A Single Step

Dear President-Elect Obama

A coalition of farmers, writers, chefs, eaters and policy advocates have combined their voices under the grassroots organization called Farm Democracy Now! to highlight the importance of President-elect Obama's appointment of the next Secretary of Agriculture.  This follows a growing concern that while the President-elect has moved swiftly to announce other cabinet appointments, the fact that a Secretary of Agriculture has not yet been nominated signals a diminished importance on the need for changes in food and farm policy.

You can join this group by signing a petition here.

In recommending 6 candidates for the position, the group wants to highlight the urgent need to create a new food system, one that "advocates for policies that encourage sustainable, humane, organic and natural food systems" and that reminds the President-elect of his commitment to family farmers and the promotion of regional food systems.

The list of candidates includes:

• Gus Schumacher - Former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture;
• Chuck Hassebrook - Executive Director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, NE;
• Sarah Vogel - former two-term Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of North Dakota, attorney, Bismarck, ND;
• Fred Kirschenmann - organic farmer, Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Ames, IA and President, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY;
• Mark Ritchie - current Minnesota Secretary of State, former policy analyst in Minnesota's Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich, co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy;
• Neil Hamilton - attorney, Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and Professor of Law and Director, Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, IA.

What's Your Favorite Green Thing to Do?

I volunteered at and attended the San Francisco Green Festival Nov. 13 - 16.  The event sponsor was Co-op America whose mission is to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.

They were taking pictures of people sharing what their favorite green activity is. 

Check out what others are saying.

Food For Thought

My friend Tena Rubio is an award winning radio journalist who currently produces a weekly show out of Oakland called Making Contact.  Today she aired a show entitled Food For Thought where she presents three stories about unconventional solutions that touch upon community gardening and towards bringing food production closer to urban residents, in some cases, to those who are low income or otherwise disadvantaged.  The stories are:

• Urban gardens in the heart of San Francisco;
• food production in a skyscraper;
• a food bank turned farmers' market in Portland Maine.

You can stream the show here.

On this day before we traditionally give thanks, I am reminded that there are amazing people around us who are taking action and advocating aspirational ideas, all in the name of ensuring that great, nutritious, and in these examples, local food is accessible to all.  There are Trevor Pacque, and Tree, and Dr. Dickson Despommier and Joel Reed.  Thank you for your entrepreneurship, your vision, your sense of community and your hard work.

Some of the more intriguing ideas to me are:

• Allowing My Farm in San Francisco (who I've mentioned in the past) to plant gardens in currently vacant San Francisco lots to support local food banks;
• Individuals such as Tree in San Francisco who operates a Free Farm Stand to distribute vegetables grown from his own urban garden & from donations from other urban gardners and leftovers from farmers' markets;
• Vertical farming (farms in and on high rise buildings) in a truly sustainable ecosystem.  While it's not addressed in the story, I can envision bringing this concept to life in San Francisco by asking real estate developers to include it into their building plans, just as we've done with retail developments that add housing above the street level;
• Free farmers' market to feed the homeless in Portland Maine run by Preble Street, a concept not too different than another group that I've mentioned in Oakland, City Slicker Farms.

These are but a few sustainable ideas that creatively use local food production as a solution to larger challenges such as a growing global urban populations and economically challenging times.  It makes me wonder how we can realize these dreams sooner rather than later.

An October Farm Visit: Capay Organic Farm

I know it's already November, but I've been meaning to share this experience for a month now.  It was the first week of my Eat Local October pledge when I was cruising around the Ferry Building Marketplace and nonchalantly picked up a blue flyer from a kisok set up by one of the retailers, Farm Fresh to You.

What immediately caught my attention was the announcement in the upper left hand corner:

Halloween Farm Tour
Saturday, Oct. 11th
11AM to 2PM
Visit the Farm & Pick
Your Pumpkin

I had been researching ways to visit some local food sources, be them farms, dairies or cheese-makers, and this was the perfect opportunity.  I invited my friend "D" to join me and we set off on a glorious sunny morning to make the 1-1/2 hour drive from San Francisco into Yolo County and to Capay Organic Farm.

It turned out that the flyer I had picked up was a copy of a weekly newsletter written by Thaddeus Barsotti, one of the owners of Capay Organic Farm.  In essence, the invitation was to customers.  Ooops!  Nevertheless, "D" and I blended in with the dozens of people who were there and we enjoyed the being a place that seemed to be millions of miles away from The City. 

