“For folks who have cooked their whole lives, taking business into their own hands with their family by their sides, is a huge risk. But it provides potentially huge freedom,” said Caleb Zigas, director of San Francisco’s La Cocina culinary incubator summarizing the second National Street Food Conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

The conference, held August 21-22, united street food entrepreneurs and mobile vending policy makers from around the country to share experiences and insights around trends, marketing, and money. Conversations about freedom, daring, and risk wove throughout each session. 

“There’s a transition from street food being something you had to seek out,” said Zigas. “In a lot of ways it’s a trend and vendors are easier to find. Now they’re ‘cartepreneurs.” Communications and urban planning consultant Lizzy Caston said, “Street food changes lives.” With a pulse on the Portland and New Orleans food truck scenes, she observed, “It’s integral to communities and keeping people in the black. Allowing trucks is an efficient way for cities to put economic development funds to work.”

With start-up expenses in the many thousands in San Francisco (that’s just for city application fees) and differing laws per city and per county (making the business expansion Orwellian), the launch into street food can be onerous. Getting permitted is often the major challenge of starting up. “What we’re seeing in cities today reflects the way things used to be,” said author Robb Walsh. He pointed out it was Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle that generated an outcry about sanitation, leading to “a huge wave of legislation that put into effect the health codes that began to regulate street food between 1907-1910.”

Particularly for struggling immigrants, going legit is goal number one. Maria de la Luz Vazquez of Chaac Mool and Lucero Munoz Arrellano of Lucero’s Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dogs experienced freedom in getting permitted, with guidance from La Cocina. They strive to educate those vending via strollers on street in San Francisco’s Mission District on the ease and thrill of overcoming the fear of being busted by the cops by operating with permits.

Gail Lillian’s frustration filled the room as we experienced her journey calling precinct after precinct to confirm her chosen Liba Falafel locations would comply, only to learn that street vending rules are less clear than a cup of horchata. The last straw? Hearing she could not land a location due to competitor proximity. She now focuses more on East Bay locations rather than San Francisco, as that area attempts to become more mobile business-friendly.

“Creative class refugees,” the new cartepreneurs

“I think the family business model is very effective for lower income families,” said Zigas.  “My perception of a lot of the new wave is they are ‘creative class refugees’ who are entering this space because their jobs no longer exist. Compared to a job making $80-100K and now you’re diving in to manage a food truck, it’s going to be difficult to make even $50K. How long will those people last?”

Answers arose in a panel moderated by Baylen Linnekin, a long-time street food advocate who runs Keep Food Legal, in Washington, D.C. “We were born out of necessity,” said Lisa Wood of Portland food truck Big Ass Sandwiches, as her career in radio and music faded away.  They took nine months to get everything together. “We knew the food cost in detail before we made anything or went forward,” said her husband and chef Brian, “Yet it was trial by fire, despite the planning, serving 70 customers on day one.”

Mobile food truck formulas sound very familiar

Every entrepreneur, whether “creative class” or not, echoed that running a street food operation is not “easy” or “fun” but a 12+ hour a day proposition. Interestingly, successful vendors follow similar practices common to principles for “good business:”

1. Build community: Matt Cohen helps vendors start street food businesses and makes it easy for customers to find them. His Off the Grid in San Francisco clusters food trucks on a consistent schedule in several locations. The spirit of competing trucks energizes the scene. “The sum is greater than the parts,” he said. “The customers are likely to go to many of the carts. They enjoy the choice and variety.” In Portland, Wood finds “even for solo eaters it’s a cool way of eating, to get bits of food from each place.”
2. Location, Location, Location: The Portland scene reinforces this time-honored aphorism. Just three square miles downtown has over 600 street food vendors, though many are closing “It’s a 50 / 50 split of not enough planning and experience,” said Brian Wood.
3. Make It a Good Experience: “With the food being a certain quality they’re going to come back,” Lisa Wood smiled about her sandwiches. In addition to providing an array of house-made condiments, Lillian makes her falafel experience fun, playing 80s music.
4. Keep It Simple: Cupcake Crumb Bakery in Denver recommended vendors narrow down to a focused product line. Cohen advises, “Even if your products highlight seasonality, be consistent initially so new customers know what they’re getting.” Off the Grid also works hard to keep the prices the same across all the markets.
5. Be Transparent: “People really love when you’re willing to be completely honest,” said Lisa Wood about her sandwiches. “They are starting to realize higher quality, local food costs more.” “My job is to educate,” said Henderson, who loves seeing people’s shock at Skillet Street Food’s $14 burger price. “People need to know that all natural burgers don’t cost $2.” He tells them why.
6. Master the Media: “Twitter and Facebook are great for word-of-mouth since people share without changing your message or voice,” said Lisa Wood. In D.C., Twitter plays a critical role. “You can’t park a food truck unless there’s already a line,” Linnekin explained. “This is based on an old ice cream truck rule.” A line forms after Twitter and Facebook posts, after which the truck (or “gastromobile”) arrives.
7. The various vendors use social media and email in similar ways, honed over time:

• Email for information, not immediate updates.
• Facebook for more permanent updates. (Henderson from Skillet Street Food feeds his Facebook updates to Twitter.)
• Twitter for the fleeting, immediate news.
• Big Ass Sandwiches takes orders through an iPhone apps used by about 1700 people who also receive alerts on the app.

