Archive for March, 2010
‘Food Safety’ bill could kill sustainable farming
By Roland McReynolds
Congress is debating legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wide-ranging new authority over farming practices and food production. In its current form, the bill’s requirements would be impossible for many small-scale farmers and food processors to fulfill.
In other words, small farms committed to producing healthy food are the ones that could be driven out of business by initiatives designed to ensure food “safety.”
The House has already passed a bill, HR 2749, and in April the Senate will take up its version, S 510, which is co-sponsored by NC Sen. Richard Burr. With or without a new law, FDA is moving forward with rules on produce safety on the farm, and already has authority to require food producers to register with the federal government. Unfortunately, the FDA’s initiatives treat small farms, organic agriculture and local food businesses as if they are giant corporate food processing companies, an approach that will crush the community food movement that so many of us hold dear.
As documented in films like. Food Inc., large corporations dominate our food supply, and there is little doubt that industrial supply chains need to be cleaned up. Pathogen contamination in food has been making regular headlines for four years now, beginning with the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in California spinach, and right up to today.
These incidents have made a substantial impact on agribusiness. Sales of California spinach have yet to recover to their 2005 levels. Seeking to win back trust, large food processors and retailers have allied with consumer groups and FDA to promote a framework for pathogen control that relies heavily on paperwork, inspections, and limited knowledge about where pathogens come from in the first place. That approach is embodied in S 510.
Sustainable ag advocates have been working behind the scenes to win protections for local food systems in S510, and there have been improvements. For instance, the latest version of the bill (scroll down to p. 140), requires FDA to make sure that on-farm food safety rules are consistent with organic farming practices and soil and water conservation programs.
Fundamentally, though, the bill still puts local, sustainable food systems in a straight jacket: While some existing farmers and businesses could survive the S510 regime, it would effectively prevent them from expanding, and it would block new farmers and entrepreneurs from getting in the business to begin with.
The way to bring true food security and economic vitality to all of us who eat is to allow the sustainable farming movement to grow beyond farmers markets and direct sales. This bill doesn’t give them a chance.
Federal and state programs have been working for a decade to spur small farms to get into value-added agricultural enterprises, for the good of those farms and for regional economic development. The result has been growth of small farms and small businesses that now count as “food facilities” under existing law, and so would be subject to S510’s one-size-fits-all regulations. These are businesses that are growing to meet wholesale demand and so moving outside the narrow direct marketing exemptions that FDA and consumer groups site when they claim that the bill won’t hurt local foods.
That’s why small farmers and the customers who support them want to see this bill improved.
We need your help.
Please see Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s action alert on S510 and the key changes that need to be made to protect small farms and businesses. Check in with us to stay tuned on what you can do, or join our e-News list (scroll down to lower left), and help make food safety safe for healthy food.
– Roland McReynolds is Executive Director of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, and serves on the North Carolina Sustainable Local Food Advisory Council. There is a new CFSA-powered iPhone app that helps foodies find sustainable farms in the Carolinas, check it out here.
Putting out the scream for local ice cream
At the four-day Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance held every spring and fall in Silk Hope, NC, we try to model sustainability. Yes, that means we want the festival to survive and flourish. We also want to reduce our carbon footprint, and to model and teach the moral imperative of caring for our planet while strengthening the community created during the event, as well as the larger one in which we live, work, and dance.
Which brings me to ice cream. We have been using a Raleigh-owned business, but their ice cream came from the massive big-box store with the best price. Where was it made? We didn’t know. Ingredients? Farming practices? Not sure. But where else can they easily buy over 100 gallons of ice cream in one weekend?
We’re about to find out. For the April 22-25 festival we’re looking closer to home. We want to offer ice cream from a local creamery, and one that promises to be free of hormones and antibiotics. Staffed by friendly festival volunteers, we will be new at running an ice cream booth, but we’ll have fun. (And if that is too big an order, fine…we’ll use more than one source.)
If you’d like to cast a vote for a specific creamery (or flavor) now would be your chance to do just that. Leave me a comment to let me know. I will be looking for a few dairy-free options as well.
