We all want to support small farmers, but it’s not always as easy as we’d like it to be. Annie Myers is bridging the gap between the urban lifestyle and the quality found at small, primarily organic producers with her company, Myers Produce.

Myers Produce is a regional distributor connecting the New York City and Boston areas with local producers throughout Vermont and Western Massachusetts in a totally appropriately scaled way. It’s an idea that could only have come from someone with farming experience, something that Myers has in spades.

After having worked as the official forager for the Spotted Pig and for three years at Pete’s Greens, an organic, four seasons vegetable farm, Myers noticed that small organic farms were growing more food than they could sell locally, but not nearly enough to sell through larger supermarkets like Whole Foods. There had to be something between the local co-op or farm stand and the enormous megamart, and Myers found it by tapping into urbanites who wanted the quality of homegrown food without the hassle of coming out to get it.

“Given my past in New York, I knew there was still a huge demand from restaurants and retail stores for efficient and effective delivery of fruit and vegetables grown in our region,” she told Forbes. “I could literally see the supply and demand in front of me and the gap between them.”

After three years in business, Myers Produce remains small, and they like it that way. With just a handful of drivers and fewer than 40 farmers, many of whom run organic operations, Myers is at the helm of a diminutive but powerful organization. She’s looking out for the little guys at a time when, she says, the nation is overlooking them.

As compared to the 1950s, when there were more than five million farms in the U.S., there are about 2.1 million today, according to the Census of Agriculture due to mass consolidation that happened principally between the 1950s and the 1970s. While family farms have returned to the focus of agriculture — 2014 was dubbed the International Year of Family Farming by the United Nations — smaller efforts such as Myers’ are a huge part of what continues to support these family farms on a daily basis.

“The local food movement has made a lot of progress towards bringing back small farmers and saving farmland,” Myers says. “Creating small-scale distribution networks is one more necessary step towards rebuilding our regional food systems.”

And it’s working. Myers says that small farmers are planting more to meet the demand that Myers Produce is bringing them, and urbanites like knowing that what they’re buying — and eating — comes from small, local farms.

“None of the products we handle travel more than 350 miles from grower to customer,” Myers says.

A reduced carbon footprint, local organic food, and helping out the little guy: sounds to us like a recipe for success.

Related on EcoSalon
How Family Farming Revitalizes Local Economies
White Oak Pastures Embrace Sustainable Farming and Family Ties
What if All Markets Were Local Food Markets? Foodie Underground

Farm fresh produce image via Shutterstock

The post Making the Link Between Small Farmers and Urban Buyers appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column If you enjoy food from other cultures, how do they fit into a locavore diet?

When I travel, I love discovering a place through its food. Go to a market and you’ll immediately get a taste of what the locals eat. Food is also the impetus for a conversation. It’s the chance to get together with people for a meal. Because of this, food is one of the easiest vehicles for cultural exchange. The food on our plate, and where it came from, who produced it and who cooked it, is often an excellent lens for looking at the culture as a whole.

When we travel, food also often ends up being the thread that ties our travel memories together, and when we return, of course we want to recreate those memories, either in the kitchen or by going to a restaurant. You ate the best street food of your life in Bangkok and now you’re on a mission to find a place that does something similar. Or you had an unforgettable night of cheese and wine in France and now you are scoping the local market to see if by chance they import at least one of the items that you now feel that you cannot live without.

In a globalized world, it’s easier and easier to get foods from abroad. Almost any large supermarket nowadays has a section devoted to food products from various regions, and with specialty retailers, as well as the online world, there are few items from around the world that are absolutely impossible to get. We live in a world where if we want it, we can have it.

But should we have it? If you’re trying to stick to a largely locavore diet you can be sure that the can of coconut milk didn’t come from down the road.

I thought about this a lot in writing the book “Fika.” Swedish baking uses a lot of cardamom – grown nowhere near the Nordic countries – and shredded coconut and ginger are common ingredients. As somone who writes a lot about local foods, how do I come to terms with the fact that sometimes, the ingredients that I use come from afar?

The embrace of foods and ingredients from around the world is exciting. It allows us to step out of our own culinary comfort zones without actually traveling. New ingredients can spice up an old dish. Yet in this hyper-growth of availability of exotic cuisines, have we turned the focus away from our own?