The group railed against Deal of the Day services, of which Big Ass Sandwiches had a catastrophic experience. “Everything you sell should make money. There’s no such thing as a loss leader. Make money every time,” said Henderson.

Is Street Food Here to Stay?

“There is a need for street food, not only where good, fast food can fill a food desert void, as in New Orleans,” said Caston. Street food also creates an “eyes on the street” effect, helping reduce crime in areas that might otherwise be sparsely populated.

Walsh observed that restaurant sanitation laws ironically drove a boom in Texas barbecue trucks. “The health departments want grease traps and things that don’t make sense,” he said. He finds many “now putting BBQ pits in the mobile food trucks,” essentially saving old-fashioned, wood barbecues. It is also a return to the past, much like urban farming, Caston pointed out.

Is street food is indeed a trend? All agreed on why it is so popular–the direct contact with owner/chefs, the ability to see food being made, the communal experience, and often amazing food. I’ve been to many brick-and-mortar restaurants that provide this experience, with communal tables, high traffic locations, a buzz (often loud), and food for which people line up. Great customer experience is the key to business success.

As the Executive Director of CFSC, and the responsible party for some 20 conferences over the past 13 years, I was keenly interested in her comments. After reading her article, I soon realized that the contradictions at our conference are a reflection of the contradictions that our organization faces in society in general. We operate the conference in the context of a travel/meeting industry dominated by and tailored toward the needs of large corporations. This industry, like the rest of the country, is serviced by a highly concentrated industrial food system, grounded in convenience and commodification. Our organization and our constituency do not share these values and typically do not have the same resources as the other clients of this meeting industry. Thus, we are forced to make compromises and adjustments to make the event work. Let me explain.

First we have made the decision to move the event around the country from year to year, to allow people from many communities to attend. We also decided not to hold the conference in the summer because it is peak season for many of our members.  The implications of these decisions are as follows:

• We have to re-invent the event every year, with a different site and new host committee.

• A strong local host committee that sources local food, plans field trips and much more is an absolute prerequisite.

• With attendees flying in from all over the country, accessibility and affordability are key. Cheap flights and short drives from airport to meeting site are essentials.

• Nearby restaurants, cafes or other attractions are a plus, so attendees without vehicles are not stuck without choices.

• The facility itself must meet our space requirements for 1000 people and there needs to be adequate lodging nearby. They must be willing to work with us on serving local food.

All of these criteria limit both the possible communities in which we can hold the event, as well as the venues within those communities. In Des Moines (the 2009 conference site), we had only one option. In New Orleans (the 2010 site), we had four options: the Hilton, Sheraton, Crowne Plaza, or the Marriott.

Shifting gears from site to finances, the conference is a zero-sum game. We subsidize the event heavily with grants to cover staff time, but we typically break even. Expenditures need to be recouped by registration fees, corporate sponsorships, and the occasional grant or individual donation.

This brings us to one of the contradictions that Haven raised: corporate sponsorships. She commented that Sodexo’s sponsorship of our event is contradictory to the purpose of the event. Instead, I would argue that Sodexo is itself a contradiction: a multi-national company increasingly committed to serving local food, with some great practices and others not so commendable. It is a fair question to ask, though, whether their fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders will allow them to adopt truly sustainable triple bottom line practices. What is indisputable is that Sodexo holds a lot of power. They can, through one fell swoop of policy–and a lot of implementation headaches–establish farm to cafeteria programs at thousands of schools, colleges, hospitals and workplaces.  This power is what makes a partnership with them attractive to CFSC.

For the New Orleans event, we raised slightly less than $40,000 in corporate sponsorships. This income meant we didn’t need as much revenue from registration fees. Sponsorships enabled us to reduce registration fees by about $70 per person. Since our target audience tends to come from organizations or communities without a lot of money, we often find ourselves in a balancing act between ensuring a high quality event and keeping registration fees low.

We work hard to walk our talk and incorporate as much local food into the event as possible. As anyone who has done this work before knows, there can be challenges: the chef might not be very flexible about menus or sourcing; not knowing head counts until 10 days before the event makes procurement planning difficult; acquiring food donations from local businesses can be hit or miss. We’re frequently back-filling, adjusting, tweaking, and running around. All of this can be even more challenging on a budget. Local meals can require more labor for the hotel in managing multiple deliveries, keeping product separate from their normal stocks, as well as increased prep time. They’re loath to reduce their prices too much, in part because food and beverage is a big profit center for them.

We could have perfect food at every conference: local, organic, humanely raised, union labor, assuming it’s available. But, at what cost?  In New Orleans, we asked the food bank to get us donations for the snacks so we could save some money. They put out candy and Nutri-grain bars, which is what was donated to them. Less than ideal? Yes. But, serving real food would have meant having to raise registration fees $15-$20/person. Is it worth that amount to registrants?  I don’t know. We haven’t asked them.

Because we operate in a world in which candy is cheaper than healthy food, social justice organizations have a lot less disposable income than corporations, and community-oriented convention centers are not as prevalent as swanky corporate hotels, and because as an organization we have our own limitations in time, staffing and fundraising capabilities, we make adjustments, compromises, and mistakes.

