As local food balloons in popularity (the market has grown four times faster than industrial agriculture in the past decade, reaching 14 billion dollars in 2016), consumers continue to look for ways to seek it out. But it’s easier said than done.

Our current grocery system makes it a cinch for large distributors and large chains to find one another, but not nearly as easy for grocers to stock products from smaller producers. The proof is in the pudding: while “local” is undoubtedly a popular buzzword when it comes to food, locally sourced products still only make up 3 percent of all of the food we consume.

Serial tech entrepreneur David Stone, however, is looking to change that.

“We can talk all we want about wanting to eat local white asparagus or strawberries,” says Stone, “But if you can’t get it onto the grocery shelf, it’s irrelevant.”

It was with this in mind that Stone founded Forager, a software startup enabling grocers, co-ups, and other food services including schools to tap into the local food market in an easy, streamlined manner.

“Getting independent farmers’ products onto the shelves requires a lot of change in the supply chain,” explains Stone. “Forager, very simply, is digitizing the supply chain to make it much less expensive and much easier to source from small independent farms.”

The software streamlines every step of local sourcing, from ordering to shipping to payments. This reduces not just costs but also the time required to get these coveted local products onto shelves. Michael Shepard, Produce Manager at Portland Food Co-op in Maine, says that Forager has saved him between 10 and 20 hours a week of work in summer months, and General Manager John Crane notes that Forager has become essential for internal communication at the co-op.

“We can pull up Forager any day of the week and see what farmers are delivering on what days, what they’re bringing, in a very organized way,” he says in a video about the software. “It’s definitely a level of organization we’ve never had before.”

The software is also key for helping farmers communicate what items they have available to local stores and purveyors. Sean Hagan of Left Field Farm has been using Forager since last year and notes that it saves him quite a bit of time updating stock availability.

“I no longer have to refer to old lists to find my prices and descriptions; it’s all stored in Forager, and I can just turn items on and off,” he explains.

The software doesn’t just make life easier for small producers, but also for small sellers. Stone notes that the company is focused on independent grocers for the time being, giving them a leg up over bigger distributors when it comes to sourcing locally.

“Small independent grocers, butchers, bakers, fishmongers are starting to make a comeback in the US,” explains Stone. “The consumer wants to be able to have relationships with the people that they’re buying from, and they want to be able to touch and smell the food and activate their senses.”

Forager is small for now, with just 100 growers and a dozen independent grocers using the platform, but the ease of using the software is sure to make it a success for producers and sellers alike.

“I just really wanted to do something to help move our dependence a little away from big agriculture, to kind of bring things back to the way they once were,” says Stone. “It was a combination of wanting to do a little bit of good and help sustain a market that needs technology to help accelerate or facilitate change.”

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The post Forager Makes Sourcing Local Food Even Easier appeared first on EcoSalon.

Tasty small batch spirits to add to your home bar.

While you might think small batch craft distilleries are overrated and are the purview of the waning hipster trend, we would disagree. Just like we saw with the craft beer trend, the popularity of small batch spirits is actually growing. The tastes of imbibers all across the U.S. have really only been whetted and they are pretty much always on the lookout for the latest and best new small batch American spirits.

Learn about some of our favorite small batch spirits to add to your home bar.

5 of the Hottest American Small Batch Spirits

1. Bluecoat American Dry Gin – Philadelphia, PA

Philadelphia’s Bluecoat Gin is something special. Bluecoat keeps it real by using just four botanicals—juniper, coriander, citrus peel, and angelica root. It’s also aged for at least three months in American Oak Barrels, which gives it a very grown-up finish. It’s strong in flavor, but so incredibly smooth. It’s great straight, with tonic, or even in a martini.

2. Blonde Whiskey – Asheville, NC

Blonde whiskey is distilled with heirloom turkey red wheat and white corn, which is sourced in the lowland hills of Western North Carolina. The varieties of corn and wheat used in this whiskey have been grown in the area since the 1800s. Modern varieties of corn and red wheat have bigger yields and are more resistant to weather and pests, but according to the Asheville Distilling Company, the company that crafts the whiskey, the older grains have a flavor and softness the newer versions can’t match, and that makes this whiskey super smooth.

3. Blueshine Blueberry Moonshine – Maine

Blueberry moonshine might not be your go-to spirit, but it’s certainly one of those special items to add to your home bar. Made from barley from the fields of Maine, fermented in a large wooden fermenter, and run through a copper still with a whole bunch of wild blueberries and finished off with Maine maple syrup. It’s smooth and sweet and quite a treat.