We are quick to assume another culture’s diet than to fix our own, that’s why things like the Mediterranean Diet and the Nordic Diet have become so huge. Maybe this isn’t so surprising in a country like the United States, whose food culture has from the beginning been made up of the food culture of many other places. We are quick to embrace the foods from elsewhere, because that is hat we have always done. Globalization and cheap transport has only made that easier.

Unfortunately, when it comes to food from other cultures, we get so focused on doing exact replications, instead of taking inspiration. When your entire grocery list is made up of ingredients that come from an ocean away, a red flag should go off.

The ability to get different cuisines from around the world has spiced up many a bland food nation. The ability to get a diversity of food from different cultures is a nice thing. But in doing so, we’ve put all the focus on what we can get from elsewhere instead of thinking about what’s available closer to home. Goji berries, I am looking at you.

Just like with a healthy diet, it’s all about moderation and balance. To exist solely on a locavore diet is hard – and even if you go back a few hundred years people were already eating imported goods, like coffee, chocolate and spices – but most of us could deal with eating a little more locally sourced foods – particularly foods that do grown closer to home (buying apples from Chile and New Zealand is just silly) –  and making the exotic foods an indulgence instead of a regular, everyday occurrence.

This just means rethinking some of our favorite imported dishes. Thinking in terms of inspiration instead of replication. How can you adapt a recipe from afar to include more ingredients from close by?

You might love a certain French cheese, but what are the cheese producers making in your region? You may be a fan of the Nordic Diet, but what about simply applying some of the general principles instead of making a mad dash for the Scandinavian supermarket and buying lingonberry jam?

Let’s not just import taste, let’s be inspired it by it, and adapt it, making something new in the process. Instead of just copying and pasting a food culture and calling it our own, we build a completely different one. Use a few exotic ingredients here and there, but let us not make them a staple of our everyday dishes. Let food from other cultures be an indulgence, and be challenged to think about how everyday, ordinary ingredients could be used in a new way.

Related on EcoSalon

Why Travel Teaches Us to Appreciate Good Food

10 of the Strangest Restaurants from Around the World

Year-Round Locavore: Eat Local No Matter What the Season

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Anna Brones

The post Can You Be a Locavore and Indulge in Food From Other Cultures? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnFor the love of local food.

There was a time when local food wasn’t fancy or special food, it was just food. People didn’t intentionally seek out food that came from nearby, it was simply all that they had.

But then came a globalized world with an abundance of choice, and dinners were no longer restricted to what came from the farm down the road. Our diets diversified and we had many more ingredients to experiment with. While this certainly made dinner more fun, it pushed the small, local farmer out and brought the large, industrial producer from across the country, or even the world, in. Because of our quest to expand what we had available to eat, we lost something in the process. We lost our relationship to local food, and instead of local food being a given, it became something that we had to intentionally seek out. We had to work harder to get something that was grown from down the road.

If you find it odd that apples from New Zealand can be cheaper than apples grown a few miles away, you are not alone.

I was thinking about this recently as I perused the wonderful space at Ploughboy, a market devoted to local foods in the small town of Salida, Colorado. Here, everything comes from nearby. Even the homemade granola and kombucha.

The entrance is inviting, signs boasting hand cut pasta and local grass-fed beef. Inside you’ll find locally made goat cheese and freshly baked spelt bread. If you wanted to transition to 100 percent locavore, this would be the place to start.

As I stood facing the market, behind me sat a Safeway, the parking lot a huge expanse of asphalt filled with four-wheeled monstrosities. In front of Ploughboy was a bike rack. If utopia could be found in a grocery store, this was certainly it. A place for the community to come and congregate, grab a deli item for lunch, and stock up on eggs from the nearby farm.

“I’m getting a restock of eggs from our three different farms tomorrow morning,” I overheard one of the Ploughboy staff tell a customer, listing off the names of the farms that the eggs would be coming from. I smiled.

There are certainly some foods that we have grown accustomed to that won’t be brought to us from local fields, but in a world where we’re trying to find ways to live more sustainably and more consciously, wouldn’t it be nice if our local food markets were just our regular food markets?

