Perhaps no one represented the American work ethic more than the dairy farmer. Early morning hours and hard physical labor, often conducted in solitude while ankle deep in muck. Families working together to get the job done. They have long proudly supplied a demand for their community, and like most farmers, are clearly not in it for the money.

Today however, the American dairy farmer also represents the frustration and economic hardship evident across our nation. Increasing volatility in the price of milk paid to farmers, higher feed costs, corporate consolidation in the supply chain, organic milk farms scaling up, and questionable government policies all have farmers shedding a few tears. The life is so unappealing that the number of American families remaining in milk farming has plummeted from roughly 165,000 20 years ago, to less than 50,000 today.

Behind the innocent glass of milk lies an intriguing story that’s not so black and white: Many farmers are losing money, organic milk is in short supply,  anti-trust lawsuits have been filed, and legislative reform is on the agenda. Farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers are engaged in conversations like never before. And cows. Don’t forget about the cows.

Please join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco on Tuesday, February 21 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm at 18 Reasons, as we discuss the current state of the organic dairy industry.

When: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Time: Food and drink at 6:30. Discussion from 7 – 8:30 pm
Where: 18 Reasons (3674 18th St., San Francisco, 94110)
Tickets: $10 Brown Paper Tickets. NOTE: A limited number of sliding scale tickets will be available on a first come, first serve basis at 7 pm on the night of the event.

Joining us in conversation will be:

Leslie Butler, Department of Agricultural Economics at U.C. Davis. Leslie holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University. He regularly testifies at state and national hearings regarding dairy policy, and has published numerous articles on dairy production and economics marketing and policy.

Mike Griffin, West Region Pool Manager, Organic Valley. Mike was born and raised in Petaluma, CA. After his first year of college, he began his journey into farming, and never looked back. His vast  experience over 30 years at Clover Stornetta as a truck driver, distribution foreman, plant manager and in public relations, ultimately led him to Organic Valley in 2011, the nation’s largest cooperative of organic farmers.

Richard Hughes, owner Westfield Jersey’s in Bodega, CA. Richard was a self-proclaimed “city boy,” until he turned 15 and a 4-H project began his life long journey and commitment to dairy farming.  In 1976, Richard and his wife purchased a 182-acre ranch just outside of Bodega. They currently have around 100 Jersey cows, have completed the transition to organic farming, and provide milk to Straus Family Creamery.

Bob McGee, CFO/COO Straus Family Creamery, Marshall, CA.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of Civil Eats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Seasonal snacks and refreshments generously provided by Bi-Rite Market and Shoe Shine Wine.

Alison Cross and her older brother Alphonzo saw a vast need for fresh food in the Castleberry Hill neighborhood of Atlanta, where they’d spent time since they were kids. The community, which is adjacent to the Atlanta University Center, had seen both vibrance and decay, and was begging for transformation.

So the siblings decided to fill that need, and hatched a plan to open The Boxcar Grocer, a new food business. Alison, who studied architecture and worked as a video editor, and Alphonzo, with a background in fashion, describe the independent grocery store, which stocks local, organic, whole foods, as being at “the intersection of food justice and high-concept retail.”

And they’re right; it’s not your average corner store. The market looks modern, with lots of light, stainless steel, and wood. The shop, which had a “soft” opening in late October and celebrated its grand opening last Monday, sits in an area dotted with old railroad warehouses. African Americans own the majority of the storefront businesses. The neighborhood is undergoing a renaissance with small art galleries, graphic design firms, and a tattoo parlor that attract the typical urban mix of students, artists, and free thinkers.

Alison, 36, has also written about the personal inspiration for Boxcar (“This is Our Land“), the socioeconomic challenges of the food movement (“All the Foodies are Rich, All of the Farmers are White, But Some of Us are Still Cookin’“), and its shortcomings (“A Limited Engagement“) on the store’s blog.

I spoke with her recently about her hopes for the family business and the obstacles she and her brother have faced along the way.

Why did you decide to open a corner store in Atlanta?

For years we recognized a lack of stores in the area where we could get food we liked when we came to town. The space became vacant in May 2009 but we couldn’t find anyone willing to put in a store. So we researched, wrote a business plan, and started submitting to banks for financing.

In the meantime, I was working at The San Francisco Foundation part-time and part-time at Feldman Architecture, so I was getting this great vision of what could happen when social ideals merge with beautiful design. We felt no one had done that. And there were very few people actually creating something new in terms of for-profit business models for food access. We also figured if we were going to uproot our lives and move away from the Bay Area, it had to be for something extraordinary.

Did you run into any challenges?

Unfortunately, the economic crisis meant the process took us two years to complete. Banks flat-out weren’t lending, especially not commercial loans to novices. But we kept charging along. We applied to nine different banks and one foundation and all said no. All we needed was one yes, and that happened in March 2011.

Did you get support from the healthy corner store movement?

People we approached in the national food movement didn’t really take us seriously until we actually opened the store. Maybe it’s because we came out of nowhere. We were not involved in politics, nor did we run in foodie circles. We’d meet people at food movement events and when I mentioned opening a store I got the sense that people were dismissive.

What kind of response have you had from local residents?

We have had overwhelming support from the community. That’s a wonderful validation because for so long it was this thing rattling around in our heads and on paper. People have been amazingly patient with our mistakes. People are just so grateful to have a grocery store here after all these years. On opening day–which we tried to do quietly to work out the kinks–there was so much buzz about the business we had a line outside the door before we even opened. It was insanity.

