Fwd: FW: Think Global, Eat Local

March 6, 2006

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> size=2><FONT

> size=4>Editor's Note:

> This article from

> the LA Times highlights the growth of sustainable

> agriculture.

> This approach contrasts with industrial approaches

> to farming,

> emphasizing knowledge of where food comes from and

> how it has been produced, as

> compared to industrial food production where

> questionable practices are often

> employed to bring cheap food to consumers at great

> cost to human, animal

> and environmental health. Local sustainable

> agriculture

> initiatives offer advantages from three

> perspectives: human health and

> food safety; the strengthening of local economies;

> land, environmental

> and animal

> quality.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2><FONT

> size=4>Think Global, Eat Local

> The

> sustainable food movement that began with Berkeley

> chef Alice Waters has

> blossomed in Portland, Ore. Are its proponents just

> dreaming? Or is a real

> revolution underway?

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2><A

>

href= " http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=dgynxnbab.0.xrinxnbab.w4bsxqn6.5369 & p=http://www.l\

atimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/ "

>

> target=_blank shape=rect>Los

> Angeles Times

> Magazine</A> - July 31, 2005

>

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>By Jim Robbins

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Greg Higgins, chef and owner

> of the tony downtown Portland restaurant Higgins,

> walks to the back of his

> bustling kitchen and opens a door into the heart of

> the latest environmental

> movement. The walk-in refrigerator is crammed with

> sides of beef covered with

> blankets of fat, glassy-eyed fish, rows of

> restaurant-made sausage and ham,

> trays of fresh vegetables in plastic tubs and

> assorted comestibles, nearly all

> of it originating within 100 miles of here, in what

> Higgins calls the Portland

> " foodshed. " Virtually every item is brought in and

> dropped off by the farmer who

> raised it. " There's nothing more threatened than the

> American farmer, " says the

> tall, burly Higgins a little later, as he swirls and

> sips a glass of Oregon

> white wine. " The goal is to keep them in

> business. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>A personal connection

> between a restaurant chef and the people who grow

> his beef or broccoli rabe

> might not sound radical, but it's a major element of

> a burgeoning movement. It's

> called " sustainable food " —a chain of supply and

> demand that theoretically could

> continue in perpetuity. A shorter food chain cuts

> down on oil consumption, puts

> money in the pockets of disappearing farmers, is

> more humane, helps protect soil

> and water and, best of all, usually delivers food

> that tastes better. Alice

> Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley is credited with

> starting the movement in the

> U.S. Now, from the ivy-covered dorms at Yale to the

> public schools at Berkeley

> to the grocery stores, white-tablecloth restaurants

> and fast-food joints of

> Portland, a grass-roots movement is sprouting that

> emphasizes food with a local

> pedigree.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>That this kind of

> relationship is even news is an indication of how

> crazy the food production and

> distribution system has become. Brian Halweil of the

> Worldwatch Institute, an

> environmental research organization, estimates that

> just 1% or 2% of America's

> food is locally grown. He thinks the locally grown

> share could easily reach 40%

> or 50%, " and there's no reason why we couldn't grow

> all of our food. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>The produce in the average

> American dinner is trucked about 1,500 miles to get

> to the plate, according to a

> 2001 study by the Leopold Center for Sustainable

> Agriculture at Iowa State

> University, up an estimated 22% during the past two

> decades. And growing food is

> no longer an artisanal process, but a commodity.

> Large food producers focus on

> supplying products as cheaply as possible, and

> consumers are waking up to the

> fact that something's wrong. Things are getting

> weird out there in Hooterville:

> cloned cattle and sheep, genetically modified

> " Frankenfoods, " schools of

> pen-raised and chemically dyed salmon, E. coli in

> beef, mercury and PCBs in

> fish, chickens crammed into cages the size of a

> sheet of paper, and giant hog

> farms that pollute watersheds and raise a stink for

> miles. Acres of topsoil get

> washed away by large-scale farming and pesticides

> wind up in human breast milk.

> Small farm and ranch families are disappearing,

> while large corporate farms reap

> huge federal subsidies, sometimes for growing

> nothing.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Peter de Garmo is the owner

> of Pastaworks, a sustainable grocery store in

> Portland, and the founder of the

> Portland chapter of Slow Food, a group that seeks

> sustainability in food.

