The LocalHarvest Blog

Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more...

Welcome to the new LH blog! We've been wanting to be more dedicated bloggers for a while now, but quite honestly have just been too darned busy to get around to it. Finally, finally, it made it to the top of the list.

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Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter.

Last night as my husband was going through the mail, he held up a dozen political mailers from both parties and asked, "What if they just weren't allowed to out and out lie? It would be so much better if what they said was at least true." Indeed. In these final days before the election, we at LocalHarvest have ears for only two kinds of words: those that give shape to the hope we carry for the future, and those that shine a bright light on dark corners.

In this issue of the LocalHarvest newsletter, we offer you one example of each.

First, the hope. Good, honest food is making a comeback. Hallelujah. Beyond the table, we are seeing that food is central to many social ills. Pesticide abuse, food safety, obesity, immigration issues, climate change, gene patents, water quality – these issues and more are rooted in part in our collective approach to food. We know we can do better. The time has come to give voice to what a healthy food system would look like. Some of the finest minds in modern agriculture have carefully crafted a manifesto declaring just this. They call it the Food Declaration. It's meant to be used as a foundation for future agricultural policy, and a point of common agreement among food activists across the nation. The authors are looking to get a million individuals and organizations to endorse it. We think it's an excellent effort and well worth signing.

Now for the bright light on dark shadows. I have been wanting to write about dairy for a while now, but it keeps getting bumped down the list. Truth be told, one of the reasons for this desire was my discovery of Dexter dairy cows. They're miniature cows. Aren't they adorable? I want one for Christmas.

Anyway, back to the bright light. We know that all organic food is not the same, right? If it's grown on a vast scale, it carries many of the same problems as mega-scale conventional food. This goes double for dairy products. You've heard that despite organic rules, a few organic dairies milk thousands of cows held in confinement. So how are you supposed to know if the organic milk you're buying is really something you want to support? Thankfully, the Cornucopia Institute has made it easy. Their recently updated Organic Dairy Scorecard lists all the organic dairies in the country and gives each a rating, from one to five stars. The ratings criteria is described in their milk integrity report. Check it out, and stick to the good stuff if you can.

Read on for an update on our pricing survey, health info about the brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and their cousins) and a recipe.

As always, take good care, eat well and remember to vote!

Erin Barnett
Director, LocalHarvest

Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter.

We get this question a lot: "Is it more expensive to eat local food?" Usually we try to work our way around the question, speaking with enthusiasm about the quality and flavor of fresh local food, its healthfulness, its contribution to the local economy, etcetera. Sometimes we convince the questioners that they can’t look at price alone, because the quality of stuff that's picked green and trucked in can’t be compared with that of the fresh, vine-ripened produce. Other times the person hears us out and then says, "So it is more expensive then, huh."

The truth is, we don't know the answer to the question. As with so many substantive issues, the real answer is, "It depends." It depends on the product and the season and the vendor. Depends on whether its organic and how much of it the farmer or grocer is trying to move that week. Lots and lots of variables. Still, with the economy looming large in many people's minds, it seems a good time to try and find out.

A few days ago I took a notebook to my local supermarket, made a list of the prices for various fruits and vegetables, and then compared notes at my farmers market. The organic produce section at the grocery store was completely cleared out on this particular day, so I gathered conventional produce prices at the store and "low spray" at the market. Small watermelons (the ones they’re calling "mini" or "personal size" this year) were $2 at the farmers market and $4.49 at the store. Local tomatoes at the grocery store were $2.49 a pound, and $1.50 a pound at the market. Peppers were less expensive at the market. Winter squash was about the same. Onions were cheaper at the store.

This small foray into price comparisons made me want to know more. I would like to have a good answer the next time a reporter calls to ask me whether ‘local’ is more expensive. Not that price is the only measure of value, but it is one, and sometimes an important one. Moreover, the perception about the relative price of buying local is also very important.

I'd like to ask for your help.

What I have in mind is a kind of collective research project. This newsletter will go out to about 50,000 people. Certainly a few dozen of you might be interested in doing a little comparative shopping over the next couple of months and maybe again in the spring? I have a spreadsheet that I will send to anyone who is interested. You can fill out the portions of it that apply to the foods that are in season where you live, and send it back to me. We’ll compile all the data and report the findings back to the group. If you are interested in learning more about participating in this grassroots research, please contact me.

