- Author: Suanne Klahorst
Inspired by an uptick of diet-related diseases and emerging antibiotic-resistant microbes, doctors are overdue when they insist that hospitals practice their prescriptions for healthy diets and healthier agricultural practices. Anything less would be a violation of their ethic to “first, do no harm.
However, transitioning hospital food service to what they would like their patients to eat has been a two-year struggle. Many institutions do not systematically provide higher budgets for food procurement just because their doctors insist. Organic or antibiotic-free foods are consistently more costly and seldom available in the form that foodservice facilities have grown dependent on: prewashed, precut and preportioned.
Nonetheless, lessons have been learned and six hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area are sharing those in a How-To Guide based on two years of collaboration through the Farm Fresh Healthcare Project (FFHP). The guide describes how the hospitals were able to purchase almost 67,000 pounds of local produce from 10 family farmers who practice sustainable agriculture.
The guide features a photo of Capay Organic mandarins arriving at UCSF. The other hospitals in the project are John Muir Health, San Francisco VA Medical Center and Washington. (Stanford recently joined.)
Participating farms also include Coke, Durst Organic Growers, Las Hermanas, GreenSolar, Greene & Hemly, Dwelley, Zuckerman's, Casteneda Brothers, and Gowan Orchards.
The project and the guide is the result of a collaboration between Community Alliance with Family Farmers, Health Care Without Harm, and San Francisco Bay Area Physicians for Social Responsibility.
- Author: Carol Arnold
As Executive Director of PlacerGROWN, increasing sales for farmers in Placer County is on my mind all of the time. How do we make people aware of Placer County’s agricultural side? Once they are aware, how do we persuade them to buy from local farmers? Most importantly, how do we keep them coming once they have given local a chance? These are the kinds of questions I think and, quite frankly, worry quite a bit about. When I was asked to write for this blog I realized I don’t have a lot of answers but I do have quite a few questions. I will probably be writing quite a bit about marketing, merchandising and sales from local farms in an effort to exchange information and to explore some new ways of thinking about the “buy local challenge.”
I have been working in the local agricultural community for almost six years. I had and have a great deal to learn. As one community leader said-“you don’t know enough to know what you don’t know.” And she was right. I came into the Ag world as an enthusiastic consumer; volunteering to cook for the Land Trust dinners and belonging to the local Slow Food group. Eventually I was hired by the Foothill Farmers’ Market Association (FFMA), in part because I had some awareness of the local food movement but, more importantly, because I had experience in running small businesses.
The marriage of those two attributes, a passion for good food and an ability to run a business give me a unique point of view on farms, farming, farmers’ markets, and the economics involved. My perspective grew broader when I was recently named Executive Director of PlacerGROWN.
So what is my unique perspective and why do I go to the trouble of seeking out locally produced food? People might say “well, she’s at the markets all week long, it is easy for her.” It is true; I attend a lot of farmers’ markets. But convenience isn’t what drives me—flavor and quality drive me. I visit farmers’ markets all over the place. I don’t shop at all of them. This may sound “Placer/Nevada County-centric” but I find our markets feature the highest quality produce. Better than the Ferry Plaza (but they do have great food vendors), better than Marin, (though they have great crafters), and certainly better than anything in Sac County (unless I buy from one of our growers who also sells in Sac.) I shop from local growers because the food is consistently more flavorful and of higher quality in general at a great price. It’s like buying from the food equivalent of Nordstrom’s and only paying Macy’s sale prices for it.
So how do we find more customers like me? By getting them to try local food and then hooking them with the quality and flavor so that they don’t want to buy anything else. Grocery stores are for buying cereal and milk. Leave the rest to local farmers and ranchers. More on this subject in six weeks…
Get Fresh, Buy Local, buy Placer/NevadaGROWN!
- Author: Betsy Lunde
This week, another full-service nursery closed its doors. Capitol Nursery announced that the Freeport Boulevard store in Sacramento would be closing. Why you ask, is that a problem when you can buy plants practically at every store in town? Full-serve nurseries are getting harder and harder to find. Yes, a person can go to a big “box store” and purchase plants with no problems – or so some of us think.
