The LocalHarvest Blog

LocalHarvest friends --

Are you noticing the nudge and pivot into autumn? We are, too. In nature and in the farming world, this is the moment when we savor the retained heat of summer and the abundance of autumn harvest. Soon we'll start tuning in to crisp, shorter days.

Autumn is a time of reflection. How has the year been so far, especially in the world of CSA farming? We asked our friends John and Haidy Peterson at Angelic Organics of Caledonia Illinois to find out.

Angelic Organics is a gem in the world of Community Supported farming, where community, poetry, the land and the nitty gritty of getting-it-done come together. When we spoke with John we could feel in our bones the dynamic and ever-changing nature of farming. Life has this quality no matter where you are, but on a farm, if you're there long enough and you tune in, you really know it.

Angelic has around 2,400 shareholders this year, about the same number as in 2019. In 2020, that number had increased to 3,200: during the nationwide shut-down, we saw an up-tic in people's connection with CSA. It's a reminder of how important our local food systems are, and how fortunate we are that small-to-medium-scale farms are there to support us. These farms are representative of years of cultivation, evolution, planning, and innovating. Included in the cycle of a CSA farm's life are the people that buy shares each year. Members are an integral part of the momentum that keeps the operation running.

Farmer John has many beautiful insights to share on what sounds to us like "farming from the heart." In his August posting "Do You Eat Data?", he shares about what a farm actually IS:

"Your farm is a being, a living being. What I realized [when touring and speaking to audiences] was that in general a farm was regarded as a source of food, a sort of factory (and for many, a data point). I would suggest that engaging the land through our hearts and our will would result in food...

...your farm, Angelic Organics, has not evolved out of data, but out of love, out of a sense of stewardship, of relationship, of connectedness. Of course we engage science, technology, engineering and math (daily, even hourly), but the underlying forces that guide this farm forward are love, compassion and devotion. When these are present, life flourishes at the deepest level, and food follows."

Everyone has experienced life-reminders during this past year and a half. A couple big ones for us are that change is certain, and it matters where we decide to place our attention. Do we know our community - our neighbors, our land - whether we live in the city, suburbs or country? How do we regard and care for one another, since certainly our well-being depends on it? CSA farming continuously emerges as an answer to these questions, providing a place to meet on the land, share food, share in some of the work, and most importantly, enjoy it all.

For over 25 years CSA farms have proved to be important players in creating vibrant local economies. When you create a relationship with your farmer you're saying 'my community counts.' It's easy to be dazzled by conglomerates that mimic the CSA model, but don't be fooled. A box of products without a connection to the farm is a bland version of something that's meant to be simple, rich and nourishing!

If you don't know the full story of Angelic Organics and John Petersen, (or even if you do!), you should check out the movie, The Real Dirt on Farmer John.

It's also a ripe moment to look back over our progress at LocalHarvest and CSAware. Businesses everywhere have had to ride the waves of the pandemic workplace, and we're no exception. We've continued to evolve to serve the changing needs of our farmers and their CSA subscribers.

This year, among other upgrades, we added automatic preference-based box customization to CSAware, our farm software toolkit. Affectionately named BoxBot, this remarkable tool customizes each individual delivery by allocating the week's harvest based on each CSA subscriber's options and preferences. (ie, "I love kale, but not so much turnips"), Simply put, BoxBot optimizes inventory while increasing customer satisfaction, and has proven itself extremely helpful for busy farmers.

If you are a farmer and you'd like a tour of CSAware, give us a holler.

Till next time, enjoy the September rays of sun, and each other.

-Kerry Glendening

Guillermo

07:00 PM CDT

LocalHarvest friends --

Now that the results of the 2020 elections are over, it is absolutely critical for Americans to come together. More than ever, we need to listen to each other, seek to understand, and identify common ground. To heal we need to build our empathy muscles and collaborate to build the kind of world we want to live in and leave for our children. There are two golden rules we can live by that would go a long ways towards that repair:

1) Treat others as you want to be treated
2) Leave it better

2020 is a time of great upheaval and transformation. It is an emotional time, to be sure. Anxiety is at an all time high. We feel out of control. The best way to feel “in control” is to take agency for our lives, to put one foot in front of the other, to work for positive change in whatever ways we can. Every effort matters, regardless of the size or scope. Work, don't worry. Forward movement, not fretting about what was or could have been. In the context of food and farming, of our mutual love for agriculture, real food, personal health, and stewarding the earth, what might that look like?

Start with your inner landscape. Focus on your health now. Don't wait for a New Year's resolution. Start today. Get your body healthy and your mind will follow. Give yourself permission to get a good 8-9 hours of sleep a night. The days of constant hustle are over, at least for now. Make the time to move your body everyday. Cook a meal from scratch. Eat with your family. Be still for devotion or meditation. Pick up a hobby or renew an old one that you do for no other reason than it brings you joy. You cannot pour from an empty cup. You can't heal the world from a state of dis-ease. Create more ease and health in your life. Each human is a miraculous, unique being, now treat yourself like one.

Next move to your home landscape. Compost your food waste. Clean out your refrigerator. Throw out your plastic containers and replace with glass. Add 1-2 more servings of produce a day. Take 1-2 hours a week to food prep so that you have more ready access to healthy food over the course of the week. Recycle. Use a re-usable shopping bag. Stop using toxic cleaners. Plant native plants and reduce your irrigation. Plant something edible in your yard.

Now onto your family landscape, whatever size or shape that may take. Put down your phone or tablet and talk to each other. Read to your kids. Call your parents. Write a card to a relative you haven't seen in a while. Turn on some music and have a dance party. Play board games instead of electronic ones with your family. Talk about your feelings. Listen to each other. Go on a bike ride or hike together. Say “I love you” more often. Give daily hugs. Pray or meditate together. Cook and eat food together and help each other out with chores. Be on the same team.

Next move to your community level. What are some ways you could be of service and help create positive change? Is it volunteering to drive for Meals on Wheels? How about writing letters to housebound seniors? Advocating for foster kids? Fundraising for your schools? Organizing river cleanups? Helping teens write resumes? Planting a community garden? Volunteering on a non-profit board? Running for office? There are so many ways to pitch in. Volunteering also doubles as a great stress reliever and helps you forge new friendships. What are you waiting for?

A healthy democracy and society starts with the individual and works outwards from there. So regardless of who is in elected positions, who is in charge of your office? Are you acting from a state of consciousness or just making the motions through life? Being proactive rather than just reactive? It is like the difference between growing vibrant crops in beautiful rich soil that you improved over the years, or just top-dressing with some chemical fertilizer because your soils are depleted and now your plants are yellowing and weak. Creating a healthy foundation for change starts with you. This is what will create the healing we need. Start with a healthy mind, body, and soul and expand outwards, creating a virtuous cycle of positivity.

I keep hearing that 2020 couldn't get any worse. What about if we reframe that limiting belief to something altogether? What if 2020 is a gift, one that we just need to unwrap? That is not to say that many people are suffering, but many are suffering based on their own beliefs. They are being the jailor of their own minds. 2020 is a time of great change, a great pause to evaluate the unconscious ways most of us were going about our lives, treating each other, and the earth. This is our year to wake up, to see things differently, to reconnect with that which is most important, and to reaffirm our values. This is our great awakening.

