Buying local : repeat chorus

Doug Powell of the K-State Food Safety Network passes along this link to yet another NYT story/column about buying local. It repeats a familiar theme; buying local is replacing the allure of buying organic, since if Wal-Mart is selling organic and we are getting organic Chinese garlic, what's the real attraction there? Like new converts who may wane in their zeal, I wonder if all the passion about buying local will have staying power in two to three years. Call me a doubting Thomas. Called "In Pursuit of Farm Fresh Flavor," Kim Severson writes:

My church is a farm. Give me a few chickens, a long row of carrots and the smell of dirt, and I’ll find the open heart and inner peace others might seek from a prayer book or a pew.
The connection between what I put in my body, the land around me and the miracle of things that grow makes me feel as if I’m part of something bigger than myself.
But before you dismiss me as some sort of patchouli-scented wacko, allow me to share my hedonistic bottom line: a perfect ear of Long Island corn or a lovely little lump of Hudson Valley goat cheese simply tastes better to me than anything I may find at the supermarket.
Of course, in the city or the suburbs, a farm is a really impractical church to have. So in a pinch, I’ll go to a farmers’ market. And on some days, a bin of local apples at the supermarket will do.

TK: I"m sure this sticks in the craw of Wegmans and other fine retailers; the supermarket as a last resort.

But luckily, it’s getting easier to find something local to eat. All over the tristate area, the church of local food is growing at rates that have farmers, serious cooks and even the most casual farm stand shoppers in awe.
“We have people calling every week wanting to start farmers’ markets,” said Linda Piotrowicz of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture. “It’s gotten to the point where we’ve had trouble recruiting enough farmers.” That’s a bold statement, when you consider that the state has about 4,000 farms.

“If you live here you know that the supermarket is for winter,” said Sandra Fox, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Southampton.
Sure, shopping at a grocery store is more convenient and sometimes cheaper, conceded Lisa Tamra of Yonkers. She was at the Bronxville farmers’ market recently, picking up nectarines for $2 a pound.
“My fiancé thinks I’m a nut that I come down here,” she said. “But I go to the grocery stores and it’s not up to par.”
For some, even a trip to the farmers’ market isn’t good enough. They want to connect directly with the farm. So they sign up for community-supported agriculture projects. These nifty little pieces of commerce allow customers to buy shares in a farm for a few hundred dollars and then get boxes of whatever the farm is producing that week. Some are so popular there are waiting lists.
Jane Hutnik, who lives in Lake Shawnee in northern New Jersey, is one of 140 people who bought a share in Upper Meadow Farm this summer. Boxes of Chinese cabbage and Rose Gold potatoes help her feel more connected to her food and the people who grow it.
“You’re involved in the same gamble as the farmer,” she said. “If there’s been a bad storm and there’s no broccoli, then you don’t get broccoli.”
So why is local fever gripping the region? The trend is a case study in cultural and environmental changes.
Let’s start with the runaway train called organics. In 2000 when the federal Department of Agriculture announced a set of standards, the spirit of the organic food movement was changed forever. You would think people who wanted to eat food from small, well-run, pesticide-free farms would have welcomed a national set of rules. But it unleashed a monster.
Now, the market is more than $15 billion a year and draws players like Wal-Mart and General Mills. Somehow, organic garlic from China doesn’t have quite the same appeal as some hard-neck variety from the Hudson Valley.
For small farmers, the paperwork can be expensive and cumbersome so they don’t apply for organic certification, even though their practices are in line with organic principles. And the organic label doesn’t mean a product is from a farm that uses sustainable practices.
So local has become the new organic, helped in large part by a growing concern over the environmental impact of transporting food thousands of miles. A few years ago, the term food miles moved into the lexicon. Dedicated people calling themselves locavores began limiting their diets to food that came from a radius of a couple hundred miles.
The author Barbara Kingsolver became a locavore and in May published “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” (HarperCollins Publishers), which chronicles her family’s yearlong adventure trying to eat locally. That book and Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” (Penguin Press) have become the bibles of the church of local food. Laura Singer, a resident of Trumbull, Conn., who shops at the Westport Farmers’ Market, has read both.
“I’m on this total guilt trip about buying food and having it shipped halfway across the world,” she said. “My consciousness has really been raised about supporting local farmers and the amount of fossil fuel it takes to get food from long distances.”
The desire to save shrinking farmland in densely populated areas also figures into the equation. There is no better way to save a small farm than to buy the farmer’s food. And buying directly at a farmers’ market or through a community-supported agriculture project brings in more money for farmers than the wholesale market, said Tim Warner of Orient, N.Y., who helps run his family’s 120-acre farm. “The farmers’ markets are our only outlet,” he said. “That’s what keeps us going. We couldn’t wholesale anymore. It was just really hard.”
The last two threads of the local food trend come from concerns over food safety and the talent of area chefs.
Mix a little mad cow disease, bags of spinach infected with E. coli and an obesity epidemic and people begin to question what is happening to the food supply. A bunch of kale from Hepworth Farms in Milton, N.Y., may not solve those problems, but it is one sure, small step toward a healthier family dinner table.

TK: As Doug Powell would say, where's the data? Healthier compared with what - eating Butterfinger minis, yes, but not necessarily healthier than California spinach.

The modern notion that food grown organically and close to home tasted better might have been pioneered in the 1970s by people like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., but chefs like Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills in Westchester County and Michel Nischan at the Dressing Room in Westport, Conn., are perfecting what Adam Platt from New York Magazine calls haute barnyard cuisine.
Of course, trying to buy more local meat and produce isn’t without its problems. Finding what you want isn’t convenient, and it can be more expensive. And food coming directly from the farm means washing your own lettuce and learning how to cook beets.
But there is value beyond the price per pound. Mr. Pollan points out that the American food system is devoted to increasing quantities and reducing prices. The average American spends less than 10 percent of his or her income on food. In 1947, the figure was 24 percent. Mr. Pollan believes people who can afford to pay more for better food should.
Still, we all become misers at the supermarket. There are those of us — and I certainly have done this — who will happily spend $4 for a cup of warm milk and coffee but balk if organic tomatoes cost 40 cents a pound more than something shipped from Mexico.
The farmers know customers are price- sensitive.
“Getting people to understand why things are more expensive is a challenge,” said John Ramsey, who runs a four-acre family farm in the heart of Scarsdale, N.Y. “For years we’ve had the same prices. A bunch of basil was always 50 cents.”
Now, with fuel prices up and a year of tough weather, he is going to have to raise it to 75 cents. But imagine what that brings. You get the basil, and you get to be part of a community and help save some farmland.