Before the Plate traces a dish of food back to the farm
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
A documentary aimed at showing the origins of a plate of food as livestock or crops on a farm is receiving great support from Ontario’s agricultural community.
“The response from the ag community has been overwhelming,” Dylan Sher, Before the Plate’s creator turned producer, told Farms.com today. “Everything is going better than planned.”
Sher and his team recently wrapped up their 14th of 25 scheduled shoot days. A number of producers and agribusinesses agreed to be part of the project.
trailer_btp_day2_v1 from Sweet Tooth Digital on Vimeo.
“Our vegetables are coming from Hillside Gardens in the Holland Marsh, our wheat is coming from P & H Milling, our steak is coming from VG Meats and we have honey from Osprey Bluffs.
Before The Plate Teaser #1 from Before The Plate on Vimeo.
“And Zimmer Air Services donated two helicopters for us. It’s great there’s people like that in the ag community that understand what we’re trying to do.”
In addition to receiving support from farmers, Before the Plate is also working closely with members of Toronto’s trendy food scene.
“We’ve partnered up with the Oliver and Bonacini restaurant group,” Sher said. “They own and operate about 21 restaurants in Toronto and their flagship restaurant is called Canoe. We’re taking our plate of food from that restaurant and tracing it all the way back to the farms it came from.”
Partnering with a well-respected restaurant can only help the film reach its ultimate destination, Sher said.
Screening the movie at the “Toronto International Film Festival is our goal,” Sher said. “We have to submit the film by May of 2018, so our drop dead date for filming this year is November 30.”
Anyone interested in donating to the project can do so by visiting Before the Plate’s website.
Farms.com has reached out to some of the agribusiness involved with the project for comments on the importance of the project.