Natural News Network -- Local Food

Think Globally, Eat Locally
Are small farmers a dying breed in New England? The odds against them are growing.

A Preference for Local Food

Published in Conservation Matters, quarterly journal of The Conservation Law Foundation,
Winter 2002-03.

By MARY GRADY

On a sunny Saturday in early September, when the breeze holds a hint of autumn but the deep green of summer abides, scores of folks young and old are queuing up in the community center in Shelburne Falls, Mass., for a buffet lunch. Butternut bisque, jambalaya, lamb sausage (sweet or spicy), curried chicken salad, organic pickles. Hard cider and cold soda, apple crisp, and vanilla ice cream. Glowing colors, ambrosial aromas. All of it is built from ingredients grown on local farms, prepared by local chefs, and served up fresh and delicious.

The luncheon, organized by Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), is part of the group's annual farm tour, open to all. Besides enjoying the cuisine, guests travel the area's back roads and meet Angora goats, Jersey calves, draft horses. They sample milk fresh from the source, tour a sawmill and woodlot, tag their Christmas tree. It's all part of an effort to educate local residents about local products, and encourage them to support their neighbors' endeavors.

"We want to build bonds between farmers and consumers," said Barry Steeves, a CISA board member, as guests shoveled down their victuals, and listened to his brief talk. "We want to support the supply of good, fresh food, build a stronger local economy, and preserve open space." CISA is part of a growing grass-roots movement across New England striving toward those goals.

But the forces arrayed against small farmers are formidable, says Steve Burrington, general counsel for the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), in Boston: "The daunting economics of the market. Demographics... many farmers are getting old. Sprawl, and development pressure. Galloping globalization." Activists, farmers, and consumers are forging strong alliances, but they face a tough struggle. CLF, says Burrington, is working to provide support and leadership for their efforts, as well as leading the campaign for the Food and Farmland Protection Act now pending in the Massachusetts legislature. Burrington says that to have a chance in today's bleak economic climate, the Farmland Act has been tailored to minimize its fiscal impact. The Act would provide an advantage for Massachusetts-grown products in state purchasing. It includes incentives to preserve farmland for future generations, and to help farmers succeed in the marketplace, rather than relying on subsidies. The bill has lots of support. Yet it remains stuck in the legislative logjam and so far has resisted efforts to move it along. "We need to create enough pressure to overcome the inertia," says Burrington. "There is essentially no opposition to it. It should be easy." But it isn't. Still, Burrington gives the Act a hopeful 50-50 chance of making it into law.

The basic principles

A fellow traveler who knows all too well the trials and tribulations of government bureaucracy is Jay Healy, the former agriculture commissioner for Massachusetts. Healy turned up at CISA's luncheon in Shelburne Falls, happily noshing on local foods along with the rest of the crowd. He left his state post in frustration earlier this year, after 10 years in office. "I wasn't able to spend my time addressing the issues that are important to farmers," he says. Instead, he was dealing with the fiscal crunch and trying to figure out how to run his agency with a dwindling budget. "The decisions I was having to make were not decisions that were helping out farmers," he says.

Now he runs the family farm in Charlemont, Mass. He manages the forest, operates a sawmill, makes a living doing it, and doesn't have to drive to Boston all the time. "We have a unique product, which helps," he said. His Hall Tavern Farm turns out wide pine boards that are difficult to find. "And lumber doesn't spoil," he adds.

A few basic principles, Healy says, comprise the strategy that will help small farmers increase their income from the land: diversification, value-added products, and direct marketing. Sell apple pies instead of apples. Find buyers for cheese or ice cream instead of raw milk. Each operation needs to find a niche that works -- there's not one universal answer. "Farmers need to be willing to take a risk. In this global economy, they can't afford to stand pat," he says. "Change is scary. It's hard to change your operation. Some farmers need a nudge to do it."

Sometimes the market itself provides that nudge. Dan Tawczynski, owner of Taft Farms in Great Barrington, Mass., wryly recalls the day some years ago when he saw a bag of his potatoes for sale in a Boston supermarket, at $1.39. He'd been paid only 26 cents by the wholesaler. Right then and there, he says, he quit growing potatoes.