Locating local farmers has been a discovery process–we thought we’d be dealing with rural farms–so to find such well-established urban farms as Truly Living Well, Metro Atlanta Urban Farm, HABESHA, and Patchwork City Farms right here in the inner city has been incredible. It’s allowed us to tap their network of supporters and access a knowledge base that is helping us learn about organic farm operations.

I spent last summer riding my bike from farmers’ market to farmers’ market meeting vendors, tasting food, and connecting with the producers.

What about some of the craft products in the store?

One couple make these phenomenal pulled pork sandwiches and organic barbecue sauce called The Heat Legend. A product like that speaks to our diverse community. It allows us to meet people where they are with their diet but offer a healthier option that is culturally appropriate. Another producer makes these kale salads with sun-dried tomatoes that people go bananas over. We can barely keep them in stock. It feels good to offer a healthy fast food that people can snack on.

What’s it like running a business with your brother?

It’s awesome. We’ve always been close and we’ve always wanted to work together. I’m in awe of his creativity, social nature, and energy. He appreciates the way I dig down in the details and my diligence in seeing things through. We respect each other’s visions and know that we get more done together than we do on our own because of our complementary skills.

Can you give us some background about your own relationship to food?

I was a notoriously picky eater as a child. Left to my own devices I’d consume nothing but Frosted Flakes and Kraft macaroni and cheese. Both my parents cooked. My mom made Cajun spiced red snapper, jambalaya, and gumbo, foods influenced by her mother, who was from Louisiana. My dad liked to cook us breakfast. We weren’t really allowed candy or lots of fast food, which was maybe a once-a-month treat. After my dad passed away in 2001, I went to Grenada, West Indies. It was the first time I was really surrounded by utterly fresh food. I was eating fruit right off the trees, vegetables directly from the ground, and seafood caught the same day it ended up on my plate. It was healing and cleansing and opened my eyes to what a difference food can make.

What does food justice mean to you?

It means approaching food access as an issue that is not reduced to a socioeconomic determinant. It means adding more faces to the cause so people can identify and desire to be part of a lifestyle shift. If Jay-Z and Kanye can create a lifestyle brand that people in urban and suburban areas aspire to, regardless of their actual income, why can’t we do that with organic food?

We have had family members and friends who are highly educated and in the middle class develop diseases directly related to the food they are eating. I like to tell people that we are not in competition with Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. We’re in competition with KFC, Burger King, and McDonald’s, who are marketing directly to people like me. The food [access] movement is looking at low-income people and telling them to eat better, but not necessarily including the people who CAN afford to eat better but don’t think it’s important or don’t connect with how it has been presented thus far.

What does the future hold for Boxcar?

We have always envisioned Boxcar as a national model. We wanted to be able to create something that would inspire other social entrepreneurs to replicate and hopefully get more healthy corner stores popping up in food deserts to show the demand is there for these businesses. What Alphonzo and I have done is an incredibly risky venture from a financial perspective. But we made a healthy gamble that was deeply rooted in the strength of our education, experience, work ethic, and commitment to seeing the model thrive in different incarnations across the country.

For now, we are focused on building this brand into a strong foundation. We would love Boxcar to be the Walgreen’s of healthy corner stores. We’d like to see at least another five to 10 stores like Boxcar in the next five years.

Originally published on Grist

Urban farmer. Heirloom. Food security. Methane digester. These are just a few of the terms you’ll find in the Lexicon of Sustainability, a series of portraits that speak the language of a growing movement.

The project began with Douglas Gayeton’s first book, Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town, which portrayed the principles of the Slow Food movement as expressed in rural Pistoia, Italy. While on his book tour in the United States, Douglas encountered people who longed to connect with those cultural traditions. “We’re a nation of immigrants,” he says. “And a lot of traditions that were tied to food haven’t carried on from one generation to the next.”

He decided, with his wife, Laura, to document and share what they saw as the roots of the sustainability movement in America. They started by photographing 100 thought-leaders, farmers, and food artisans and asking them to describe one key concept that defined what they did. Each portrait in the Lexicon consists of multiple photos seamlessly collaged, then carefully hand-lettered with detailed phrases selected from the interviews. “The people in the photographs often refer to the image as a collaboration, and for us, that’s the greatest compliment,” says Douglas. “They have sweated out all of the words. They’ve thought it all out.”

So far, the Lexicon team has created more than 175 of these “information art” photo collages, capturing national pioneers such as Will Allen, Alice Waters, and Joel Salatin, as well as farmers and artisans such as La Tercera Farm (pictured above), Marin Sun Farms, Knoll Farms, La Cocina, Cowgirl Creamery, Lagier Ranches, and Bariani Olive Oil. The project is also branching out into short films.

This year, the Lexicon Project takes the show on the road with pop-up exhibits around the country. Hosted in community venues like farmers markets, small grocery stores, and CSA pick-up spots, the goal is to engage people in the places where they think and talk about food. After each show, the prints are donated to a local school.

We caught up with Douglas, who had just returned from photographing alternative water and energy practices in Israel, to learn more about the Lexicon project.

Why did you chooseto focus on the language of sustainability?

Sustainability as an idea is very important, but as a term, it’s vague and often misused. People ask me, “How can you use the term sustainability for your project when it’s already been hijacked?” Part of the project is taking back the power of words from large companies. Look at the term cage-free. When people learned the term cage-free, they suddenly thought about where an egg came from and realized that a cage-free egg would probably taste better and was probably better for the chicken. Then, it turned out that cage-free was a weasel word, and it was replaced by free-range, which was also a weasel word. That led us to pasture-raised. The idea that terms have power to shift people’s consciousness and thereby shift the way industries do business is very real.