“But what about the people that can’t afford to eat like this?” you’ll say. You can blame that on agribusiness and an industry of food companies that have made food products cheaper than actual food, poisoning us in the process.

It’s not the slightly more expensive head of broccoli you should balk at. It’s the packaged potato chips made with partially hydrogenated oil. Sure the price tag may be less expensive in the food aisle, but that price tag isn’t taking into consideration more than $190 billion the U.S. spends on obesity-related healthcare costs every year.

For those of us who have the luxury to choose local, we have an obligation to, because it’s consumer demand and consumer demand alone that will change the system. Food products are created because there’s a market for them. Take that market away, and there’s nowhere for those food companies to sell to. Choose to eat better, not just because it’s better for you, but because it’s better for your community.

Do you dream of a world where the local food market is just the regular market? Then do everything in your power to get your food from close by. And maybe one day, more stores will feel a little more like Ploughboy.

Related on EcoSalon

Fast Food, Fast Fashion… It’s All About Choice: Foodie Underground

Why the Food World Could Do With a Little Restriction: Foodie Underground

It’s Time We Put Up a Food Fight: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

The post What if All Markets Were Local Food Markets? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

Have a vegetable garden? Then you’ll love these 5 cookbooks.

The point of starting a vegetable garden is of course to reap the benefits, aka eat the food you grow. Anyone who grows their own food will know the special feeling of putting together a meal with produce that comes from their own raised beds. To go from seed to plant to plate is an amazing process. And with more and more people starting to grow their own food, there are a growing number of garden related cookbooks.

But let’s be honest: these are inspiring books even if you don’t have the space to garden (or if your space is tiny). Ultimately they are celebrations of local and seasonal food, something we could all be eating more of.

1. “Carina Contini’s Kitchen Garden Cookbook” by Carina Contini

Part gardener’s journal, part family memoir, part cookbook, “Kitchen Garden Cookbook” will appeal to gardeners and food lovers of all kinds. It’s organized by month, which means that even in the seemingly dreary root vegetable overdose of the winter, you’ll still be able to to find some cooking inspiration.

2. “Kitchen Garden Experts: 20 Celebrated Chefs and Their Head Gardeners” by Cinead McTernan

Ever wonder how food goes from garden to table in the restaurants of chefs who are working hard to incorporate food grown on site? “Kitchen Garden Experts” brings us into the world of UK chefs and their gardeners, a book that’s as much about the products that are grown as the people that grow them.

3. “From Seed to Skillet” by Jimmie Williams

In “From Seed to Skillet” you actually get a gardening guide and cookbook in one. Learning the art of growing and cooking vegetables from his grandmother, a South Carolina native from a traditional Gullah community whose members were descendents of Caribbean slaves, his book serves as a guide to building your own vegetable garden and putting it to good use. Gardening guides and recipes abound.

4. “Grow Cook Eat” by Willi Galloway

Just because you love good food doesn’t mean you know how to garden. And just because you love to garden, doesn’t necessarily mean that you feel like a master in the kitchen. “Grow Cook Eat” is the book to fill that void. The book is devoted to cultivating fresh, gourmet food, ensuring that everyone has the skills to grow their own, but also that they know what to do with them.

5. “The Gardener and the Grill” by by Karen Adler and Judith Fertig

Who said that all you could do with a grill was meat? “The Gardener and the Grill” is for gardeners who believe in the power of the vegetable. With more than 100 vegetarian recipes, it’s the perfect summer guide to good eating. You could also kindly give it to the grill aficionado in your life to prove that vegetables do have a place over the coals.

Related on EcoSalon

5 Tips for Starting Your Own Urban Garden (Even if it’s Teeny Tiny)

10 Ideas for Sexy Urban Gardens

The 10 Easiest Vegetables to Grow at Home

Images: Anna Brones, Frances Lincoln, Chronicle Books, Sasquatch Books, Running Press

The post 5 Cookbooks for People With a Vegetable Garden (or Who Just Love Growing Food) appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnIf quinoa starts to grow in your backyard, what happens to the farmers that made it big?