Meanwhile, please enjoy the rest of the newsletter, and as always, Eat well and take good care –

Erin

Erin Barnett
Director, LocalHarvest

Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter. Sorry for the delay in this "August" issue. We were eating tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. And making really incredible sauce.

Through much of the summer, we have been hopeful. It's hard not to be, when being so well fed by the garden and the local farmers. Everywhere we went, people were talking about buying local food. We like that. It felt like the tide was turning. But in the last couple of weeks, it has seemed like The Insanity is gaining ground again. The FDA decided it was a fine idea for iceberg lettuce and spinach to be irradiated. A science advisor to the Bush administration equated seed saving with multi-species gene manipulation. Then a small scale cattle rancher from Texas told us that fuel and feed prices are going to put some of his neighbors out of business this year. A poultry farmer in the Midwest said the same.

I don't need radical change right this minute. I'm willing to watch it unfold, if it does so kind of quickly. But when it looks like momentum is gathering in a direction that seems fundamentally wrong, well, it's a little discouraging. I mean, irradiated iceberg lettuce?? That has to be a bad idea in about six different ways.

The up side of pondering the news is that it got me thinking about this notion of momentum. Motion, shift, gathering power. Harnessed for the common good, it could be our golden ticket.

When we choose to eat a more local diet, we first have to learn about what is raised near us, and when. Our minds are thus engaged on a new level with the land and the seasons. Buying our veggies and meat from the farmers market or a CSA, we strengthen both our social and economic ties to the farming community. We develop a taste for seasonal food, and may find we prefer plums from a neighbor's tree to any corn syrup laden snack in a box.

Little by little, the authenticity of real food reveals itself to us. Our eating habits change. Food, not as international commodity, but as deep nourishment, becomes important and interesting to us. We plan meals, we cook, we sit down to eat. Small acts, really, but ones that undermine the dominant food system's ethos of convenience and instant gratification. Slowly, momentum builds.

Having experienced real food, we see through the lies of irradiation and genetic manipulation and agricultural consolidation. We are willing to stand up for the real thing. Maybe we march in the streets, as the French are fond of doing. Or write letters, as over 275,000 people did a decade ago when the USDA was shaping the rules that would define ‘organic.' Maybe we simply keep putting our money where our mouth is and keep local farmers in business. More motion, more gathering power.

It's safe to say that the industrial food system is going to continue to roll out weird technologies and advertising campaigns and laws to ensure its profits and self-preservation. They will do so in the name of safety and satisfaction. No matter. Individuals can still recognize what is real and whole. Making contact with the authentic is truly powerful. When we do it together, in every community, great shifts will happen.

As always, take good care and eat well!

Erin

Erin Barnett
Director, LocalHarvest

Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter. Last time I wrote about the choices we have as we face a rapidly changing future. It was a broad topic. No sooner had we finished reading your comments -- and thanks to all who wrote in! – when the New York Times published an editorial exemplifying the very fear we talked about last month. The Times editorial used the recent salmonella outbreak to call for a national food tracking system. Proponents of this system say that having the ability to track our food "from farm to fork" is the way to keep our food system safe.

A safe food system is a most excellent goal. It is fundamental. But the logic of traceability is fundamentally flawed. It relies on endless paperwork and pop inspections and numbered tags and microchips. Out of all this bureaucracy, "farm to fork" tries to build an edifice of safety, a Great Wall between us and the bad bacteria.

What we want is a guarantee. We want to trust that we won't get sick from our food. The thing is, "traceability" can't offer that guarantee. Say my grocery store watermelon comes with a barcode sticker on it. I peel the sticker off and throw it away. The garbage goes out. Two days later I get sick. Now what?

A traceability system would not change the things that need changing. Its purpose and methods concern themselves only with what went where when. It is about command and control, not quality. What we need to focus on is stewardship -- of land, crops, and livestock. Traceability is blind to issues of scale and the logic of the small scale farm. If something goes terribly wrong on a small farm, at worse a few hundred people are affected. No national, multi-million dollar sleuthing involved. If something goes terribly wrong in an industrial size farm, whose products were mixed in, processed and distributed with the goods from a dozen other mammoth farms, the numbers affected can reach the thousands, and as we are seeing now, the sorting out takes months.

