Food Fight:
Local Ways Putting local food on the table
Part 3 Food: Local ways
By RICH HEFFERN
When I lived on a farm in the
Missouri Ozark Mountains, one of my favorite places to visit was up by the
spring where tall pines circled a half-buried square of flat stones, once the
foundation of a house. Neighbors told me that home had been built more than a
hundred years ago by the Coonts family, who made their living by a combination
of small cottage industries: fiddling at weddings, growing some of their own
food and foraging wild plants and fruits, hunting wild deer and turkey -- and
probably at times a furtive enterprise involving copper coils and corn
mash.
Visiting that site I would wonder what their life had been like.
Probably hard at times, keeping the stone fireplace stoked with wood in winter,
hauling water from the spring, but also no doubt rewarding in ways forgotten
today. Were the days filled with hard work along with a heady feeling of
self-reliance? What were the evenings like, sitting on a porch made of
hand-hewn logs under pines that reached high into the clear, star-dazzled
skies?
Maybe I unduly romanticize their life. Given a choice,
wouldnt they gladly have traded those inner satisfactions and aching
muscles for a chain saw, electric lights and cook stove or compact pickup
truck? Probably. Yet maybe not.
For a cash crop, the family, like most Ozarkers, raised tomatoes
on the hardscrabble, sun-washed hillsides and sold them to the local cannery in
town -- 18 miles away -- providing the dollars needed to buy sugar, coffee,
cloth and fiddle strings. Today the site of the old tomato cannery in town is
occupied by a Wal-Mart and a big chain supermarket. The tasteless tomato
sitting there on the supermarkets produce shelf has traveled in its short
life maybe five or 10 times the distance the Coonts family traveled in
theirs.
My brother still lives on that piece of land. To make a living on
his remote farm he must drive 140 miles a day to and from the nearest city in
order to work as a house builder. He buys his food at the supermarket that
stands where the local cannery once supported the local economy.
I call this the Parable of the Well-Traveled Tomato. It seems
emblematic of both the problems with our food system today and the way to a
more sustainable and just one.
Worldwide over the past decades, thriving local econ-omies have
been replaced by national and even global systems -- and we both gain from it
and pay for it in the coin of loneliness, lifeless food, fertile farmland
plowed under by developers, songbird decline and a hundred other losses. Can
the traditional community and the family farm, those age-old life supports,
withstand the onslaught of newer and newer technology, industrialization,
global trade and extravagant consumerism? Can we have a flourishing food system
completely severed from both nature and local connections?
Globalization and technology are not going to go away, nor should
they, but surely there are methods available to preserve economies that have
served humankind for centuries, reliably producing tasty and nutritious food
for our tables.
Americas most eloquent and prolific defender of traditional
rural life, small-scale farming and the civilized practices of hearth, table
and home is Kentucky poet and farmer, Wendell Berry. Berrys many books
and articles offer viewpoints and strategies that can help us navigate a sane
and just way through to the future, between the sirens of consumerism and the
clashing rocks of industrialization and globalization.
Berry writes: A sustainable rural economy will depend on
urban consumers loyal to local products. He counsels us as far as we are
able to make our lives dependent upon our local place, neighborhood and
household -- which thrive by care and generosity -- and independent of the
industrial economy, which thrives by damage.
We are talking about an
economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.
In the food system today, what we need are economies of
location rather than economies of scale, Br. David Andrews of the
National Catholic Rural Life Conference told NCR. Because of
widespread food scares and tasteless supermarket wares, the wisdom of
buying food that is grown organically has sunk in. What needs to happen next is
for consumers to realize the equal importance and urgency of buying
locally as well.
If we want to reduce the widespread environmental damage caused by
our food system, if we want food that is safe, nutritious and tasty, if small
family farms are to survive, then new ways to get re-involved in our own local
economies must be devised, according to Andrews.
Such alternative food systems are emerging all over the United
States and Europe and in Asia and Africa; they are entrepreneurial, green and
regional. In these systems, people buy local food because they trust it. Big
companies capture some of the market because people want variety, but largely
food needs are supplied from within the area.
Some examples: When the World Trade Towers collapsed on Sept. 11,
local farmers who had just delivered their wares to the nearby New York City
Green Market lost their trucks. French farmers protest against U.S.-style fast
food and agribusiness methods while raising food the traditional way for local
cafés where the asparagus smothered in tangy sauce couldnt be
fresher. California chefs spend weekdays scouring nearby farms for the freshest
greens for their city menus. Dakota Pasta Growers Cooperative, owned and
operated by its wheat farmer members, has become the third-largest pasta
company in the United States. A large water authority in southern Germany now
pays farmers to convert to organic because those subsidies are cheaper than
buying a new water treatment plant. A tea plantation in Kenya sets aside 10
percent of its acreage as natural forest or conservation areas to preserve
local biodiversity.