Tawczynski and his family today run a thriving 200-acre farm, and have stayed in business for 34 years. "You have to look where the wind is blowing," he says, while relaxing at a table in his farm store, surrounded by the aromas of fresh-baked pies. "We've had to change our operation many times over." Potatoes had their day, but it's past. Beef came and went. So did green beans. Now he sells bread made from grains grown and milled on the farm. His sweet corn is free of pesticides. He sells lots of squash and pumpkins in the fall, Christmas wreaths in December, cut flowers year-round. Those who can't make the drive to his picturesque farm store can shop at his Web site.

Besides the store sales, Tawczynski supplies local restaurants, freezes surplus vegetables, and sometimes still takes his produce to a wholesale market. Diversification is key. And community support is vital. "Berkshire Grown is a big help," he says, referring to a local advocacy group. "They create awareness. Amy [Cotler] makes a superb effort on our parts. She'll steer restaurants to the appropriate suppliers ... saves us a lot of grief."

Thinking big, working small

Amy Cotler's bright blue eyes, enhanced by the glow of her tousled strawberry-blond hair, create an aura of intensity that persists even when she's ordering a cup of tea at the local breakfast place. But what she is most intense about is her work on behalf of local farms. Cotler is the director of Berkshire Grown, in existence since 1985, a grande dame among the small-farm advocacy groups in New England. From a tiny, cluttered office in Great Barrington, Mass., Cotler coordinates a far-flung grass-roots effort to support local foods and farms in the Berkshires. "We're part of a big picture," she says. She believes there is a mounting national backlash against processed, generic food, and growing markets everywhere for fresh, local goods.

Cotler's goals are small-scale, but broad in scope. Berkshire Grown aims to protect the working landscape and preserve open space; to support the local economy and fight the trend for all places to become generic; to preserve the culture and heritage of family farms; and promote the quality of the product. Its strategies include a "Buy Local" consumer-education campaign, farm tours, school visits, a Web site with a calendar of agricultural events, liaisons with tourism promoters. Ad campaigns in local newspapers publicize pick-your-own opportunities and farmers' markets in season.

"People feel good about supporting their neighbors," says Cotler. She credits Berkshire Grown's volunteer network for establishing local links that are vitally important. She also works directly with farmers, acting as a liaison with local markets. "We're helping them to navigate their re-invention. ... We're the only support they have."

But that support is struggling to find support of its own. Berkshire Grown has typically received about 40 percent of its funding from government grants. Given the state of the economy, Cotler expects to lose most of that this year. Any private donors or foundations out there are welcome to come to the rescue and help fill in the gap, she said with a grin.

Leaving her office to show off the local countryside, Cotler leads the way to the rolling hills of High Lawn Farm, which surround hundreds of acres of deep green fields. Stout century-old barns and farmhouses radiate character. The place is shipshape, clean and orderly. The Jersey milk cows are visions of contentment, with huge, deep brown eyes and soft coats the color of cinnamon sticks. It's a prime example of the kind of working landscape that she is working to preserve.

Yet despite its robust appearance, the dairy's future is at risk. Manager Dave Klausmeyer says the farm processes its own milk from 180 cows and delivers it to 1,100 homes, plus 170 stores, restaurants, and schools. Nonetheless, "It's not making money," he says. It's just managing to break even, and for now the owners -- the third generation of their family to farm here -- are satisfied. They want to preserve the heritage and beauty of the farm, but to do that, they depend on support from the local community. Activists like Cotler help to keep that support alive.

The restaurant connection

Berkshire Grown's strategy, Cotler recounts, developed during its early years, in fruitful, wide-ranging discussions among a diverse group of individuals. They tried to visualize an ideal agricultural system, then examine where things were, then identify leverage points for change. "One of those leverage points," says Cotler, "was restaurants." The Berkshires support a big summer tourist trade, and the season overlaps well with the abundance of local produce. Cotler worked for years as a chef in New York City, she says, and one lesson she learned is that freshness and quality of ingredients is the true secret of good cooking.

Today, Berkshire Grown has signed up 60 restaurants to participate in its "Buy Local" campaign. If a restaurant has three agreements with local farmers, Berkshire Grown will promote it. Cotler's staff also provides business-to-business networking, routing the right farmer to the right buyer. "We're a conduit for information," says Cotler. "We're a go-between." The demand is there, and has increased a lot in the last few years. "People are starting to look at local food systems in a new way."