I laugh when I talk about going to H*D* to look for a plant! I laugh because I joke I can buy what I need there as long as it’s a petunia and I want it in any color. Folks like me don’t want what everyone else is growing; I want color and texture that is different from my neighbors. I guess what I mean is that although my next-door neighbor loves palm trees and has roughly 10 in his yard, I don’t want one. Why buy a plain old run-of-the-mill Boston fern (Nephrolepis exaltata) when for the price of shipping I can buy Nephrolepis exaltata ‘Suzi Wong’. Look at the two and there’s no other choice: the bright green foliage hanging straight down to length of 2 feet and the minute, mini leaves looking as though made of lace. The foliage looks almost fake – you know the plant is of man-made silk.
Growing plants that are a little different has become my hobby. I go to various nurseries when I visit friends and relatives back East just to find out what’s available elsewhere. I’ve found through my readings and “field trips” that some plants are horrible pests – on no plant lists –but here in California, we plant them with great abandonment. One such plant is the ‘Butterfly bush’ ( Buddleja spp.) which Fine Gardening Magazine practically insists is taking over the world.
Would I get this information at a “box store”? Nope! As a matter of fact when I tried several years ago to purchase nine Berberis verruclosa or Warty Barberry at my local box store, I was told “nope, won’t grow
here as they grew in zone 9 and that wasn’t Fairfield’s zone.” I had to remind the clerk that yes, there would be no leaves on the plants (it was winter after all), but I also had to explain the difference between the Sunset Western Garden Zones and those of the USDA. That was the second clerk as the first clerk I went to then promptly looked at his watch and advised he was going home! I ended up purchasing from the great nursery in American Canyon!
Any way, remember to buy from our full-service nurseries, principally local but don’t be afraid to venture afar for plants especially house plants. You get grade-A plants and the advice that can be the difference between success and failure!
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The “locavore diet” originally focused on supporting small farms and protecting the environment, says the blog Triple Pundit, however, large grocery store chains and big box discount stores are now writing their own definitions of “local.”
Their definitions include:
- Grown and sold in the same state - Walmart
- Grown within an eight-hour drive of the store - Safeway
- Grown within one day’s drive - Whole Foods
- Produced either in that state or that region of the US - Krogers
- Grown in regions as broad as four or five states - Supervalu (Albertsons, Lucky)
The Triple Pundit post, written by Lesley Lammers, was prompted by an article in the Wall Street Journal published earlier this month. The WSJ withholds most of its content for subscribers only. But Triple Pundit, quoting the Journal, said such loose definitions have sparked criticism from small farmers and organic-food advocates that the chains are just capitalizing on the latest food trend, rather than making real changes in their procurement practices.
Lammers suggests usage of the term “local” may be a passing marketing phrase for the retail food industry that may soon be supplanted with “seasonal.” However, with consumers shopping for tomatoes even in the dark days of winter, even the term “seasonal” raises questions.
Director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center at UC Davis, Daniel Sumner, told the Wall Street Journal, “I really don’t think Wal-Mart is going to tell customers, ‘This is not in season, you have to eat cabbage and turnips for the next three months.’ ”
![Retailers are writing their own definitions of local. Retailers are writing their own definitions of local.](/blogs/blogcore/blogfiles/8222.jpg)
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A campaign on Facebook is encouraging Americans to assert "food independence" on July 4th and enjoy sustainable holiday picnics as an inspiration to others.
The effort drew the attention of Huffington Post columnist Leslie Hatfield, who declared in an article published yesterday that "eating local food is patriotic."Hatfield contacted the director of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County, Rose Hayden-Smith, to get her take on food and patriotism. Hayden-Smith just finished her dissertation on the history of U.S. Victory Gardens at UC Santa Barbara.
She told Hatfield that demonstrations of American patriotism have often been linked to food, going back to the American Revolution, when Americans dumped British tea into the Boston Harbor rather than pay taxes on it.
"Many of the foods we traditionally associate with the Fourth of July - including apple pie - reflect the diverse mix of immigrant heritages that make our nation strong and unique," Hayden-Smith was quoted. "Like people, food ways have mingled, creating new and unique cultural expressions."
Hatfield seemed taken aback by the suggestion that apple pie is not all American. Hayden-Smith told her apple pie's roots go back to the 14th century, not in America, but in Germany, Holland and England.
Returning to her point, Hatfield wrote that she believes eating industrially-produced foods helps support systems which have put a lot of farmers out of business and made a lot of people a lot less healthy.
"Let's get patriotic in the easiest, most delicious way possible," Hatfield suggests, "by eating some awesome food."![Many traditional American foods were imported by immigrants. Many traditional American foods were imported by immigrants.](/blogs/blogcore/blogfiles/4340.jpg)