We’re looking at holding our Spring 2012 Farm to Cafeteria conference in Burlington VT and our Annual Conference in the Fall in the DC area. If you know of any venues in those areas that are accessible, can hold 800-1000 people, have affordable sleeping rooms nearby, and are willing to serve local food, send an email to our conference planner, Emily Becker at emily@foodsecurity.org. We’d love your help.

To reform our food system lastingly and effectively, we’re going to need a lot more authoritative research from valued institutions of higher learning. So there was cause for celebration last week, when the inaugural Stanford Food Summit brought together representatives from all seven of the university’s schools under the slogan, “Complex problems require multidisciplinary solutions.”

The on-campus gathering on Nov. 3 drew about 400 faculty members, administrators, and students as well as a handful of non-profit and other visitors to explore such topics as “Global Food Security,” “Quest for the Optimal Diet,” and “Reforming the Farm Bill.” Afternoon sessions were devoted to “interactive discussions” on how to collaborate between disciplines and develop future fundable projects.

Glad tidings, all. Yet what seemed like a brand new day in the land of academic plenty felt a little bit awkward–and even, in moments, unschooled–to anyone familiar with the complexity of issues across the food spectrum and the precedents set by numerous groups, many of far more modest means, over decades of hard work. A quality of innocent disregard for this imposing body of food-related scholarship and investigation seemed to permeate an event that had been staged with the best of goals–to encourage gifted researchers to look beyond their own academic silos.

Perhaps the disconnect was merely tonal. After all, Stanford is accustomed to leading, not following, and a degree of hubris may be inevitable when a very powerful institution throws its weight in force behind an equally powerful idea. Maybe that institution can’t just come to the party but rather has to throw its own.

Inside the auditorium, the mostly professorial speakers ran through a range of impressive research projects. Among them: Ira Lit (School of Education), who proposed a rethinking of the purpose and possibility of schools, especially for young children, to encompass broader and more diverse curricula, including edible education; David Lobell (School of Earth Sciences), who described the impact of agricultural and environmental disruptions in a world where one in seven humans now lives with food insecurity; and Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert (School of Medicine), who showed how the computer models he’s developing can capture and analyze the interrelationships of obesity, malnutrition and climate change in India and, eventually, worldwide.

Follow-up Q&A between pre-selected students and the speakers made up in earnestness for what it lacked in trenchancy. During a break, another professor offered some insight into the overall shortage of contextual awareness. As a Stanford educator, he said, he finds himself dealing with both unlimited intellectual opportunity and an attitude of entitlement that promotes insularity and self-regard: “Stanford and its incredibly rich resources exist inside a bubble that is itself inside an exclusive [academic] club.”

His point seemed aptly illustrated by the lunch that followed, as delicious as it was, and it was–sandwiches of Petaluma Rocky Junior chicken, grilled roast beef with caramelized onions, applewood smoked Wild Alaskan salmon with glazed fennel, vegan squash with tomato chutney; salads of roasted brussels sprouts, wheatberry and rice, root vegetables and oranges, baby lettuces and watermelon radishes; and a fresh-fruit and nut crumble for dessert.

The chef du jour was Jesse Cool, a local restaurateur and doyenne of the Cool Café at Stanford’s Cantor Art Center (where you can have a vegetarian mushroom burger with Rodins). Ms. Cool, who was also a speaker, recalled having been asked by the university several years ago to cater a summit on sustainability. Back then, she explained, food was not considered a relevant topic, and she had looked on from the sidelines. Known for her long-time commitment to sustainable agriculture, she clearly was delighted to have been upgraded this time around to podium status.

With a gentle sternness that those who know how to feed us seem often and uncannily to possess, Ms. Cool went on to admonish the audience. She urged the group to recognize and honor the contributions of others across professions and affiliations, and as she spoke the whiff of disconnectedness seemed momentarily to evaporate. You are members of a larger community of interest and concern, was her message. Don’t forget that. And don’t forget the chefs. And don’t forget the farmers!

The event’s chief organizer, Christopher Gardner (School of Medicine) predicted that next year’s planned event will draw a much larger crowd. One hopes and trusts that he’s right, and also that the 2011 Stanford Food Summit will reflect and interactively discuss more of the great breadth and depth of research in the field.

As it happened, one of the most respected contributors to the evolving canon, Tim Galarneau of the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz, was in the audience. The stacks of CASFS research briefs he had brought along sat on a table in the lobby, there for the taking, though they appeared to be considerably less enticing than the Blender Bike.

First, the interests and people that now constitutes the “movement” for good food is truly diverse. Over six hundred folks ranging from late teens to late seventies, white, brown, black, Asian, African, European, Indigenous, urban, rural and suburban showed up. Some of them focus on nutrition and health, others on urban or rural food production, some on farmworker rights or distributing good food to schools and low-income communities of color. Others are improving policy or doing research to support all the areas represented. Any way you slice it, the evidence exists that the movement is getting very large, representing millions of Americans.

Second, the issue of race relations and the impacts of race on health and good food access now sits atop an inevitable hierarchy of priorities. From the drama spawned by being in Arizona, which just passed a racially charged immigration policy, to discussions about farmworker rights and health disparities for inner city African Americans, the underlying need for this nation to embrace racial healing was obvious to all. The movement for good food is now also a platform for dismantling structural racism.