With gratitude,

-Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

06:00 PM CST

Curious about how the pandemic is affecting farmers? We were too.

The pandemic has affected all of us -- producers, consumers, humans trying to get through 2020. Of course, we were and are particularly interested in how it was affecting producers and farmers. Thanks to hundreds of you who participated in our surveys (seriously, thank you!) and the incredible support and expertise from engineers at the Stanford Department of Management Science and Engineering, we were able to deepen our understanding of how the pandemic has affected markets, supply chain issues, and farmer needs.

Our hope and plan is that this deeper understanding will help LocalHarvest better serve the ongoing needs of farmers and other producers.

The link to the study is below; we want to say a huge thank you to Yunru Huang, who is is the lead author of this article and just graduated from Stanford with an MS in Management Science and Engineering (MS&E). Hannah Li, PhD student, Ramesh Johari, professor, and Irene Lo, assistant professor (all at Stanford MS&E) also assisted in conducting the survey and writing this article. We are super grateful to the whole team for generously giving their time and expertise to this project to support local agriculture.

To our health, -Susan Drury

Guillermo

07:00 PM CDT

Happy mid-summer! I wanted to focus this month's article on some of the creative ways that farmers' markets are changing up their models in order to comply with coronavirus safety protocols, while ensuring the provision of essential foods and keeping local farmers and vendors afloat. It is indeed trying times, but many out-of-the-box thinkers are rising to the occasion. In the following interviews I highlight two different markets in the Pacific Northwest: Hood River, Oregon where their outdoor farmers market is going strong in slightly different ways, and Boise, Idaho where their outdoor farmers market has turned into a robust drive-thru market.

First I spoke with Hannah Ladwig, the market manager of the Hood River Farmers Market, which is ran by the non-profit organization Gorge Grown Food Network. They have pared down their market to just foods (not craft vendors), spread them out considerably, and limit the number of shoppers that can be in the market area at any given time.

What sealed the deal in getting the City of Hood River to allow you to operate the outdoor farmers market this year?

The City of Hood River allowed us to open the outdoor season one month early this year (starting in April instead of May). Our indoor season at May Street Elementary was supposed to go through April. When COVID-19 began shutting everything down, we eagerly sought to open the outdoor season early.

Two items were key factors in allowing us to open: 1) Fortunately, Governor Kate Brown included farmers markets as an essential service early on, which emboldened the City to grant us permission to operate. In addition, we developed a robust safety plan to demonstrate to the City that we could hold a responsible market. To make our plan, we consulted Oregon Farmers Market Association, the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Oregon Health Authority, CDC and others. We are still continuously updating our operating procedures to reflect best practices.

At the beginning of the season, Gorge Grown was selling most of the vegetables from their truck before the farmers had enough to stock a table. That was a unique concept that appears to be a win-win for consumers and for the farmers. Was that hard to execute? Do you think other small farmers markets could do something similar?

We opened the outdoor season one month early and farmers weren't going to be ready with fresh produce until late April or early May so we continued to have the Gorge Grown Mobile Market booth for the first month. It benefited our local farmers who had some, but not enough product to justify a booth at market yet.

It is a challenge to execute and takes a lot of coordination between the farmers and our staff. It can also require significant infrastructure like our refrigerated Sprinter van, cold storage, etc. We do use the Mobile Farmers Market to help prop up smaller markets- going in as an anchor vendor to help build demand and then pull out when a farmer is able to take our space. This year, we are supporting the White Salmon Farmers Market this way.

Are there any bright spots or positives that have come out of this new way of running the farmers market?

There are a lot of bright spots in running the market during this tough time- lots of gratitude from our vendors and customers. Our sales are nearly on track with last year despite having less vendors (no craft makers or artists right now). Our SNAP Match program use has increased by nearly 200%. With this program we give SNAP customers (formerly food stamps) shoppers an extra $10 free to spend at the market. Some customers have said that they like shopping at the market even more now that we've streamlined our operations- we've placed vendors with similar items (produce, meat, value added) in the same aisles, not spread out throughout.

What tips would you give other farmers market managers who want to create a similar "COVID-cautious" market?

Start small- We started the market with 14 vendors and averaged about 300 customers, now we are up to 30 vendors and 750 customers (our normal capacity is 45 vendors, 1,000 customers). Starting small allowed us to train or staff, volunteers, vendors and customers on our new operations.

Consult those who have done it- I learned a lot from Oregon Farmers Market Association who helped to compile best practices of other markets from around the state. I took those recommendations and wrote a plan that I thought would work best for our community and farmers market.

Communicate- it took a lot of staff time early on to communicate our rational for opening and our safety plan. As things change, we continue to share clear communication with our customers and vendors.

Be nimble- especially early on, conditions were changing constantly. Being flexible and using good judgement have allowed our season to continue successfully.

Next up is an interview with Tamara Cameron, Market Manager of the Boise Farmers Markets, who have switched their market to a drive-thru concept.

Was the drive-thru farmers market created in response to COVID impacts to regular marketing venues?

Yes. We were planning to open in our regular fashion and pivoted when Treefort, our large music festival, cancelled their event. At first we thought we would do a fenced market with limited entry, then, when the stay at home order was issued, we decided on the Boise Farmers Market Drive-Thru concept. It took three weeks to put it together and get it approved. We opened one week late on April 11. The concept that works was our 3rd try. We continue to innovate each week, although the improvements are tweeks now rather than overhauls.

How does it work exactly, and how has the reception been to the concept?

Customers reserve a pickup time, then order from our online store on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for Saturday pickup. We offer around 800 pickup windows through Eventbrite - 50 spots are available every 15 minutes from 8:30am to 12:45pm. Customers arrive at their pickup time and we put their groceries either in their trunk or on a table outside their car so they can put them in their vehicle.

We have ~80 people, mostly volunteers, putting together orders by time and we try to stay 30 minutes ahead all day. We have our vendors organized into "stores". Here is a video that gives a good representation of the project (it is a tear jerker, so inspiring!)

We take SNAP/EBT and have a Double Up Food Bucks match that is provided by the City of Boise. We handle those transactions on-site.

Are there any bright spots or positives that have come out of this new way of marketing? Such as attracting new customers, improving accessibility for disabled customers, reducing costs for farmers, etc?

Yes. We have found new customers! People who don't like walking around the farmers market but want to eat local love the BFM Drive-Thru. And, right now our loyal customers are happy to be able to get local food and support our farmers, ranchers and producers. The drive-thru is convenient and fast and shopping in advance of pickup makes meal planning much easier.

What tips would you give other market managers who want to create something similar?

Ours is a fairly complicated and labor-intensive system. And it works. So, I am happy to advise anyone who wants to run their market this way. I have a bunch of resources that I can offer as well as advice by phone. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. Sounds like a sales pitch, but, seriously. We have learned a lot and are happy to share. No cost, of course!

A hearty thank you to both Hannah and Tamara for sharing their wisdom and creative problem solving with our community. It is efforts like theirs that keep local food systems strong and allow our communities to be fed with fresh, healthy foods. What could you try in your communities to launch a new farmers' market or pivot an existing one to thrive during these changing times?