What have you learned about sustainability since starting the project?

Sustainability is best expressed by the people I’ve documented. One definition came to me from a Cherokee forager (pictured at right) in Washington State. He said that when he learned to forage, his grandmother and his great aunt took him out into the forest and showed him how the animals eat. They told him that an animal never eats all of something; an animal always leaves a little bit so that next season there is something more to eat, and it’ll be there every year. This is one definition of sustainability: to not use all of something, to use enough of something to satisfy your own needs, and to make sure there will be something left for the next person. Our logo for the Lexicon Project is an ouroboros, a snake that eats its tail and constantly rejuvenates and revitalizes itself. But I think there are many ways to express sustainability. People have a tendency to think in black-and-white terms—only eating what’s local, only eating 100 percent organic—but part of the project is illuminating that things are much more gray than black and white.

Why do we need a common language around food and sustainability?

Whenever I go to a conference about food, there ends up being someone who says we don’t know the difference between food sovereignty and food justice and food security, or we don’t understand the different principles related to egg production. We are activists who are deeply engaged in the conversation, and yet we don’t know the distinctions between all of these terms. This puts us at a great disadvantage because we can’t speak with a unified voice.

Somebody came up to me once and said, “You know, what you’re doing is diabolical, because if you can set the definition of something and get people to become disseminators, then you’ve planted thought bombs that they’ll never be able to get rid of. You’ve taken the power of those words back.” I firmly believe that words can save the world, and words are the building blocks for new ideas. If the most radical thing this project can do is help define what the words are, then we are perfectly comfortable with that.

You can view larger versions of some of these images at the Lexicon of Sustainability. 

Meet Douglas Gayeton and watch the short film “A Story of an Egg” at CUESA’s Beyond Cage-Free panel discussion on February 16. Learn more. 

Originally published on CUESA

 

 

 

 

 

Paula Deen’s public admission that she has Type 2 diabetes and her follow-up announcement that she is also a paid spokesperson for the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, and its diabetes drug, Victoza, has sparked an interesting debate about the deeper issues surrounding our food system—especially the impact it has on the many people diagnosed with diabetes. And according to Deen’s comments on the Today show, she implies to her millions of fans, that the primary ways to deal with this largely diet-related disease are through personal responsibility and pharmaceuticals.

Indeed, when Al Roker, asks her if she is going to change the way she eats and the foods she cooks, Deen says, “Honey, I’m your cook, I’m not your doctor. You are going to have to be responsible for yourself.” Evading the question, Deen puts the onus back on the individual to decide what foods to eat or not, despite the fact that she promotes unhealthful and processed foods on TV. The one comment she does make about food choice is “moderation,” one of the most meaningless and confusing bits of nutrition advice. In fact, this is what the industry giants often use as their defense for harmful, unhealthful foods.

Personal responsibility and consumer choice are solutions heralded by conservatives and liberals alike—the idea being that ultimately good health comes down to what we choose to buy and eat. But it’s not that simple.

There are three main issues when it comes to the myth of personal responsibility about food choice and they get at the root of our nation’s health crisis: The public’s confusion about nutrition; the lack of time and knowledge about real home cooking; and the promotion of quick fixes like drugs, diet foods, and fads in lieu of addressing underlying causes. The Paula Deen diabetes story manages to hit on every single one of these issues.

Americans suffer from nutrition confusion, thanks to an array of conflicting and often inaccurate public health messages, misleading labels and claims on packaging, and a lack of nutrition knowledge by many doctors, dietitians, and other health care providers.

Deen’s cooking, and now her public diabetes announcement, only adds to this confusion. During the Today show interview she repeatedly mentions the amount of fat in her recipes, as do many in the media reporting on the story. “For 10 years, wielding slabs of cream cheese and mounds of mayonnaise,” a New York Times article begins, “Paula Deen has become television’s self-crowned queen of Southern cuisine.”

But real, unprocessed cream cheese and mayonnaise are not the problem. The issue that mainstream media has largely overlooked is that Deen uses the processed, packaged versions of these foods, which are full of chemicals, additives and trans-fats. Actual home cooking would require whipping these foods up herself in her kitchen using real ingredients. And that is the real story behind Deen’s diabetes diagnosis: Her health problems are largely due to her reliance on packaged, processed foods that are the foundation for many of her recipes.

Even though her cooking show is called Paula’s Home Cooking, there’s a lot going on in her kitchen that is as far removed from home cooking as you can get. Many of her recipes include “ingredients” like Krispy Kreme doughnuts, biscuit mixes, cans of mushroom soup, and sour-cream-and-onion flavored potato chips. This is processed food cooking, not home cooking.

Heaping the blame on all the “fat” she cooks with only serves to confuse the public further. A New York Daily News article also cites fat as one of the main culprits in Deen’s cooking and her diet. But the most recent research indicates that when it comes to diabetes, fat is not the problem. The problem foods are sugar, refined white flour, chemical additives, artificial sweeteners and flavors, trans-fats, and the various other chemicals and additives found in the processed foods that abound in Deen’s recipes.

Now Deen is pushing the idea that taking medicine is the real solution to diabetes. On the Today show, she says, “Here’s what I want to get across to people, I want them to first start by going to their doctor and asking to be tested for diabetes. Get on a program that works for you. I’m amazed at the people out there that are aware they’re diabetic but they’re not taking their medicine.”