Its what a sustainable future looks like.
Minnesotans will still eat bananas; Texans will still garnish
their fruit salad with kiwis. But as fossil fuel becomes scarcer and its supply
more problematic, common sense recommends the re-creation of local and regional
food supplies.
Below we spotlight five small food enterprises in a two state area
of the U.S. heartland, in Kansas and Missouri, where the local
yokels have devised new ways of producing and distributing quality
products while maintaining a regional connection. Multiply this one location by
thousands; look around your own backyard and you will find their like.
Know your local farmer
By late March this year, Missouri farmer John Kaiahua had already
sold his 2002 harvest. While his starter plants were still emerging from
potting soil in his small greenhouse, families around Kansas City, Mo., were
mailing him checks for subscriptions for the years crops.
A new way of producing and delivering food that has taken hold in
many areas today is called Community Supported Agriculture -- CSA. Its an
idea that started about 30 years ago in Japan, where community farms are called
teikei, meaning putting the farmers face on food. The
concept branched to Europe before migrating to the eastern United States about
20 years ago. Today, there are an estimated 1,000 CSA farms in the United
States. Its an innovative strategy to connect local farmers with nearby
consumers, developing a regional food supply and a strong local economy
together. In contrast, 85 to 90 percent of each Americans food supply
comes from beyond the borders of his or her own state.
In Community Supported Agriculture, the subscriber pays a fixed
amount to a local farmer up front in February or March. In return, she can
expect to receive 24 or more weeks of fresh organic produce beginning in April
or May and ending in late October or November. Each CSA is administered in a
slightly different way. Sometimes the produce comes in a box that can be picked
up at a central, convenient location. Other CSAs involve farmers driving their
produce-laden trucks to a central market where customers can pick what they
want from the truck beds.
The advantages of CSAs are many. Subscribers get quality produce
first, the freshest pick, the best selection, and it comes before the
farmers markets open on Saturdays. Subscribers receive an astonishing
variety, depending on whats in season. By participating, subscribers
support a family farming operation that is ecologically and environmentally
sound, locally focused and sustainable. By paying for food in advance, the
farmer avoids borrowing for seeds and other start-up costs. Theres a
slight risk, if poor weather produces poor harvests, but CSA farmers are
usually so diversified the risk is minimal.
Best of all, consumers know the people who grow their food.
Customers share potlucks, visit the farms, peruse their organic certification
papers and techniques. There is a trust in this mutually supportive
relationship that cant be duplicated. Farmers get a fair return for their
labor. Consumers get fresh, tasty, nutritious and safe food. Farmers have total
control of their land and equipment. They choose the crops that will be planted
and the price they will ask for a share. Some farmers rely totally on income
from subscriptions while for others its only part of their operational
budget.
John Kaiahua and his wife Judy run J.J. Farms in Raytown, a Kansas
City, Mo., suburb. John is retired from the Marines. His farm
spreads over his spacious backyard, and over a number of half-acre backyard
plots he leases from neighbors. In this limited space, John and Judy grow
enough produce to feed 40 local families and to sell at the local organic
farmers market.
A native of Hawaii, John likes the fact that he is cultivating the
earth naturally. I plant in half an acre what most people plant in one
full one, he boasted, referring to his technique of staggering double
rows of crops crowded so close they are able to create their own shade,
preventing sunburn and discouraging weeds. John and Judy take great pride in
their produce, which is rich with minerals and vitamins. Their buyers usually
get their produce the same day it is picked. A lot of agribusiness
produce has to be picked when its still green so by the time they
transport, its ripe, John told NCR offhandedly. By contrast,
his produce is fresh and mature, which translates into some of the finest
eating imaginable.
Annual farm visits sponsored by the Kansas City Food Circle, an
organization that links consumers in the city with local farmers, include
visits to John and Judys farm.
I love the whole CSA concept, said one of John and
Judys customers, Vicky Combs. By supporting local family farmers,
were keeping people on the farm. Were eating locally. All those
trucks on the highway delivering from far away to the big supermarkets are a
huge strain on the environment. And John and Judys produce tastes just
wonderful, so fresh! CSA is all about knowing where your food comes from and
having a relationship with the farmer. We trust J.J. Farms with our lives
really.