To our health, -Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

07:00 PM CDT

Our food system is having a moment in the spotlight. The media and the average American consumer is taking notice, for once, of the numerous weaknesses and paradoxes of a food system designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of worker health, public health, food security, animal welfare, ecological and economic resilience. Even Tyson Foods took out a full page ad in the NY Times to point out the fact that our food supply is teetering at the edge of an abyss, but they failed to mention that it is precisely their model that pushed us there. Their extractive, unsustainable, "too big to fail" model, and others like it, are being laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic. It is only through struggles like this that we take notice, we innovate and build better models, and we demand change. If anything can give you hope right now, it is that there has never been a time in the last 40 or so years when small and independent farmers and ranchers have seen this kind of uptick in business. This is our moment.

But first, we need to talk a bit about how we got here and why our predominant food system model is built to fail. How do we have a system in which so many people are going hungry right now, yet millions of animals are being euthanized, milk dumped on the ground, and produce tilled into the ground or left unpicked? It is because we have let our system become weakened to the point of collapse. Through extreme consolidation, vertical integration, specialization, and the relentless pursuit of quantity over quality, we are left with a system that both cannot feed us nor sustain itself during environmental or economic disasters. We got a taste of that last year when a fire wiped out a single Tyson beef plant, reducing beef slaughter capacity by 6% and sending prices to beef farmers and feedlots plummeting. Now we have a similar situation, with several dozen enormous slaughter plants being off line for weeks on end, leaving gaps in the meat supply and financial ruin for way too many producers (especially contract farmers). Then taxpayers pick up the bill and bailout the big companies, while their shareholders reap the benefits (for example: JBS, the largest meat packer in the world, received ¼ of all pork bailout funds in 2019). Taxpayers also pick up the bill for any environmental pollution or get to pay for the health care of the sick employees who receive no health care from their employers. The provision of public health and food security has been largely sold off to private industry to profit from, and still the taxpayers always foot the bill. Says retired agricultural economist John Ikerd, "Ultimately we must accept health care and food security as basic human rights and develop government policies that give these rights priority over corporate profits or economic efficiency of government agencies. Only then will we have systems with the built-in redundancy and resilience to endure the inevitable shocks and disturbances of future reality."

Mr. Ikerd goes on in a recent blog post, "Once again, however, the people are been asked to bear the economic costs of a failed food system through government assistance to those all levels in the systems—farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers. Once again, the people are enduring the inevitable hunger and deprivation of a failed food system. Actions thus far have been engineering attempts to stabilize the current food system by simply mitigating its obvious lack of built-in resilience. Little apparent thought or consideration has been given to the need to create systemic resilience by fundamentally changing or redesigning the food system as a whole. There will be other pandemic and other global disruptions of the food system in the future—of this, there is no doubt."

Heartland writers and academics, such as Wendell Berry and John Ikerd, have been talking about this for decades, that rural America is essentially a colonized nation within a nation. We extract all of our necessary resources from it- food, timber, fossil fuels, wind energy, etc., and in return it gets paid less then it costs to produce those things, little by way of social services or educational opportunities, and gets to absorb all of the environmental costs and social ruin. Now add to that disproportionately higher rates of coronavirus infections, particularly amongst farm and food workers, many who have no health insurance. For example, in the state of South Dakota, around 50% of all coronavirus infections there have come from large-scale meat processing plants. In Iowa, one Tyson meatpacking plant in Waterloo had nearly 1/3rd of their 3,000 employees test positive for coronavirus. Yet, it's not just meat processing. In Arizona, farming communities such as Yuma and the Navajo Nation, see much higher rates of infection than the elderly snowbird communities that Arizona is known for. Lack of health care facilities, high rates of poverty, language barriers, and higher than normal rates of chronic disease also underpin those elevated infection rates, but they are all slices of the same colonized rural America pie.

In any ecological community, diversity within species and among species is one of the most critical factors in how quickly that community bounces back after a disturbance, such as wildfire or hurricane. The very same can be said for economic systems and food systems. Diversity of scales, production techniques, business types and ownership models, and market outlets make those systems more resilient. When one business closes up, many more can take its place. There are built-in redundancies and competition helps keep prices both fair and realistic. For example, in my little community, we can procure food from a small mom & pop grocery store, from a once a week farmers market, from a couple CSA farms, or farms that sell direct from the farm. I can also order grocers to be delivered or shipped by common carrier from a wide range of farms in my region and across the country or drive to the nearest full-service grocery store. There are multiple options, scales, diverse growing systems, and many built in redundancies to procure food. I will not go hungry. To top it off, we have an emergency food supply at a network of food banks and rural pantries, many who are now buying fresh produce, nuts, grains, eggs, and meat from farmers within the state. Now contrast that with a food desert community, could be urban or rural, that perhaps just has a mini-mart or Dollar General in which to purchase their groceries. With limited or no internet, online orders are not possible either in many of these places. Not only are those single-entity systems incredibly risky, they also mostly peddle in junk food that sickens their local community.

The alternatives to the large-scale consolidated food model already exist (LocalHarvest being a huge one), and many of them are being strengthened or coming back into popularity during this pandemic. CSA farms are a perfect example. Many are reporting record increases in subscriptions and some are completely sold out for the year. Personally, I just joined a CSA for the very first time so I can make less trips to the grocery store and get a wide assortment of organic produce grown in the region by multiple farms. More farmers and ranchers are working together too, to build larger multi-farm CSAs, delivery routes, or online stores. Some restaurants are pivoting to cook food for food banks, or they are shifting into cutting meat for farmers and setting up pop-up butcher shops or mini grocery stores. The quick and creative thinking that is sprouting up all over gives me great hope. Let's capture this momentum and rebuild our food system from the ground up with the values we hold dear. Let's build a food system that is delicious, resilient, and equitable for all.

To our health, -Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

07:00 PM CDT

Editor’s Note: We thought you could use some interesting food for thought that isn’t about the coronavirus pandemic, thus the feature article below is about the growth of the Regenerative Agriculture label. However, we wanted to express our deepest sympathies to those who may have lost loved ones, whose businesses may have been shattered, and whose families may be experiencing significant hardships. We also wanted to express deep appreciation to the farmers, ranchers, processors, distributors, retailers, grocery clerks, truckers, farmworkers, and everyone in the food chain that are working long hours to ensure a safe flow of food to hungry consumers. The LocalHarvest team has also been working long hours to assist CSA farmers in onboarding new customers and expanding their delivery services. We are heartened by the growing interest in local and regional food systems and plan to be here for the long haul to strengthen those systems.

Can Agriculture be Regenerative?

There is a new word in town that is being used on all sorts of agricultural products and foods. You have probably seen the adjective and verb “regenerative” by now, perhaps you even use it to describe the food you grow. But what exactly does it mean?

Let’s start by looking at the simple dictionary definition of regenerate: to restore to a better, higher, or more worthy state; to restore to original strength or properties. So when using this word to describe an agricultural system, the intent would be to restore the natural resources and ecosystem functions in some ways so that the system can continue in a better state.