Now I just need to find some local cones!
Crop Mob, Sunday, Carrboro
If you’ve been curious about the now famous Crop Mob and Carrboro’s amazing urban ag scene, here’s an opportunity to get involved in both. Crop Mob will work at several Carrboro garden locations this Sunday March 21 from 12 noon until 5 p.m., followed by a dinner. Show up and work hard and you are sure to pick up some new skills, eat good grub, and make new friends. And you’ll even see where some of the “mobsters” live and garden.
“We’ll be mini-mobbing Carrboro,” says Andrea in the Crop Mob Facebook invitation, “3 house gardens, 1 community garden and 1 co-op garden. All of these locations, in addition to being the home-base gardens of crop mobbers, are on the map for Carrboro Greenspace’s 3rd Annual Urban Farm tour (June 12th) and we are hoping this mob will spur the creation of an urban crop mob in Carrboro/Chapel Hill.” That would be sweet.
Here are the details—–
What: there will be garden expansion, renewal, bed creation, tomato transplanting, cob & cedar greenhouse construction, chicken coop building and plenty of weeding.
What to bring (if you have): digging forks, shovels, trowels, hand weeders, wheelbarrows, a spoon & bowl or plate. (Don’t forget to label your tools.)
Where: come to one of 3 main locations; bike or carpool if possible:
* Carrboro Community Garden
* The BOG Co-op (102 Crest St) will be the base for 1 other home
* 201 Lindsey St will be the base for 2 other homes (and will also be the final destination for all mobbers for the meal)
See map for directions, parking & details: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=100558489454771298925.000481e0adad290901e2b&z=15
Feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested.
Please RSVP to wood.andrea@gmail.com so they can plan the food.
UNC nourishes sustainable local food business
Jennifer Curtis had a great idea for a sustainable food processing enterprise. But she needed some help executing it. So two years ago she turned to an array of consulting services offered by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jennifer Curtis, right with Tina Prevatte, at Weaver Street Market.
She had been hired as a consultant to the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) to manage NC Choices, an initiative funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to promote local, sustainable food in North Carolina. Her goal was to develop market opportunities for local family farms raising pasture-based livestock.
“My background was primarily in nonprofit and academic organizations, rather than for-profit business management and development,” she said. “So I thought I could use some help.” She applied for and was accepted into the Business Accelerator for Sustainable Enterprise (BASE), created by the Center for Sustainable Enterprise (CSE) at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.
“(It) was an awesome way for me to meet other business people and begin to understand different business models and various stages of business development,” Curtis said. “It was an opportunity to do some serious networking and consider possible business solutions.”
BASE helped her solve a key challenge facing NC Choices: A collaboration of several local farmers and Weaver Street Market, the southeast’s largest natural foods grocer, wanted to provide as much local, sustainably produced meat as possible. After two years with help from NC Choices, they are now sourcing 100 percent of their grass-fed beef and 40 percent of their pasture-raised pork from local farmers.
Despite that success, the program is difficult to scale, Curtis said. There remains a major bottleneck blocking local, small-scale farmers’ access to larger-scale retail and food service markets.
“BASE helped me to see that bottleneck as a business opportunity and to identify potential solutions that would both benefit farmers and local buyers interested in sourcing local meats,” she said.
Her plan evolved to focus on incubating a sustainable business that could provide local, pasture-based meat and value-added products to local retail grocers and restaurants on behalf of small-scale farmers.
CSE consultant Kelly Boone helped Curtis realize she had to get a handle on the financials before investing any more time in developing the business. When CSE ran a preliminary financial model, Curtis met another CSE consultant, Tina Prevatte, a UNC graduate student in planning and business. It was Prevatte’s idea to get NC Choices involved in UNC’s Launching the Venture program that provides help in market testing the feasibility of ideas and launching the ones with high potential for success. The program is part of the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI), which fosters innovation in the liberal arts and sciences, as well as in business.
