While the SFM is
seen by many as just a renewed interest in quality food and family farms, it’s
also about ‘food security’ at the national level post-9/11 as well as economic
best-practices and conserving resources, both natural and manmade, in the
future when the end of cheap energy will no longer support the consumerism and
lifestyle the West now takes for granted. Food for thought? KwC
SUSTAINABLE FOOD MOVEMENT
Selected paragraphs from
Think Global, Eat
Local by Jim
Robbins, LA Times Magazine, July 31, 2005
“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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"You can pay your farmer,"
says Higgins of the Chefs Collaborative, "or
you can pay your doctor."
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Finish this at http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-localfood31jul31,1,755689.story?coll=la-headlines-magazine
Understanding sustainable food
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.
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.
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.
"For all this they expect market advantage," says Scott Exo,
executive director of Food Alliance. "Access to new markets, greater
market share, price premium."
Related Links
Chefs Collaborative http://www.chefscollaborative.org/
Food Alliance http://www.foodalliance.org/
Terra Madre http://www.terramadre2004.org/
WorldWatch Institute http://www.worldwatch.org/