According to Deen, the reason she waited three years to go public with her diagnosis was because she didn’t have anything to give her fans. “I could have walked out and said, ‘Hey ya’ll, I have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.’ I had nothing to give to my fellow friends out there. I wanted to bring something to the table when I came forward.” So what is she bringing to the table? A sales pitch for a diabetes drug that costs $500 per month and has some seriously troubling side effects, including thyroid cancer, as Tom Philpott reports.

Just think of the kind of influence she could have wielded had she come out with a new cooking show that focused on using fresh, real food ingredients that cut way back on sugar and refined carbohydrates. In fact, if she had done so and eaten this way for the past three years she might have reversed her own diabetes diagnosis, which is entirely possible given the right diet.

But instead, Deen is getting paid to leave that task to a drug company. This isn’t her first corporate sponsorship (here she peddles Smithfield ham) and I doubt it will be her last. Diabetic and diet foods can’t be far behind in products she’ll attach to her name.

Alas, we can’t fairly discuss personal responsibility without taking into account the under-regulated advertising industry that pushes cheap, convenient, and processed foods on an overworked and cash-strapped population. Add to this the diminishing knowledge on how to shop for, cook, and prepare foods from scratch and we have a serious problem.

As Deen now joins the 25.8 million other Americans suffering with diabetes, she “brings to the table” the ideas of moderation, personal responsibility, and the drug Victoza as the solutions. She could do so much more with all the power she wields.

Anthony Bourdain put it squarely when he said of Deen, “If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.” And this was before her diabetes announcement. Bourdain has also said that Deen is the “worst, most dangerous person to America.” He might have a point.

Scores of books depict farms as little slices of heaven on earth, where venison is smoked and butter is churned, and things seem perfect. But today’s farmers are far from unrealistic dreamers, longing for a Little House on the Prairie-esque pastoral ideal. They’re socially conscious doers. And when asked about books that inspire them, they cite writings that are practical, at times poetic, and that beckon them to rescue the land.

Here are some of the books that farmers are reading and getting inspiration from today.

The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry. “I had spent  seven or so years of my life as a ‘punk’ growing up in the the central NJ suburbs of NYC, disgruntled and disillusioned and looking for real meaning and ways to be in the world, and [Berry] was someone seemingly so disgruntled and disillusioned, yet incredibly intelligent and coherent, with a posited solution of sorts…. Challenges [were] laid forth to take full responsibility for our lives and to truly push against what our culture is feeding us, to move towards a society built around community, equality, a new free culture, and a cooperative economy in which we all work satisfying jobs in support of each other; ideals I cannot imagine any human being would deface. Farming could embrace these challenges and reconnect us with the land and each other like no other, I was convinced.” — Anthony Mecca, Great Song Farm

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. “I read The Good Earth when I was a child, I think I was ten or eleven. I read it again in my 20s, and again in my 30s…. It’s an inspiring novel about building a dream, perseverance. I think the best line is at the end of the novel when it says, ‘without land, you’re nothing.’ It’s a quote my father and mother used to repeat to us kids all the time. So that book always meant something for many reasons.” — Alexis Koefoed, Soul Food Farm

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. “I read it as a freshman in college. This was kind of a critical treatise in the ecological movement. It was not only a cry of protest, but a teaching document about the basic principles of ecology. [Carson] was drawing connections between the different layers that make up the environment… how the chemical sprays in the ground migrated into the trees. The book had layers—one layer was science, one was critique, and one was art—the art of protest. It was also very poetic—what do we cherish more than the sound of birds in the spring?And I thought the fusion of those things really appealed to me as a young woman, and guided what kinds of actions I would take in my life. “ — Severine von Tscharner-Fleming, farmer and founder of The Greenhorns.

How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons. “My copy of this one is missing its cover and several of the front pages and the binding has been chewed up by a dog. I like that John explains a complete farming system that minimizes the use of commercial and outside inputs that will work nearly worldwide.  He even looks at the calories produced, and includes fruit trees, and compost growing areas as part of the garden design and process… I wanted to farm because it is good honest work and it provides something that people truly need.  John Jeavons is telling people all over the world how they can farm and produce the food they need with very few tools, little money and fertilizer, and using open-pollinated seeds.” — Brenton Johnson, Johnson’s Backyard Garden

The Contrary Farmer by Gene Lodgson. “I read The Contrary Farmer about eight years ago.  I think this book really helped me formulate the idea about what it meant to be a farmer.  Lodgson painted a beautiful, yet realistic picture of the farming lifestyle and the sacrifices a farmer must make.  It brought me to the conclusion that I could achieve this lifestyle for myself and my family.” — Jacqueline Smith, Green Dirt Farm.

Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon by Pablo Neruda. “Judith [Winfrey] and I really did not come to farming in a direct fashion. Early on in our relationship we fell in love with food, travel, revolutionaries, ecology, and community.  The decision to farm seemed like a natural way to wed most of these fascinations… Neruda is amazing in all of his words, but his Odes really resonate with people who love food and its power to create interaction.  We still read “Ode to the Onion” once a year.” — Joe Reynolds, Gaia Gardens/Love is Love Farm.

Alternative Urban Futures: Planning for Sustainable Development in Cities throughout the World by Raquel Pinderhughs. “What motivated me most was that Raquel conveys a vision using practical models from around the world. She was my inspiration to take what would have been just a house and a garden and work to transform it into a living renewing system.” — Esperanza Pollana, Pluck and Feather Farm.