Curtis’ team refined its business model and received the LTV Coaches Award, recognizing the team closest to actually launching its venture. NC Choices eventually hired Prevatte as its full-time business development director in 2009.
NC Choices is now nearly ready to launch the business: a branded meat-processing company that will use only local farmers and local markets. She credits UNC’s “suite of entrepreneurial support services” for this success.
–Excerpted from the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative newsletter.
‘Celebrity’ goats thrive on community support
Here’s a post from Anna Child, project coordinator for The Gillings Sustainable Agriculture Project at the University of North Carolina 
at Chapel Hill.
I make sure to visit this blog regularly to keep up to date with local food happenings around the area. I wanted to contribute to the wide breadth of topics covered here by guest posting about current research on local foods that incorporates some of the progressive good food happenings in Pittsboro and Chatham County.
I work on the The Gillings Sustainable Agriculture Project, a two-year research grant titled, “Linking Local, Sustainable Farming and Health.” The project is headed by Dr. Alice Ammerman, Professor of Nutrition at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and Director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Along with a team of more than 50 researchers comprised of farmers, academics, economic development experts, students and others, Dr. Ammerman is researching sustainable agriculture’s beneficial relationship to public health outcomes, the environment and community economic development.
One aim of the project that we are currently working on intensively is researching the intersection of local food systems and community economic development in eight different counties. Chatham County has been identified as an area with a strong local, sustainable food system (not a big surprise to readers of this blog) that showcases community economic development resulting from their food shed. We’re now in the process of interviewing leaders within organizations, farmers, business owners, agriculture extension agents and others to hear how they believe Chatham’s local food system is playing a role in their economy.
As part of this initiative, a few weeks ago, I headed out to Celebrity Dairy for an interview with owner Brit Pfann. His first few litters for the spring had just been born, and amidst the baas of hungry baby goats, I talked with him about his farming history and his business. Our conversation revolved around what makes the multi-faceted local food system in Chatham work. Again and again, Britt brought up the amazing support network within the county. He spoke about his veterinarian, who has worked with his family to care for their goats for over fifteen years.
He also brought up Agricultural Extension Agent Debbie Roos, who holds a position unlike most agents in the country, that allows her to focus solely on sustainable farming and small-scale agriculture. And he emphasized the incredible support of his customers. It was great to meet the man (and the goats) behind the delicious cheese and so much fun to see how sociable little baby goats can be. More than anything, my interview with Britt made me realize just how important a strong community support network is for small farmers in all facets of what they do to bring product to market.
As part of the Gillings Project, the case study that we’re working on will detail this strong community support that is one of the main reasons why the county’s food system has been so successful. The case study can be offered as an example to other communities trying to build their own local food systems and looking to emulate successful models. Emulating something like strong community support isn’t exactly easy, but the study hopes to give readers an idea of what it would take to begin building interest for local foods in their communities. We’ll be wrapping up our case study on Chatham soon, but to learn more about the entire research project, please follow this link.
–Anna will begin a masters program in Health Behavior and Health Education at UNC in the fall.
Quote of the week
www.saveantibiotics.org
“More antibiotics are fed to livestock in North Carolina alone than are given to humans in the entire United States, according to the peer-reviewed Medical Clinics of North America. It concluded that antibiotics in livestock feed were ‘a major component’ in the rise of antibiotic resistance.”
– Nicholas Kristof, The Spread of Superbugs, NY Times, March 7, 2010.
Antibiotic resistance threatens our health and is escalating healthcare costs. Learn more here.
Third-generation seed
Bob with the grandmother crooknecked pumpkin bought in Texas in 2007.
The other day, Bob went to Windy Meadows Farm to visit Gerry Levitt and brought back a crooknecked pumpkin they grew from seed we saved. This beautiful squash represents three generations of crooknecked pumpkins, beginning with the first one we brought home from The Cupboard in Denton, Texas.
It was three years ago when we were shopping for food at the natural grocery that we saw a pile of very large squash. Unable to resist the unusual shape and sheer size, we bought one and took it home. We used it for a photo op prop before eating it for dinner. Or several dinners as it turned out.