> " Large-scale farming comes at an incredible cost, "

> he says. " It's subsidized by

> the public at large without the public knowing it

> subsidizes it. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Some consumers are rebelling

> against the global marketplace and seeking out food

> whose history is known and

> friendly. While there are alternatives to mainstream

> food—organic, biodynamic,

> fair trade and others—the idea of a sustainable food

> system is generating the

> most interest.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>The granola-and-Birkenstock

> types aren't the only ones behind the movement. The

> rock-rib Republican governor

> of South Dakota, Mike Rounds, supports a state

> program that requires animals to

> be tracked from birth, fed high-quality feed,

> treated humanely and otherwise

> remain well-cared for, under penalty of felony

> charges. Sustainable food is

> served in the restaurants of Yellowstone, Yosemite

> and other national parks. In

> Italy last year, 4,300 small farmers, chefs and

> other small-scale producers from

> around the world gathered for a conference called

> Terra Madre, or Mother Earth,

> to consider alternatives to the present food supply

> system.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Sustainable food " is growing

> beyond the culinary fringe, " says Worldwatch's

> Halweil, who also is the author

> of " Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a

> Global Supermarket. " " It's

> showing up in restaurants, supermarkets, even

> Wal-Mart. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>A cascade of factors are

> driving this new attitude toward food. In 2001, the

> U.S. Surgeon General

> released a " Call to Action " that found more than 60%

> of Americans are overweight

> or obese, which is a major contributor to Type 2, or

> adult-onset, diabetes. Food

> scares also have raised awareness. In the 1980s, it

> was Alar, a chemical sprayed

> on apples that was shown to cause cancer, especially

> in children. In the 1990s,

> it was genetically modified organisms—the high-tech

> swapping of genes between

> disparate species to, for example, increase the

> output of milk in dairy

> cows.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>But more than any single

> factor, mad cow disease in Europe has made people

> rethink what they put in their

> bodies. Mad cow, or bovine spongiform

> encephalopathy, is believed to be caused

> by an abnormal protein that leads to brain damage

> and eventually kills the

> infected cow. In humans, it's believed to cause a

> variant form of

> Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which leads to a slow and

> agonizing death as the

> disease attacks the brain.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>But it's in the food-savvy

> city of Portland that the new food economy has taken

> root, and where the future

> may be taking shape.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>One of the first groups to

> respond to the decline in food quality was an

> organization called the Chefs

> Collaborative, which has some 1,000 chef members,

> including current Oregon

> chapter chair Greg Higgins. Higgins grew up on a

> truck farm near Buffalo, N.Y.,

> one of six children in a single-parent family. He

> wandered west to cook, and

> opened his Portland restaurant with a partner in

> 1994. About that time, he says,

> he noticed that both the taste and the look of food

> were changing. " The

> cauliflower I was getting didn't look or taste like

> the cauliflower I picked as

> a kid, " he says. " It lacked flavor, intensity,

> character and depth. " But the

> revelation came when a salesman talked him into

> trying farm-raised salmon. " I

> didn't like the way it smelled, I didn't like the

> way it felt, and it smeared

> orange on my cutting board " from the coloring dye,

> he says.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Higgins is the godfather of

> sustainable food in Portland, a movement that

> started in earnest in the mid- to

> late-1990s. This progressive, environmentally aware

> town with European

> sensibilities is filled with savvy gourmets and food

> activists. With its

> embarrassment of gastronomic riches—wild mushrooms

> and salmon, an array of

> berries and fruit, organic dairy farms, rustic

> bakeries, coffee roasters,

> vineyards and a crop of top chefs—Portland has

> become a destination for serious

> eaters. The city was quick to grasp the idea that

> changing food choices made

> sense on every level and would ripple out into the

> natural, cultural and

> economic systems. Sustainable food has crept into

> nearly every culinary

> crevice.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>It's nearly impossible to

> find white-tablecloth restaurants here, for

> instance, that would dare serve

> farm-raised salmon. There were two farmers' markets

> in the 1980s; now there are

> more than 20. Community Supported Agriculture, a

> movement in which people buy

> shares of produce from a farm family before it is

> grown, is booming. Higgins and

> other chefs meet regularly with fishermen and

> farmers.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Sustainability would not

> mean much if it were relegated to the world of elite

> restaurants or expensive

> organic grocery stores. In Portland the goal of food

> activists is to permeate

> even the culinary demimonde with local and

> sustainable alternatives.