One final thought: a farm to fork bureaucracy would place a disproportionate burden on small scale farmers, who often have no employees to pass the paperwork on to, and who would really like to spend their time growing healthy food, thank you. Should the government decide to implement such a scheme, we would hope that small scale farmers would be exempted. Requiring them to shoulder the same paperwork as the true offenders only makes family farming harder. What we ought to be doing instead is creating programs that encourage people to go into farming, so we can have as decentralized a food system as possible. That -- and developing relationships with the farmers who grow your food -- is where true food security lies.

With that, I'll invite you to browse the rest of this month’s newsletter, where green beans take the starring role. As always, take good care and eat well!

Erin

Erin Barnett
Director, LocalHarvest

Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter. What a month! Things are different. You feel it too, right? With gas prices soaring, Iowa flooding, salmonella striking tomatoes, and a global food crisis threatening, it seems to us that America is finally, slowly waking up. The world is not what it seemed to be. Change feels inevitable in ways it didn't even a few months ago. The question now is not so much whether the collective we is going to change, but how - with what frame of mind. As we alter our consumption patterns, food and otherwise, we must be aware of how we approach change. We can be anxious or relaxed, defensive or curious, fearful or joyful. The differences are vast and vital.

Many of us live lives that are overly determined by convenience. Day to day decisions are made as if expediency and ease were our highest values. So habituated are we to these conveniences, so dependent on our luxuries (chocolate, coffee, bananas), that the idea of going without them actually makes us feel afraid. But fear - of scarcity, of change - is a terrible master. It makes us forget our own creativity and adaptability. We mistake the way it is for the way it has to be.

In that mindset, there is no way to discover something that might be better. Last month LocalHarvest was featured on a radio program out of Sacramento. The host started with the usual questions about how to define 'local' and how the website works. Once the conversation turned to actually buying local food, though, it became personal and he was stumped. Northern California offers astounding agricultural abundance, but this fellow could not see his way to buying this extraordinary produce directly from a farmer. He was used to shopping at Safeway, and the idea of deviating from the safe way (ironic, isn’t it?) made him tense. Shopping at a farmers market requires too much trust, he said, plus it's an extra trip and the veggies would sit in the frig drawer and rot anyway. Hmmm...

That interview stands out as an example of the kind of thinking we as a nation need to leave behind. If we greet every new idea with excuses that aim to defend our old ways, we will be lost. The future belongs to those who can walk lightly, willing to shift as needed, alert for the next ingenuity. If we let ourselves be afraid of this rapidly changing economy, it would be easy to lose site of the great beauty and new opportunities that surround us. If we keep ourselves relaxed and open, we will find ourselves reveling in the great gifts of this life: the beauty of nature, the comforting joy of friendship, the spark of creativity, and the civility of true community. And then we will be fearless.

Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter! This month's main article was supposed to be about the value of growing a little of your own food, but Michael Pollan beat us to it in a piece published in the NY Times Magazine. He did a bang up job. It's worth your time.

The article prompted several far-reaching conversations around here. It got us thinking about personal and collective action, in the garden and beyond. We are continuing the conversation in the short article below. And ... from our nutrition and cooking columnists, we include a few thoughts on the glories of barley. How's that for something for everyone?

One of the best parts of my job is getting to talk to farmers. This afternoon I called Ber-Gust Farm in western Ohio and talked with Rick Kabara while he planted potatoes. (He had already put in 1208 hills when I called, and had another 600 to go for the day.) Like many LocalHarvest farmers, Rick and his wife Joanie grow a number of heirloom foods. In this issue of our newsletter we're announcing our new effort to promote "endangered" foods, so I wanted to ask him why they make a point of growing unusual varieties. Rick was quiet for a minute and then he said, "The biggest reason we like to grow old-fashioned varieties is that, well, I love food." It doesn’t get any more honest than that. He went on to talk about how he sees that so many people have forgotten what good food tastes like because they have gotten so used to "grocery store food." Rick likes to tell people who join their CSA, "You're going to learn to enjoy food again..."

We're making that our wish for all of you this Spring – may you find beautiful heirloom foods locally this year, food as it was meant to be. And may you learn to enjoy food again...

