Consumers Clamor for Local Food

Agweek
November 29, 2005
HEADLINE: Consumers seeking home-grown food products
BYLINE: By Ann Bailey

Locally grown food is finding a niche in the world of agriculture.

Interest in purchasing food from local farmers is a growing trend across the United States.

Whether it is from a college food-service manager who wants to have vine-ripened tomatoes for the dining room salad bar or a restaurant owner who wants to serve customers beef from a steer raised in a pasture down the road, demand for local products is increasing.

For Grand Forks, N.D., chef Kim Holmes, purchasing local foods is a matter of quality.

"It's a better product," says Holmes, owner of Sanders 1997 restaurant. Holmes purchases eggs, vegetables when they are in season and some meat from area farmers. Holmes' aim is to buy the "best and freshest" food he can.

Theresa Podoll, Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society
director, believes that the closer the link between the producer and the consumer, the better the product, both in taste and nutritional quality.

For example, she says, a vine-ripened tomato is more nutritious than one that is picked green on the West Coast and "gassed" to turn it red, Podoll says.

"The way that we farm and how we structure our food system and how we eat has an impact on their health. There's a whole group of people who are looking for more healthy lifestyles and healthy alternatives."

A recent article in the food section of the Washington Post newspaper notes that local foods were highlighted in the dining hall of American University this fall. All menu items one day were produced within a 150-mile radius of Washington, according to the story.

The menu featured beef and beets from Washington, Va., and White Hall, Md.; vegetables, fruits and herbs from Maddensville, Pa.; heirloom tomatoes, apples and fresh cider from Harrisonburg, Va.; and red wine for braising beef from vineyards in Sparks, Md.

"These days, any restaurant that wants to be taken seriously pays attention to the fresh and seasonal mantra," the story says.

For some consumers, buying local food is a matter of principle. There's a perception among consumers that local producers use more sustainable production methods.

"There isn't a direct link, although many farmers that are producing food for local markets pay attention to sustainability because very often when people buy from a local source they expect environmental sustainability," says Fred Kirschenmann, former director of the Leopold
Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames.

Kirschenmann, president of Kirschenmann Family Farms, a 3,500-acre certified organic farm in Windsor, N.D., says incorporating sustainable agriculture practices into farming systems requires capitalizing on production methods that are more knowledge-intensive than energy-intensive.

For example, research at Iowa State University shows that the prairie deer mouse, an animal that does not hibernate in the winter, eats a voracious amount of weed seed and can reduce the amount of seed in a field by 60 percent, Kirschenmann says.

"This is a free service that nature offers. I'm convinced there are all kinds of free services like that we don't know about because we haven't done the research."

"One of the things we're finding in the market is people are not only interested in a quality product, they also want a good food story.

"If they know farmers are using these unique ways (of production), providing habitats for wildlife while producing healthy food, it makes it attractive in the marketplace."

"People want to know the farmers. They want to know where their food comes from.

They want to know where it is produced," says Karen Lehman Minnesota Project food program leader. The St. Paul- based Minnesota Project, which designs programs to improve the social, environmental and economic health of local communities, in February 2004 launched the Heartland Initiative, a project to promote local foods.

Lehman conceived the idea of the Heartland Initiative because she knew that demand for certain local foods had outstripped the organized available supply. Farmers already were selling a lot of their products directly via farmers markets and restaurants, but Lehman believed that there also was a market for sales to institutions.

One of the difficulties institutional buyers and some restaurant face is finding an adequate, affordable supply of local food products.

For example, some Northern Plains chefs are having problems finding a source for good, local poultry, Lehman says.

"It's connecting up those dots that we want to make happen," Lehman says.

Coordinators of the Heartland Initiative project held meetings across Minnesota from last January through last July. Participants, including food processors, chefs and institutional food-service managers, discussed ways to get more local food on dinner tables in the Northern Plains and Midwest regions.

One of the goals of the Heartland Initiative is to pair chefs and other local buyers with the farmers who grow it.

"Our hope is to create more of a market for mid-sized farmers who may not be thinking their market is local," Lehman says. Instead of selling their products to traditional markets, farmers need to start thinking about restaurants patrons who might want to have locally grown products such as cheese, fruits and vegetables on their dinner plates, she suggests.

For some buyers, including food-service giant Sysco, buying products from farmers who use sustainable farming practices such as integrated pest control, and from family- owned operations has gained importance.

On its Web site, Sysco says it is supporting "a new vision for agricultural practices designed to protect the land and environment It is Sysco's goal to ensure that differentiated products are successfully produced for our future generations. To that end, our ultimate goal is to foster the success of highly differentiated products that are profitable to all participants and incorporate farmer ownership and control."

That philosophy has potential to open new markets for farmers, Kirschenmann believes.

"The thing that encourages me is that when you look at those farmers that are most under threat, they are precisely the ones that can produce these differentiated food products in a volume a company like Sysco needs," he says.

"What's missing is the infrastructure to connect farmers to the market." The infrastructure includes processing plants that can preserve the identity of the products.

Because large food processors who use mass production techniques would be unable to do that, there is potential for bringing back into production smaller food processing facilities that are sitting idle in some communities, Kirschenmann says.

"It provides an opportunity for economic development in rural communities for plants that are existing," he says.

"Those are market opportunities that are waiting to happen."

One of the benefits of having local markets available to farmers is the economic impact the sales have on local economies, Podoll says.

"The incoming generating potential of local food sources is great," she says. That's in contrast to the current market system, in which farmers are selling their raw commodities at below the cost of production, then shipping them out of their states, only to have them return on their grocery shelves as processed convenience foods.

"We export wealth on both ends and wonder why our farm economy is not doing well," Podoll says. One of the things the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society has been impressing on its members is "feeding the village first," Podoll says.

"Sustainability begins at home." Once farmers have fed their home-grown products to their families, the next step is to market them to other people in their communities, she says.

"Right now, local food is our No. 1 issue," Podoll says. One of the potential benefits for individual farmers is a better price for their products.

"Certainly, by moving closer to the consumer and capturing more of the consumer dollar, it will increase their incomes," she says.