> Burgerville, for example, a 39-store fast-food

> restaurant chain based in nearby

> Vancouver, Wash., buys all of its beef from the

> sustainable ranchers at a co-op

> called Country Natural Beef and local dairy products

> that are not genetically

> modified, and it's trying to work out a way to buy

> no-till sustainable wheat

> from eastern Washington. It also offers a special

> milkshake based on Oregon's

> hazelnut season. " Food safety is the No. 1 issue in

> our business, " says Jack

> Graves, Burgerville's chief cultural officer. " And

> the way to ensure that is to

> know where the food is coming from. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>New Seasons Market is a

> sustainable grocery store chain that has thrived in

> Portland, a fusion of Whole

> Foods and Safeway, with twists of its own. " Our goal

> is to try and change the

> food system, " says Brian Rohter, chief executive of

> New Seasons Market. " People

> want to buy locally. We give them the

> opportunity. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>The five New Seasons markets

> are as large, cheery and well-lighted as any modern

> grocery store. You can buy

> organic chickens and tofu, but also Doritos and Diet

> Pepsi. Things are most

> obviously different in the produce section. The

> provenance of apples from China

> and Chile is conspicuous on their labels. Apples

> from Oregon are labeled with

> the name and location of the farms where they were

> grown. So much of the produce

> is bought locally, one greengrocer's sole job is to

> make contact with

> Portland-area farmers and arrange to buy their wares

> for New Seasons

> markets.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>In the fish department, the

> fish are graded with green, red and yellow signs, a

> system developed by Monterey

> Bay Aquarium called Seafood Watch, which publishes a

> list of seafood that's

> caught or farmed sustainably. Red means they are not

> sustainably caught; green

> means they meet the sustainable criteria. Virtually

> all of the meat is locally

> and sustainably raised. New Seasons just started a

> program to mark with a

> special sticker all of its 35,000 products that

> originate or have value added in

> Oregon, Northern California and

> Washington.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Sustainability obviously

> makes some things more complicated. It's much more

> work to find vendors and

> manage 20 sources for produce rather than deal with

> one institutional provider.

> And small outfits have trouble providing quantity.

> Restaurants have to bend—they

> don't serve salmon all year, and only serve

> vegetables in season. That's why

> even proponents say this is not an effort to replace

> the big food companies, but

> only to replace what they can.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Price also is one of the

> drawbacks to buying food from small-scale producers.

> Pork in the grocery store

> is less than $3 a pound; the pork Higgins buys is

> $9. But proponents of

> sustainable food say that the price of goods on the

> grocery store shelf is

> deceptive. Large-scale operations can sell goods

> cheaply because of cheap labor,

> or by " borrowing " against the future by causing soil

> erosion or groundwater

> depletion, or because they get the lion's share of

> the federal subsidies. Often

> the global food supply is filled with hormones or

> pesticides, or is otherwise

> not as healthy.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2> " You can pay your farmer, "

> says Higgins of the Chefs Collaborative, " or you can

> pay your

> doctor. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Rohter says that when most

> things are near equal, but people know food is local

> or sustainably raised,

> consumers overwhelmingly will buy local products.

> " We're not going to guilt-trip

> anybody or make judgments about what they buy, " he

> says. " But we share as much

> information as possible. Eaters should be able to

> make informed

> choices. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>At Clint Krebs' spread in

> the middle of the sun-baked eastern Oregon desert,

> he points out the wagon ruts

> from the Oregon Trail that passed through here. His

> grandparents opened a store

> in what they called Cecil, but it closed as the

> homesteaders drifted away from

> this harsh, dry land. The store still stands, a

> monument to the ghost towns that

> now dot the rural landscape. As he drives through

> sheds filled with hundreds of

> sheep milling about with their rickety newborn lambs

> and points out grazing

> cattle, he describes the changes brought about after

> he joined forces with the

> Hatfields.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Doc and Connie Hatfield, the

> Roy Rogers and Dale Evans of the sustainable beef

> movement, founded Country

> Natural Beef with 13 other ranch families in 1986 at

> their High Desert Ranch

> near Brothers, an hour or so out of Bend. " We were

> going broke, " Connie says.

