Local Food: What is it?

Local food:  what is it?  To many farmers' markets in eastern Ontario it means food that is sourced from within 100km.  To many public institutions local food means food sourced from within Ontario or up to 50 km outside of the province (which would include parts of New York state).  To companies like Tim Hortons and A&W, it means "One hundred percent Canadian Beef!"

But what is local food at its core?  What does the experience of eating local really mean to those who care?  If you read the 100 mile diet, you see a food system that is challenging, subversive and rewarding in ways that take a certain willingness to sacrifice.  If you read this New York Times article, it means experimenting with foods that are acquired tastes, foods like cowpeas and emmer wheat, and mustard, and other highly nutritious legumes and grains and roots that are not a part of the current North American menu.

At a recent summit on Local Food, hosted by the university in my area, local food was discussed as something that might be more widely used in our public institutions, making it a central part of our larger food system.  The trouble with discussions on local food is that there is usually enthusiasm that can't quite connect to the real world - it can be embraced only once it has fully matched, in its volumes and variety, what currently exists in the food industrial food system, which is not likely to happen.

A moot discussion

The day involved group sessions with representatives from various government agencies and non-profits.  There were a few distributors, a few curious people, and a few producers.    

The central challenge, it was established, was that of taking the nebulous world of local food production, rounding it together into a functioning system, and bringing that abundance to hospitals and schools and universities.  But the assumption that made the session largely moot was that there would never be enough producers capable and well-connected enough in this region to make regional food a viable alternative to the current system of sourcing food from across the world. This is a real challenge because we are in the midst of a decades' long process of dismantling local food infrastructure.  Larger food companies can afford to set up their own processing plants for their own sprawling production needs. but small, more diverse groupings of producers in a given region cannot do the same.  In some cases, producers band together to form cooperatives, but they encounter challenges from regulators, as well as financial burdens, as few investors are interested in putting money into them.  Any discussion on local food should address these issues, but  the challenges of local production in a globalized economy centred on cheap food would not really come into the discussion. 

At various points we came back to the topic of small farms, direct-to-consumer markets, and what ordinary people want in a local food system.  One woman pointed out that she did not want to get up on Sunday morning and go the farmers market.  She wanted to have local food nearby, every day.  Just like a trusty Loblaws.  And when that happens, she suggested, she will be ready.  And so will many others, it seems.  After all, the buzz around here, as in many Canadian cities, is that people are craving local food, but they can't afford it and can't find it.

They can afford it and they can find it.

But the real issue is they don't really want it, perhaps because they don't know why they should.  Our culture is not really focused on food choices beyond the occasional blurb from health Canada about the importance of a balanced diet, or the Heart and Stroke Foundation's plugs for Becel margarine. This brings me back to the idea of local food as challenging, subversive and requiring sacrifice - all things that are not in line with a culture of hyper-consumption and overabundance.  This is attractive to me, but getting up on Sunday morning to go to a farmers' market is not everyone's cup of tea and if it isn't, then that is quite alright.

As a local food producer, I am not looking for a customer base that:  buys local food because they want to be able to say they buy local; buys local food because they think they should, or; buys local food as an occasional gesture of support.  I am looking for customers who buy from me because they like my product; they genuinely find it worthwhile from a price standpoint, and; they look forward to consuming it.  They know it is not from a cheap food model, and they know it is not always convenient to come to the market on Sunday, but it is worth it to them, and for that reason, there is a market for me, however small.

The idea that many more people would buy locally if they could afford it doesn't really pass muster.  I, along with many other people I know, including young couples with children, buy local food in spite of being in a relatively low income bracket.  For many who don't buy local food, reportedly because it is expensive, the real issue is that they don't see its merit and they don't want it badly enough to pay a small premium for it.  I am convinced of this because the first time I bought an organic chicken was during a period of my life when my finances were quite comfortable.  I had been in a natural foods store, in my early stages of interest in local and natural foods, and had called my sister later that day, asking her how I could justify buying a chicken that cost twice the price of the ones I was used to buying.  She advised me that it was not the same product and could not be compared as such,  That stuck with me, and now the price I so reluctantly paid for that chicken is normal, standard, simply the price for the luxury of eating chicken....but I digress.

For anyone who truly wants local food but does not know where to find it, a simple internet search puts one in touch with several local markets, where one can meet vendors and find out more about where to source their food, as well as connecting with CSAs for those who have church service Sunday morning or cartoons on TV.

