderation."

Noting that a chefs' collaborative in Victoria is succeeding in putting more local fare on the menu, Smotkowicz imported the concept in collaboration with Dine Alberta - and asked Lebsack to lead the charge.

An initial meeting last November, hosted by Alberta Agriculture, led to a producers showcase at Northlands in February. More than 200 attended the showcase and the buzz was encouraging, Lebsack says, but few chefs changed their buying habits.

To overcome inertia, the collaborative intends to build a list of local producers that want to work with restaurants, he says. "We need to see some long-standing relationships, not just one-off purchases."

A collaborative effort

Lebsack's mid-summer farm dinner at Nature's Green Acres illustrates the dance involved in expanding the clientele for local food. The event is attracting quite a crowd, but expanding the table is not as straightforward as it might seem.

"We're butchering one pig just for this," Lebsack notes. It's not as if killing another half pig is a viable option.

The chefs' collaborative faces that same issue writ large when connecting chefs with potential suppliers, Lebsack adds.

"We have to be careful. The Ruzickas raise 20 animals a year; we can't put them in contact with the Shaw Conference Centre and the next thing you know they're all out of certain cuts and have nothing for the farmers' market. It's a fine balance."

Even for larger producers, the vagaries of weather and disease can wreak havoc on supply. One grower we meet says 70 per cent of his crops remain to be planted due to rain; in previous summers, the issue has been drought.

But by working in concert, producers and chefs are finding ways to ensure that what's on the menu walks in the door in time to be served.

Distributor Lori Menshik offers one such safety valve. Operating as Full Course Strategies from a downtown warehouse, she sources local food on behalf of chefs. "If I know I'll have something on my menu for six to eight months, she'll make sure she has that on hand," Lebsack says.

Farmers are also partnering up to do business in volume. Edgar Farms has a stall at market today to sell asparagus, its specialty. But the farm is also part of the Innisfail Growers Co-operative, whose five families have banded together to attend more markets - and attract larger accounts.

Some producers have grown so large and sophisticated that they could dependably supply our entire region, Lebsack says. He points to Kuhlmann's Market Gardens and Riverbend Gardens as prime examples of operations that "run like clockwork," grow fantastic crops and sell some of it all year thanks to greenhouses and climate controlled storage.

Their excess goes to large grocery chains to be shipped who knows where, he notes. Ideally, this food would stay closer to home, replacing shipments from afar.

The chefs' collaborative aims to address volume issues by matching users with right-size suppliers. "Say you're using all prime cuts and someone else is making burgers," Lebsack says. "Why don't you team up to work with these suppliers, so farmers are not butchering animals and being left with too much ground beef?

Hank Strokappe (Retail Meatcutting '05) of Farm Fresh Lamb offers a case in point. He swore off restaurants after dealing with some high-handed chefs who wanted nothing but prime cuts - at a discount. Yet he now supplies four Edmonton eateries. What makes it work? Creativity.

"They're not afraid to cook with different cuts."

Part of the onus lies with suppliers, Strokappe admits.

"When I first started cutting shoulder steaks, they didn't sell. But now we do boneless stewing meat, which works well in curries, and we do up a boneless shoulder roll with netting. So we're more creative in how we market the cuts."

He credits NAIT instructors with laying the foundation. "They drilled into us that a job worth doing is worth doing right."

Redefining local

Like a growing number of consumers, NAIT instructor Hong Chew (Culinary Arts '93), the Canadian Culinary Federation Edmonton's Outstanding Member of the Year for 2011, wants to know not only where but how the food was grown, harvested, stored and shipped.

"I don't specifically follow the 100-mile diet, although most of the things sold at farmers' markets come from within 100 miles," he says.

Noting that British Columbia berries, fruit and seafood greatly expand our menu in a short-summer province whose winter fare leans to root vegetables, he adds, "I believe food should transcend provincial borders, and I'm a big supporter of anything Canadian.

"We have so much to offer from the Canadian perspective in terms of food - coast to coast and north to south."

Recognizing NAIT's role in equipping the next generation of chefs to cook local, both Chew and Lebsack are making a point of injecting local fare into the curriculum.

Ernest's, the dining room where culinary arts and hospitality management students cut their teeth, now uses 30 per cent local fare and is aiming for 50 per cent, Chew says. "We're doing it gradually in baby steps, trying to switch key products over."

Incoming students are fueling the shift, Chew adds. His colleagues are interested as well, but many are focused on covering set curriculum rather than scouting out local producers.

As culinary management instructor with a focus on procurement, he's in a perfect position to shift buying patterns by taking students to area farms and inviting producers such as honey producer Lola Canola's Patty Milligan to campus.

"Patty is a great educator, just passionate about what she does," he says. "That's what you want to see from a local standpoint."

Indeed, featuring the people behind the food is one of the keys to promoting local, Chew says.

"When we put a certain product on the menu, there has to be a story behind the product. That's how you educate the consumer about where the food comes from." And if local is what consumers demand, he adds, "Guess what, there will be a lot more local produce."

Growing support

Like many vendors at today's market, Alan Irving is expanding carefully while refusing to compromise quality, producing pork products that my tour guide declares "absolutely phenomenal."

In fact, Irvings Farm Fresh stands as "one of the models" of healthy growth, says Lebsack, who has visited to help stuff sausages and watch the family in action.

"There are a lot of really good success stories out there," Lebsack adds. "Right now, the producers are doing a better job than the chefs. They're offering all these really good things, but we're not buying enough. We need to see more of it on our menus."