We were the first two people to arrive, and we were joyfully greeted by two women who had set up a tent where they were serving free pumpkin bread, pears and apple cider.  They even had recipes for the pumpkin bread that they passed out.  "D" and I joked that we might be the only two people here and that we'd get the special private tour, but within 30 minutes, the yard was surrounded by families toting their young children & with couples who were seeking a day away from the hustle and bustle of city living.

Thaddeus gave us a walking tour of the farm.  It's 240-acres nesteled bewtween small rolling hills and the Cache Creek.  They grow everything from figs, peaches, mandarins & pistachios to onions, shallots, broccoli, leeks, cabbage, tomatoes, squash, peppers, asparagus, okra, and of course pumpkins.

He was generous beyond belief, not only with the pumpkin bread and cider, but also in allowing us to taste cherry tomatoes and onions straight from the vine.  He also took the time to introduce us to his head farm chief (I've lost my notes, but I believe his name is Ricardo) who has been working the farm for 15+ years.

Onion Fields

Okra

Asparagus (it looks different when it's not in season!)

Of course, the highlight of the day was when Thaddeus walked us to the pumpkin fields and invited all of the attendees to pick their own - again for free - and it was not only fun walking through the field seeking the perfectly shaped and sized pumpkins ("D" was picking one to carve, I was picking one to roast and eat), but it was a joy hearing the laughter of kids with their parents.

Beyond the hospitality shown by Thaddeus and his crew, I came away from this visit truly inspired about what a farmer and a farm can achieve in creating a business.  Thaddeus and his three brothers (who each manage various parts of this business) are true entrepreneurs who have established an organic farm, who have (in the words of Thaddeus) "shamelessly promoted" a CSA program, branding it as Farm Fresh to You, and who have opened a retail grocery store where they sell produce from their farms (and other farms) in one of the most prominent spaces in San Francisco at the Ferry Building.  Unfortunately, I suspect that they are on the cutting edge of "farm marketing."  Not only have they thought of and implemented big ideas to promote their farm and grow sales, but they also attend to details such as writing weekly newsletters, inviting customers to visit the farm, & provide samples and recipes of delicious foods, all of which adds up to just plain and simply great customer service.

I'm not a customer of Farm Fresh to You, but I am certainly a big fan.  And if you ever want to enjoy an afternoon on a farm, I know just the place you should consider.

"D"s perfect pumpkin

Options to Eating Local: Farmer’s Markets

This is my third installment on ways that you can eat local.  Today I'll share the fifth idea, shopping at Farmers' Markets.

If you're like me and a bit wary of receiving too much farm fresh food from a CSA, or perhaps you just enjoy being outdoors or the experience of shopping, then the Bay Area offers you numerous Farmers' Market options.

I heard on the news the other night that it was former California governor Jerry Brown, in the late 1970's, who was responsible for changing regulations that prohibited farmers from selling directly to consumers.  This led to what has now become an explosion in the number of markets in California.  He's been quoted as saying:

The farmers' markets were another step to giving people an opportunity to take more power over their own lives and also to provide another outlet for organic produce.  That is important because the production and distribution of food is increasingly being monopolized and controlled by large corporate structures, large financial structures.

There are now more than 4,600 Farmers Markets in the U.S. (up from 1,700 in 1994), 600+ in California, and based on my own count, more than 100 in the Bay Area.  Not only have they given greater access and options to people who seek fresh from the farm produce, but they have also transformed cities and markets:

• Between 1987 and 1997, sales of fresh fruits and vegetables in the U.S. have more than doubled to about $70 billion per year;
• In order to better compete with Farmers' Markets, the number of items in the average supermarket produce section has risen from 173 to 335;
• Markets often provide access of fresh fruits and vegetables to urban residents who in some neighborhoods do not have access to a grocery store.  Some markets report receiving as much as half its revenue in the form of scrip from Federal and State anti-hunger programs such as the WIC program;
• Farmers' Markets have been used as the centerpiece in urban development, such as at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, or in being the original anchor in what is now the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica;
•  Markets serve as community centers, allowing families to spend a morning together, or to attend special events such as concerts, book readings, cooking demonstrations, and tastings.

There are also considerable benefits realized by farmers.  They keep a larger portion of their revenue than what they would get selling to wholesale distributors.  They get cash instead of having to wait weeks to get a check from a wholesale customer.  And they get to build relationships with customers, from chefs to house-dads. 

This is not to say that there isn't a downside to a farmer working a market.  The hours can be long, and at some of the more popular markets, competition can be fierce.  This has resulted in some farms either cutting back on its market visits, or pulling out completely.  Just the other day, I saw a farmer drop his price for pluots from $2 / pound to $0.50 / pound so he could close for the day and return home.