Third, the need for deeper research on the biological realities underlying health is clear and exciting. The research findings related to secondary plant metabolites (plant properties beyond the carbohydrates typically discussed for their impact on nutrition) provide a pathway for humans to understand the synergistic or relational nature of ecosystems, plants and human health. We need more variety in our diets from a diverse set of plants that emerge from deeply healthy ecosystems. Diets rich in plant diversity will ensure that our cells receive the full spectrum of nutrition that evolution has made available to us.

Fourth, there is so much more to be learned from dialog among the various interests now committed to good food. I always attend this conference because I thirst for the interaction. The “mash up” of perspectives unleashes synthesis and synthesis is what we need in this country to work through the polarization that reveals a national fear shared by both right and left of changes we cannot fully control. Food producers and food and farming activists must learn to hear one another better by loosening their certainty about what is the right or wrong path. We all have much to learn.

If the story of human civilization provides a continuous theme, it is that change is upon us here, now and always. Yet, in the realm of politics, humans struggle to limit and/or control change in order to gain or to protect perceived good fortune or perhaps merely acceptable pain. But given the monumental economic, health, climate, and security challenges today, we must overcome our national fears and engage our in-born ability to adapt.

Evolution teaches us that species amass within their genetic make up a spectrum of abilities to respond in diverse environments. The more adaptable an individual, the more likely they are to survive. We are living a moment of massive social and biological transformation and those who adapt will more likely thrive and survive. I do see it happening through the folks I met from Detroit, Boston, Madison, Los Angeles, Oakland, Fresno, Kansas City, San Francisco and Des Moines to name only a few. Sustainable food production is emerging to underpin sustainable communities where healthy food is widely available to everyone.

The WK Kellogg Food and Community conference reminds me that adapting can be fulfilling as well as challenging. This nation and all nations only exist because countless generations have risen to challenges they faced. Some were larger and some were smaller, but all were met. Creating a healthy food and agriculture for this nation will not be easy or happen quickly, but the effort will be worth it for us and for future generations. Thank you WK Kellogg Foundation for another rejuvenating conference.

While many of the more than 2,200 attendees of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture’s yearly gathering would have gladly entertained a dialogue with a Monsanto representative, it’s safe to say they view the conference’s central concept in a quite different light.

In his opening remarks, PASA President Kim Seeley borrowed a phrase from architect and designer William McDonough, a previous year’s keynote speaker, and asked: “Does the end result love all the children? We will condone all forms of farming that will love the children.”

It’s hard to associate the maker and marketer of Roundup pesticide and poison-withstanding genetically modified seeds with “loving all the children.” Yet, that is what Monsanto–newly crowned by Forbes “for persevering in the face of vicious criticism to feed the world”–would have us believe through what writer Ken Edelstein has called a “greenwash marketing” campaign that is “positively Rovian on the chutzpah meter.” Equally credibility-straining is Elanco, Ely Lilly and Company’s animal-health division, which in 2008 purchased the Posilac brand of synthetic bovine-growth hormone from Monsanto. Elanco’s president has been on a speaking tour promoting a technology-dependent program of “Sustainability and Feeding the World.”

Obviously, a different take on technology from that of most who attended the conference.

And in a recent call-to-arms speech delivered in Seattle, American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman railed against those he called “extremists who want to drag agriculture back to the days of 40 acres and a mule” and against “misguided, activist-driven regulation on labor and environment being proposed in Washington.” Further, Stallman called sustainability “the most overused and ill-defined word in the policy arena today.”

Finally, a patch, however small, of common ground.

“I completely agree that the term ‘sustainability’ is overused and often confused for something it’s not by those who try to use it,” PASA Executive Director Brian Snyder said in his stage-setting conference speech. “So, I have an idea–how about if you, Mr. Stallman, and your counterparts at Monsanto and Elanco stop using it! We can handle this one, and have been doing so quite ably for several decades now.”

Snyder said it is impossible to overlook the deliberate attempt by sustainable agriculture’s detractors to dilute the dream and goals PASA and its members aspire to in order that their objective of putting profitability above all else does not fail.

Not that profitability was ignored during the Farming for the Future conference. Quite the contrary. Neither was the concept of “small” farming, currently a pejorative term in Washington and elsewhere, where those who use that word, according to Snyder, “get immediately pigeonholed and tossed aside as a probable relic of the past.”

Here, the common-ground borderline was crossed.

“There is nothing ‘small’ about what any member of PASA is doing with respect to our food system, whether as a producer, processor or consumer, regardless of any volume specifications,” Snyder said.

“People like to hear about lots of acres or large numbers of animals and bushels of corn per acre measured in the hundreds,” he continued. “But models of farming that can gross $50,000 to $100,000 on a single acre, or Community Supported Agriculture programs that, in some cases and on relatively small acreage, are able to count their customers in the thousands and bank $1 million or more in the spring before even planting a seed, are anything but small!”

A non-genetically-modified seed, he might have added.

Snyder said that a second misconception held as incontrovertible truth in the halls of power is the notion that “we cannot feed the world this way,” that only industrial food systems can do so.