4. Barr Hill Gin –  Hardwick, VT

Barr Hill Gin is a wonderful treat that features raw northern honey. Added just before bottling, the raw honey imparts unique floral qualities that vary with season and blossom. Imagine what a wildflower meadow next to a pine forest would taste like–that’s Barr Hill. The distillery, which is located on the banks of the Lamoille River in the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont is part of a community of farms where the production of milk, cheese, timber, grains, honey, seeds, and herbs is infused in this tasty spirit.

5. Rumble Whiskey – Texas

Rumble Whiskey comes highly recommended and is also crafted utilizing honey–it’s actually made with fermented Texas wildflower honey, Mission figs, and turbinado sugar. A truly elegant and distinctive spirit is produced through the twice distilled process and maturation in premium oak casks. This one-of-a-kind Texas creation, crafted by Balcones, is a must-have for your home bar.

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Image: Bourbon Whiskey via Shutterstock

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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.

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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.

Can you eat local in winter? Of course you can!

In the deep cold of winter it’s hard to remember those days of endless sun and diverse produce, isn’t it? These days, when we talk about the “eat local” movement, a comment reaction is, “sure, that’s easy to do in summer, but I don’t want to just eat root vegetables all winter long!”

Certainly, root vegetables can get a bad rap when we’ve been eating them for too long, and there’s no denying that after a few too many rounds of roasted potatoes you are craving the luscious berries of summer. But if we’re looking to eat more sustainably, we have to start thinking out of the box, and it means thinking about how to eat local not just when there’s an abundance of food, but in the quieter harvest months as well.

When it comes to thinking about these questions, Meghan Boledovich has got a pretty cool gig: don’t you wish you could tell people you were an in-house forager? That’s exactly what Boledovich gets to do thanks to her role as in-house forager at New York City’s PRINT restaurant, a space well-known for its culinary sustainability efforts. In her role, Boledovich does everything from maintaining relationships with local purveyors to managing the restaurant’s rooftop garden.

As the restaurant aims to cook seasonally and locally, she’s just the one to give us some tips on how to ensure that we’re not just eating locally in the good weather, but deep in the depths of winter as well.

1. Think out of the box

There’s more to winter than root vegetables, I promise. “There are a lot of other items ​available locally that are produced through the winter other ​than vegetables​, ​which can ​become mundane in the dead of winter​. For instance, ​​try grains, dairy, micro greens, dried ​chillies, legumes, etc,” says Boledovich.

2. You can make exceptions, but you should still know where your food is coming from

There are certainly some foods that don’t come from nearby that you might no be willing to give up. That’s ok says Boledovich, but do what you can to know what you’re getting, and that it’s of the highest quality. “Our [restaurant] motto is “If it’s grown in the region, we eat it in season​.​”​ ​That means for things like citrus and coffee, that never grow in our region we must source from other regions and countries. Even with these products we take great care to work with family farms and fair trade products,” says Boledovich.

3. If you can, shop around
“Source from various locations, go to a farmers market to find niche speciality items (seafood, speciality produce, breads, cheeses, etc)​. ​Join a food co-op or find a grocery store with local bulk items that you can stock up on (grains, beans, etc)​. ​Find a good butcher shop that sources local meat and buy affordable cuts for stewing and braising,” says Boledovich.

4. Make your own food

Wanting to eat local more often? The easiest way to ensure that what’s on your plate came from nearby is to make it yourself. Cooking “is the most affordable way to eat local and produce less waste, especially when you use scraps for stock, save leftovers, ​and ​bring your own lunch​!” she says.

5. Make a boring food in a different way.

“Cabbage may seem boring, ” says Boledovich, “but if you make ​it ​into kimchi or sauerkraut, it preserves it into a tangy condiment that can be used for sandwiches, stews, ​and other dishes.”

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The post Year-Round Locavore: Eat Local No Matter What The Season, 5 Tips From Meghan Boledovich at NYC’s PRINT appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column Spend your money at farmers market and the money stays in the community. Spend it at the big box grocery store and it goes elsewhere.

After a lot of road trips in many different places, I have come to a conclusion. When you drive through the countryside and come across a small town, one of two things happens:

1. You think to yourself, “ugh, this place is full of box stores and has no feeling at all. Get me out of here!” You proceed to drive to the next destination on your map.