In the last decade, quinoa has seen more than fifteen minutes of fame. It has become the beloved grain of vegetarians and carnivores alike, touted for its nutritional superfood benefits of high protein as well as magnesium, iron and calcium. It’s good for the gluten intolerant, can be used in cakes and even got its own year of official celebration.

But despite quinoa’s popularity, there has been one thing that has kept the eco-savvy, locavore feeling just a little bad about its consumption: it’s not often grown in our backyard. Quinoa is certainly not a guilt-free grain.

Quinoa is a grain of the Andes, domesticated some 3,000-4,000 years ago, with locals making it a part of their daily diet for centuries, until the health food craze hit, and every natural food provider from Whole Foods to upscale organic vegan cafes in Manhattan started offering it. Finally, we had a complete protein that seemed to do no harm. Or so we thought.

While a rise in global demand for quinoa helped raise farmers’ incomes – quinoa currently sells for over $3,000 a ton, three times as much as it was sold for only five years ago – it also pushed up prices, making a grain that had for so long been a staple of the regional diet inaccessible to locals.

The healthy juice-cleanse-loving-yogi could eat their quinoa salad in Boulder, but on the other side of the hemisphere, the local Bolivian farmer was forced to opt for more processed foods, and increase in demand threatened the production’s sustainability. Such is the ongoing dilemma of the global food market.

The easiest solution appears to be growing it locally in the regions that demand it. Quinoa cultivation now takes place everywhere from the United States to Sweden to Kenya. But even expanding quinoa production to a global level comes with its own set of problems.

While quinoa has begun to be cultivated outside of the Andes, the grain is still most successful in its native region of cool, dry highlands. Growing it elsewhere will require finding a variety that will not only be successful in other climates, but that we consumers will want to eat. But there’s another thing that leaves many unsettled: the farmers.

At a recent gathering of agricultural researches brought together for a sort of quinoa summit at Washington State University in Pullman, that’s exactly the question that was brought up: what about the farmers? Here is a grain that for centuries has been kept alive by the Bolivian people – even in 2012, Bolivia was responsible for 46 percent of the quinoa consumed in the world – and as it hits the global market, will they be able to reap the benefits?

Ultimately, it’s a question of fairness, and one that the Bolivian government feels so strongly about that it is working hard to keep control over quinoa varieties. As NPR’s The Salt blog highlights, it won’t give samples to plant breeders in the U.S.

While that might seem harsh, it could be the only way to provide any sense of protection to the Bolivian farmers that have been responsible for quinoa’s success. By going global, quinoa ultimately could become a local product, which is good for both economies and the environment, but in this global scheme, protecting quinoa’s heritage is of the utmost importance.

We have seen far too many losers when it comes to the global market, and while quinoa might be the star of the food world, it shouldn’t come at the cost of the people and the land that helped make it so.

Related on EcoSalon:

The Gluten Free Flour Guide

Local Food is Ethical? Tell That To Greece

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Sweet on Veg

The post Can Quinoa Be a Local Food? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhen a fire hits a local farm, the community rises in support.

Mondays are sacred.

Since I came to Paris in January, they have been reserved as “veggie nights” – the night that we go and pick up our weekly basket of local food: Vegetables grown just outside of the city. It’s part of a system called AMAP, a French consortium of organizations set up to promote independent agriculture and a direct connection between consumers and producers. You buy into the AMAP in your local community or neighborhood and every week your farmer brings the weekly load to the local pick up place and you go to retrieve your goods.

Our farmer’s name is Manu. He is there every Monday, smiling, shaking people’s hands, chatting with every member. He has a welcoming face. Warm, generous–the kind of face that makes you happy to be buying from him.

The vegetables are in abundance, but stick to their season. When the first head of lettuce arrived it was practically cause for celebration. Maybe spring would eventually arrive, too. Rhubarb is just making it’s way into the mix. It’s the little things.

Monday nights are in fact, like Christmas. You know there will be the basics like, carrots and potatoes, but maybe, just maybe, there will be some other surprise vegetable. Something you weren’t waiting for. Something to force you to get creative in the kitchen with.

Two weeks ago on Sunday evening we received an email. There would be no vegetable pick up on Monday night.

Manu had a fire on his property.

As much as not having the prospect of vegetables on Monday night was upsetting, it was nothing compared the feeling we had in the pit of our stomachs imagining a fire on Manu’s farm.