There are a number of similar terms, such as carbon farming, agroecology, conservation agriculture, holistic farm management, holistic planned grazing, ecological farming, and biological farming. Not too distant are sustainable agriculture and organic agriculture. Some of the key organizations that are working to define the term or at least its core tenets include Regeneration International, The Carbon Underground, Rodale Institute, and the Savory Institute.

From Regeneration International- regenerative agriculture describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity–resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle. Other definitions don’t necessarily promise to reverse climate change (a huge promise to be sure), but they certainly focus on carbon sequestration and improving soil health. This definition has particular appeal to me: Regenerative agriculture is marked by tendencies towards closed nutrient loops, greater diversity in the biological community, fewer annuals and more perennials, and greater reliance on internal rather than external resources (aka inputs). Interestingly, when I was in graduate school 20 years ago, that is what we called “agroecology”. I don’t think that term ever gained broad appeal beyond the academic realm. So regenerative it is.

The key goals for regenerative agriculture include:

1. Soil: Contribute to building soils along with soil fertility and health.

2. Water: Increase water percolation, water retention, and clean and safe water runoff.

3. Biodiversity: Enhance and conserve biodiversity.

4. Ecosystem health: Capacity for self-renewal and resiliency.

5. Carbon: Sequester carbon.

Certain definitions exclude the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, while others embrace the judicious use, sort of akin to an integrated-pest-management (IPM) approach where they are used as last resort. Some organizations like the Rodale Institute have paired regenerative agriculture with organic certification, embracing the idea of ‘beyond organic’. Their new Regenerative Organic Certification uses organic standards as the baseline and goes above and beyond by requiring improved soil health practices, animal welfare, and social equity.

The Savory Institute has gone about this in a different way- instead of verifying practices, they are verifying the outcomes of those practices and expect to see continuous improvement (called Ecological Outcome Verified, or EOV). That just may generate the kind of data needed for scientists to actually study the benefits of regenerative agriculture. Thus far, there has been a paucity of scientific studies due in large part to the wide variability between farms and ranches and the suite of practices they use.

With the lack of consensus on a definition, there is the risk that the word regenerative will be used on foods that are grown in ways that differ little from the norm. An article I read recently said all legumes were regenerative simply because they sequester nitrogen from the air and thus don’t need nitrogen fertilization. But if they are grown with frequent tillage, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, that system is hardly restorative or more biologically-based than any other annual field crop. Without standards and third-party verification, the regenerative claim may be little more than greenwashing. Some farmers roll their eyes at more certification, not wanting to maintain the records or pay the fees. Other farmers see it as essential to protect the meaning of the word and be transparent in the marketplace. Like all label claims that have come before it, big business latches on and takes advantage immediately.

What about the science? Does any of it show these farming systems to be superior and to live up to their goals in any meaningful way?

One much-cited estimate of potential soil sequestration published to date suggests that if regenerative practices were used on all of the world’s croplands and pastures forever, the soil may be able to sequester up to 322 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. But coming up with forever models is fraught with issues and based on all sorts of assumptions that may not exist in 10 or 100 years. Other science has shown that yes, our agricultural soils can absorb a considerable amount of carbon, up to a point. Then they hit a sort of steady-state mode where more carbon cannot be absorbed. And as soon as a future farmer decides to go back to tillage, fertilization, etc. those carbon gains can be undone.

As University of Washington geologist David Montgomery put it: “Putting more carbon in the soil will buy us some time. But if we continue to burn fossil fuels at the rate we are, once we fill up the soil with the carbon, all we have done is delay things a bit.” Of course, there are other benefits to adding carbon to the soil and following the other practices of regeneration. One of the few studies I could find showed profitability rose as soil organic matter increased. There was also a 10-fold decrease in insect pests in the regenerative corn fields over the conventional ones, saving the farmers input costs and decreasing the environmental burden of pesticides. Interesting results, to be sure, but many more paired experiments are needed.

There is no neat conclusion to this story, more of an opening for inquiry. What do you think of the regenerative agricultural concept? Are you using the word to describe your practices or the foods you grow? What does it mean to you?

As always, stay healthy and stay kind. -Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

07:00 PM CDT

It was not long ago that I loathed cooking and rarely sat down with my family for a home cooked meal. That is hard for me to admit since I consider myself a foodie and have worked in agriculture for 22 years now. I am here to come clean. Perfection has never been my strong suit anyways.

Ever since I left my family home at age 17 for college, my eating has been mostly mindless and on the go. My parents, brother, and myself ate dinner together, but the TV was always on in the background and talking was either terse or non existent. Food generally came from a can or a box or the grocery store deli, and microwave rays generally did the cooking.

Later when I was married for 13 years, meals were commonly the "fend for yourself" kind (a comical term my mom introduced to me when she would lay out a bunch of deli meats, cheeses, and breads for dinner). I would cook up a few things and lay them out on the counter for others to build their own plates and eat when or where they wanted. One or two nights a week of dining as a family was about all we managed. Breakfast and lunch were never as a group, as everyone got up at different hours, ate different things, and was moving in opposite directions. Twenty-five years of mindless eating had taken its toll on me and my family bonds.

Some of the personal repercussions of mindless eating manifested in a little excess weight around the belly and low energy. Eating late night snacks or grazing throughout the day. Eating in the car or at my desk while working. I thought my diet was "healthy-ish", being that I was an organic farmer for many years. But when I look back on it, I was mainly a "breaditarian" with a side of vegetables and meat. Muffins, scones, bread, crackers, tortillas, chips, bagels, pasta made up a large part of my diet, mainly because I could eat them while moving and they didn't require much or any cooking. They say, how you do one thing is how you do everything. My whole life was a moving blur, including eating- I literally can't even remember my 30s because I never stopped moving/doing/hustling.

A big shift has happened for me in the last two years and it has been a huge awakening to how I approach eating. It's ironic that as I have pestered friends and family for years to eat better, the the person doing the pestering (me) was just shoving food into my mouth unconsciously for years. My awakening started when I got a divorce and for the first time in over a decade, I was in complete control of what foods were brought into the house. My first hurdle was getting over my bread and processed carb addiction. I just stopped buying it, much to my children's chagrin. For awhile, there was no bread in the house. Once I got over that craving, I started buying bread again for my kids, but now I have no urge to eat it. Next up was alcohol. The last few years of my unhappy marriage led me to drink a little too much wine. The whole "overwhelmed mommy wine habit" needed to stop (don't get me started on how much they market alcohol to moms, it's abhorrent). No more alcohol in the house, period. Sugar was next. I first cut out table sugar, then honey and maple syrup, and all processed foods with added sugar. I now use a monkfruit or stevia substitute in recipes if it calls for sugar. I have even convinced my teenage daughter to use all natural sugar substitutes in her baking experiments. Now with processed carbs, alcohol, and sugar out of my diet (mostly, I am not perfect), I started to focus on when I eat. That is when I introduced daily intermittent fasting, which for me was the silver bullet to lose that last bit of stubborn baby weight from my last kiddo in 2015. It took a good 6 weeks to get used to it, but I now am not hungry in the morning and don't eat until noon. That gives my body a full 16 hours of fasting overnight to fully digest, reduce inflammation, repair cells, and lower blood sugar and insulin levels. I don't need to eat as much to feel full and I no longer get panicky "hangry" emotions when I go without food for long stretches. By changing the timing of when you eat to be more intuitive, rather than on a set clock schedule or when your kids eat, you change your whole relationship to food. You eat when you are actually hungry and stop when you are close to full but not over full. You eat to live, rather than live to eat. You fuel your body like the exquisite machine that it is.