Asked to picture a farm in Iowa, and most people think of endless fields of corn. Though accurate for many parts of the state, there is something else going on in the northeastern corner of the state, something we would love to see cropping up all over the country. It is a cooperative of family farmers who joined together to market their products to local institutions. The local college, a couple of nursing homes and hospitals, and even a casino are now proudly serving healthy food, bought directly from local farmers. The barriers to such a scheme are considerable, but not insurmountable. Our main article this month looks at the draws and drawbacks of small farmer cooperatives like Iowa’s GROWN Locally.

Elsewhere in the newsletter -- if your diet needs some whole grains to balance out the jelly beans, be sure to read our nutrition and recipe articles about whole grain rice.

As always, thanks for your interest in LocalHarvest.org and your support of family farmers. See you next month, and until then, take good care and eat well!

If you're like us, every time the Farm Bill is mentioned, an uncontrollable urge to drift away from the conversation overtakes you. You start wondering what's for supper, or whether the car needs an oil change. You'd just as soon leave the whole complex affair to the people who are paid to make sure it all works out.

Us too.

BUT.

It turns out that the Farm Bill is the funding vehicle for the Community Food Projects program, the country's major source of funding for community food security projects. And funding for the CFP is in danger of being axed from the final version of this year's farm bill. Though we rarely ask readers to get involved in specific political scuffles, we are devoting this issue of our newsletter to convincing you to do one thing: make three short but important phone calls. Read our article on the CFP and you'll see why this is a program well worth saving.

If you need a minute and a little boost of energy before you make those calls, grab an orange and read our nutrition and recipe columns. You’ll see below just how far beyond vitamin C those beauties go!

As always, thanks for your interest in LocalHarvest.org and your support of family farmers. See you next month, and until then, take good care and eat well!

LocalHarvest Newsletter, January 30, 2008

Four weeks into the new year and 2008 already feels broken in. We at LocalHarvest have spent a good deal of that time putting big plans in place for the site -- new ways for the public to interact with family farmers through our site, new content, new features. We hope you'll visit often and check out our progress. Meanwhile, we bring you this month's newsletter, featuring a story about a CSA that serves low-income people, and the way the farmers make it work. You will also find an update on the almond pasteurization issue, a great video on our collective consumption habits, and everything you ever wanted to know about beans!

Happy holidays to all! Tis the season of sparkling lights and deep darkness, frolicking and hibernation. Tis also the season of reflection and planning. We at LocalHarvest are looking ahead to all the improvements we would like to make to the site in the new year.

We thought we would take this year end opportunity to ask for your ideas about what you would like to see us do with LocalHarvest in the next 365 days. We have many ideas ourselves, of course, but we always appreciate feedback! If you’d like to contribute your two cents, please send me your ideas at maildecode('erin%localharvest|org');.

Meanwhile, in this holiday season we wish for you a life that is warmed by simplicity and gratitude, generosity and kindness.

Sincerely,

Erin Barnett
LocalHarvest Director

Happy Thanksgiving, all! Since we are always talking about good food and have been writing about our Thanksgiving excitement for a couple of months already, I thought I would devote this month’s newsletter to something different. The plan was to offer you some especially nice food and farming-related videos as our way of honoring the second best thing about Thanksgiving: lying on the couch. But in the end, I couldn’t let the opportunity to speak of gratitude pass without mention. The result is a greatly revised Thanksgiving article, videos sprinkled in: "In Praise of Praise".

With deep thanks for your support of LocalHarvest and America’s family farmers,
Erin Barnett
Director, LH

Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter. In this traditional season of plenty, we are turning our attention to New Orleans, a city of paradoxical abundance. Though signs of poverty and devastation are easy to find there, so too is the creative spirit that made the city famous. Our main article this month looks at one organization's efforts to ensure that everyone in the city can find healthy food close to home. The New Orleans Food and Farm Network is doing great work because they know how to work with people on what is, while also looking together for what can be.

Time conscious readers will notice that although the calendar already has a toehold on October, we're only now sending out the September newsletter. Why? In a word, the boss-man has been out of town. Backside glued to a motorcycle seat for over two weeks, truth be told, and having the time of his life. Guillermo Payet, LocalHarvest's founder and chief brain, writes a little about his farm-hoppin' adventures in the article below, but who can stuff so much fun into 500 words? If you want to get the true flavor of his trip, you'll have to check out our blog, where the best stories of the trip are told, and some great photos tell the rest.