Two Good Reads

Some good reading for your enjoyment.

First, local organic farmer Don Kretschmann waxes, well, organic about the "booming" local farm economy...

The willingness of the consuming public to pay a fair price for food reflects a fundamental change. They see that this nutritious food is actually a bargain when compared with purchasing cheap food which is deleterious to health, or food which is shipped astronomical distances incurring hidden costs of environmental degradation and energy dependency. (Is there a parallel in the auto industry?)

Although he acknowledges that are serious challenges for family farms...

Several factors can impede this unfolding ag revolution and opportunity. One is the loss of local, small-scale food processing facilities -- slaughterhouses and butchershops, particularly. And the other is the loss of young people to enter the field (no pun intended) who've had the experience of growing up on farms.

I have to wonder if everybody would agree with Mr. Kretschmann about the "booming" business thing. Has this translated into more stability for their farms, particularly those that make their living raising cows, pigs, and chickens for beef, pork, and... uh, chicken? From what I've read and seen, this may not be the case.

I've read posts on message boards about grass-fed operations selling a cow or two 'cause they can't afford to maintain them all, and over at the Ethicurean the other day there was an excellent discussion about how family farmers are struggling to pay for health care, driving some out of business and preventing younger wanna-be farmers from fulfilling that particularly wish.

In other words, I just don't know if the increased demand for more local, and in most cases, more sustainably produced food, is translating into more financially secure family farmers.

Meanwhile, the semi-famous Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson take to the pages of the Gray Lady with a call for a 50-year Farm Bill to, among other things, address the tremendous damage that's been inflicted on the soil.

Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological “solutions” for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.

Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing. The last line is killer.

Connecting Small Farms and Big Buyers

A little late coming to this, but better late, eh?

In any case, the so-called locavore movement seems to be picking up steam in these here parts, with an organization called the Progress Fund launching a new program called the Produce Grown Here, or PGH, project.

The project will help local farmers deliver the produce by connecting them with buyers and reduce costs by joining with other farmers to streamline operations.

First, let’s begin with The Progress Fund. What is it?

Few conventional lenders and business gurus tailor their offerings to small, rural businesses. The Progress Fund supports businesses that build the rural economy, typically while honoring the environment, reusing historic structures, reinvigorating traditional business districts, and creating living wage jobs.

From the description on its Web site, it sounds like the Progress Fund may have got its start thanks to one of Rep. John Murtha’s famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) earmarks. Nevertheless, in this case, it appears to be a worthy organization.

Next, some more details about the program.

The PGH project will focus first on Giant Eagle and Eat'n Park Hospitality Group, helping them to expand their existing local buying operations by connecting more local farmers with the two companies.

Because the local farming economy is fragmented -- there are 17,000 family farms in Western Pennsylvania alone -- many farms are too small to fill the needs of large companies like Eat'n Park, whose restaurants can go through 35,000 pounds of tomatoes a week.

The Progress Fund’s president and CEO, David Kahley, was kind enough to reply to an email to offer some further details on the PGH project:

“We’re presently focused on four products (tomatoes, corn, apples, and potatoes) to stay focused rather than scatter our initial efforts. I think our chances of success are best protected by staying focused. However, once we develop a good distribution system, our intention is to use that as a model for even more local foods, including high quality local meats produced by using sustainable practices.”

It is a bit disconcerting that the project’s launch involves to heavy hitters like Giant Eagle and Eat‘n Park, the latter of which already has ongoing efforts to get some of its produce locally.

But these are both fairly big operations that shouldn't necessarily need any free help if they want to source more produce locally. I can understand that both companies have choices and may be able to source many of the same products from very far away at an equal or even cheaper price, so if they can be encouraged to get more produce locally, that's fantastic.

However, in the current environment in which large recalls of vegetables and meat are a common occurrence, it’s a shrewd business maneuver – in that it could potentially reduce their liability in the case of future recalls (and let’s face it, there will be more recalls) – for them to take necessary steps to source more products locally.

In other words, this is something that it would appear these two operations – unlike smaller restaurants (even small, local chains) – have the resources to do on their own and should want to do.

In response, again, Mr. Kahley:

“For the foreseeable future, we are going to work with Eat’n Park and Giant Eagle because of their commitment and the partnership that has been developed over the past two years that got us to this point. But I’ll hasten to add that I hope that this effort will spread further into the community beyond our own efforts; by my way of thinking, the more involved will strengthen the overall results for [southwestern Pennsylvania].”

I hope to follow up with the project manager, David Eson, to get some more details about the participating farms and whether there are certain criteria that participating farms must meet (although it’s fairly obvious that, for the moment, they must grow apples, potatoes, corn, or tomatoes).

It would be nice if there were certain sustainability criteria that participating farms must meet (e.g., limited use of chemicals and pesticides and other sustainable practices) in order to participate, but that may be impractical and self-defeating. One would hope that most small-scale farms already operate in such a manner.

Scrapin’ Up the Bits, Lots of ‘Em

While I work on a longer, more “serious” post about nutrition and disease, there’s been a heck of a lot of interesting news and things happening.

Perhaps the most uninteresting of these was the arrival today of my Zuni Café Cookbook. After the wild success of the roasted whole branzino, it just seemed like fate was telling me to crack that thing open as soon as possible. My plan is to make at least one main course from it a week for the next month or so and report on the outcome.

From cookbooks we move to much more intriguing fare, such as the FDA’s approval of cloned animals as a source of beef and pork and milk. I swear on whatever holy text can be provided that I am not anti-technology, but this really is unnerving.

There are no long-term data on whether meat from cloned animals is safe, and the government has no plans to track the products from these animals once they enter the marketplace or to label them as coming from a cloned animal. In any case, for those interested, the Ethicurean’s cloned animals digest is very informative.

I’ve read about overfishing, but did you know that the price of cod – the fish of choice for fish ‘n chips – in the UK has quadrupled in the last few years because cod stocks have been so depleted? And that these huge Chinese-owned fisheries are doing their best to devastate the fish stocks in the waters off of Africa? The NY Times has the scoop… or should I say “catch”?

We use garden-variety fresh mozzarella on our pizzas. But true Neapolitan-style pizzas, particularly those made in Naples, only use mozzarella di bufala, and it’s apparently about to get more expensive because of problems with bacterial infections in Italian buffalo herds.

The Daily Table blog has an interesting post about water, both its scarcity and its health, and how local, family-owned farms are important to both.

Want to find food that’s in season and local? The National Resources Defense Council has a fantastic resource for you.