You might be surprised that there is a market located near you.  I told my friend "D" the other day that I had shopped at a market literally around the corner from where she lives, and she was unawares that it existed.  Again, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers has a tremendous resource in its Food Guide where it lists the markets by day of the week and by county in the greater Bay Area.  There's a market every day of the week, except Mondays.  You can do a web search of its database, or you can check out the Google Map I created using the information in the Food Guide.

I like to attend markets because I can people watch; I can ask a question of the farmers about a new food and not feel dumb for asking; I can sample foods; I get to shop outside! 

Last Wednesday I took a bus down to the Heart of the City Farmers Market where I took in the sensations.  This is a truly urban market located at the United Nations Plaza between Market Street on one end and City Hall on the other end.  I bought some Persian cucumbers and green onions from a farm located in San Juan Bautista, and I bought a pound of green grapes from a farm located in Modesto.  I spent a total of $3.

I was amazed at how many people were out and about shopping at 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon.  I briefly wondered how this market compares to those found across the country, but I quickly reminded myself that few places can compare to the bounty we have available to us in San Francisco and around the Bay Area.  I basked in the sunshine of the day and smiled.  Life is good!

If you don’t shop at Farmers’ Markets, what are your reasons?  If you could have somebody shop and deliver from a Farmers’ Market FOR YOU, would you be interested in this service?

Options to Eating Locally: Community Supported Agriculture & Non-Farm Delivery Services

Yesterday I shared some information about how you can grow your own food, either with a home or shared community garden.  Today I'll touch upon something that's much easier:  delivery services.  These are two of the nine ways I've determined that I can buy foods produced within my defined 150-mile local food radius.  As a reminder, the nine ways are:

1. Grow it yourself;
2. Share the responsibility of growing, either through a community garden or by bartering with friends, family or neighbors for food they've grown themselves;
3. Buy from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program;
4. Buy from a non-farm produce delivery service;
5. Buy from a Farmer's Market;
6. Buy from a small grocery store that sells mostly locally sourced products;
7. Buy from a 'meal assembly' services that is committed to local buying;
8. Eat at a restaurant that cooks with locally sourced ingredients;
9. Buy from a national chain when you're able to determine that products are sourced locally.

As a shopper, you basically have two options to receive delivered food:

1. Have vegetables and fruits delivered from a local farm through what is called a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program;
2. Have vegetables and fruits delivered from a non-farm operation that aggregates from many farms and growers.

Community Supported Agriculture
       

A CSA program is basically a subscription or "pledge" to a specific farm that you will purchase its food.  It's a way to bypass the Farmer's Market and still ensure that you are receiving locally grown foods.  The benefit to the farm is that it can count on a guaranteed income stream and a predicatble demand which lets them to only plant what subscribers have committed to.  The benefits to the consumer are a steady stream of fresh, seasonal ingredients.  And if you're a practicing locavore, of course this means you know exactly where your food is coming from.

Each CSA operates a bit differently.  Some farms will deliver a box directly to you.  Others will designate a pickup location for you to come get it.  Some offer multiple size boxes and different delivery frequencies.  Some deliver only fruits and vegetables that they grow, while others may add foods grown from neighboring or partner farms.  Most will provide you recipes as well as invitations to visit the farm for special events or occasions so that you get to know the families and people who are harvesting your food.

If you're interested in CSAs, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers publishes a Buy Fresh, Buy Local Food Guide that includes 23 different farms that currently offer CSA programs within the Bay Area.  If you cannot locate a printed version of this tremendous resource, you can print parts of it, or search an online database at the Buy Fresh, Buy Local website.  Additionally, Local Harvest has a powerful, searchable database that can pinpoint CSA farms that service your location.

I've taken the liberty of putting together the following chart to help make your connection to the farm of your dreams a bit easier.  In addition to contact information, I've also indicated the counties in which each farm offers either a pickup or delivery service.

Lastly, KQED compared a few CSAs for you at its food blog, Bay Area Bites.  And oh yeah!  Remember My Farm, the company that installs backyard gardens?  Through them, you can also subscribe to a CSA that supports your backyard garden neighbors in San Francisco.