“We must encourage everyone, wherever they are and as a priority, to eat food produced as near to their own homes as possible,” Snyder said. “Secondly, feed thy neighbor as thyself. From this perspective, local food not only can feed the world, it may be the only way to ever feed the world in a healthy and just manner.”

Few involved with farming, even of the sustainable variety, relish increased government regulation. But Snyder likened what he called the “Stallman Doctrine”–a “Don’t Cap Our Future”-sloganed, war-like resistance to a cap-and-trade system or any proposal to limit farming’s environmental impact–to a modern re-emergence of Manifest Destiny, “wherein we take and use what we believe was divinely ordained for us to have, regardless of the consequences for others.”

By contrast, Snyder said a truly sustainable farmer wakes every morning with two thoughts in mind. The first is one of gratitude that the land we are privileged to own, rent or be paid to cultivate has been given to us, and we must give it back in better shape than we found it.

“Second,” Snyder said, “we as individual farmers are limited and essentially dependent on each other to figure out what’s best to do with this land in order to honor it, improve it and make a living from it and one day to deliver it back to the source from whence it came.”

“It’s all about maintaining a ‘right relationship’ with the land, which,” he said, “is analogous to the good relationships we hope for in other aspects of our lives as well.”

Or, at the end of the day, does it truly love all the children, and will it give them a good Earth to love, as well?

That–regardless of what corporate farmers and the companies they serve will tell you–is what sustainable agriculture is really all about.

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In contrast to the Stallman Doctrine – an unwillingness to work as hard as possible to save our beautiful planet – PASA Executive Director Brian Snyder offered the Promise of Sustainability.

“We understand that this world is not really ours to do with as we please and that we must work together to make it better,” Snyder said. From this perspective, here are some things sustainable farmers choose for themselves, rather than depend on government regulations or ballot initiatives to force upon them:

• We would do everything possible to protect the Earth, its water, air and climate systems, and to cherish and protect our great watersheds, including especially here in the Mid-Atlantic region, that which feeds the Chesapeake Bay.

• We would never lock up livestock of any kind for prolonged periods in restrictive cages or crates where they can’t even turn around or care for their young in a natural manner.

• We would not treat cows with artificial growth hormones, either for profit or the pride to be gained from seeing how much milk we can force them to give. We would also never feed antibiotics to animals for the sake of speeding their growth, especially in the absence of medical need.

• We would take whatever pre-emptive steps may be necessary – even if less than 100 percent certain – to protect our bees and other pollinators, and also to promote the diversity and integrity of seeds we depend on to produce food, avoiding advanced technological strategies that might otherwise undermine or diminish them.

• In dealing with our neighbors around the world, we would reject the political philosophy of Free Trade in favor of Fair Trade.

• We would treat with dignity immigrant and migrant laborers who are needed to work our fields, care for our animals and generally keep our food system moving, and welcome them as full members of our communities as they choose and are able to settle here.

• We would teach and assist the citizens, communities and countries of a hungry world to feed themselves as we would wish to be fed.

• We would build our entire food system on the concept that fair prices for farmers will keep wholesome, nutritious and safe food on our tables without fail.

Corporate entities such as Monsanto and Elanco–Ely Lilly Company’s animal-health division, which owns the Posilac brand of synthetic bovine growth hormone–lay claim to “sustainability,” thereby distorting its meaning and diluting its promise.

The president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, no ally of sustainable agriculture, recently called “sustainability” the most overused and ill-defined word in the policy arena.

Perhaps we can help.

The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture has recently partnered with Food Alliance, based in Portland, Oregon, to deliver a trusted, third-party certification to our region’s farms, processors, food buyers and consumers. The Food Alliance Certified seal ensures safe and fair working conditions, humane treatment of animals and careful stewardship of ecosystems. Here is how Food Alliance answers the question, “What is sustainable agriculture?”

Sustainable agriculture:

• Provides safe and fair working conditions. It creates a work environment with open communication about workplace safety and job satisfaction, with incentives and opportunities for development of employee skills; it considers quality-of-life issues for farm workers and their communities.

• Ensures the health and humane treatment of animals. It raises livestock with respect for their physical needs and comforts; it provides livestock with access to sunlight, fresh air and an environment where they can socialize and express normal behaviors; it handles livestock with care to minimize fear and stress.

• Does not use hormone or antibiotic supplements. It raises animals without using hormones or antibiotics to stimulate growth or productivity; it uses antibiotics only to treat a sick animal and return it to health, not as a substitute for healthy living conditions.

• Does not raise genetically modified crops or livestock. It raises crops or livestock that are not derived from transgenic or genetically modified organisms in order to respect public concern over potential impacts on human or environmental health.

• Reduces pesticide use and toxicity. It practices integrated pest management by using field scouting and cultural and biological controls to avoid pest problems; it minimizes risks to human health and the environment by selecting least toxic pest treatments and using best practices for application.

• Protects water resources. It protects water quality and riparian habitat by providing buffer zones along streams; it manages tillage to maximize the ability of soils to absorb rainfall; it manages animal wastes to prevent ground and surface water contamination.