More news followed soon thereafter, a slew of email updates as more information came in. Manu and his family’s house were fine. The building where they stock many of their machines for cleaning and keeping the stock of vegetables wasn’t. Hundreds of kilos of carrots had burned. Damage was in the six figure range.

We were encouraged to trek out to the farm. Lend a hand in any way that we could. So the following Sunday, we hopped on a train north out of Paris. It was grey, rainy and cold. Not idyllic May weather. Depressing in fact.

We walked the country roads from the train station to Manu’s property, making our way to the house that he is in the process of constructing (fortunately, it wasn’t touched by the flames).

It sounded like there was a party going on.

It was a little before two in the afternoon, and in the space that will eventually serve as a main room once the house is finished, 15 or so people were gathered around a long picnic table, boxes of wine at the end, large slabs of Comte and Morbier cheese ready for anyone that wanted, pasta and stew brewing on the stove. It was lunchtime. Everyone was smiling; after a morning of hard work they were finishing off with a hearty meal. Even in the face of destruction, food was bringing people together.

Manu welcomed us with the obligatory French bise. One kiss on each side of the cheek. “Bienvenue ma belle,” he said to me smiling.

Someone quickly cut to the chase.

“How are you doing?”

Manu looked at the table of people eating and us the newly arrived. “I am great!”

“Great” is not the defining word you think of when you imagine someone who has just had part of their property and livelihood burn to the ground.

“You know what? Since the fire last Sunday, we haven’t been alone here one single day. Every day is like this,” he said pointing towards the group around the table. “People just show up to work when they can. It’s like a family. Everything I have gotten out of this experience is worth much more than what I lost,” he paused, “c’est une belle aventure.”

It takes a very strong personality to look at a fire as a beautiful adventure.

As it turned out, much of the main work that needed to be done that week had already been completed. The morning crew had prepped the greenhouses and we were to plant eggplants and peppers. I snagged a piece of cheese on my way out.

The greenhouses stretched like long white caterpillars across the ground. While the rain poured in the cold weather outside, working inside we all broke a sweat within minutes.

Our group work methodically, each of us eventually finding a rhythm. Laying out the black plastic tarp to protect against weeds, popping a hole where each plant should go, aligning the irrigation system and coming back to dig with our hands and carefully put each seedling into place.

Manu is not only a local producer, but also an organic one. I asked if the seedlings were purchased or if he had grown them himself. He looked at me as if I was slightly crazy. “Ah non, tout est d’ici.”

Of course everything is directly from the farm. Hand grown, hand raised. Thanks to that kind of mentality, as a consumer you know exactly what you’re buying.

In the food movement, we talk a lot about where our food comes from. We even talk a lot about growing our own–the power of getting your hands dirty. But what we often forget the talk about, is the community that comes with eating locally. You can be sure that if a farmer who supplied the local grocery store with carrots had a fire at his property, I wouldn’t have known about, I wouldn’t have gotten on a train to go volunteer my time to help, and I wouldn’t have spent an afternoon talking, laughing and learning.

Local independent agriculture works because of people like Manu and the connections that he is so committed to making. It’s not just because his vegetables are good that people drop everything to help, it’s because by creating a local system he has created an extended family. One that goes beyond the food at hand.

Food nourishes us, but not just physically, emotionally too. That’s why we love markets. That’s why we buy from people we know. Because we get more out of it than just the raw product.

“Support your local farmer” may just sound like a cliché bumper sticker, but it’s more than that. Because supporting your local farmer is supporting and taking part in your local community, a community that can be there as a safety net when you need it.

We took the train back to Paris, our shoes caked in mud and our fingernails dirty from digging all afternoon. One measly afternoon is nothing compared to the work of the farmer, but at the very least it’s a small contribution. A contribution to making not only the food system a better place, but the community around us. Just like Manu and other local, independent farmers around the world do every single day.

You can be sure that when peppers show up on Monday nights, we’ll be throwing a big party in celebration.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: Local Food, Local Community appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnA bag full of tomatoes, bread, and fresh cheese.

It was Saturday, the sun was shining and the central square of Carcassonne, France was packed with people. It was market day.