> She decided to talk to a guy at the local gym to

> find out why eating beef was so

> roundly condemned. " He was a big Jack LaLanne type

> with muscles, " she says. To

> her surprise, he told her he loved beef, but he

> couldn't get it without

> antibiotics, hormones and excess fat.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>A market was born. During

> the last two decades a new ranching philosophy has

> evolved on the high desert of

> Oregon, moving ranchers out of the anonymous

> commodity business and toward a

> higher-quality branded product. " De-commodify or

> die, " Connie says. While the

> co-op has grown to 70 families, it cannot keep up

> with the demand, and the

> Hatfields and other co-op families are teaching

> fellow ranchers the same

> approach, from Texas to Montana. " We turn someone

> who wants to buy beef down

> every week, " Doc says. " Supply is our problem, not

> the market. " As Connie puts

> it: " If you're truthful, you don't have to advertise

> it. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Krebs says his life, and the

> lives of other ranchers, has changed on every level.

> They stopped using hormones

> and antibiotics and started feeding minerals and

> handling the animals in less

> stressful ways. Sensitive riparian areas were fenced

> off, and cattle are moved

> more often. And he and other ranchers now try harder

> to understand their

> customers. The hardest part for some, Krebs says, is

> the " meet and greet. "

> " Every rancher in the co-op spends two days a year

> in front of a meat counter

> meeting customers, " he says. " For a lot of these

> ranchers, the thought of going

> to Portland is difficult. But everyone has enjoyed

> it. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>They fetch a premium for

> their efforts. On average during the past decade,

> ranchers in the Country

> Natural Beef co-op got $120 more for each cow they

> sold over the price of

> traditional commodity beef. And their land is

> healthier because their operations

> better meet environmental standards and are verified

> by an independent third

> party, the Food Alliance. Young ranch families are

> coming back to work a ranch

> they thought they might have to leave forever. As a

> result, some Western towns

> may survive—or even thrive.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>While Portland may be the

> capital, the push for a sustainable food system is a

> fledgling national

> movement. Catering institutions that run the

> kitchens on corporate and college

> campuses have rallied around the idea, in large

> measure because they have been

> pressured by college students, but for other reasons

> as well. " We were losing

> flavor on the plate, " says Maisie Ganzler, director

> of communications and

> strategic initiatives for Bon Appétit Management

> Co., a Palo Alto-based

> corporation that serves 55 million meals a year at

> institutions such as Oracle

> Corp., Cisco Systems and the Massachusetts Institute

> of Technology. " Tomatoes

> didn't taste like tomatoes anymore. We realized we

> had lost contact with our

> food supply—it's bred and grown to travel, not for

> flavor. " They launched a

> " Farm to Fork " initiative that allows all of their

> chefs to buy ingredients

> grown within 150 miles of their kitchen—a tenth of

> the travel distance of the

> produce in an average American meal.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>The true test, of course,

> will be the large corporations that dominate the

> global food system. Five

> supermarket chains account for 42% of U.S. retail

> food sales, according to a

> 2001 University of Missouri study, but they're

> apparently paying closer

> attention to growing consumer awareness about

> food.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Even Wal-Mart, one of those

> five corporations and widely considered hostile to

> local economies, has

> participated in " buy local " produce programs. Beyond

> food retailing,

> Anheuser-Busch recently announced that it would stop

> buying rice to brew beer in

> its home state of Missouri if the state allowed the

> planting of genetically

> modified rice. McDonald's website proclaims the

> company's commitment to the

> humane treatment of animals, and McDonald's and

> Burger King are discouraging

> beef producers from routinely using antibiotics in

> beef, which some studies

> suggest may lead to reduced effectiveness of

> antibiotics in humans.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>The impact of these gestures

> is not yet clear. And mainstream food producers see

> locally grown food as a fad.