The crooknecked pumpkin hails from the butternut squash family and has a very small seeds-to-flesh ratio compared to most squash. There are seeds in the bulb of the squash only. The long neck is pure butternut. Even better, we found that it stores well after it being cut, so we could cut off a meal-sized piece and put the rest of the squash back into the refrigerator.
Like butternut, the crooknecked pumpkin was delicious! So Bob saved seeds and planted them in his North Carolina garden the next year, after we moved . We were rewarded by an enormous plant with half a dozen giant pumpkins. That’s when we discovered that they stored for months without showing signs of wear. Which explains why the Amish are so fond of them. We also learned that most of the pumpkin in canned pumpkin that you buy in the store is actually crooknecked pumpkin.
Bob saved seed again and since he’s teaching farmers as part of the Sustainable Agriculture Program at Central Carolina Community College, he shared his seeds with his students.
Camille with a 13-pounder from the 2008 crop.
The next year, our crooknecked pumpkins didn’t do so well. They were hit hard by squash bugs and squash vine borers. We were disappointed to miss a year. Or so we thought.
Gerry gave Bob one of the crooknecked pumpkins he harvested last October, grown from the seed Bob handed out in class the year before. We can’t wait to start hacking off meals from this beauty and of course, saving some of the seed!
Spring’s coming: bloomin’ tulips, Celebrity “kids” and an interactive Farm Tour map
Hang in there, friends, spring will be here before you know it. The cosmic forces are in alignment:
Tulips in the rear view mirror, from Bluebird Meadows' delightful blog
- The tulips are blooming at Bluebird Meadows, according to Alice-and- Stuart’s delightful blog of running commentary and lovely photos.
- The new kids have been birthed at Celebrity Dairy, where the goats have names like Angelina Jolie and Miley Cyrus. You can visit them and the young ‘uns at the Open Barn this week-end March 6-7, all day 9 am to 5 pm. Don’t forget to check out their latest batch of chevre, cheese spreads and goal-milk yogurt.
- And the annual Piedmont Farm Tour, set for April 24-25, already has an interactive Google map to help you plan ahead.
This is the largest sustainable farm tour in the country, so it’s worth planning ahead so you can cover as much ground,and food, as possible. Check out Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s web page for details.
By tour time, Piedmont farmers and gardeners will be too busy to spit, and conscientious consumers will be looking forward to the cornucopia that our Carolina spring and summer are sure to deliver.
Click your heels together and chant with me three times: There’s no season like spring, especially in Carolina.
– Dee
Four ways to improve school nutrition now
1) Change prices to encourage healthier food choices at school. Lower the cost of fruits and vegetables and increase the price of french fries, pizza, desserts and junk foods. [Now that would be a refreshing change. Why can't our local school boards set some standards?]
2) Strengthen standards for foods sold in vending machines, school stores and a la carte food sales. North Carolina has one of the weakest policies in the country. [This could be done at the state or local level.]
3) Apply nutrition standards to school fundraisers. It’s a bad idea to enlist kids in selling uhhealthy foods to their families and friends. [Now you're talking. PTA Presidents take note.]
4) Pass a law to limit the marketing of unhealthy foods in schools. [Why not? After all, we don't let guns in our schools, why should we let junk food in that's hurting our kids?]
That’s just a start. I plan to share Suzanne’s ideas with my local school board and school board candidates running this year. Click here to read her whole column and be prepared to get hooked. You can read her regularly in The N & O or at On the Table, her blog . She can be reached at suzanne@onthetable.net
Quote of the Week
“We need you not just to tweak around the edges, but to entirely rethink the products that you’re offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children.
“”I’m asking you to actively promote healthy foods and healthy habits to our kids. Just as we can shape our children’s preferences for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods–with a lot of persistence, we can also turn them on to high-quality, healthier foods as well.”
–First Lady Michelle Obama, keynote address to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, representing the nation’s largest food businesses.
March 17, 2010 at 10:23 pm Sustainable Grub Leave a comment