When in new places, I am always drawn to markets. In some cities they’re easy to find – the main event of the weekend – and in others they take a little more research. But at a market, you get the sounds, smells and sights of a place. You step into an everyday routine of wherever you are.

At a market, you wander. This is not expedient grocery list shopping; this is living in the moment. Taking up a bunch of tomatoes to see what they feel like. Smelling a container of strawberries. Holding a basket of chard. Asking the cheese monger what he recommends today. This is simple enjoyment. It’s no surprise that in our modern lives – most often defined by stress and deadlines – that we appreciate a moment to slow down.

I made my first round of the market. Because you always make a first round. Rule number one of market shopping: get a feel for the market and know what’s available.

Tightly packed into the main square, it was hard to determine where outdoor terraces ended and food stands started. The line to the organic baker wove around a few tables with coffee drinkers. The baker was doling out samples. “Un brownie sans gluten!” he exclaimed, cutting off a bit of the gluten free baked good. In bake-centric France gluten-free is rare to find, but sometimes you stumble across a nice surprise. We grabbed one for the following day’s river picnic. His fingers did a kind of dance routine, flitting back and forth between stuffing dense loaves in paper bags and doling out change. The kind of man that loves his job.

Next to him an old man sat behind a sea of wooden crates filled with salad. That’s another reason that we love markets: the personalities. These are not robotic cashiers, these are characters. These are farmers whose hands are cracked from working in the soil. These are bakers that have mastered a loaf of seed bread. Craving interaction, at a market we get just that. At a grocery store, you may just hand over money and leave with a “good bye” but at a market, there’s always something extra. Maybe it’s a discussion about the weather. Maybe it’s a joke about the food. Maybe it’s simply a comment that this is the best thing you have ever tasted. Whatever it is, it’s a human to human exchange, something for which we desperately yearn.

I made the rounds again. Handmade olive salami. From a local and organic producer. Only 4€.

It’s silly to even think about what you pay when you’re at the market; ultimately the market isn’t necessarily about the food, it’s about the experience.

Basil and tomatoes at the next stall. The cloth bag I was carrying was now full of picnic goods. Nothing processed, nothing imported, just good ingredients that would go well together.

Why do we love markets? Because they’re simple. Because they remind us of our relationship with food; that from what we eat, we draw happiness. And if we don’t take time to celebrate that happiness – that simple moment of picking up an apple to see how it feels and smells – then we are lacking something primal. We love markets because they bring us back to that connection, the connection that sustains us, physically and emotionally.

Food is joy, and a market is simply a wonderful manifestation of that.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Images: Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: Why do We Love Markets? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Food by water.

When we talk about eating local, we often forget that for centuries, eating local wasn’t a choice. It just was. If it didn’t grow on your farm, or your neighbor’s, you most likely didn’t eat it. But as time went on and transportation improved, new foods popped up. This was especially true if you lived close to a waterway; boats and barges have for centuries been an essential method of food transportation. It comes as no surprise then that just as there is a return to localism, there is a return to food by boat. Enter the floating market.

It is no surprise that Europe, for example, has such a strong boat market culture, given its network of canals and rivers that have allowed its cities to flourish. If you’ve traveled, you may have discovered the floating markets in destinations like Thailand, Vietnam and Venice.

Current-day floating farmers markets allow not only access to food, but a discussion of the regional food landscape. In Vermont, Erik Andrus is raising money to launch a floating farmers market, building a 39-foot canal barge, that will take products from Vermont to New York City. The boat will be able to carry up to 12 tons of nonperishable goods, and the journey will take about 10 days. Slow travel, slow food.

In the Pacific Northwest, a similar concept is alive and thriving. Farm Boat Floating Market on Lake Union in Seattle, Washington is a 125-foot wooden vessel that opens up for a market once a week, selling local produce and artisan goods. But the boat is also part of a larger project, one that will ultimately consist of Floating Markets in 18 different ports in the Puget Sound region. That and taco boats.

