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.
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:
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:
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.
How about exclusive? Or even worse, a BIG SPENDER!
Truth be told, one of the most common questions I've received from friends and family about shopping for local foods is "doesn't it cost more?" I suppose the answer for YOU depends on what you cook and eat each and every day, or as they like to say in the automotive industry, your mileage may vary.
I'd venture to guess that if I were cooking up a steak, or a rack of lamb each and every night, my costs to buy locally farmed meats would cost me more than if I shopped at the local mega-mart. But I'm a simple man with simple taste buds so I'll share with you some data that I've collected around the price differences between shopping for produce at a Farmers Market versus at a national chain store.
I have three data points to share. While they are not conclusive nor do they refute the premise that I am spending more money to buy local, they don't necessarily suggest that I AM spending more money either. Then again, I'm choosing not to buy factory farmed foods trucked, air-shipped or cargo boated from far away locations to my local national chain store for reasons other than pure cost savings.
Exhibit I
CUESA conducted a shopping survey comparing the prices of various fruits and vegetables purchased at the Ferry Building Farmers Market as well as at two national chain stores found in San Francisco, Whole Foods and Safeway. It compared the price per pound of these different items, both conventional as well as organic, and calculated an average price per pound of the "basket" of goods.
The conclusion highlighted by this study was that organic produce sold at the Farmers' Market was the least costly option, followed by Whole Foods and Safeway (in that order). Conventional produce, however, was least expensive at Safeway, followed by the Farmers Market and Whole Foods.
Being a marketing guy, I know that the research data can allow companies to "massage the data" and draw favorable conclusions, so I dug into the raw data a bit, removed what appeared to be outlyer data (for instance, Safeway has organic broccoli at $9.56 / pound or more than $7 / pound more than the Farmers Market; also, the relatively high price of almonds relative to the other data points skews the averages). I also noticed that Whole Foods had relatively few conventional items surveyed and Safeway had relatively few organic items surveyed. Therefore, I don't believe it is fair to compare all three sources across both conventional and organic categories of produce.
After these changes, I was able to draw the following additional conclusions:
So if you prefer to buy the least expensive organic produce, the Farmers Market is the place for you. If you prefer to buy the least expensive conventional produce, then Safeway is the place for you.
Of course, these strict price comparisons don't tell any part of the story around the quality of the produce, its freshness, or its taste. They also don't address the hidden environmental costs of transporting these goods long distances to get to my market.
Exhibit II
In 2007, an economics professor at the University of Washington assigned her statistics students to conduct a price comparison survey of organic produce found at both a large Pacific Northwest grocery chain, QFC, and at the Broadway Farmers Market in Seattle. Her group concluded that "the farmers market was slightly less expensive pound for pound, on average, for 15 items that included Fuji apples, red potatoes, baby carrots, spinach and salad mix."
Items that were less expensive at the Farmers Market included the apples ($1.99 / pound vs. $2.49 / pound), asparagus ($3.00 / pound vs. $8.99 / pound) and baby bok choi ($1.33 / pound vs. $1.99 / pound). More expensive items included salad mix ($7.50 / pound vs. $6.99 / pound) and red potatoes ($2.50 / pound vs. $1.99 / pound).
Exhibit III
While I have not kept accurate food spending records for myself to compare my pre-Eating Local spend to my post-Eating Local spend, I spent about $300 on food in October which feels very much in line with what I typically spend each month.
Included in this amount was a $25 bottle of olive oil (which I seem to need to replace about once every 3 months), some storage containers, and three six-packs of beer that I don't NEED to include in my 'food' expenditures. Perhaps my costs are in line with the past because I've been cooking large batches of food and freezing them for future consumption. Perhaps they are in line because I've started to buy from stores such as Real Food, Rainbow Market and Bi-Rite Market where I can buy amounts that a single person needs from bulk bins, rather than in boxes and packages much larger than I can keep and use before spoilage starts to happen.
In short, while I'm trying to support local foods for reasons beyond saving money, I don't believe that I am spending more to do so. The data is somewhat inconclusive, I admit, and the studies I've cited outside of my own experience don't necessarily make the case that costs are comparable between a farmers market and a national grocery chain, particularly if you don't shop exclusively organic (and I don't). Nevertheless, my personal experience to date does not lead me to conclude that I AM spending more for locally grown foods.
So I'm not a big spender. I'll have to work on addressing whether or not I'm elitist at another point in time.
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:
As a shopper, you basically have two options to receive delivered food:
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?
After almost three weeks of eating local, I've decided that now is the time to take a step back from the excitement of trying something new and the enjoyment of testing new foods and recipes, and be more methodical in describing the challenges of eating local. One of my original goals in taking the Eat Local Challenge for October was to see how difficult it would be to make this commitment, not only for a month, but for a lifetime.
As I see it, there are nine distinct ways that I (or you) can acquire local food. They are:
Today I'll share some ideas on growing it yourself and on community gardens.
Grow It Yourself
In order to grow your own food, you will need some outdoor space, some soil, some seeds, some water, some sunshine and preferably a green thumb. In an urban setting, the space could be your front yard, back yard, window boxes, or even rooftop. And if you don't have a natural green thumb, or don't know the difference between root and non-root vegetables, there are plenty of resources available to you:
Join a Community Garden
If you are an apartment or condo dweller, or do not have yard space, you can consider joining a community garden. A community garden is nothing more than a piece of land, usually owned by a city, that is shared by a group of volunteers who are free to plant and harvest anything (legal) they desire for personal consumption. Often there is a small fee that covers the costs of maintaining the property, and many will provide you with the tools, water, and even expert advice, you need to start your own mini-farm.
If you grow your own food, what do you grow? Would you be interested in being able to trade your food for that grown by others?
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