In addition to fruit and vegetable CSAs, the Bay Area is starting to see the emergence of Meat CSAs.  In a meat CSA, not only can you get beef, pork, lamb and poultry, but at  least also provides you farm fresh eggs.  Check out the recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle about them.
There can be a couple of challenges when you join a CSA.  One is that you may have to learn how to prepare and cook with unfamiliar ingredients.  Again, many farms will provide you with recipes to overcome this hurdle.  Another challenge is that you may receive more food than you are able to cook and eat (my personal fear), resulting in spoilage and waste.  There's an interesting article about the  dilemma of wasting CSA food at Slate.  Bonnie P. over at The Ethicurian, however, writes about a solution against CSA waste via a CSA Challenge / dinner party with friends. This is yet another opportunity to develop community around food. The last challenge is that as a sponsor of the farm, you are committed to receiving the bad along with the good.  A poor harvest could be reflected in poor quality food.

Non-Farm Delivery Services

Planet Organics is based in San Francisco and sells a variety of produce boxes and grocery staples.  They offer more than 20 different combinations, ranging from all vegetables, to various mixes of vegetables and frutis, to all fruits.  It appears as if all the produce sold is organic, but not necessarily locally produced.  From its website:

We buy locally as much as possible.  In the winter months when little is grown in Northern California, we buy from farms in the Central Valley and Southern California.  Our tropical fruit, such as bananas and mangoes, comes from organic farms in Central and South America.

The origins of each item contained in a given box are only occasionally descriptive enough to make a determination as to where the product was grown.  Planet Organics delivers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area within the boundaries of south to San Joes, north to Petaluma and east to Livermore.

The Fruit Guys is another San Francisco based service that will deliver boxes of fruit to your home or company offices.  The Fruit Guys offer three different sized boxes with a range of varieties and will attempt to fill the boxes with as much locally sourced fruit as possible, depending on whether you live in their defined Western, Central, or Eastern zones.  A quick review of the products available in the Western zone indicate a fair number of Northern California growers, but certainly not all.  And of course, they do offer tropical fruits such as bananas that are not native to the Bay Area, let alone to California.  Fruit Guys deliver nationally.

A key benefit of these non-farm delivery programs is that if you don't like them, you are not committed to buy from them for an entire growing season, as you may be with a CSA.  Also, as I've noted above, if you are committed to buying only locally produced foods and to supporting local farmers, these options are not perfect.

Have you ever bought from a CSA?  What has your experience been?

How Chefs, Farmers and Artisans Strengthen our Community

I attended one of the Commonwealth Club Speaker events that is sponsored by Eat Local SF as part of the October Eat Local Challenge.  This event was entitled "From Farm to Feast: How chefs, farmers and artisans strengthen our community."

It began with a local food and beverage reception where Butterfly restaurant served a Thai chicken noodle soup, Kika's Treats (a graduate of the La Cocina food incubator program) served Brazilian Honey Cakes with Dark Chocolate and Caramelized Graham Crackers with Milk Chocolate, Back to Earth Catering served an assortment of olives, meats & cheeses, there was a platter of meats and cheeses from Boccalone and from Cowgirl Creamery , and wine from Buckland Winery.

The presentation was comprised of a diverse panel that included:

• Joan Simon - current co-chair of Eat Local SF and a food industry consultant via her practice Full Plate Consulting;
• Sue Conley - founder and co-owner of Cowgirl Creamery, an artisan maker of cheeses based in Point Reyes Station and with a retail store at the Ferry Building Marketplace;
• Jered Lawson - farmer and owner of Pie Ranch , a farm located in Davenport (San Mateo County) and of Mission Pie, a retail bakery located in San Francisco that uses ingredients from the farm;
• Ari Derfel - owner of Back to Earth Catering, a 100% organic catering business that is a subset of a larger Back to Earth  concept that includes mountain yoga and other outdoor retreats;
• Dave Stockdale - Executive Director of CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), an organization that educates and creates links between urban dwellers and farmers.  CUESA also manages the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market.

Each of the panelists gave a brief background of how they've arrived at their current place as spokespeople for the local food movement, and they shared stories and their visions for how local foods develop a sense of community.

• Joan made a point that dining at a restaurant is not only about eating food, but about how dining is a way to share time and moments with people who are a part of our communities;
• Sue shared stories of how Marin County has been able to sustain farming by dedicating one-third of its land to agriculture, and how farmers have been able to organize and sustain themselves through groups such as Marin Organic  to expand the number of certified organic farms, and to help what was once 5 farms selling direct to consumers to grow to 45 farms;
• Jered discussed his outreach programs to area high schools to bring school kids to the farm, show them the "seed to meal" process and to hopefully develop apprentices who embrace agriculture as a livelihood;
• Ari discussed how he sees part of his greater mission in life being to bring people together around organic food, and how preparing loving meals for hard working people is a way to nourish them (physically and spiritually) and to celebrate their efforts to make the world a better place;
• Dave talked about how chefs are increasingly working in concert with specific farms to plant new crops for use in their restaurants and how consumers ultimately benefit from these alliances.  He also talked about the many educational programs run by CUESA to bring urbanites in closer contact with farmers, be it Farmer's Markets or farm visits and tours.