• Protects and enhances soil resources. It protect soils by maximizing plant cover, rotating crops and using cover crops to enrich soil and increase productivity; it uses management-intensive grazing; it uses tillage methods that protect soil quality and promote soil conservation.

• Provides wildlife habitat. It encourages vegetative cover, food and water resources necessary for habitat; it establishes biological corridors; it manages mowing and grazing cycles to minimize impact on wildlife; it protects and restores wetland, prairie and woodland habitats.

• Continually improves practices. It sets annual goals for improving performance in areas addressed under Food Alliance certification; it evaluates and reports progress on goals annually.

For more information, go to www.foodalliance.org.

Last year the owner of Asilomar, the CA State Parks department, signed a 20-year contract handing over the running of the property to Aramark, a national corporation with 260,000 employees. This led to some controversy at the recent Hazon sustainable food conference, where certain local, sustainable producers had their products rejected as donations for the conference. The reason? “Food Safety”, according to Aramark.

And now, this “Alcohol Announcement” from the 2010 EcoFarm program guide:

“Dear EcoFarm Friends! We know that celebration is a very important component of the EcoFarm Conference and you are probably noting a reduction of fun activities, especially reagarding the consumption of alcohol. The new Aramark management at Asilomar changed several longstanding policies regarding alcohol in the months leading up to the conference and we did not have time to figure out a new cost and activity structure to accommodate this. Therefore, we needed to cancel several bars and activities. We hope that you will still find plenty of fun – ask EcoFarm staff if you are looking for ideas! Thank you for your patience and understanding!”

I’m not that much of a drinker, and I did still have plenty of fun, but I understand a certain disappointment. Many farmers see this conference as their vacation for the year; its the one time they can kick back with their organic-growing buddies from across the country, talk shop, get inspired, and party. While I had a great time at this year’s conference, I can see how Aramark’s new management style might be just a signal that EcoFarm needs to move into a new phase. And sure enough, EcoFarm’s organizers are openly considering a move.

With 1,300 registered attendees and more who wanted to attend but couldn’t register, the popularity of ecological farming may finally be catching up with the EcoFarm community. The organizers really seem to know what they’re doing, helping us come together “for education, inspiration, and creative solution-building”. There are workshops for everyone; for the farmer, for the gardener, for the activist, for the policy wonk, some practical, some aesthetic, some en Español. Over the three years I’ve gone, I’ve learned what I love most about the conference (besides the conviviality, and the seed swap) is that I really come away inspired to continue working on these issues, with these people.

Particularly, I get inspired by talking to “heroes” of the movement, like Bob Scowcroft or Judith Redmond, who have done so much to advance the cause of just, sustainable food systems, yet remain so humble and approachable. Sure, it instills in me hope to know that progress can and has been made, but it also makes me think about how (personally) I am only at the beginning of my journey as an activist. My goal is not just to create change, it is to create change while having a good time and being good to people, and it’s nice to know that I have role models for that!

As for the conference itself, I’ve learned that I get the most out of the practical workshops, so the ones I attended were:
“High Quality Organic Wheat for the Local Whole-Grain Market”
“Advanced Soil Fertility Topics: The Wise Use of Micronutrients in Organic Farming”
“Farming With a Sharp Pencil!”
“Are Internships Illegal?”
and “Classical Plant Breeding for Improving Vegetable Crops.”

With the exception of the wheat one (where a UC researcher babbled about the chromosome locations of wheat/rye hybrids), I learned a lot. I learned how to be a better farm business planner. I learned that regulations intended to protect workers are ruining the prospects for on-farm internships (which have no doubt played a huge role in the expansion of ecological farming’s success). I learned the importance of proper Boron levels in your soil (and what to do if they’re out of whack). And, in the workshop which could have been titled “Dorkin’ Out on Seed Saving,” I learned how to effectively set the right genome composition of desired traits into a summer squash plant, over years of selection and growing.

The most theoretical session I went to was “Planting the Future: New Leaders in Activism for Food Justice.” This was a plenary, so all minds were on deck to ponder a newly-emphasized aspect of ecological farming: urban food access, and the various forms of environmental racism associated with food. This was a wonderful presentation, full of hope for more collaboration between social justice advocates and the ecological farming community. It made me think, however, about what the next step was. With so much press and emphasis on urban farming and urban food issues, you’d think that once people start growing food in the city, a sustainable food system is inevitable. But clearly this is too simple a read on the problem. I love that people are making efforts towards urban food self-sufficiency, but maybe we should think three steps ahead: we may be growing more of our own food in 20-30 years time, but we likely won’t be able to grow all of it. So I’d like to see a concurrent emphasis, along with urban food production, on connecting urban communities with their rural counterparts. This connection could be rooted in physical trade of food and work, but also serve to foster inter-cultural dialog. Obama may not be able to unite the country, but perhaps sustainable food can?

Honestly, after attending many other food conferences, I have almost nothing bad to say about this one. It was a blast, and I’m grateful to the organizers for sticking with it for 30 years. I encourage anyone who has ever been, or would like to go in the future, to contact EFA with your ideas for a new conference venue, or any other suggestions you can make to help them improve and expand the conference while maintaining its integrity.