Farming patchwork-style
Most of us cant live on produce alone. The same problems
that plague small local vegetable farmers trouble the meat producers as well.
Like the CSA concept, new ways and means are emerging in the meat production
sector.
Through the agency of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, a number
of central Missouri hog farmers joined forces in 1994 and inaugurated a
cooperative they called Patchwork Family Farms.
A big, vertically integrated hog operation, Premium Standard
Farms, had just moved into the state. It became apparent that we needed
to go about some ways of becoming economically independent, said Rhonda
Perry. She and her husband, Roger Allison, have helped develop the program.
They are one of 12 families who produce hogs for Patchwork.
The largest operation in the program has 100 sows, according to
Perry. All 12 families raise their hogs outside. They are allowed to have
farrowing houses, but not full confinement. They also are committed to avoid
heavy use of antibiotics.
Patchwork farmers market directly to 30 restaurants and grocery
stores in the Columbia, Mo., area. They also go to inner-city churches several
times a year, and each month, they deliver food to 1,100 Missouri families.
Their goal is to make small farms viable once again. The farmers
in the program are guaranteed no less than 15 percent above market hog price
and no less than 43 cents per pound. During recent record low hog prices, these
farmers put $35,000 more in their pockets than farmers on the open market. Many
derive all their income from the farm now.
Six firms control 75 percent of the market in the hog
industry, said Mary Hendrickson, rural sociologist at the University of
Missouri, Columbia. The only way for small farmers to compete here is to
cooperate in a Patchwork-type arrangement.
In 1997, Patchwork earned $60,000 in gross sales. That figure
doubled in 1998, and hit a quarter million in 1999. By cutting out the
middleman, this project has kept more money in producers pockets. The
group is currently looking at ways to get into the larger Kansas City and St.
Louis markets. It gives farmers hope, said Perry.
Tastes great, too!
Assembly-line beef production and processing offer a product that
is lower quality.
One can taste the difference easily on biting into a freshly
grilled kabob of free-range chicken or pork, then sampling the wares from a
factory poultry or hog farm.
Missouri farmer David Schafer and his wife Alice Dobbs were
working in the travel industry when Schafers father suggested they
rebuild the family farm near Trenton in northwestern Missouri. Their small farm
consisted of 500 acres, half in woods, half in pasture. Schafer and Dobbs moved
onto the farm about 15 years ago and began to bring it back to life. They
decided to use the rich pastureland to raise meat for the local markets.
Pasture rotation is the keystone of their farming approach. It
reproduces the natural migratory patterns that helped create the prairies in
the fist place. The diverse, natural diet and stress-free environment give
Schafer meats their delicious flavor. They sell primarily through subscriptions
and at the nearby Kansas City Farmers Market. They ship beef and chicken
to customers by Federal Express.
Madison Avenue couldnt have dreamed up an easier
product to advertise, said Schafer. Our meats are produced in a
natural environment, using no chemicals, no antibiotics, no pesticides, no
hormones, heart-healthy, beneficial to the environment, helps build soil and
promote diversity, humanely treated, strengthening local economies, and, oh
yes, tastes great, too!
Their animals forage on a fresh salad bar every day,
sleep on a grass bed every night, and there are no chemicals or unnatural
products in their diet, according to Schafer. They use a graze and
rest technique devised in New Zealand that optimizes land usage.
David and Alice, together with a few other farmers in their area,
started the Green Hills Farm Project in 1988 as a way for farmers in northern
Missouri to share information and learn together to improve their land
management. The project now has about 100 members. Participating farmers attend
seminars, share information and expertise with each other and share marketing
resources. It helps fill research gaps, Schafer said. The
state extension services werent giving us any helpful information, so we
decided to do it ourselves.
Not the company store
Once that healthy produce and tasty meat is raised, how does the
consumer in the city get her hands on it? New ways of marketing and selling
local food products are emerging as well.
In Kansas City, Mo., organic gardening enthusiast Heather Hands
began growing wheat grass as a health food two-and-a-half years ago. Now she is
proprietor of a store that sells only local products, and director of a
marketing cooperative that sells locally grown produce to area chefs and
restaurants.
During a U.S. Department of Agriculture conference on food
security for local farmers that Hands attended, discussion turned to the need
for a central organization to provide a connection and distribution service
between local growers and restaurants. As her wheat grass venture bloomed into
a full-fledged business, Hands decided that providing that link herself would
be a natural offshoot. She established Local Harvest, a cooperative for local
growers that markets and delivers their produce to local restaurants.