It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life by Keith Stewart. “This book provided a lot of inspiration while I was starting to farm … Not because it’s a perfect book, or because I agree with everything the author did or believes, but because it provides a very interesting story of becoming an organic farmer (with warts and all). The guy hadn’t farmed before and showed what he went through in setting up a farm and carving out a niche.” — Fred Hempel, Baia Nicchia

We Didn’t Have Much but We Sure Had Plenty: Rural Women in Their Own Words by Sherry Thomas. “I was originally inspired to farm because of the farms I grew up around in Skippack, PA.  But as farms left my community, I was left thinking it wasn’t a good career to get into.  Many things re-inspired me to start growing my own food in my early 20s, but [this] book stands out. it was a bunch of stories of women who worked their land as a job and for personal consumption. Most were very poor, but were able to tend to their nutritional needs because of farming/food preservation. It reminded me of the importance of simplifying life and just how vital feeding yourself from your own garden can be.” — Barbara Finnin, City Slicker Farm

The New Organic Grower: a Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener, by Eliot Coleman. “I got my first farming book back when I was 25 yrs. old in 1988, and [Coleman] continues to revise the book to stay current.  This is a basic how-to organic farm book, but it’s very inspiring and gives great information for the modern day gardener.  Elliot himself is an amazing grower, who invents unique farming tools and is always looking for new/better ways to grow vegetables.  This book is still my “go to” reference book and I use it to turn people on to growing food. Since I’m a New Englander and he is part of the Maine growing community he’s always appealed to me.” — Simon Richard,  Sonoma Farms (Bi-Rite Farms)

A few months ago my wife gave me a home brewing kit. Home brewing is a fun activity and something I’ve done with greater (and lesser) success over the years. While I do enjoy it, I also drink more beer than I brew, so I tend to sample my share of beers made by others.

And there’s a lot of different beer being brewed, as other bloggers have explained (here and here). Domestically-produced American beers, called craft beer or microbrews, have started a revolution in terms of quality, variety and flavor. Art, science and the marketplace have combined to make better beers blissfully commonplace on store shelves around the country. And the proof is showing up in bottom lines—in spite of the overall shrinking of the beer market, the craft beer segment has thrived. What’s more, this better beer movement challenges decades of perception (and reality) of the lowly American beer.

And this change in American beer starts at home, or nearly so, as craft beer really is a “local beer” phenomenon. This shift in consumer preferences and support for local craft beer is perfectly representing in a nanobrewery start-up called Community Beer Works(CBW) in Buffalo, NY. The CBW founders are using Kickstarter, social media and other fund raising techniques to make their brewery

an integral part of our city and the neighborhood our brewery is located in. We are planning partnerships with local urban farmers and gardeners to create a network of hop gardens that can be used in specialty beers as well as to dispose of our grain in ecologically friendly, mutually beneficial manner. Our goal is to foster a sense of community and place, enriching our hometown through the production of damn good beer.

What is “new to us” about this project is the clear articulation of its goal–strengthening local community through microbrewing. And CBW is not alone. This powerful message is resonant with the good food movement and underscores the values that foodies and craft beer adherents share, especially over the return to local. Below are some characteristics (most of which also apply to the good food movement) of the better beer movement, particularly as it concerns local production and consumption.

Ingredients

One of beer’s greatest attributes is the amazing variety of flavor that can be derived from four ingredients: grain malt (typically barley), hops, yeast and water. Even given this simplicity, microbrewers and enthusiasts–like their locavore cousins–are eager to have locally-sourced ingredients in the product. Such is the case for the recently released BSA Harvest from Notch Sessions Brewery, which features New England-raised grains. The same is true further south in Durham, NC, where Fullsteam puts out a seasonal craft beer employing many local ingredients, from persimmons to sweet potatoes. In Fullsteam’s endeavor to promote “radical, farm-focused brewing,” a nearby farmer has set aside one acre dedicated to hop cultivation.

Owing to my environmental specialty, I can’t resist pointing out that virtually all brewers, large to small, use one local ingredient: water. The importance of water is openly acknowledged by Cathy Erway, Communications Director for Brooklyn-based, Sixpoint Craft Ales.

New York City tap water is among the best drinking water in the country, and we proudly use it in our beer. It’s one of the reasons we chose this city to open the brewery in.

Clean water that is not inundated with chemicals and has a balanced level of TDS that provide good texture and taste is equally as important as the other flashier ingredients. So the next time you tip one back, don’t forget a toast to your local water provider and watershed manager for a (hopefully) job well done. (And for you hopheads out there, don’t hesitate to quaff my favorite Sixpointer, the Bengali Tiger.)

Sustainability

In many cases, microbrewers are eco-leaders in their communities, proving that sustainability is more a matter of practice than a trendy buzzword. The list of breweries that incorporate sustainability into their products and operations is long and getting longer.

Many craft brewers and drinkers are strong supporters of sustainable and organic farming practices and reflect that in their beer. Organic beer, still a small segment of the market, got a shot in the arm when the USDA required organic hops in order to label a brew organic (this seems obvious, but let’s just move on). This requirement, coupled with growing demand for organic beer, means that organic hops farming is expanding in the United States, potentially overtaking New Zealand as the world’s leading grower.