I just started reading a fantastic book about mindful eating (Eating Mindfully, 2nd edition, by Susan Albers). It posits that by simply being mindful about what, when, and how much we eat, we would never have to go on a diet again. We would lose the excess weight our bodies don't want to carry and along with that the guilt and shame that plagues so many of us. We would create a positive relationship with food and use it to nourish our exquisite machines, rather than to punish or use food as a crutch for difficult emotions. I believe that is what has happened to me over the last couple years. I now reach for the healthiest foods that give my body energy and don't feel deprived when opting out of the junk food. If I want to eat pizza once a month, I will do it. But the majority of the time what I want is a giant colorful salad with shredded pork, avocado, and olive oil drizzled on top. Or eggs scrambled with a couple cups of baby kale or arugula, then served with feta cheese, avocado, and fermented veggies on the side. That is my new normal now, and it feels delicious, satiating, and life giving to me. It's time to treat my body like the miraculous temple that it is and be mindful of the things I put into it.

As I have made these dietary changes to what and when I eat, I have also made a commitment to eat dinner with my kids together as often as possible. I try to protect a couple nights a week from meetings or other obligations so that I can be with my kids and sit together over a nutritious, balanced, and tasty meal that they often help prepare. My cooking skills are still a work in progress and my daughter still hounds me that I don't use enough salt and other spices, but I am getting better. I enjoy the process of cooking now- it's a meditative break for me. I love looking at the colors and textures of the ingredients, smelling the smells, watching things bubble and brown. I am enjoying the process of cooking, not just the destination.

How can you be more mindful about your eating? Do you dread cooking, or do you look forward to it? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

In good health, -Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

06:00 PM CST

I am pleased to congratulate the LocalHarvest team on their 20-year anniversary by interviewing the founder, Guillermo Payet for this month's article. I have been just a small periphery player in this two-decade effort, but am grateful for the opportunity to make a small contribution through researching and writing for LocalHarvest about food and agricultural issues. Below is an abbreviated version of our conversation.

Guillermo, can you tell me what sparked the idea to create the LocalHarvest website? I ran a small software company in the late 1990's, and we sometimes had free time between projects. Instead of being idle, I decided to use that time to build a “community service” project. We discussed the idea internally, and eventually decided on building something to support family farms serving their local communities. We kickstarted this by meeting with about a dozen farmers from Santa Cruz County, CA. The main theme coming out of that meeting was the need for promoting their nascent Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs to the general public. I decided then to build a nationwide directory of family farms, farmers' markets, and CSAs.

Was it just you, or were there other people that played a key role in the first few years of the site?

Erin Barnett was instrumental in running the project during the first couple of years, and later came back to run operations in the mid-2010's. Harlan Glatt built much of the first implementation, Berni Jubb was an invaluable advisor and cheerleader, and Reggie Knox, then of Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), was my introduction into the world of US family farms. We've had a few other people who have been essential to making us who we are, some of whom are still working with us. Angel Dobrow and Kerry Glendening being prime examples.

What has changed in the local & regional food scene since you started LH?

The main challenge, from my point of view, is that in the last 10 years "local food" has gone mainstream, and with that, there's been relentless competition from extremely well funded players who only care about profit maximization. I'm referring to competition both to small farms, and to online services like LocalHarvest. It's really incredible that at a time when demand for local food is at an all time high (see graph below), many CSAs nationwide are closing, and most diversified family farms are struggling. We've written about this in previous newsletters. The continuing dilution of Organic standards has been another unwelcome trend. On the other hand, the public is much more aware now of the importance of eating healthy food and supporting their local economies.

What issues related to food & farming keep you up at night?

One question I'd like to have more time to research is the effect of a changing climate on small and diversified farms. My hunch is that diversification brings resilience in front of the mounting uncertainty in growing conditions. Will this result in small farms becoming more competitive, or will the added climate stressors be just too much for too many of them? Unfortunately I spend too much of my time writing and maintaining software these days to think about or model these issues as much as I'd like.

What are you optimistic about?

We've been around for 20 years, our directory is very popular, and our CSA management software is used by a large and growing number of farms. We love our work and feel great to be making a positive difference in the world by facilitating a food system based on an ecology of small and local businesses. I highly value the fact that my two kids see me make a living from work that's creative and meaningful. I am looking forward to another 20 years.

Speaking of the future, what is the future of LocalHarvest looking out 5 or 10 years from now?

For many years, our engineering focus has been on the CSAware side of things. We'd like to have the resources to do a full rewrite of LocalHarvest.org into a new system built on modern standards. The basic structure and some of the core software of LocalHarvest.org is 20 years old and could use an upgrade. CSAware, on the other hand, has always stayed in front of the wave and will continue to evolve following the needs of the market.

How can farmers/ranchers cope and innovate to stay ahead of the local food curve and stay relevant (& in business)?

Keep the focus on community and authenticity. Yes, most eaters are spoiled and care mainly about convenience, so by all means provide it, but being “real” is what distinguishes us from the corporate competition with a thin veneer of fake “farminess” that's been taking away such a huge slice of the local food market that small and diversified farms created.

Added Angel Dobrow, a long-time LocalHarvest employee and CSAware account manager:

“I might add the 'fun' part of incorporating technology, and the optimism of small and new farmers to access the tools of big corporations for their own purposes. I feel sometimes that we are dodging bullets but also as we are so much closer to the ground we can be more flexible with what we create and deliver. Software development is all about learning and incorporating new ideas and methods. Kind of like resilience farming.”

The LocalHarvest team is currently exploring ways to add more value to the website and the enormous community that we have created. In addition to renovating the website, we are considering adding some educational tools and offerings such as online short courses, workshops, publications, and more. We would love to hear from you. As a producer, consumer, market manager, or other stakeholder, what are some ways that LocalHarvest could serve you better? Drop a line to Rebecca at rebeccathistlethwaite@gmail.com if you have ideas, or post them in the comment section below.

Twenty years is a long time in the online space, where businesses come and go as quickly as the moon cycle. Let's give a big virtual pat on the back to Guillermo, Angel, and all the current and previous rockstar employees, consultants, and advisors who have built and grown the LocalHarvest community. We thank you.

With gratitude, -Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

06:00 PM CST

The landscape of agriculture and food is changing rapidly these days. In my daily news feed are articles about robots, cell-cultured foods, drone delivery, driverless trucking, climate instability, and more somber topics. Change is happening at a dizzying pace, so much so that sometimes I feel like going full ostrich and putting my head into a hole in the ground to block out the noise. But then I take an expanded view, recognizing the long arc of planetary and human history, and take some deep breaths. I don't have to sanction all the changes, nor invest my dollars into them. I can keep directing my mental energy and my food dollars towards farmers and efforts that are congruent with my values and are building the kind of world I want to leave for my children and grandchildren. I want to fight for what I believe in, rather than against what I don't. Long-term efforts like LocalHarvest are what I believe in. Do you know that we are just finishing our 20th year helping consumers and farmers connect over good food?