Earlier this year, investment guru Jim Rogers predicted that within the next decade farmers will be the ones driving Lamborghinis, while stock brokers will drive tractors or taxis. His contrarian proclamation has since fueled intense investor interest in the agriculture sector. But despite this growing interest, the majority of investors have yet to discover the sector’s most promising niche: sustainable agriculture.

Today, farming uses 80 to 90% of all the water consumed in this country, along with millions of gallons of chemical pesticides, hormones and antibiotics. After food is grown, processors and retailers ship it across vast distances before it reaches consumers. The result is a tangled web of farms, runoff, oil dependency and highly-processed or unripe food laced with chemicals. Sustainable agriculture offers a healthier, more environmentally-friendly alternative.

Two measurable factors are driving growth in the sustainable agriculture sector: rising oil prices and increasing consumer demand. Traditional agriculture is highly dependent upon petrochemicals. In fact, in 2006, when fuel and fertilizer prices began to rise, USDA researchers noted that most farmers immediately began to reduce fertilizer, fuel, pesticide and herbicide usage to reduce costs. With input costs on the rise, “sustainable” practices may become synonymous with “cost-effective.”

At the same time, savvy consumers are demanding foods free of pesticides, hormones and antibiotics. In an effort to appease these consumers, food companies like General Mills Inc. and Sysco Corp. have already been asking farmers to change the way they farm, from conserving water to limiting pesticide usage. Recently companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., The Kellogg Company and PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay have mandated conservation practices, and the few producers able to meet their requirements have been inundated with orders.

All this means that a new crop of agriculture businesses, ones with cost-effective, eco-friendly innovations, will experience increased demand for their products. A few investment firms have already begun to take advantage of this trend, seeking out these companies and investing in them directly.

My firm, New York-based NewSeed Advisors, invests exclusively in businesses that make a significant contribution to sustainable agriculture. By doing so, NewSeed hopes to provide investors with double-digit returns and a clear conscience. Our goal is to find small companies, even companies just starting out, to make seed-stage investments and to guide them toward profitability. It’s not a “beat them or join them” proposition. Agriculture is a $100 billion industry; there is room for everybody.

NewSeed is not alone in this thinking. Canadian investment firm Investeco has invested in sustainable agriculture companies such as Organic Meadow and Horizon Distributors. Black River Asset Management, a subsidiary of Cargill, also invests in sustainable agriculture companies as part of its broader mandate.

High net worth individuals and family offices are also beginning to scour the sector. “I’ve been approached by several clients interested in investing directly in local food production,” Frank Morris of Ecologic Advisors, a NYS Registered Investment Advisory, told me.

Sustainable agriculture investments are not limited to land-based agriculture. New York-based investment firm Aquacopia invests exclusively in open-sea fish farming, while San Francisco-based Sea Change Investment Fund invests in sustainably harvested seafood companies.

Soon, these investment firms will not be alone in this profitable pursuit. This week, on September 17, interested investors from across the country and around the world will converge in New York City to discuss investment in sustainable agriculture at the Agriculture 2.0 conference. Entrepreneurs looking to raise capital will also be flocking to the conference to meet investors. (NewSeed Advisors, along with SPIN Farming, is hosting the Agriculture 2.0 Conference.)

The sustainable agriculture sector is about to pop. While that may not mean a rash of Italian sports car dealerships in Des Moines anytime soon, the future for sustainable agriculture investment looks very promising.

(Editors note: Its not too late to register for the Agriculture 2.0 conference. Sign up and see what the future of sustainable agricultural investment looks like! I’ll be there, and look forward to reporting back to you about what I discover.)

Originally published on Huffington Post ]]> http://civileats.com/2009/09/14/sustainable-agriculture-investment-poised-to-surge/feed/ 0 http://civileats.com/2009/02/24/a-report-from-pasa/ http://civileats.com/2009/02/24/a-report-from-pasa/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:16:22 +0000 ccomer http://civileats.com/?p=2296 We call it ‘hitting the reset button’ around the office. Each February, my sustainable farming colleagues and I count the days until we make the trek across the Delaware River and on to State College for the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) Farming for the Future Conference. It’s not so much that we’re not surrounded by great farm and food business owners in our own area, it’s that spending three days surrounded by over 2,000 like-minded folks from across the northeast is an annual reassurance that we’re on the right track.

The attendees at this event represent 13 states and six countries. This year over 1,200 farmers attended. That’s an important number, and there were also many farmer’s market managers, butchers, regional planners, farmland preservationists, and distributors in attendance. The theme of this year’s event was “Finding your Foodshed” a term, as a person grounded in watershed management, I am not always so apt to adopt as an analogy. We don’t yet have the same connection to our foodways as we do our waterways. There is more work to be done to understand how an apple makes it to your grocery shelves than to understand the river that runs through your town or the source that runs out of your tap.  But this is changing.  After watching players from across the food system build connections for a few days at PASA, I was feeling a little more comfortable with the terminology.

Keynote speaker Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, brought a global perspective. He focused on the consistent challenges rural people face around the world by highlighting recent increases in obesity after years of using cheap food as a tool for oppression. Globally, there are as many people starving as there are struggling with obesity. Patel shared examples from India, Haiti and South Africa that were painful to consider. Taking a break to think about global agriculture served as a strong reminder of how much work remains in rebuilding an American food system.