Beyond ingredients, craft breweries are demonstrating sustainable business practices in other aspects of production, too. Alaskan Brewing Company’s was the first craft brewery to recycle naturally occurring CO2 from the fermentation process, offsetting 1.5 millions gallons of fuel-oil with spent grain heating, and using proceeds to found an ocean health nonprofit organization, Coastal Code, among other activities. For another sustainable use of spent brewing grain (not to mention farm-to-table menus), look no further than Triumph Brewing and its three PA and NJ locations, where they share the spent grain with local farmers for livestock feed. And California’s well known Sierra Nevada Brewery has an entire sustainability program complete with real-time power generation reporting for their large solar power arrays, and natural/biogas fuel cells. And big ups to Central Waters Brewing Company in Amherst, WI for maintaining the state’s first solar-hot water system complete with radiant floor heating, estimated to save $1.4 to $1.5 million in energy costs over its lifetime.

Tradition and Innovation

As defined by the Brewers Association , the foremost microbrew experts, an “American craft brewer is small, independent and traditional.” Under this definition, almost 98 percent of the over 1,700 breweries in the United States meet that criteria, although craft breweries have captured less than seven percent of total market sales. Still, the sheer number of smaller-sized breweries not owned by Industro-Brewers is impressive. It also means that the brewing techniques used to brew the flagship beers are “malt-based” and don’t contain as many “adjuncts” (added rice, corn, etc.) as their industrial counterparts do, which often result in weak-tasting beer. (To sip a pint of tradition, head to Circle Brewing Company in Austin, TX for beer that conforms to the German purity code dating from 1516 that permits only the customary foursome of malt, hops, yeast and water.)

While craft brewing stays committed to traditional artisanship, innovation is strongly encouraged. Many never-before-experienced flavor profiles have been created using different ingredients from varietal malt to chocolate to chilies, not to mention the most common method: adding tons of hops. (Take a look at the unique selections that Clipper City Brewing Co. is producing in Baltimore.) Innovation extends outside of unusual taste sensations to unusual business models. For Northern California’s Bison Brewery, the formation of a streamlined, vertically-integrated farm-to-brewery structure guarantees the flow of organic ingredients from local and regional farmers, thereby lowering the cost of their organic beers to the cost of most non-organic craft beers.

Culture and Community

In the beginning there was beer. Rather, there was beer as soon as there was agriculture, as evidenced by ancient Sumerian brewing that occurred about 6,000 years ago. Over the centuries and across many cultures, beer was almost literally considered to be daily bread. Skip several thousand years to pre-Colonial America and you’ll find that the Pilgrims craved beer so much that the Mayflower was outfitted to carry a precious supply of suds. George Washington was a noted beer lover and home brewer (check out his recipe). In America, the flow of beer and the flow of immigration took the same multitude of routes, with small breweries springing up everywhere linking new homesteads with old, culturally-distinctive styles.

Then Prohibition struck. America’s post-Prohibition brewing culture and history is sadly fallow not only because of Prohibition, but what happened after. Just as with Big Ag, Industro-Brew companies wiped out smaller, domestic beer competition through consolidation and turned the beer industry into a monoculture of taste and culture. The last remnants of beer diversity in the late 20th century were the regional breweries that provided a sense of cultural identity and independence apart from the homogenized. With people proudly rallying around them, regional brewers like Washington State’s Olympia and Baltimore’s National Bohemian fought to survive, but eventually were gulped up by the Pabst/Metropoulos Co., which is actually an equity firm. Even though the two beers are brewed far away, they remain “community symbols” bound up in local identity. Witness the 2011 marriage of long-time National Bohemian mascot, Natty Boh boy, to another Mid-Atlantic cultural icon, the Utz potato chip girl.

Like any product, beer consumers want quality, choice and the opportunity to connect with local communities, making the better beer movement both similar and complementary to the food movement. As Sixpoint’s Cathy Erway states:

We appreciate craft beer and the important role it’s played in numerous societies throughout time, as well as new waves in the last few decades in the U.S. What we’re doing is an example of what brewers did in cities and towns all over, which is use the best of our creativity, resources and community to create great beers–and continue to innovate with new techniques and ingredients.

Being informed by the past and innovating for the future, all while drawing on the local character and flavors, are major reasons for craft beer’s success. No doubt the Community Beer Works crew has figured this out and hopes to promote not only their local brews, but also the distinctive character of their city, with their conscious attention to local ringing true for many other microbrewers around the country. And just like with food, conscientious consumers are willing to pay a little more for better quality and for the local connection. Microbrewers use these advantageous attributes to encourage strong and vibrant communities, keeping customers coming back for more. In fact, it seems that in today’s uncertain and flagging America, one sign of community prosperity and revitalization is a microbrewery or brewpub in town. So one small way to encourage an economic recovery while holding to your values is to say cheers to local, sustainable beers!

Editors Note: Kai will appear on Beer Sessions Radio at 5pm on February 21st , 2012, to talk more about the local beer phenomenon.

Originally published on EcoCentric

“Heirloom” is an interesting term, and like the word “sustainability,” it means different things to different people. Recently, I read The Heirloom Life Gardener, a book written by Jere and Emilee Gettle. The Gettles are the co-founders of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which publishes a lush and incredibly informative seed catalog and has spun off a variety of gardening-related enterprises across the nation.

The Gettles define heirloom seeds as being “nonhybrid and open-pollinated” and as usually having been in circulation for more than 50 years. Some heirloom seed types currently in use could have been found in Thomas Jefferson garden at Monticello. Some appear more recently, during the Great Depression, including the Mortgage Lifter tomato (who couldn’t use one of these in today’s economy?).