The last two years have been a 180 degree transformation for me. I used to largely focus on the negative and play the victim. External events would darken my moods. I often felt wanting for more, I never was satisfied. Through a lot of self-improvement activities and habits, I see life completely different now. I find that taking stock of what I am grateful for makes me both hopeful and motivated for more positive change. I find that what you appreciate, appreciates. I am aware there are many indicators that our food and farming systems are flawed, maybe even broken. But there are always hopeful signs.

My local farmers markets operated by Gorge Grown Food Network pumped over $600,000 into the local economy and supported 82 family farmers, food producers, and small business owners in 2019. For a largely rural area (the Columbia River Gorge), those numbers are incredible. The multiplier effect probably exceeds over a $1 million dollars. Our local Native American tribes are organizing to call for the removal of a couple key dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers that are decimating native salmon stocks. They are organizing for change. A new pig producer and charcuterie maker in the Hood River Valley just obtained their USDA certification so they can now scale up and start wholesaling their yummy porky treats to a larger audience. The need at our local food bank has increased, but our local farmers and gleaners have also stepped up to add tens of thousands of pounds of fresh produce to the Food Bank shelves and help folks in the region eat more produce. My state of Oregon just passed a bill to increase the amount of money for farm to school efforts and help cafeterias serve more local and regionally-grown foods. Individually, these data points are fantastic, collectively they are remarkable. They illustrate the power of ideas and collective action. We can achieve more together than we can alone.

What are some data points, both qualitative and quantitative, that give you signs of hope? What are you doing in your personal and collective worlds to build a more helpful food system? Here are some ideas I have for you, going from small steps to large:

• Eat more fresh produce daily. I know- easier said than done. How about adding one more serving to each of your meals or swapping out a snack for a fruits/veggies instead?
• Start a mini-garden. Just a pot or a single raised bed will grow an incredible amount of fresh produce.
• Halt food waste in your own home. Save your meat bones and vegetable scraps in the freezer and then every so often make a pot of stock/broth. Freeze the stock for future soups, stews, and other recipes.
• Support those farmers markets & farmstands. Try to visit a local farmers market at least once a month. If you already do that, can you visit one more time a month?
• Buy Fair Trade. Look for certified fair trade symbol on any imported or tropical foods you enjoy- coffee, chocolate, coconut oil, bananas, avocados, etc.
• Buy in Bulk. Consider going in on a whole animal with a few other families. It doesn't have to be a huge purchase nor does it have to take up an entire extra freezer. I buy just 40 lbs of grassfed ground beef once a year on a cow that some friends go in on.
• Change the school food environment. If your local school has a garden, volunteer to help with it. Or if your local school has a salad bar or scratch kitchen, do they need kitchen volunteers to help prep all the ingredients?
• Cultivate hearts and minds. If you are a farmer/rancher, invite out your local elementary school or middle school science class for a farm tour. People will better support local agriculture if they have a personal connection to it.
• From field waste to food pantry. Participate in a gleaning project to help divert waste produce into our food banks where it is exceptionally needed.
• Farmland protection. Advocate for your city, county, or state to do a better job protecting farmland so that it will be available for future generations to grow food.
• Policy and politics (oh my). Finally, support political candidates who talk about food and our agricultural policy and who are willing to listen to diverse stakeholders.

As Andrew Carnegie said- "Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."

Let's drive uncommon results together. Start small, collaborate with others, and let's create the food system we all want and deserve. You all give me hope.

With gratitude, -Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

06:00 PM CST

Hello eaters- I am back and super excited to write for LocalHarvest once again! You can support the vital work of LocalHarvest by buying from your local farmers, advertising on the LH platform, and if you are a farmer, subscribing to our CSA software, CSAware.

Twenty years ago I read a book called The Bitter Fruit: The Story of an American Coup in Guatemala. Written in 1982 by two veteran journalists, the book detailed the unsavory CIA operation designed to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in the country of Guatemala, circa 1954. The United Fruit Company, whose highly profitable business had been affected by President Arbenz's end to exploitative labor practices and land reform for landless workers, engaged in an influential lobbying campaign to persuade the U.S. to overthrow the Guatemalan government. I read the book in Spanish (Fruta Amarga: La CIA en Guatemala) while I was conducting research in the ravaged Guatemalan highlands where decades of civil war had preceded my arrival. Bananas were the fruit that precipitated the 1954 coup in Guatemala, while avocados could be the fuel for another type of war in 21st century south-central Mexico.

I had heard snippets of news that rival gangs and paramilitary groups in Mexico were trying to control and profit off the explosive growth of the avocado business. But it wasn't until I watched the Netflix series Rotten, that the "avocado war" really came into focus for me. The avocado's rise from culinary fad to a must-have superfood has made it a multi-billion dollar crop - and a magnet for money-hungry cartels. In the year 2000, Americans ate around 2.2 lbs of avocados per capita, now it is over 7 lbs a person, and the worldwide demand keeps growing as the keto diet grows in popularity and people look to adding more healthy fats to their diets.

Before the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), most of the avocados consumed in the US were homegrown in California. Now, around 80% of the avocados we consume are imported, and mostly from the Mexican state of Michoacán, according to the US Department of Agriculture. As drug cartels and gangs began to see the profit potential of this lucrative fruit, they started to require that local farmers pay them "patronage" or "protection" fees, or in some cases the cartels bought up the farms, packhouses, and other companies in the avocado supply chain in order to extract as much profit and control as possible. Sort of a new spin on vertical integration. It is estimated by one non-profit media group that around 48 tons of avocados are stolen EVERY day of harvest in Michoacán. Kidnappings, heinous murders, and other nefarious activities now malign this industry, with many small farmers caught in the cross hairs. The more you learn about this, the worse it looks.

As if supporting drug cartels wasn't enough, avocados also use an incredibly large volume of water. The Rotten documentary goes into this at length for avocados grown in Chile, but also California too. Luckily, newer drip systems and remote sensing technologies can reduce water use considerably, with many innovative growers trying them out. But worldwide data on the major avocado growing regions shows that avocados are the 3rd or 4th most water hungry crop behind asparagus, alfalfa, and almonds. It takes around 74 gallons to produce one pound of avocados (which is around two medium-sized fruits).

Yet, as many of us know, avocados are incredibly nutrient-dense, taste amazing, and are featured in a wide range of dishes. From traditional guacamole to egg dishes to even deserts, this superfood is also super versatile. They are high in vitamins like B, C, E, and K, fiber, potassium, and monounsaturated fatty acids. What is a conscious consumer like you to do?

Step 1: Buy US grown- California, Florida, and Hawaii when in season (generally March-September). Here is a list to start with of LocalHarvest avocado growers.

Step 2: Look for certified FairTrade and organic stickers on imported avocados the rest of the year (generally October-April), such as through Equal Exchange.