On the other side of the country, David Berry of Merrymeeting Farm brings Maine’s island residents a fresh batch of produce and other local goods on what locals call “the vegetable boat.” In the case of food boats, sometimes it’s as simple as making the connection between supply and demand. As Berry told Down East, “I had the boat, and I had the [goods]. I’d been down the peninsulas delivering poultry from my parents’ farm when I was a teenager, and I knew that the people in those places — and on the islands — didn’t have good access to fresh produce. It was a wonderful combination, pulling my interests together into another enterprise.”

The same idea is behind Marché sur l’eau, Paris’ floating market. Allowing city residents to buy local products from the Île-de-France region; produce comes to Paris on the boat and is sold right on the quai at different locations during the week.

Expanding beyond the market concept, New York Sun Works’ The Science Barge puts a new spin on urban agriculture and is home to a a small farm that’s sustainable in every sense of the word. Launched in 2007, it’s now run by Groundwork Hudson Valley and docked in Yonkers.

In a world of semi-trucks and fast food, floating markets might not be the entire answer to the problems of our food system, but they’re certainly a part of it, and ultimately, remind us to slow down and think about what we’re eating and where it comes from.

Image: Russ Bowling

The post Food by Boat: The Appeal of Floating Farmers Markets appeared first on EcoSalon.

Basic dishes you might consider getting on a plane for. 

Travel isn’t travel without eating. You can’t get to know a place without tasting the local specialties, and food is often one of the best mediums to explore a culture. Be it in a market, on the street, at a restaurant, or in someone’s home, food gives us a very personal look into another culture. Sure, not all your travel culinary experiences are always good ones, but even when you try a local food that doesn’t suite your palate (pickled herring isn’t for everyone) at the very least, it makes for a good story.

When you travel, it can be fun to choose one local food to always go after. In my experience, being on the hunt for something in particular often leads to interesting adventures. Whether you like to travel to eat, or are just looking for an excuse to plan a summer trip, here are eight local meals worth traveling for.

1. Socca: Nice, France

The local street food of Nice, socca is a crepe made from garbanzo bean flour. While street food often makes its way around the world – you can get a döner kebab in just about any city –  socca is a little harder to track down. Even in Paris, there’s only one guy making it. Here are a few recommendations on some of the best ones you can find in Nice. Just make sure to get a chilled glass of rose while you’re at it.

2. Pho: Hanoi, Vietnam

Pho is one of those dishes that has made a name for itself outside of its homeland. In most food metropolises it’s easy to track down a few Vietnamese restaurants that top local foodies’ list of recommended places. But pho is best consumed on a hot street corner in Hanoi, sitting on a small plastic chair and drinking a cold beer. Go all out on the dish of garnishes that is served with it: a bowl full of broth, cilantro and lime is a good thing.

3. Stroopwaffel: Netherlands

A bike ride in Amsterdam followed by a stroopwaffel: is there any better way to spend a trip? Stroopwaffels are cookies made from two layers of thin waffles and held together by a sweet caramel. They’re all over Amsterdam, both sold in bags and packages at stores and markets as well as larger versions as street food. Hint: the day before you head home, go to the local grocery store and buy a few packages to take home with you. They’re that addictive.

4. Asado: Argentina

They’re not for the vegetarian, but asados are acclaimed events, barbecuing many kinds of meats at one time. Argentina is known for its steak, and raised on wild grasslands, you’re assured a leaner meat than standard feedlot-fed US cattle. Try a traditional asado in Patagonia, grilled by local gauchos.

5. Smørrebrød: Denmark

The Danish open-faced sandwich is one you’ll find on almost any traditional Danish menu. It’s a buttered piece of rye bread topped with an assortment of options, from cured meats to cheese. For a truly Scandinavian meal, get one with shrimp and pair it with a local light beer.

6. Accras: French Caribbean

Most Caribbean countries have some form of the accras, a fritter made from fish or shrimp. Accras de morue are popular appetizers in Guadeloupe and Martinique. The word “accra” is most commonly used in the French-speaking part of the Caribbean, but you will also see them listed as fritters in the English-speaking parts. You’ll often find them served as street food and they make for a great snack.

7. Pa amb tomaquet: Barcelona, Spain

Bread rubbed with olive oil and tomato might sound basic, but sometimes, it’s the simplest foods that are the best. Such is the case with Pa amb tomaquet, the classic Catalan dish (pan con tomate in Spanish) that you’ll find in almost any tapas bar. The oilier and juicer the better. If a place does it well, you can be sure that the rest of their menu will be up to par.