Among those sharing that new outlook is Douglas Luf, chef at The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Mass. The historic inn welcomes visitors with its wide porch and plenty of rocking chairs. It has 100 rooms for travelers, seven different menus, and 300,000 meals per year to serve, so Luf has a full plate. Yet he finds time to establish relationships with local farmers, to ensure a plentiful supply of fresh local produce in season.

"People think it costs more, but that's not true," he says. Even if he pays a bit more per pound for local food, it ends up cheaper because the quality is better, it's fresher, and he can use more of it, Luf said. And he appreciates knowing the farmers and their operations. "You know who grew it, and where it came from," he says. "If a farmer says these tomatoes came from my south field, I've been out to the farm, I know exactly what that means."

Early in the year, Luf meets with his local suppliers to talk about volume, varieties, what he needs, what they can produce. He deals with about 14 to 20 local growers, for products from chickens to pumpkins. He knows it's fresh. He knows it's good quality. The service is good, and the food tastes better than mass-market produce. The restaurant promotes its use of local ingredients, but doesn't always make a point of it. "A lot of [diners] will never know," Luf admits, "but they can taste the difference, and that's what matters." Not only that, but in Luf's view, "The food's got a lot more soul to it."

Buying local products should be right up there with recycling on the environmentalist's to-do list, says Steve Burrington, of CLF. It's a small way to support all sorts of big agendas, from preventing global warming (local products use less fuel for shipping), to minimizing the use of pesticides and chemicals that pollute groundwater, to ensuring that we continue to have choices about our food source. And it's easy to do. Just ask "What's local?" at your favorite markets and restaurants. And picture CISA's rich butternut bisque, hard cider, and vanilla ice cream .... food full of flavor, freshness, and soul.

Sidebar: Red Tomato -- Is The Juice Worth The Squeeze?

"Kate, you're way too smart to be selling watermelons."

With a rollicking laugh, Kate Larson, Red Tomato's director of sales, recalls the comment she heard one day on the job. But to Larson, selling big, juicy watermelons to Boston-area markets is a small part of a challenging task she's set for herself. It's about much more than the price of watermelons: it's about food supply systems, globalization, economic diversity, and other big, juicy ideas.

The staff at Red Tomato, a nonprofit group based in Canton, Mass., is struggling to develop wholesale markets for small farmers from across the Northeast. At a time when the usual advice to farmers is to cut out the middleman and pursue direct sales, it's a rough trail to blaze.

"It's not an easy job, but it's our job," says Michael Rozyne, the founder of Red Tomato. And it's an essential job, in his view. That direct farmer-to-consumer link is part of the answer, he says, but not the whole answer. Mid-size producers and remote farms without a nearby customer base need a distribution network and a wholesale strategy. Red Tomato is trying to address the needs of those growers, even going so far as to lease trucks and warehouse space, pick up the produce, and deliver it to supermarket chains and wholesalers. Their strategy: by offering to buyers freshness, flavor, and high quality, they hope to "grow" a stable market that will deliver fair prices to farmers.

Since it began in 1998, Red Tomato has been an exercise in brainstorming and trial and error as the staff tries to invent a business model that will meet their goals and become self-sustaining. "Change is constant," says Larson. Markets are volatile, tastes change, the weather is beyond predicting, and competitors come and go. "If we try a lot of things, something will work... to make our model economically viable."

They have a lot of challenges to overcome. Their mission is to support growers, which means they pay good prices. Volumes are small, trucks and fuel are expensive, and so is overhead for their sales staff and warehouse space. Produce is a low-margin product. How to make it work? "The answer is not obvious," Larson admits. "It's a tough puzzle."

But the Red Tomato staff is persistent. Sales volume increased by 57 percent in 2001 over the year before, and they expect to surpass $1 million in sales this year. They are expanding into more supermarkets, and exploring new ideas for staying busy over the winter. They are intensifying their efforts to establish brand recognition. Boston-area shoppers can look for their logo in the supermarket: a ripe, red, tomato, with the slogan: "Fresh produce. Fresh thinking." Has a pretty smart ring to it.

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Thanks for visiting. Updated March 2005.