Local food: ask for it by name! (a screed)

[rmockler]

Local farmers have done the organic food movement's heavy lifting for 30+ years now. It would be easy to think that their hard times ought to be over (I'll admit, I assumed they ought to be at least better off.) But it would be wrong. The good news is that there’s a simple, powerful way to help.

Last week, we had a discouraging conversation with one of western Washington’s stalwart local farmers -- someone who's been perfecting the complicated business of farming for 14 years, from planting to promotion. In this time of organic everywhere, their farm now faces one of its worst years.

Why?

Think of your favorite UltraBeautiful Organic Grocery Emporium™ (Stock symbol: WFM). Think of the nice pictures of all your local farmers there. Then start digging. You might find that:

• The percentage of food from local, small producers is still shockingly low (and lower still once you realize that everything there may not be .... precisely .... labeled, to put it kindly)

and

• The UltraBeautiful emphasis -- food as lifestyle not as nourishment -- is driving out many of the best local products. You know, the ones that really are delicious, fresh, and truly organic ... but don't make the cosmetic grade, in part because their producers shun the kinds of shortcuts and not-really-organic tricks that ultrabeauty can require.

It's the simple, if sad, tale Michael Pollan tells. Big Retail could use their bully pulpit to educate and inspire customers and to connect them to local food. Instead, they've turned to Big Organic to help them replicate the same old food economy and values as before, just at higher margins. The result: the same old consolidation and environmental nightmares (how do you think those potatoes got here from California?)

Sadly, some of our bigger local grocery chains, facing a huge squeeze, can easily end up implementing the same practices. In fact, the Industrial Organic Complex has now actually moved in on the territory of our local farmers. That's right: 30 years into the organic and local food movement, giant national corporations are putting the organic, local farmers out of business. And it's happening right there at your local grocery.

Farmers markets do make a huge difference, but can't provide the steady stream of wholesale business it takes to make it if you're selling many local farm products. Creating value added products on the farm helps more with some products than with others (fruit to jam, even milk to cheese, is an easier route for many farmers than, say, potatoes to chips.)

So, while some of our farmer friends do need to step up their own marketing and customer education efforts (in their free time, I guess), you can help: when you're not shopping at the farmer's markets, go in to your neighborhood Thriftway, Red Apple, Met Market, Top Food, etc and ask, repeatedly and specifically, for local organic products, including produce. Love your Full Circle or Willie Greens CSA? Can't live without Alden Farms' fingerling spuds? Ask for them by name. Over and over and over. Tell your friends and family to ask for them by name. Do it at Whole Foods, too!

And when they appear, make sure you buy some for God's sake!

[chromedome]

Preach it, Brother Richard!

I use as much as I can at my restaurant - local organic fingerlings at $4/lb, not wholesale russets at $4 for 20lb, for example - but it all comes down to the shoppers in the markets.

I've been writing a column in the major local daily, profiling local growers and producers (mainly, but not exclusively organic) and letting readers know where to buy their product. Perhaps that's an option that others here could explore...most community newspapers, in particular, are in chronic need of content.

[kitchenmage]

Amen!

I just returned from my last, with any luck, pre-Thanksgiving shopping run which involved everything from Costco to two local farms. (I have five gallons of fresh pressed cider, the world can come to an end and I'll be happy.)

Every tomato I have seen today (~18 kinds, and I started counting at the third store) is from Mexico, I'd settle for California which is better than that. Or Canada. Where are all the BC hothouse 'maters? Yes, it's November but I know people who have them in their greenhouses still.

The produce in general is abysmal. Do they think that local/organic/small farm MUST mean wilted and icky? Limp broccoli. Flaccid green beans. 2 buck a pound mealy apples. Fortunately, I am within shouting distance of Lattin's Cider Mill (Olympia, run do not walk for the world's best cider!) and got apples and a few other things but I am having someone stop in Seattle to grab fresh stuff tomorrow on the way down.

I just moved here and what I think is saddest is that when I asked vendors at the last day of the Tumwater Farmer's Market where I could get things in the off season they pretty much looked blankly at me. But what if I want food on, say, Thursday? Or for the holidays.

Another down side, I don't even know what names to ask for. rmockler, do you know where I can find a list of who I should ask for an hour or two south of you?

[Malkavian]

That's an interesting point about cosmetic grading; Seems to me like a chicken-and-egg problem maybe? I mean--I don't recall ever seeing it said or advertised in so many words, but lots of people seem to think a cosmetically flawed item is "bad" ...Maybe it just gets equated with bruising or something?

Luckily I don't think like that, ever since reading a particular Berenstain Bears book many many years ago.