Step 3: Look to other foods to supply you those vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats so you don't feel the need to eat avocados every day. Sunflowers seeds, cabbage, olives, lamb, pasture-raised pork lard or grassfed beef tallow. Pureed beans with garlic also provide a nice alternative spread for chips, so you can pass on inhaling the guacamole. I know, easier said than done:)

To your health, -Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

06:00 PM CST

Ever since I finally learned how to properly cook fresh vegetables (which I hate to admit did not happen until I turned about 28 years old), I have been fond of leafy greens of all kinds. Kale, chard, spinach, mustards, collards, etc. I did not grow up with greens as part of my diet, except the very rare occasion my mom would nuke some frozen spinach topped with some sort of processed cheese product in the microwave. It generally did not go over well with my brother and I, and I probably took very few bites of it. But once I became a gardener myself and started regularly attending farmers markets, greens became a way of life. At the end of market days, I would often drive away with a full box of leftover greens that other farmers would give me.

There are a lot of reasons to like greens from a gardeners perspective: relatively pest resistant (a few exceptions include aphids, flea beetles, and snails), tolerate a wide range of temperatures especially on the low end, some are biennials or even perennials meaning they will continue growing over multiple years, can regenerate after cutting them (called "cut and come again"), don't require copious water, and many are aesthetically pleasing and can add color to your garden (such as rainbow chard or purple kale). Growing them from seed is easy- check out this guide here.

There are a lot of reasons to like greens from an eaters perspective too: high in micronutrients, anti-oxidants, fiber, low calorie, and zero carbs. They are versatile and can go in every meal, even desserts (not so strange, I swear) and are generally affordable and readily available in many parts of the country. I have included 6 Kale-centric recipes below. I have tested each of them and they are delicious. Kale in particular is high in potassium, Vitamin B6, C & K, calcium, iron, and fiber. It is truly a superfood and should be added to your diet. See this website for all about cooking different greens.

So go ahead- get your kale on! A collection of great kale recipes awaits you at the end of this newsletter.

Kindly,
-Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

07:00 PM CDT

Last month I wrote about how many CSA farms and other direct-to-consumer farms are struggling with the increasingly fickle consumer and the growing competition of online food sales. Taking our plethora of diverse food choices for granted has become the norm. No matter how many times you may suggest that people be grateful for their food and loyal to their local farmers, that message is just not going to go very far. People are mostly motivated by sensory perceptions, perceived "healthiness", convenience and price with regards to their food purchases.

How can farmers or regional groupings of producers compete in that increasingly online, disconnected world? There is no shortage of ideas and functioning models to draw from, but here are some compelling ideas that I have found that are spins on the traditional CSA (which I still adore).

Selection and Diversity

A CSA Farm could mimic the selection and diversity of produce and pantry items that a regular grocery store or online retailer offers. But instead of buying produce from all over the country or globe, they can stick to growing some or all of the produce they offer or buying from a selected group of producers in their region. This not only keeps the produce quality high, which CSA consumers expect, but also reduces food miles and keeps dollars circulating in a region. One example of this is Hood River Organic out of the Hood River Valley in Oregon. They have their own orchards, farm, and mushroom barns to supply a large percentage of their fresh produce. But they also work with a number of other producers in the Pacific Northwest, and pull in a little bit of tropical produce such as avocadoes, citrus, and bananas to provide diversity for their consumers. Another big difference of this model is that customers can select from a changing weekly list instead of receiving only what the farmer chooses for them. They can sign up for a single week or much longer, with a variety of sizes to choose from. Front door delivery is an option for an additional charge. And there is a wide selection of add-on items as well like coffee, condiments, dairy, eggs, and more. While I don't doubt that this model is complicated to manage behind the scenes, Hood River Organic is growing and expanding into different delivery regions such as Bend and Seattle.

Cooperation/Aggregation

Farmers working together is not a new concept. But raising animals to the same standards, aggregating and processing them together, and then shipping the finished meat in coolers around the country to consumer's front doors is new. Grass Roots Farmer's Cooperative, based in Arkansas, is a collection of around a dozen small family farms that raise livestock and poultry on pasture. No synthetic hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics are used. Producers all follow an extensive list of protocols and generally use the same breeds as well, that way meat quality stays consistent. Grass Roots has also partnered with a regional meat processor and opened up their own USDA inspected poultry plant to reduce costs and assure quality and consistency. Boxes are delivered once a month and orders auto-renew unless a customer changes their selection. Packaging is all recyclable or compostable. And every piece of meat has a label indicating what farm the animal was raised on. It is like getting the diversity and selection found at a meat market, while also knowing who raised the animal and how it was cared for.

Convenience and Flexibility

Many consumers like the idea of a CSA membership, but they don't want the commitment or the limitations on what they get. Consumers tend to want choice and they don't tend to vary much from their favorite fruits and vegetables. I know for myself, this is why I have never joined a CSA. Maybe I am a boring cook, but I eat tons of produce in my house. I just generally tends to fall on the same list of items with some seasonal variety. One traditional CSA farm in Nevada City, California was witnessing their CSA membership decline. However, they had a strong farmers market presence as well as a farmstand that had a loyal base of customers. Around 7 years ago Riverhill Farm ditched the weekly produce box subscription and instead went to more of a debit card model, which they call “Friend of the Farm” card. Available in different denominations, this pre-paid card acts just like a debit card, but customers get an additional 10% in value if they purchase it early enough in the season (so the $300 card becomes $330 in value, for example). This still allows the farmers to get important up-front capital to start off their season on good footing. Cardholders select whatever produce they want in whatever quantities they desire from the Riverhill farmers market booth or farmstand. They also can use it for select u-pick items on the farm and the occasional bulk sales offered to members. The flexibility and convenience of this model appeals to consumers, and also means the farmers don't have to build CSA boxes every week nor fret about what to put in the box.

Whatever the future may hold for independent family farmers and local food production, keep innovating and experimenting, learning from each other, and supporting your local producers.

Happy holidays,
-Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

06:00 PM CST

I have written about community-supported agriculture (CSAs) before and so have previous writers at LocalHarvest. CSA farming is truly at the core of what LocalHarvest does connecting consumers with farmers in a mutual relationship of reciprocity. But times are changing. Consumers have an ever broadening expanse of options to locate and purchase food- with the click of a button, pre-chopped, pre-cooked, delivered by bike, donkey (just kidding- seeing if you are reading), or soon by drones or driverless cars to their door.

Mainstay marketing outlets that have developed in the last 30 years for small and locally-oriented farmers, such as farmers markets and CSAs, have seen a nationwide decline in business in the last few years. There is a suite of probable factors, including the rise in online grocery sales, meal kit services, and more and more people eating out or getting by on snacks instead of actually cooking. I think a large part of it has to do with what I call the "Amazonification" of the food system. I used to call it the "Walmartification", but I now realize that brick and mortar stores are a less significant driver moving into the future. What are the definitions of these invented words? In essence, they are a concerted effort by behemoth global businesses to convince people to take their food for granted, to be fickle about everything, and to maintain no loyalty to anything other than having diverse choices at the lowest possible prices. The cheapest ingredients can flow in from wherever they want in the world and get to the consumer quickly. It is fast food on an immense scale under the illusion of ‘meeting consumer needs’. Add in a dash of feel good signage, word plays like "locally grown", pictures of unnamed farmers or their rough hands delicately cradling a strawberry, and you get a completely duped consumer who is further and further divorced from where food is grown while the negative externalities are felt elsewhere.

