What if you were watching Chopped and you saw Ted Allen unload a bushel of Kiwi Berries from Kiwi Korners Farm in Danville, PA? Or if Ina Garten featured Lola ducks on her show and started raving about Hudson Valley Duck Farm? Don’t hold your breath quite yet, but executives at Food Network are pondering the prospect of sourcing from local, mid-sized farms for their studio kitchens and events. For such a high-profile entity, this move could help bring the sustainable food movement to the tipping point–depending on how Food Network spins it.

But before Food Network jumps on the locavore bandwagon, they must put one key part in place: the un-sexy locavore bugbear, “distribution.” A company like Food Network is used to sourcing most of their food from big distributors that can ship 20 pounds of tomatoes from Chile (in the middle of January), so the idea of buying from local, mid-sized family farms in the Northeast may seem like an unthinkable, logistical nightmare. This is a corporation that can get an egg delivered at midnight, after all. Here’s where Debra Italiano, Red Tomato, and Regional Access come in to stop talking about ideals and to start making things happen.

Red Tomato is a non-profit organization that connects farmers and consumers through marketing, trade, and education. They focus on the logistics behind making locally-based, family-farm, and ecological and fair trade food systems financially viable. Regional Access is a New York State-based distributor founded 20 years ago by organic farmer and entrepreneur Gary Redmond. Regional Access boasts a catalog of more than 5,000 New York-produced specialty and natural foods.

And Debra Italiano? She’s a Wall Street veteran and Managing Principal of Merintra Co., LLC, a strategic business and market development consulting firm. She’s been shepherding green economy businesses and advising renewable energy initiatives. Now she’s working on what she considers the most difficult challenge in fostering sustainable practices among corporations: food.

Together with some additional colleagues, George Gosieski and Lauren McGrath (who has had a hand in Ricks Pics, Foodshed Market, Harlem Harvest Festival, and Pig Island), Italiano has formed the Food Supply and Distribution Systems Initiative which is a social enterprise (i.e. corporate responsibility) organization that is creating a distribution and logistics template for corporate stakeholders interested in supporting food system security. In other words, FSDSI is hoping to help corporations (and institutions like hospitals and universities) plug into the sustainable food movement–and Italiano eventually wants to scale the FSDSI model nationally to support regional food systems everywhere.

It just happens that Italiano has collaborated on other sustainability initiatives with Mory Thomas, head of culinary product development at Food Network. Italiano shared her vision of Food Network becoming an education and media partner, and eventually Thomas invited Italiano to organize a luncheon at Food Network’s studio kitchen.

Feted by a knock-out locavore spread created by Fingerlakes-based Stonecat chef Scott Signori (duck confit and salad, apple fritters, marinated beet salad, Breezy Hill Orchard cider, Nettle Meadow Kunik cheese), about 20 Food Network executives gathered last week to learn about the beauty and sense of a robust regional food system. Italiano assembled a Greek chorus of sustainable food advocates, including Mary Cleaver of the green catering company Cleaver Co., Jen Small of American Farmland Trust and Flying Pigs Farm, Kerry Trueman of Eating Liberally, and author Annie Hauk of Gastropolis, who suggested that maybe Rachael Ray should be composting those carrot peelings. (C’mon Rachael, you know you want to!)

Italiano spelled out the mission for everyone:

“If what we get to do is build up a critical mass, if there’s more consuming of the right stuff…if healthier, natural, organically-grown food is in demand and we create a system where we’re demanding that to happen, the system is going to respond with higher levels of that kind of food. It will create a critical mass where we can actually lower food prices, maintain farmer’s markets–and this is critical because these people are not being taken care of–so that we create a triple win: a win for businesses, a win for the farmer, and a win for everyday folks like you and me. We will create more corporate stakeholders in the system.”

According to Executive Chef Robert Bleifer, Food Network already does a bit of local sourcing–that is, when the stars align. Producers largely determine what foods are cooked for the shows and aren’t always thinking about seasonality and a regional value chain story when they plan a series. Sometimes shows are produced a few seasons ahead, making local and seasonal sourcing nearly impossible. Still, the Food Network purchases from the Union Square Greenmarket whenever they can and Bleifer himself is open to going deeper. In fact, the network has a little more wiggle room than restaurants do when it comes to pricing. While costs would still have to be reasonable–and every expensive heirloom tomato would have to be justified by its narrative value–Bleifer is optimistic about the possibilities.

Meanwhile, Italiano’s team has set up an account for Food Network, and Regional Access and Red Tomato are ready to deploy their system as soon as Food Network says “go.” The team is hoping to collaborate on network-sponsored special events in particular.

But let’s go back to Ina Garten and her Hudson-raised Lola duck. Italiano doesn’t just want Food Network to walk the walk–she wants them to engage in viewer education. Will viewers watch Ina’s show and wonder what kind of fabulous livestock is being sustainably raised near them, say in St. Louis? Or will they start calculating how much it’ll cost to ship Ina’s ducks half-way across the country? Once producers find ways to enhance the entertainment value of educational messaging, are viewers really going to be influenced? Or will it come across as more aspirational fantasy?