While reading the Gettles’ book, I began thinking once again about the relationship between land and the American character. I was inspired to pull some of my favorite books off the shelf and revisit them, to consider the notion of “civic agriculture.”

The term “civic agriculture”–coined by the former Thomas Lyson of Cornell–is used by some to refer to the movement towards locally based agricultural models that tightly link community, social and economic development. Models of civic agriculture include CSAs, farmer’s markets, roadside stands, urban agriculture, community gardens, and farm-to-school/farm-to-institution programs. I also argue that civic agriculture includes school and home gardens . . . any place where people seek to connect land to the development of community or as an expression of engagement or citizenship.

The civic aspect of agriculture is much older than the current local food movement; it hearkens back to the nations founding. The connection between land and democracy has always held real meaning in American culture. Jeffersonian ideals about the civic virtues and value of gardening and agriculture were prevalent and shaped American cultural and political life; the U.S. Department of Agriculture, created in 1862, was called “The People’s Department” by President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln once told a group of Wisconsin farmers that as long as Americans knew how to cultivate even the smallest plot of land, that the nation’s citizens would be free from kings and moneylenders, free from oppression of all sorts.

Federal legislation such as the Morrill Act (The sesquicentennial is in 2012) created America’s land-grant institutions, which still have as a primary purpose research and education in support of the nation’s agricultural producers. (Land-grant institutions through their Master Gardener programs also support home and community gardeners). The Homestead Act, also passed in 1862, and linked the cultivation of land to the protection of the Union and the expansion of democracy during the nation’s Civil War. We were a nation of farmers at origin; we are still a nation of farmers at heart.

You farm, and we garden. Gardening links the myth and the practice of agriculture to one another. In practice, gardening is agriculture on a personal scale; it represents an individual’s relationship to a specific piece of land. This is a kind of relationship worth investing in.

As you formulate your goals and hopes for the New Year, I hope that you’ll consider adding another resolution to your list: to embark upon a gardening activity, no matter how small, in 2012. Occupy the possibilities that gardens create at our homes, and in our communities.

Originally published on Farm Progress

It’s hard times right now. Looking around, from city to small town, there are empty buildings everywhere. For lease signs loom in windows, brand new office buildings stand deserted and never used. It all seems like such a waste of resources and energy and a sad reminder of the pace our economy has slowed to. In the face of this hardship,  ideas such as The Greenhouse Project in Central Wisconsin offer respite. A group of passionate people, working on a volunteer basis towards providing “opportunities for participation, education, cooperation, and action to support a local food economy in Central Wisconsin” have banded together and successfully started renovations on a dilapidated 38,000 square foot property in downtown Stevens Point. The vision is to create a self-sustaining, multi-faceted production and education center, where rural farming techniques can coalesce with a thriving urban community ready to learn about them.

Central Rivers Farmshed is a non-profit organization, made up of a network of people that strive to connect the local community to their food. Their main beliefs are pure and simple: “Food should be grown in a sustainable manner; People should know how to buy, grow, harvest, preserve, and prepare local foods; The public should know local farmers; Farmers should know who eats their food.” Farmshed is responsible for a number of undertakings, including a comprehensive local food guide called the Farm Fresh Atlas. Under this mission, the organization banded together with the Central Wisconsin Resiliency Project, the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, and North Wind Renewable Energy to finally create and launch a physical reference for their ideologies.

The ambitious Greenhouse Project is coming to fruition with the help of bestselling author and local resident Patrick Rothfuss. He came aboard, purchasing the foreclosed property and providing the green light to Central Rivers Farmshed, the new leaseholders, to break ground. Four main tenants–soil, energy, food, and incubator–are the focus of the endeavor. Compost production, renewable energy systems, sustainable agriculture, and food business incubation and support are what the future holds.

Interim Executive Director, Layne Cozzolino says that the space “will house 11,000 square feet in production greenhouses, a community kitchen, gathering space, and learning center. Through expansion of current programming, The Central Rivers Farmshed will use the space to deepen our community’s relationship with food in all forms: from growing, to processing, preserving, cooking, and finally eating.”

Reclaiming spaces by converting a concept into a physical reality has the potential to positively change communities and create growth and local involvement in a sustainable way. To donate to The Greenhouse Project, click here.

Watch a video about the project here:

Photo 1: Media Loom

On behalf of Civil Eats we’re proud to have made it through our third full year of delivering some of the good food communities’ top stories and posts from the front lines of the food revolution. Occupy your food system people!

As we do on a daily basis, we gratefully acknowledge that this labor of love continues to grow and thrive. Without the tireless volunteer efforts of our talented and dedicated managing editor, Paula Crossfield, our co-founder and editor, Naomi Starkman, and the support of Stacey Slate, our tenacious deputy managing editor, we would not be here today.

We are very proud of our accomplishments to date. Since January 2009, we’ve now posted 1,471 pieces, averaging 30 per month this last year.

In 2011, we published 21 interviews with folks working towards a just and equitable food system. We talked with Mark Bittman, Kathleen Merrigan, Josh Viertel and Albert Straus to name a few. Ten of those interviews were part of our Faces & Visions of the Food Movement series which aims to highlight the motivations of people who work on behalf of food systems change and connect the dots between their goals, the people and groups in their community, and how they work together to realize their visions.

We covered critical stories relating to Genetically Modified Organisms, Occupy the Food System, the Secret Farm Bill, BPAs, Farm Workers and that irritating Food Plate.