Also, she opened a store at Kansas Citys downtown
Farmers Market that sells local food products exclusively. A stroll
through her store is a tour of local farms. In the freezer are free-range
chickens from farmers who live no more than 20 miles from the city limits.
Shelves are piled high with value-added products made from local fruits and
vegetables: salsas, barbecue sauce, apple butter, jellies and jams. Cut flowers
from local gardens adorn the counter.
The store provides a market and showplace for local food
products, but the volume buying is being done by local restaurants, Hands
told NCR. Chefs want the freshest produce. Many menus now contain
information about where their raw ingredients and meat comes from. We develop
an ongoing relationship with the chefs, get to know their needs and match those
with the local harvests.
There are a lot of challenges when restaurants work directly
with local farmers, Hands said. Drought and rain can devastate one
farmer who has been supplying a restaurant. However, by working through
Local Harvest, restaurants can be assured of a consistent supply of the
freshest produce while farmers can increase their income by more efficient
marketing.
Another of her ventures is the Society of Urban Producers (SOUP),
a nonprofit organization that teaches families in the inner city about
sustainable agriculture, nutrition and organic farming and lets them sell the
excess produce they grow to Local Harvest. Last year we had neighborhood
kids growing herbs for us and getting excited about what they were
learning.
Shelter for the spirit
Kathy Marchant lives on the West Side, a mostly Hispanic area in
Kansas City, Mo., not far from the City Market where Heather Hands located her
store. About 15 years ago she found herself obsessed with a nearby hilltop
intersection where the broken windows of neglected storefronts gazed out on
vacant lots littered with weeds and trash. Kathys dream featured a store
and a café on that corner, and the eventual renaissance of a
neighborhood that had once been vital, splashed with color, fun and verve.
She took her savings and with her partner bought and restored two
of the spacious corner buildings. The corner of 17th and Summit came to life
again. She opened one building as a grocery store, naming it City Garden.
Carrying the usual line of grocery items, City Garden also featured organic
grains and produce. In the other room Kathy installed skylights, refinished the
oak floors and sandblasted the interior brick walls. This area became the
Bluebird Bistro. Small tile-top tables with tiny pots of dried flowers fill the
attractive space. In the restaurant, chef Zoe LaGrece uses produce from local
farmers to concoct delicious and nourishing vegetarian entrees for the
customers who come for lunch from nearby downtown office buildings.
Soon after the store opened, Kathy and staff transformed the
vacant lot across the street into a garden. A picket fence, draped with ivy,
encloses it. In the summer, raised beds sprout kale, eggplant, broccoli,
tomatoes, peppers, okra, carrots, turnips and beets. Small beds harbor spicy
arugula, parsley, basil and cilantro. Green beans and snow peas hang from
trellises. Grapevines climb the walls of a small gazebo. Marchant hires
homeless people to tend the garden and harvest the vegetables throughout the
summer to supply the bistros kitchen.
Marchant said that all of the store and restaurant staff live
within eight blocks. The commute to work is done mostly on foot or by bicycle.
Members of the counter staff call the local neighborhood kids by name when they
come in after school for healthy and tasty treats. The store and restaurant are
a marketplace for nearby farmers and growers.
Kathy Marchants efforts brought jobs to the homeless,
vitality to a neglected city neighborhood, nutritious, tasty food to city
dwellers and badly needed income to nearby farm families. The corner of 17th
and Summit became a shelter for the spirit, a grace, a blessing and a way to
move forward.
This sampling of local enterprises that are nothing less than
avenues of reentry into a sustainable and just local economy reveals a lively
spirit of small-scale elegance and generosity. These business enterprises and
others like them around the nation and world point to a future of hope, a place
where our children can grow and flourish. They mean good eating ahead.
Rich Heffern is NCR opinion editor. His e-mail address
is rheffern@natcath.org
Reading list:
Sustainable communities and local economies
Berry, Wendell, The Hidden Wound, Northpoint Press,
1989. -- Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community: Eight Essays, Pantheon,
1994. -- The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture,
Sierra Club Books, 1996. -- What Are People For? Trafalgar Square
Press, 1994.
Jackson, Wes. Becoming Native to This Place, Counterpoint
Press, 1996.
Logsdon, Gene. Living at Natures Pace: Farming and the
American Dream, Chelsea Green, 2000.
Nabhan, Gary Paul, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and
Politics of Local Foods, W. W. Norton, 2001.
National Catholic Reporter, June 7,
2002
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