In Conclusion

There is no question that supplying large institutions with food is a challenge, whether it is sourced locally or from elsewhere.  It has a lot to do with what is prioritized in government and in the larger culture. It's a scrappy, messy business, one that I don't understand well.  Shifts in how we source food on this scale will require changes in the attitudes of government and in society as a whole and I guess they would probably come more in response to crisis than as progressive, proactive changes. Whatever the case, a truly local option for supplying food to local institutions does not currently exist, at least that was what I gathered from the discussion.

As individuals, buying food on a day-to-day basis, the business is not as messy.  There are no board meetings, no charters to ratify or legislation to pass in order to start new habits.  But a small local food community does not advertise the way a large grocery store chain does, and sometimes it has to remind people that it does not just exist in theory - it exists as a current, viable choice.

Cleanup

It's a bit like the scene after a banquet, after everyone has gone, and there are a few custodians vacuuming furiously.  The place seems so bare, when just a few hours ago it had been so lush, so nicely decorated and full of colour.  You didn't notice that the carpet and walls were so plain.

We tore out the tomato plants, the pepper plants, the eggplant plants, and the okra.  It's that time and it's kind of nice to see the beds bare, to be redone and set up with something else.  The pigs are busy digging, and the chickens are stabbing at seeds and bits and pieces of plant residue.  We will plant some hardy greens for the late fall and soon enough, we will be setting up our tomato plants again, this time stringing them to the structure so they don't lie down on the floor the way many did this year.  The place wasn't as orderly as I would like it - watering plants was a challenge when so many were slumped into the trenches and I had to get around them - and yet, we had some good results, especially cherry tomatoes, which were spectacular, if I do say so myself.

Our field has been expanded, almost doubled in size thanks to the pigs' digging.  Next year we plan to grow a few fewer vegetable varieties and grow more of each.  Enough to stock a CSA and do some wholesaling.  That last sentence is oozing with the kind of intention most farmers have for "next year," when this year's plans will be properly realized.  But we are at least further along than we would be if we hadn't already finished year 0.

In other news, I have collected the watermelon.  There were about 6 left today and they are incredible, if I do say so myself.  It's not exactly watermelon weather, but it will have to do.

Time Hurries On...

...and the leaves that are green turn to brown, sang Paul Simon.  And they become compost after they have been raked up.  We borrowed a very sophisticated mower from a good friend of ours, and it has not only mowed the grass in our front area, it has given us a pile of clippings mixed with decaying leaves that is to die for.

When we took the property in the fall of 2013 it still had a 'rural residential' feeling to it.  As one friend described it, it could easily have been transplanted into a suburban subdivision.  The lawn was manicured until about 100 feet our from the house, forming a tidy line with the field of hay.  Walking out to the hay for the first time felt like walking into a vast uncharted world, but now it has become familiar, and so has the routine of chores, of riding my bike between gardens and chopping wood along the treeline, dragging it back to the woodpile.

A couple of days ago I got the camera out for the first time in months, and shot the sunrise.  Last year I took hundreds of photos of skies, fields and I would often drop whatever building or digging I was working on at the sound of an unusual bird song, find my camera and chase it until I had a decent picture.  Farming is dangerous - beyond the risk of heavy objects falling or machines (for those who have them) getting out of control, it risks dulling some of your senses in their curiosity about the great outdoors - its sounds and smells and sheer freshness because it all become some familiar.  It also makes something as simple as visiting the local museums something that keeps eluding, going further and further into the future because there is never a good time to get away for a day.

I suspect that a guru or life coach's advice would be to set aside time for "being" amidst the spleandour, even when other mundane tasks are pressing.  But, as Paul Simon sang, time hurries on.

In spite of the grind that farming is becoming, there is an underlying goodness in the lifestyle.  I heard a CBC radio program yesterday on which the merits of organic food were debated.  There was the claim that the nutritional value was the same as conventional food, following by the claim that the research into this was largely done by large conventional food companies...there was the claim that environmentally speaking, conventional agriculture was in fact better than organic because it was more efficient, and organics also use pesticides, followed by the rebuttal that, according to the UN's findings, ecological agriculture is the only kind of farming that can be sustained over the long term, given the heavy dependence on fossil fuels in conventional growing (I should note that while the organic industry is only as organic as the regulators say it has to be, it is not the case that every organic farm sprays with pesticides, even though certain sprays are approved for organically certified farms).