2. You think to yourself, “ah, look at all these independent stores and quaint streets, I want to live here!” You stay and hang out, grab a coffee, and maybe even stay for lunch.

I had this feeling recently as I passed through Willunga, Australia. Willunga is a small town south of Adelaide, equidistant from the ocean and vineyards; the kind of landscape that feels like paradise. The main street of town is a collection of small, independent stores. There’s the organic grocer, the butcher and the handful of cafes and wine shops which remind you that you’re in a hub of agriculture and viticulture. It was nearing lunch time and people were out; the small town felt vibrant and active.

Immediately I had the “I want to move here” feeling.

I mentioned this to a woman working in one of the cellar doors (that’s Australian for “tasting room”).

“There’s so much going on here, so many places selling local produce and food.”

“That’s because the city decided to invest in the farmers market,” she responded.

It’s true. Nowadays Willunga is known for its weekend organic farmers market. People drive in from around the area. According to the woman working at the cellar door, it was thanks to this that the town had exploded.

I started thinking about this and community building.

What is it that makes us have that feeling of “I want to live here”? It’s not just a street full of stores. It’s a sense of community; a feeling that there’s a thread that ties everyone together. So often, that thread is food. Food is essential; it’s what keeps us alive. It nourishes us both in the physical and the emotional sense, and it’s what brings us together.

It brings us around the table in the home, and it’s what brings us around the proverbial community table, so often a market.

Think about your local grocery store for a second. Are you compelled to stay a little longer and chat with a neighbor? Do you feel the same sense of pride when you pick up a jar of honey that comes from across the world as the one that comes from 10 miles down the road?

Community doesn’t just come together on its own. It takes work. As we think about how we continue to evolve our communities, and build new ones, some people have started using the phrase “placemaking.”

According to the Project for Public Spaces, “Placemaking is how we collectively shape our public realm to maximize shared value. Rooted in community-based participation, Placemaking involves the planning, design, management and programming of public spaces.”

As our world population grows, we have to think serious about our management of public spaces, and for me, that means thinking about food. Because investing in food and farmers markets has a positive economic impact.

When it comes to farmers markets specifically, there are the direct and indirect benefits. Certainly a farmer benefits when he or she can sell their produce without a middleman, but there are also economic benefits for the community that come from keeping things local.

In 2009, a study found that farmers markets in Oklahoma had generated a total of $3.3 million in direct sales, but $6 million in total economic impact. That’s almost double.

A study done by the USDA found that fruit and vegetable farms engaged in local food sales (i.e. local and regional markets) employ 13 full-time workers per $1 million of sales. Those fruit and vegetable farms that not engaged in local sales (think: big farming)? They only account for 3 full time employees per $1 million of sales. A local food economy creates more jobs.

According to a UK report, “spending in smaller independent local food outlets supports three times the number of jobs than at national grocery chains.” And in another study done in Salt Lake City, locally run businesses return 52 percent of their revenue to the local economy, whereas for national chain retailers, or box stores, it’s only 14 percent. Above and beyond that, when it comes to restaurants, local operation put 79 percent of their revenue back into the local economy, but for big national chains it’s only 30 percent.

This can face a huge impact, particularly when we’re looking at growth of farmers markets. Portland Farmers Market recently accounted that it would stay open all year round. And around the US, int he last decade, farmers markets have grown exponentially. Imagine if they kept growing, if they kept supporting local agriculture and they kept ensuring that local communities could eat well. Shopping locally doesn’t just put hands in the pocket of the farmer; it’s a direct investment in community health and when it comes to placemaking, supporting more farmers markets is a smart move.

We live in a world of “bigger is better.” We strive for efficiency and high production at low cost. But let’s not kid ourselves: we don’t need bigger with more choice. We need smaller with more quality. We don’t need to consume more; we need to consume better.

We need farmers and we need farmers markets. Because above all, we need community. And if you want to build community, you have to invest in it.

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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 Farmers Markets, Food, Placemaking and Smarter, Stronger Communities: 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.

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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.

These local restaurants are where you can eat your food with a good conscience.

If you’re going to vote with your fork, you might as well enjoy the process. With the growth of the sustainable food movement has come an influx of restaurants that are not only focused on taste, but where their food comes from. From vegan restaurants to spots with their own rooftop gardens, here are 7 local restaurants around the country where you can be sure to get a meal that you will feel good about eating.