“Look at what the Food Network has done to the cooking world,” Chef Bleifer says. At one time, home cooks were lucky if they could find some parsley and mint at their local grocery store. “Now,” Bleifer adds, “there’s this amazing variety of herbs available everywhere.” Bleifer credits Food Network for changing food culture in America to the point of changing the supermarket landscape. “Even if a chef influences just five percent of an audience, that’s still a lot of people.” Considering the 36 million eyeballs trained on season six of The Next Food Network Star, five percent is still over a million people. Maybe the next Food Network star could be a farmer.

The session was moderated by Sam Fromartz, author of Organic Inc. and the Chews Wise blog. Fromartz asked his diverse panel how their media organizations reported on sustainable food issues.

Jane Black, a writer for the Washington Post, began by commenting on the changes in the media world. She noted that “newspapers are operating under rules that blogs aren’t,” that is they have stricter reporting standards such as utilizing multiple sources. These stricter standards are one of the primary advantages of newspaper reporting.

Black continued by saying that in the newspaper world, “we have to be objective and not have an opinion – and anyone who knows me knows that I do have an opinion.” This is an extremely important point when it comes to sustainable food topics.

Writing for both a newspaper group and a blog as I do, I understand her point about objectivity. Since I am a columnist for the newspaper, not a reporter, I am able to interject some of my personality into the mix – but there are distinct limits. As a blogger I have much greater freedom of expression.

An excellent example relates to my recent reporting of CAFOs in relation to the H1N1 flu outbreak. I had to edit my description of some of the CAFOs negative effects for my newspaper column, while I was able to freely discuss some distressing research (increased infant death rates) in my blog story.

Black finished by asking: “How do you write a good story?” Answering her own question, she said the key is to find the right person to personify it. For example, she said, the White House Garden story received a mountain of press attention not because most people care about gardening, per se, but because the Obama’s are such prominent personalities that people really want to know what they are doing. And it is this crossover that will introduce sustainability issues to a new audience.

Finally, Black noted, she keeps writing the same story again and again. The story is: How does this transition to sustainable food happen? The key is finding the most interesting people and angles that amplify the message while keeping it fresh.

Barry Estabrook, contributing editor at Gourmet Magazine, echoed Black’s sentiments when he said “Never, Ever Preach – and Always Tell it Through People.” People are always interested in the people who bring them food, Estabrook continued, and it is often that interest in other people that leads them to explore sustainability.

But he also noted that “it’s really important to pick the right boss,” saying that Gourmet Editor in chief Ruth Reichl was committed to “articles about where food comes from.” But, he criticized, “we as food magazines do not do a good job of bringing issues of sustainability to our readers. That’s a weakness from our corner of the business.”

“There’s this perception that isn’t panning out,” Estabrook said, “Our editors think our readers don’t want to learn about declining fish stocks. But interestingly, in practice, people seem to like these stories. Our circulation has remained very robust since we’ve introduced this element to the mix.”

Katherine Alford, a Vice President with the Food Network, agreed that communicating sustainable issues through people was important. “We will never have a show just about sustainability,” she declared bluntly. “We want that to come through our talent, someone that people relate to.” She conceded that the Food Network’s audience was very mainstream, and that they were in the entertainment business. So, Alford said, sustainable topics can also come through the ingredients. “By using certain ingredients, and talking about where certain ingredients come from,” we can communicate our passion for these ideas, she said.

She also had an interesting perspective on sustainability as it relates to television. “TV is expensive…and so we have the idea of evergreen TV shows.” That is, producers don’t want an episode of a show to be obsolete because an ingredient isn’t available anymore. “You can’t do a issue with Chilean Sea Bass because it’s not available. Over the years, people have gotten more and more receptive to that story,” Alford said.

Finally, Alford thought that television cooking programs could do a better job of connecting people directly with their food. “I think that the food media has done an amazing job of connecting to chefs, but at the detriment to home cooking.” He continued,  “I think we do a horrible job, in the food media, of saying ‘think like a chef.’ And this makes people think they can’t be involved…and those are the people we need to reach – you want them to go the farmers market.”

She concluded “We have to celebrate cooking a meal, and the skill level that comes with it.”

Finally, if you’re watching TV or a movie and you see characters discussing sustainable food issues, there’s a good chance that you’re looking at the work of Debbie Levin, president of the Environmental Media Association.
Celebrating their 20th anniversary, the EMA links “the power of celebrity to environmental awareness.” They pitch environmental ideas, story lines, and products to place in TV, movies, and directly in the hands of celebrities to get the eco-message across.

Levin loves working with sustainable foods, because “with food, you can wake up and make sustainable choices each day,” she says. She cautions us to never “underestimate the power of using celebrity to role model positive trends.” Addressing all the non-profits and sustainable food executives in the room, Levin said “you give us the information, we can get it out there.”