The most interesting portion of the evening came during the Q&A session, when the audience asked how the local food movement can expand to the mainstream, beyond the audience members who have already drunken the proverbial Kool-Aid.  The answers were diverse, ranging from the abstract to concrete, and included:

• Ask retail workers where their foods and other merchandise come from.  Tell them you prefer to buy locally sourced and produced products;
• To overcome perceptions that food from Farmer's Markets are often more expensive than that found at mega-marts, share the results of research studies completed by CUESA and a (unnamed) Seattle group that show Farmer's Market prices to be comparable and sometimes less expensive than that found at national chains [NOTE: I plan to find these studies and share the findings];
• Point them to existing resources and organizations such as Eat Local SF, Community Alliance with Family Farmers , CUESA, or Local Harvest .

My personal observations from the responses is that while there are plenty of resources available to help motivated urban consumers to make eating local a commitment, it's still not simple enough education or services available to make it an easy transition to make for the average American family.  Changing consumer behavior is a very difficult thing to do (absent of any crisis). But that just means that there is an opportunity for somebody to find a consumer solution that makes it easier for more families to make this a choice.  Whoever figures it out will surely bring tremendous value to all participants of this movement.

Ari made a very insightful comment to wrap up the evening when he said (and I'm paraphrasing here):

This is a movement not motivated by profit, but by a desire to reconnect to a way of life that once was.  We're not trying to create something new here.  Rather, it's returning to something that once was.  The knowledge and the wisdom to do so is already out there.

What would persuade you to start eating local more often?

Oh yeah, Jered gave away some Sonoma wheat stalks (he said they are an heirloom wheat variety - but I couldn't find any information about it on the web) anmd challenged each of us to plant the seeds for harvest in August 2009.

Being passionate about a cause

Just as Jen Maiser, Jessica Prentice, Sage Van Wing, and DeDe Sampson have a passion for a locavore lifestyle that considers their food choices in terms of their political, environmental, economic, and health impacts, there are plenty of amazing people who are leading changes in food policies, both domestically and globally, due to their passions around various causes.

I don't pretend to have a complete grasp of all the food issues that exist.  And truth be told, I probably do not have a well founded point-of-view on many of the more complex food policy issues.  But becoming better informed and more aware of the impact my choices have is part of this journey I've embarked on.  Part of this education, I believe, is in learning from the lead of others.

Along those lines, last week the New York Times highlighted "Young leaders who are changing the way we eat (and drink)."   I found most of these stories to be inspiring and provacative, and while I know there are more people out there like them, I figured I'd start by introducing this group and their causes to you:

• Severine von Tscharner Fleming - food policy and farming advocate & film documentarian who is highlighting organic entrepreneurs under the age of 40 in her film The Greenhorns;
• Anna Lappe' & Bryant Terry - Co-authors of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen. Anna is also a public speaker talking about the connections between the food system and climate change, while Bryant is a policy fellow who is also writing a book called Vegan Soul Kitchen to reframe African-American cuisine;
• Cruz Salucio, Romeo Ramirez, Silvia Perez, Geraldo Reyes & Leonel Perez - Florida farmworker advocates leading the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to help Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indian workers negotiate a 'sustainable wage' with Fortune 500 corporate customers;
• Scott Harrison - founder of Charity Water, a nonprofit that creates projects to bring clean, safe drinking water to the world's poorest peoples in Asia, Africa and Central America;
• Hillary Wilson, Alice Brooke Wilson, Tom Phillpot & Leo Gaev - owners of Maverick Farms, who seek to "build a sustainable-but-accessible and socially just food system" by expanding theirfocus beyond growing and selling produce to include a nonprofit incubator program teaching teens to farm, a bed and breakfast, a restaurant-supply business, and a produce delivery network;
• Patrick Martins - founder of Heritage Foods that is helping to rescue vanishing turkey breeds such as the Bourbon Red (and other livestock) and the farms that raise them by creating consumer demand for their meat.

These profiles and photo galleries can be read in full here.

Also, there are short podcasts from five of these people where they answer "What's inside your 'fridge.'"  I like to see how passionate people implement their passions via everyday choices.  These can be found here.

Do you have any food heroes or heroines?