1. Homestead – Chicago, Illinois

With a 1,000 square foot rooftop garden that produces more than 130 herbs and vegetables, at Homestead you literally have farm-to-table dining. Housed on the rooftop, you have to go through a pizza joint to get here, but once you do, you can snag a spot on the deck next to the living wall and order a craft cocktail or beer.

2. Greens Restaurant – San Francisco, California

Opened in 1979, Greens has been serving up vegetarian fare since before most people knew what fine vegetarian cooking consisted of. Annie Sommerville has been the executive chef here since 1985, and with so many years under her belt, she has become well respected in the world of San Francisco restaurants, but also vegetarian cuisine in general. She works closely with local organic farmers and producers, putting a focus on ingredients that come from the region.

3. Vedge – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

If you’re a vegan, at most restaurants you’re limited to very few options. Not at Vedge, one of the most notable plant-based restaurants in the country. Here you’ll find a kitchen that uses locally sourced ingredients and no animal products whatsoever. But that doesn’t mean it’s just for vegans: this is conscious eating for every type of foodie, which is a good thing, since we could all do with a little less meat intake.

4. SAME Cafe – Denver, Colorado

SAME, which is an acronym for So All May Eat, is a local restaurant that functions differently. You pay what you can at this mostly local, organic eatery, and if you can’t afford anything at all, you can volunteer in the kitchen for an hour in exchange for a meal.

5. Akasha – Los Angeles, California

Akasha is a restaurant where carnivores and herbivores come together. There’s a big focus on sustainability here, sourcing from small family farms, organic growers, sustainable and Fair Trade companies. It’s your standard California, healthy, fresh cuisine, complete with sangria and mimosas for Sunday brunch.

6. Rosemary’s – New York City, New York

New York is known for its Italian food, but what’s better than Italian food from a rooftop garden? That’s exactly what you’ll get at Rosemary’s, where the chef Wade Moises came from a previous stint at Eataly, and there is a 1,000 square-foot rooftop garden. Now, of course, those olives didn’t come from up there, but plenty of the herbs and vegetables that make their way into the menu do, and that alone is worth a trip.

7. Haven – Houston, Texas

Houston may get a bad rap from some people, but those people probably never went to Haven, a restaurant that’s focused on locally sourced ingredients. Not only that, but they compost their kitchen scraps, there’s an organic garden and a bee hive on site, and there are even organic Texas wines on the menu.

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The post 7 Cool, Local Restaurants Where You Can Get a Meal You Can Feel Good About appeared first on EcoSalon.

Raise a glass for locally-owned craft distillers!

Ever heard of artisinal vodka? You may be surprised to learn that craft distilling is a fairly new but growing industry. The American Distilling Institute says that micro-distilling has grown by 30 percent since January 2010, and the number of licensed craft distillers has doubled. Just as local food and local brews, local spirits are now all the rage.

“The renaissance has happened to wine, beer, bread, vegetables … even sauerkraut,” ADI President Bill Owens says of the craft revolution. Now, he says, is simply spirits’ turn, with the industry poised to imitate the rise of craft beers that America experienced in the ’90s.

And it’s already quite lucrative.

“The beauty of spirits is the margins are a lot better than cookies,” said Scott Blackwell, owner of High Wire Distilling Co. in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. “A case of cookies costs $18. A case of spirits costs $200. The effort that goes into one unit gets you a lot further dollar-wise.”

Craft distilleries make a big splash

In my home state of South Carolina, micro-distilling is exploding, a microcosm of the larger national picture. According to The Post & Courier, they’re borrowing a tactic from West Coast spirit producers: the first distillery to open in Charleston is rife with local products, like Southern-grown herbs, corn, sugar cane, and sorghum.

“We live in a really vibrant agricultural community,” said Ann Marshall of High Wire Distilling Co. “There are a lot of things we can do.”

Although craft distillers aren’t strictly defined, the term generally refers to a distiller who produces under 100 gallons of spirits a year. In comparison, huge distilleries like Bacardi produce 100 gallons of spirits in a day.

Firefly Distillery on Wadmalaw Island was first on the scene in South Carolina, making the process easier for the craft distillers that would follow. Firefly paved the way for newcomers Charleston Distillery and Striped Pig Distillery by successfully lobbying for a reduction in the distillery licensing fee in 2009.