One of the most exciting things at PASA is the variety of people attending: from Plain-sect families to urban gardeners. We are hearing more and more about younger people coming to sustainable and small farming events – and as a twenty-something myself I think that’s great. Surprisingly, there were also a number of second-career types at PASA. I met so many people who traveled many hours from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh or New York City, who, when asked, “What do you grow?,” answered, “That’s what we’re here to find out.” Not a new phenomenon for sure but important to know that the PASA message is reaching so far.

As always, it’s the workshops at PASA that are the force behind attracting such a diverse audience. Over the three days I learned about charcuterie, county planning for agriculture, keeping statistics at the farmers market and the history behind FEDCO Seeds. As diverse as these topics might seem, I gained knowledge in each workshop that I will use both at home and at my job this coming season. This type of whole food system education is a great trend that we can hope will continue at events like this across the country.

There are few moments more powerful and thrilling for a young person than those in which we learn a skill that we want to and will use for the rest of our lives.  Or those first days when we truly realistically consider our futures – just our next five years, if not more – and realize (or think very much) that we know what it is that will make us happy.  Or that last second we have before feeling we are in that future, that brief moment of conviction that we have never in our lives been less prepared nor more determined.

The Young Farmers Conference last weekend, at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, ran the participants on a marathon of such moments.  There were the inspiring speeches and the valuable networking one expects at a conference, and the beautiful meals one expects at Stone Barns, but mainly it was a time to take notes, to ask questions, to observe, and to listen.  Not only were we inspired, we were productive.

We learned how to begin doing many things: raising chickens, breeding swine, growing vegetables in a greenhouse.  We were told how to find land, how to write a business plan for a farm, how to dress up our products so they sell well at market. Many of us who came to this conference were not farmers.  And most of us have so much to learn about farming that we might have seemed comical to the more experienced.  But the presenters – the farmers, growers, breeders, foresters – brought their skills down to our level, to square one, and shared an immense amount of knowledge in hardly eight hours of workshops.

Four-Season Growing. Jack taught us how to calculate the finances of a greenhouse, to know the value of each square foot of soil.  He described the family rotations – six families, each including several varieties of plants – and the number of days it takes for arugula to grow in summer versus winter.  He taught us how he uses the row covers, from what material, at what time of day.  He told us what the temperature should be for certain levels of productivity, what sort of heaters he uses, and how their release of CO₂ at dawn catalyzes photosynthesis in that brief, coldest, last moment of the night.  He told us exactly how much money he’d spent on propane, using box heaters vs. air heaters.  He told us how long to wait for the first cut of greens, the babies, and for the second cut, a profitable premium product.  He told us of the compost system and the prop house, the soil and the seeds.  He told us how surely one keeps loyal customers with a 365-day growing season.

Beginning Poultry.  Craig told us what to look for in a hatchery, what to expect in the box when the chicks arrive at the post office, not to go grocery shopping and forget that our box of chicks is in the back of our car.  He taught us how to set up the brooding pen, how the chicks slip on newspaper, how to build the space to keep out rats and raccoons.  He told us what to consider when buying meat chickens (taste, consumer demand, growth-time, cost of production), and showed us the advantages of certain pens, fences, and pastures.  He was clear about why he would choose one bird or feed or pen or another, often simply explaining his personal preference.  “I use the term Animal Husbandry intentionally,” he said, “because this IS a marriage, of sorts.  You really have to like your animals – how they look, and act, and treat you.  You have to get to know them, and like living with them.”

Slaughterhouse Initiative. Judy explained her position at the head of Glynwood Center, a conference center and working farm that has identified a problem in the lack of slaughterhouses in and around Putnam County.  She presented the mobile slaughterhouse project, and spoke of the bureaucracy such a project faces, the services it would provide, and the demonstrable demand for these services she has found among her community.  The conversation jockeyed from urban farmer to historian to farmer-educator to friend-of-a-butcher; from accusations of bureaucratic pandering to business plan proposals, from reminders of top-hat butchers in early American markets to a polemic on the seismic shift in mentality that must take place before slaughterhouses and butcher shops are ever expected to produce anything of high quality.  We learned that we have a lot to learn about meat.

My general expectations for the conference were that it would confirm my dislike of the wealthy nature of Stone Barns, that I would meet few true farmers and more farmer wannabes (like myself), and that it would be like most conferences, where energy is high, productivity is low, and the conversations between workshops are the most valuable part of the experience.  Those conversations were valuable, but so were the workshops, and so was the energy, and so was the adjustment of my view of Stone Barns.  However the farm-restaurant handles it’s finances, the people who run the farm are full of a knowledge that young people need, and at least for two days, were wonderfully willing and able to teach it.

I remember first meeting The Greenhorns’ Severine, in Berkeley this Spring, when she (was figuring out how I might be useful to her, and) rather bluntly asked what I knew how to do.  I sheepishly said I could write decently, and I could organize people and run meetings.  She interrupted me within seconds: You have to treat your life like a toolbelt!  Start filling it up with tools!  You have to learn how to do things!  Two days at a conference might not count for much, but for many of us, it was a time to first touch the tools we wish to acquire, and a joyous early step towards making our lives full.

Download a full list of the conference workshops and presenters here.