The debate was not really interesting to me, I had heard the arguments before, but when you are on a farm seven days a week and it practically meshes with your very being, the question of farming practices becomes important.  Perhaps the most significant issue for me, which was not discussed in the debate, is the fact that large conventional monocropping farms do not seek to nourish soil in order to produce good food, and nor do they claim to.  It's not considered efficient, and with the times.

There is a great pleasure in building a compost pile that is full of green grasses and brown leaves, and chicken manure and bugs and worms and chickens hurrying about like kids in an arcade.  Time hurries on, and life is short, and as much as the farm grind is tiring and not often restful (or profitable), it's hard to walk away from it, in part because so much time, energy and money becomes invested in it and in part because the processes that go into nourishing soil to produce good food become vital to you as the farmer too in ways that most people wouldn't understand.

Regulations

As I noted in my last post, the Ontario government has stated that farmers' markets are an extension of the farmgate.  Foods prepared for sale at a farmers' market may be made in one's own home.  Foods prepared for the farmgate must be prepared in a commercial kitchen.  When I tell people this, I get incredulous looks.  "Why?"  They ask.  "Health and safety regulations," I reply.  "Yes, but...what does that have to do with health and safety?"  

When I asked the ministry in a letter, for an explanation of this seeming inconsistency,  I was informed that the minster is aware that Ontario produces some of the highest quality food in the world....the government is keen to work with farmers like us to ensure that Ontario continues to produce the highest quality food in the world....and I was advised that if our prepared foods contain more than 25% meat, not only would we be requires to produce them offsite, in a commercial kitchen, they would need to be produced in a licensed meat plant.  The minister emphasized again how important it was to his government that they work with farmers like myself to ensure that Ontario continue to make great food, and so on and so forth. 

Ours is not a culture that makes starting and running a small business accessible and viable, given the regulatory burdens that are not plain and straightforward, designed to address issues in a way that makes sense and is reasonable. 

As small farmers, we feel squeezed by the constant demands of regulations which are costly to meet, as well as by the indifference of the general public.  At markets, we present our wares, and engage with customers, but the good humour sometimes belies the tiredness that comes from the pressures that are never really eased.  Regulations change and are made on whims without farmers' input.  The place of the small farm in our culture is a precarious one.  

Back to School!

This week marked the first time I was back on campus in more than a decade.  Amidst all of the fresh-faced, stylish young folks with text books in one hand, the other hand texting friends, I felt a bit our of place...when I last spent a full day on campus, there was no texting, it was the early 2000's, and I was expanding my mind with full days of courses and a lunch break in the old student's union, with its Subway, its greasy Chinese food takeout counter, its taco booth.  Come to think of it, it was mostly junk food, but there was no Tim Hortons or Burger King. Subway seemed out of place.   By today's campus standards, it was quaint. I usually brought a bag lunch with me anyway.

Queen's has a mall-style food court, with an array of cheap, nutrition-deficient food vendors dressed up as upscale ethnic eateries, along with the usual international faves.  And coming back to why I was on campus - I am not taking courses, I am a vendor in the farmers market.  We were set up along a busy stretch of sidewalk outside of the student library and near the food court building.   I sat at my table for the 7-hour stretch, under the canopy, my wares spread out.  We had our dim sum advertised, and people did stop and ask for some, but when we told them we were not allowed to sell it hot, presumably because it may infringe on the business of the existing food vendors, and it would have to be given to them fresh out of the refrigerated cooler, they frowned and said "oh."  Then they smiled politely and said, "okay, I was hoping to eat it hot."  Then they walked away a bit self-consciously.

As farmers we are constantly up against little rules that add up and become a patch of choking weeds. Health units enforce supply management rules (the health inspector will fine a farmer for selling chicken eggs, but not for selling duck or goose eggs, for example, even though there is no reason that chicken eggs are less safe than any other egg.  They are, however, a supply-managed commodity.)  Prepared foods must be kept below 4 degrees or above 60, even if they are foods that are best enjoyed at room temperature, foods that will not perish in the four hour strech of a farmers' market. There is no room for judgment, and no room for a steamed bun sitting at 5 degrees.