“When we got the law changed, it was the end of the world with the recession,” Scott Newitt, president of Wadmalaw Island’s Firefly Distillery, told The Post & Courier. “I think it’s starting to flourish now. But these craft distillers are going to have to come up with a story, like we did: We’re using all-American stuff and keeping it all Southern with sweet tea. Places struggle if they don’t have a story.”

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Image: Joel Olives

The post Got Local Liquor? Our Growing Thirst for Craft Distillers 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.

ColumnThe moral obligation to eat better.

When we talk about food, the topic of economics inevitably follows suite. The whole eating-well-is-a-luxury conversation. It is a comment I have heard many times, especially in response to writing about healthy eating. “Not everyone can eat like that” is a common outcry in response to stories of whole grains and organic fruits and vegetables. It’s true; an industrialized and global agriculture system has externalized many costs, like health. And ultimately, it made unhealthy, non-local, processed food the cheapest. This means that there are many people in an economic situation that doesn’t allow them a choice; irresponsibly priced food, as Michael Pollan once put it, is their only option.

But many of us do have a choice.

We’ll buy premium gas, but we’ll buy the cheapest carrots. We’ll invest in a $100 -a-month fitness studio, but we’ll down a chemically enhanced sports drink afterwards. We’ll cut out carbs and starches in an attempt to eat better, but we’ll continue to eat eggs from god-knows-where.

Although the individual effects of these choices may be minimal, at least in the short term, because food is linked to so many things, the ultimate cost is much much greater. Buying factory raised chicken isn’t just about the health of that one chicken, it’s about the health of the land that the factory is on, the people that work there, and the wages that the fast food worker was paid to serve it to you.

We want to create a better world to live in, and if we have the luxury to choose what you eat, shouldn’t you have a moral obligation to do so?

I was thinking about this recently as I read through a friend’s musings on the same topic. Emily runs a site devoted to locavorism, regularly visits local producers at markets and is committed to buying natural foods that are grown with care. And she too deals with the problems of readers complaining about the problem of locally grown food being simply too high. As she puts it:

“We all make choices on where and how to spend our money and I think that food is one thing that is worth paying for. I don’t own a lot of shoes, or much clothing- I don’t spend a ton of money on things that make me look better, but good food makes me feel great in an invaluable way that I love to share with the people I care about.”

I’ll second that point. Feel free to check out my bank statement before commenting on my eating habits. It is because I personally put a value on eating well. It’s a choice that I have intentionally made.

She goes on to point out:

“Local farmers aren’t getting rich off of the “locavore” movement. Despite comparatively elevated prices at the market, these farmers live simple lives and constantly feel economic pressure. Farmers are already hard pressed to tend their land with small teams of workers, to transport their goods to the city, and to pay rent for a place in the open-air markets.”

Emily’s right, and she touches on a point that we should all spend some time thinking about.

We live in a world of speed; fast and cheap have become the norm. And just like buying a cheap t-shirt in the name of fast fashion on one side of the world can have the ultimate effect of hundreds of deaths at a textile factory on the other side, cheap food comes at an extreme cost.

Be serious with yourself: it’s not the broccoli that is $1 more expensive that is going to break the bank. Ultimately that dollar that you save by buying the cheaper version of produce may put an extra dollar in your pocket, but it doesn’t have the same benefit for a lot of other things: the farmer, the environment, the community.

What we eat isn’t just a matter of choice, it’s a matter of morals.

We make plenty of decisions in our everyday  choices based on morals. How we treat other people, how we react to situations.

When you’re broke, why don’t you rob a bank? Because your morals tell you otherwise. Yet when you’re hungry, you stop at the grocery store and pick up the first thing that will satiate that hunger, no matter where it comes from or who made it. If we expect change in the food system, we have to demand it, and that means making a choice every time we eat.

This may be preaching to the choir, but the choir has room to change too.

If you’re going to remember to take your reusable bag to the grocery store, then remember not to fill it with processed foods.

If you’re shopping for fruit in the organic section, then don’t choose fruit that comes from a continent away.

If you’re going to lament the suicides of farmers linked to the global control of seeds by Monsanto, then don’t buy from global companies that block GMO labeling efforts. Ever.

We can all make an improvement in what and how we eat. Even if you can only make a small step, it’s still a step, and it’s the power of choice. The power to choose a different path forward, one that supports local food systems, food equity and a world where we can eat whole foods that are good for us.

And if you expect real change, that choice isn’t an option.

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: DC Central Kitchen

The post Foodie Underground: Fast Food, Fast Fashion… It’s All About Choice appeared first on EcoSalon.