We continued our monthly community conversation, Kitchen Table Talks, in San Francisco and in New York and hope to see one in Chicago in 2012. In those conversations we discussed critical topics relating to the growing food revolution including: Occupy the Food System, the secret Farm Bill, food activism, farm labor, war veterans turned farmers and chocolate, to name a few. (Please let us know if you’d like to start a KTT in your town. We are happy to help you get started.)

This year we also partnered with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism News21 course on food reporting and the class wrote a few stories for us and will continue to in 2012. And, we thank the New York Times and Washington Post for sending readers our way.

As an all-volunteer effort, we are thrilled to have accomplished so much.

Thanks, as always, goes to all of our writers who contribute their work without compensation. We’d love a shout out to all of our dedicated contributors: Tamar Adler, Vanessa Barrington, Helena Bottemiller, Haven Bourque, Siena Chrisman, Eve Fox, Twilight Greenaway, Rose Hayden-Smith, Sarah Henry, Kate Hoppe, Ulla Kjarval, Anna Lappe, Tom Laskaway, Ralph Loglisci, Dave Murphy, Kim O’Donnel, Antonio Roman-Alcala, Kerry Trueman, Amber Turpin, Adrianna Velez, Kristin Wartman, and Mark Winne. As always our goal is to pay our writers a fair wage for their efforts. We hope the work we do brings value and inspires continued efforts for a world that works for everyone.

Now, in no particular order, some of our favorite stories of the year:

1. Why Laying Off Ag Reporter Phillip Brasher is Bad for Food by Paula Crossfield got a lot of attention and played a part in why Gannett re-hired him.

2. Why the Food Movement Should Occupy Wall Street by Siena Chrisman connected the dots between the national Occupy movement and the good food revolution.

3. Andy Fisher’s piece, Growing Power Takes a Massive Contribution from Wal-Mart, generated a good deal of conversation on money and the movement.

4. A Big Fat Debate by Kristin Wartman was one of our most read pieces with 77 comments and 35,915 views. Kristin covered how the health and nutrition community are beginning to debunk misleading information about the importance of fat in our diets. The piece caused a big fat debate on Civil Eats as well.

5. The second most popular post was Where do Americans Get Their Calories (Infographic) by Andrea Jezovit. It was one of many articles posted as part of our ongoing partnership with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism News21 course on food reporting.

6. We are ever grateful that Anna Lappé has written a lot of pieces for us recently, a few exposing conflicting interests. Her post Who’s Behind the United States Farmers and Ranchers Alliance and Why it Matters generated 25 comments and contains very valuable information for any food activist.

7. The North East had it hard this year and Ulla Kjarval shared New York Farmers Struggle in Wake of Hurricane Irene … keeping us all up to speed with the challenging situation.

8. GMOs will continue to be a hot topic for years to come. GMO and Organic Co-Existence: Why We Really Just Can’t Get Along by Paula Crossfield highlights how we really must take a stand against GMOs if we value our organic farming heritage.

9. Transparency in labeling will also continue to be an important issue worth fighting for in 2012. Read Naomi Starkman’s piece on the Just Label It campaign and look for an updates in the year ahead.

10. Finally, for all those who say it’s too expensive to buy good food. Please read How to Stay a Foodie Family on Food Stamps by Corbyn Hightower.

Mesa-Bains’s exhibition, “Geography of Memory,” draws on her personal memories of the Santa Clara and San Joaquin Valleys and her family’s history as immigrants and farm laborers. An important retrospective of her intricate, sensory-rich installation work, the exhibit includes pieces such as “Transparent Migration” and “The Curandera’s Botanica” that incorporate synthetic and organic materials and that pay homage to family history, Mexican iconography, and the botanical world. To walk through and immerse oneself in these installations is to encounter a space of curio cabinets packed with botanical samples, family photographs, handmade journals, rows of sculptured maize, religious icons and, in the case of “The Curandera’s Botanica,” a stainless steel medical examination table. Spending time in the galleries containing these visceral and expansive installations is to see California’s shared, multiethnic histories that center on cultivation and food but also the violent realities of migrant labor and industrial agriculture.

Walking back through the atrium and past its permanent collection of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art takes the viewer into Bixler’s exhibition, “A New Pastoral: Views of the San Joaquin Valley.” Comprising over forty photographs arranged into fragmented clusters that at once seem mechanical and organic, the exhibit includes images of state-of-the-art industrial dairies, rusted machinery, manure evaporation lagoons, brownfield sites, and austere grain elevators. These are the images that viewers notice first, perhaps seeing in them a searing critique of industrial agriculture and its environmental costs. With time, though, other images come into focus that offer a more ambivalent view: a newly planted field glowing yellow and green with young crops; perfectly still, fog-shrouded orchards in winter; doves taking flight from a burned-out trailer; and a man’s weathered hands held poised over the soil he stands on (the only photograph containing a person). In a recent article on Bixler’s project, Fresno Bee arts columnist Donald Munro captures the overall effect of “A New Pastoral”: “an almost ghostly tour of a familiar landscape, one that strips away the human presence while at the same time zeroing in on the human impact.”

“Geography of Memory” and “A New Pastoral” on the surface offer starkly different visions of California and its agricultural story. For Cano, the former “remind[s] the viewer of the difficult life journey of the immigrant,” the latter of the “environmental degradation caused by industrial farming.” But, as Bixler puts it, “both shows explore how agriculture simultaneously shapes the land and the fortunes of the people who live on it and work it. Both shows present a tension between growth and decay, wholeness and fragmentation.”