A farmer may prepare foods in his kitchen if the items are sold at a farmers' market, but may not sell these items at the farmgate, even though the farmers' market is defined as an extension of the farmgate.  Items sold from the farm itself must be prepared in a commercial kitchen.  This means the farmer drives twenty minutes, hauling all of his or her ingredients, to a kitchen at a community hall or a church, cooks, packs up, hauls it home, and sells his or her farmfresh food.  These facilites generally require liability insurance on the part of the farmer, which can be around $100/month, cutting out any chance of profit.

As I sat on campus, I did some studying.  I read a bit of "The Meat Racket," a new book on the American meat industry, which has changed dramatically over the years into a handful of companies, which are vertically integrated and which control nearly every aspect of their production.  The only aspect they do not take on is farming.  They contract the raising of their animals to farms so that the farms can take on the massive capital investment required to run a factory farm, and then the farmer takes the loss on a bad batch of chickens.

This is a time when an education in food issues is more accessible than ever.  There are countless books, from The Omnivore's Dilemma, to the Hundred Mile Diet, to Locavore (and books like the Locavore's Dilemma, which offer an opposing, more upbeat view of the industrial food system), to Organics Inc...and films like King Corn and Food Inc. and the Botany of Desire.  There is much to be learned and discussed around the issues of food production and consumption, which are, after all, ever-pertinent issues.

  

Long Road Celebrates 1 Year

We have made it to the end of summer.  There are a couple of big ripe watermelons in our field ready to harvest, and a few more on the way. There is a second, very tenacious crop of strawberries as well.  The pigs are digging up a portion of field that we plan to use next year, and I am pleasantly surprised to see that they are doing a bang-up job.

We hosted a concert to celebrate the anniversary of the move.  The turnout was perfect - we did not break any fire codes with our attendance, but it was enough for a great sense of camaraderie and also enough to notice a rise in the room's temperature.  It was enough people to encourage us, but beyond the number of people, it was wonderful to know that we have connected with some quality people.

We made a buffet of farm-fresh snacks and chatted amongst ourselves between sets, and played a mixture of folk/roots originals, songs by the Beatles and the Guess Who (which my siblings and I grew up listening to) and a few brilliant trumpet numbers (we were fortunate enough to have a world class trumpeter in the lineup, and no that is not a joke).


 

Me and the band (my siblings who helped make the evening a memorable one)

A year ago our land was still unimproved hay fields and woodlot.  The vast majority of our land is still just that, but there are three lush gardens now.  We fretted about soil depth, about having to spend on raised beds, but the soil is serving us well.  We began the spring intending to sell vegetables and meat, but have expanded our operation into Frontenac county's only Dim Sum joint.  Recapping the year, it would be fair to say we have had some modest success - in any case, I am still writing this blog and the farmgate sign is still going up each day to welcome visitors.

Mid Summer

It's the time of year when the farmer's body has been moulded into a machine that gets up, works, goes to bed.  He forgets what it is to go out for a night on the town, with drinks and some kind of entertainment, like a good band.  He has only a few minutes before he turns out the light to read a passage of something unrelated to farming.

Markets have settled in for the season.  They are also well-oiled now, reliable and smooth - no longer the jerky, sputtering things they were at the beginning of the season when it was still chilly and wet and people scouted us out from the comfort of their passing cars.

And what have the markets been for us, first-time produce and dim sum vendors?  July was a good month.  Our sales increased significantly.  There are still slow days, and times when we wonder, what if people come for the novelty, and spread the word with enthusiasm, and then wash their hands of Long Road?  It's a challenge establishing returning clientele, though there are some people whom we see week in week out, and it's always nice to visit with them.  That is part of the appeal of the markets - it is a social place in a way that a big store is to a much lesser extent.  Yes, people say excuse me when they bump carts, and yes, most cashiers can do good small talk, but they can't talk for ten minutes, and there is no place for hovering around, it is a line that must keep moving.

There are locals and tourists at our markets, young and old, though it is the older people who are often the most interested in trying our food.  Often younger people come to the market and head straight for old-school treats, and steer clear of us because we are young too and maybe we make them uncomfortable.  We sell Chinese goods, but I have seen Chinese patrons come up as far as the neighbouring booth and then quickly cross to the other side.  It's funny how markets make people self-conscious in ways they wouldn't be in a grocery store.

We have some whole chickens that turned out wonderfully - small again, but top quality.  We will be fine with the chicken feet, livers and necks if the whole chickens sell out.  They are all in our freezer, interlaid with pork and frozen veggies.  It is the time of year when fall feels near and canning, freezing and making preserved vegetables becomes more pressing.