> The National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. in Denver says

> that while it supports

> Country Natural Beef, its safeguards are unnecessary

> but appeal to " people who

> might not otherwise eat beef, " says Dr. Gary Weber,

> an animal scientist who is

> the director of regulatory affairs for the beef

> association. Of the U.S.

> Department of Agriculture inspection and

> certification process, he says: " We're

> very confident with all of the levels of protection

> in place. We have the safest

> beef supply in the world. " While antibiotics and

> hormones are used in cattle,

> Weber says they are carefully monitored. " We're

> dedicated to making decisions

> based on science. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Food activists say it's time

> to look at the big picture. Brian Halweil of the

> Worldwatch Institute argues

> that a highly centralized food supply imported from

> around the world and

> controlled by a handful of companies leaves us much

> more vulnerable to

> disruption in the oil supply or climate warming.

> " Because agriculture depends on

> stable and predictable weather, it will be most

> affected by climate change, " he

> says. " Anything we can do to make the global food

> source more diverse or more

> decentralized will help us cope with that shock. "

> Terrorism also has given the

> movement a boost— " food security " is a term that

> wasn't heard much before Sept.

> 11, 2001.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>In his best-selling book,

> " Collapse, " UCLA geography professor Jared Diamond

> argues that what has brought

> down past civilizations, from the Norse settlers in

> Greenland to the inhabitants

> of Easter Island, was that they created ways of life

> that simply couldn't be

> sustained over the long haul. Many food activists

> say that locally raised food

> may never completely replace corporate farming, but

> it could grow to play much

> more of a complementary role.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Perhaps the most compelling

> aspect of the sustainable food movement is how

> quickly a community can create a

> local food economy. It doesn't take global

> agreements, and it doesn't require

> new legislation. Every locally grown tomato or

> hamburger from a nearby cow, the

> foodies say, is a vote for a less-polluting,

> safer—and more delicious—way of

> life.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Understanding

> sustainable food

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Unlike the term " organic, "

> " sustainable " has no official government definition,

> and other definitions can

> be slippery. And because customers will pay a

> premium, many businesses claim

> that their food is sustainable when it

> isn't.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>A recent study by the New

> York Times of eight New York City stores offering

> wild salmon, for example,

> found that six were really selling farm-raised fish.

> A Wall Street Journal

> article found that the organic grocery chain Whole

> Foods was misleading

> consumers by implying that 5% of the retail price of

> fair trade coffee was going

> to growers, when it was 5% of the wholesale

> price.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>Understanding sustainable

> food means understanding three types of labels.

> " First party " means the producer

> is making the claims. " Second party " means an

> industry group has evaluated the

> product. Urvashi Rangan, an environmental health

> scientist at the Yonkers,

> N.Y.-based Consumers Union, says the best labels are

> " third party " labels, in

> which an independent organization evaluates the

> claims being made.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>One of the largest third

> party labels—and rated as accurate by Consumers

> Union—is Portland-based Food

> Alliance, which certifies 225 farms and ranches in

> 16 states and tries to bring

> some order to the chaos of " sustainable. " Growers

> pay a minimum of $400 in

> annual fees to the Food Alliance, which dispatches

> an inspector to assess such

> things as the reduction or elimination of

> pesticides, whether working conditions

> for laborers are safe and fair, how well soil and

> water resources are conserved,

> and whether animals are treated humanely. Farms are

> inspected every three years

> and are required to file annual reports.

> Occasionally there are spot

> audits.

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2> " For all this they expect

> market advantage, " says Scott Exo, executive

> director of Food Alliance. " Access

> to new markets, greater market share, price

> premium. "

> <FONT face= " Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif "

> size=2>*Researcher Jessica Gelt

> contributed to this story.

> WHO WE ARE: This e-mail service shares

> information to help more

> people discuss crucial policy issues affecting

> global food security. The

> service is managed by Amber McNair of the University

> of Toronto in partnership

> with the Centre for Urban Health Initiatives (CUHI)

> and Wayne Roberts of

> the Toronto Food Policy Council, in partnership with

> the Community Food Security

> Coalition, World Hunger Year, and International

> Partners for Sustainable

> Agriculture. Please help by sending information

> or names and e-mail

> addresses of co-workers who'd like to receive this

> service, to <A

>

href= " foodnews " >foodnews</A><B\

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