8. Amok Trey: Cambodia

This popular Khmer dish is made of steamed fish and coconut milk. With an emphasis on zesty flavors, it has a softer and less spicy taste than most curries. The fish is wrapped with other ingredients in a banana leaf and steamed in the coconut milk.

Images: katinalynn, Tran’s World Productions, sindy, dr_pablogonzalez, fredrikrynde, SnippyHolloW, Jen SFO-BCN, Ben Yapp

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ColumnWhy eating locally isn’t just smart. It’s the socially just thing to do.

We all know the benefits of locavorism: eat food that comes from close to where you live and you not only support the local economy, but you have better access to the people that produce your food.

But unfortunately, the infrastructure of growing local food hasn’t necessarily caught up with the increase in demand and awareness, and while the popularity of farmers markets may be on the rise, that doesn’t mean that the lives of farmers are getting any easier.

An NPR story last week highlighted the difficulties that some of these small-scale, independent farmers face. Farming in Illinois, Amy Cloud and her husband produce all those things we crave to put in our weekend farmers market basket: kale, broccoli, onions, Swiss chard. But while we’re busy sauteing a luxurious assortment of greens for dinner and pondering what organic, artisan cheese to pair with it, the Clouds are working hard to simple scrape by, living off a combined annual income of $25,000 – $30,000.

As Cloud told NPR, “Both my husband and I live off of an income that any normal person would consider to be just enough for one person, certainly not for a whole couple. We don’t have health insurance.”

Why does this discrepancy still exist and how do we fix it?

That is a complicated question with a multifaceted answer, but let’s start with this simple fact: we live in a globalized system where processed food and profit margins reign, no matter the cost to the environment, the local economy or an individual’s health. This is a world of Monsantos, and no matter where you turn, it’s hard – even impossible – to live a lifestyle where you are 100 percent removed from the powers of big agribusiness.

No matter how conscious we are, we consume more and more processed foods and chemicals, from high fructose corn syrup to residual pesticides. On the health side, food companies are fully aware of the effects that this has, but again, profits win out over public health. As former Executive Vice President at Kraft Foods stated in a New York Times Op-ed: “… executives who run these companies like to say they don’t create demand, they try only to satisfy it. “We’re just giving people what they want. We’re not putting a gun to their heads,” the refrain goes.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the years, relentless efforts were made to increase the number of “eating occasions” people indulged in and the amount of food they consumed at each.

To think that we have a certain level of choice when we head to the grocery store is to live in a dream world; we are inundated with products that are meant to create an addiction, and many of those products require cheaply produced ingredients like corn. Corporate agribusiness has a tight grip on the food system, and in it, there’s certainly no room for the independent farmer.

To exist in a world where independent farming can succeed, we have to therefore think about an entire restructuring of the system, from individual consumer habits, to how grocery stores operate to the transportation of goods, and that’s why it’s going to take more than just expanding farmers markets across the country. The solution is a combination of changing personal habits and change that comes from the top down. We need a system that better supports independent agriculture; one that aims to protect food culture instead of slowly losing it.

We can all vote with our forks, but to do so, we have to really do it, not just some of the time. “Buy local” shouldn’t just be a mantra for your apples and kale, it should be a mantra for everything. Until we as consumers start really demanding locally produced goods from independent sources, we won’t get the amount of government support that we need to ensure that these products continue to exist on the shelves, and we will continue to go down a path where we have less and less say over what we are eating.

There are many things that are part of our everyday consumption habits that are difficult to change. (If you find a local farmer in North America growing coffee beans, please tell me about it.) But there’s a lot that we can change, and if we are in an economic position to shop locally, we have the obligation to do so. Not just for our own health, but for the health of our local economies and our neighbors.

If we want to keep eating freshly grown kale, we better do something to ensure that the farmers down the road can continue to grow it, and that starts with buying from them every single time. Not just once a week, but changing our shopping habits so that we really are consuming locally every chance that we get. Only when we start showing that we are serious about our demands will industry follow suit. Support local not because it’s a trend, but because it’s the socially just thing to do.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: ianmalcm

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