Memories become more distant of the days when kids grew up on farms or helped their grandparents on their farms. Or days when a whole family would go out and pick cherries together, and then pit and freeze them later. Or days when parents would load up their kids into a red wagon and take them to the farmers market for a couple hours of shopping and social connection. Or picking up the wooden crate of fresh weekly vegetables on the CSA farm that you have invested in while chatting with neighbors how to use rutabaga. We are moving more inward, ego-driven (it’s all about the "I"), disconnected from the land, the people growing the food, and each other. And the more we do that, the more walled off we feel, the more socially isolated, the more depressed, the worse we eat, and on and on with our list of cultural ailments that befall our "advanced" society. The number of minutes we spend on cooking is inversely proportional to the minutes we spend on our devices, to nobody’s benefit.

Fickle, unfaithful, convenience-seeking consumerism is described by Wendell Berry so eloquently here: "In this state of total consumerism – which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves – all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand." (pg. 85, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry). Can we ground the rootless in something that gives them a sense of place, that helps them establish roots in an ever faster paced world? Can being connected to a farm, a place, the soil, the people, provide that solace and sense?

Will farmers and small-scale food sellers be able to adapt to these new ways of buying and eating food without running themselves ragged, extinguishing their profit margins, or lowering their environmental values by using more plastic packaging or fossil fuels? Traditional marketing methods of farmers markets, farmstands, and CSAs will continue to be incredibly important and I don’t begrudge any farmers who stay on that course and creatively make it work for them. But I don’t believe that resisting change will get us anywhere. The tide is too strong- adapt or perish. Just do it with your values intact.

In part 2 of this series, I will share some promising models that farmers and groups of producers are using to not only compete but to thrive by adapting to new food marketing trends. They are building customer loyalty in new ways and gracefully adapting to the fickle ways of the consumer, while grounding them in something that is meaningful, transparent, and produces tasty food.

Guillermo

06:00 PM CST

A few Fridays ago I ended my workday early so I could take my daughter out for a few hours on the Hood River Fruit Loop. It was the last official day of summer before fall equinox and a bright, picture-perfect day with fluffy clouds and temperatures in the mid 70s.

The Hood River County Fruit Loop, located in northern Oregon along the Columbia River, is enormously popular, especially during fall fruit season. There are apples, pears, pumpkins, wine grapes, Italian plums, and a few other crops being harvested at this time. Tour busses and large groups descend upon this agricultural region en masse, especially on the weekends. So we snuck out on a Friday afternoon to get a taste without the huge crowds and limited parking. The Fruit Loop has 28 different members who have farm stands or tasting rooms open at different times of the year, some of them year-round. They band together to do group marketing and produce a colorful map that can be found all around the region. It is a model of cooperative agritourism, one that could easily be adopted in other agriculturally rich and beautiful regions of the country.

Continue Reading...

Guillermo

07:00 PM CDT

Map by InciWeb

Welcome back to the LocalHarvest Newsletter.

Although July 2018 was not the hottest on record- that unfortunate data belongs to July 2016, the wildfires this year have been record-busting. For many people suffering the effects, however, this summer's raging wildfires and blistering heat waves stand out as exemplars of the impacts that human-driven global warming are having worldwide. Across the western US, thousands of wildfires have burned more than 2 million acres since January, far above the average for the previous decade. In California, the active Medocino Complex fire is the largest in state recorded history. Three of the largest wildfires in California's history have occurred in the past 12 months. There are 114 large fire incidents burning in the West as I write this article (see updated map here). Millions of acres of farm and ranchland have burned this year from the Pacific coastline to the 100th meridian, which is the typical fire zone (although it is moving further east). But wildfires have popped up in the Southeast as well, where long-term drought has taken its toll. Over 2 million bushels of wheat was recently lost in a fire in my home county of Wasco and the neighboring Sherman county, Oregon. That is just a fraction of the wildfire losses this year, and the fire season is not over. Agricultural losses in the Texas Panhandle and Southern Great Plains last year topped $21 million dollars and over 1.4 million acres burned. It's going to be bad this year, any way you look at it.

Climate change is far from the only reason for these conflagrations in the West, although many of these factors are related. There is also the legacy of 100 years of fire suppression and fuels build-up, pest and disease outbreaks on a massive scale, shorter winters, less snowpack, drier soils and fuels, increased human development in or near wildlands, and human carelessness. According to a recent comprehensive study, 84% of all wildfires are directly ignited by humans. The past 3 decades of human-induced warming has dried out more fuel, doubling the amount of forest burned compared with that from natural climate variability alone (Science, 10 August 2018). What was once a 3-4 month long fire season has become year-round in many places such as California and the desert Southwest. Friends of mine who are wildland firefighters used to work the summers on fire and then take the winters off to go ski, surf, or work other jobs like carpentry. Now they are called up the majority of the year.

Farms and ranches lose trees, crops, and pasture to wildfire. They lose fences, outbuildings, houses, and animals. Many lose their lives trying to protect their livelihoods, despite the intense risks. They also burn up soil carbon, which can decrease productivity for several years into the future. Farms and ranches can work to "fireproof" their properties, to the extent possible. But dry weather, wind, and firestorms will resist even the best fireproofing efforts. With a long view, however, the most innovative, creative, and forward-thinking farms and ranches of this country and globally are focusing their efforts on creating more resilient agricultural ecosystems. This includes managing the adjacent wildlands as well through various methods. It turns out that these practices also make the farms more resistant to climate change and in many cases improve product quality and economic returns.

Some of the best practices to create fire and climate change resilient farms (these can be used on homesteads and homegardens as well):

• Encourage diversity (across space and time)
• Crop rotations, cover crops, reduce tillage
• Fertilizer management and precision agriculture
• Reduce food waste (and return to soil)
• Prevent erosion, reduce soil loss
• Adjust irrigation practices and upgrade equipment
• Dry farming/fallowing systems (without irrigation)
• Build soil organic matter/capture carbon
• Managed, rotational, multi-species grazing
• Agroforestry (shade, windbreaks, lumber, etc)
• Perennial agriculture (trees, berries, vines, perennial grasses, etc)
• Reduce fossil fuel use and practice energy conservation
• Draft animal power and alternative energy sources
• Fuels management, selective thinning, and forest grazing
• Mowing and controlled burning as needed

* For a more in-depth presentation on Climate Change and Resilient Agriculture, please see this slide show I put together a few years ago.

Imagine if practices like these could be done on a landscape level. Then we could witness that landscape becoming more fire-proof, and smaller scale, economically thriving farms would also flourish. Local economies would benefit as well. As Allan Savory, noted agroecologist and livestock farmer stated, "Since the advent of agriculture, humanity has been moving carbon in the wrong direction—out of the soils and into the atmosphere." Catastrophic and widespread wildfire is just another indicator of that mismanagement and sending carbon in the wrong direction. There will always be wildfire and indeed there should be for ecological health. But we have a crisis now on our hands that will take herculean efforts by all of society to turn around.

-Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Guillermo

07:00 PM CDT