There has ostensibly been a dialogue among New York City legislators around food, as seen through Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s Food Works resolution, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s (at the moment dormant) NYC Foodprint legislation, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s Blueprint for Sustainable Food System initiative. But there has yet to be a watershed policy that explicitly acknowledges and addresses the connection between “cool foods” and reducing the effects of climate change.

Food is a tremendous component of our global ecological footprint, specifically the livestock sector. With regards to anthropogenic green house gas (GHG) emissions, livestock production generates nine percent of the carbon, 65 percent of nitrous oxide, 37 percent of methane, and 64 percent of ammonia.

Cool foods, mainly plant-based foods (e.g., fruits, legumes, vegetables), require fewer GHG emissions to produce than animal-based foods (e.g., beef, poultry, dairy products). The livestock industry alone is responsible for 18 percent of global GHG emissions (including CO2, NO2, and methane)–more than the entire global transportation sector (to learn more, click here).

Given the apparent inertia in NYC to move legislation encouraging cool foods consumption, New York University’s Environmental Studies program dedicated one of its undergraduate senior Capstone Seminars to this very issue.

Led by Mia MacDonald, the Executive Director of the non-profit action think tank Brighter Green, we were among a group of nine students tasked with creating a set of policy recommendations for the aspirational client of the Mayor’s Initiative on Food and Climate Change, a yet uncreated programme out of the Mayor’s Office. In addition, a supplementary campaign and toolkit was designed to empower individuals and communities to increase cool foods in their diet with–and without–the support of the government.

The client remained “aspirational” in light of the omission of food issues in NYC’s 2007 PlaNYC report, a strategic framework to reducing NYC’s GHGs by 30 percent by 2030, while improving the economic, social, and environmental well-being of the city. That said, we were careful to be wary of the practical limitations faced by a city government.

By encouraging cool foods consumption, the hyper-urban NYC (the most populous in the States and among the most ethnically diverse in the world), has the potential to reduce the local and national carbon footprint while fostering a culture of cool foods consumption. With programs designed to reach various demographics, cool foods will be neither a fad nor a kitschy way of life for the wealthy, but a fundamental shift in how we understand the health of our bodies and planet.

After an extensive literature review of policies and campaigns designed by different municipalities around the world that were both related and unrelated to food issues, the students created the Eating for the Green Apple initiative.

We found that a purely top-down approach would not suffice; thus, an integral component was increasing education and awareness around cool foods. Additionally, programs increasing cool food consumption, working in tandem with food aid and welfare programs (e.g., NYC’s EBT program) can increase access of fresh fruits and vegetables to lower-income communities, leading to lower incidences of diet-related illnesses, increased workforce capacity, and improved academic performance.

Over the course of the three months, we designed a set of responsive strategies for NYC to reduce its GHG emissions.

• Establish the Cool Foods Systems Assessment (CFSA) Task Force that will:

(1) Develop baseline measurements of New Yorkers’ animal-product consumption and the associated GHG emissions;
(2) Identify and assess differences, if they exist, in animal-product consumption amongst various cultural and socioeconomic demographics; and
(3) Identify opportunities to reduce animal-product consumption and/or associated GHG emissions, educate New Yorkers on the connection between diet and GHG emissions, and propose efficient and cost-effective recommendations to increase cool foods consumption.

• Increase geographic and monetary access to cool foods in low income communities

• Develop a public schools campaign that includes the promotion of wellness committees in public schools and the establishment of a NYC school-wide Meatless Mondays campaign to raise awareness and increase consumption of cool foods

• Work through afterschool program and partnerships to increase awareness and consumption of cool foods

The proposed public awareness campaign consists of an interactive, user-friendly Web site containing several features including additional facts on cool foods, a recipe index, and a downloadable version of the toolkit; a poster series to be distributed throughout the city on subways, bus stands, and buses with photos of ethnically diverse New Yorkers a factoid about climate change and cool foods, and a link to the EGA Web site; and partnerships with grocery stores in various boroughs to help raise awareness and gauge levels of interaction with the campaign.

The toolkit includes a set of key actions New Yorkers can take to increase their cool foods consumption, including joining a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), cooking your own food, and talking to your grocers. Individuals can adopt and share these actions easily, and refer to the entire toolkit for further guidance and rationale. We also included a few New York University-specific actions to demonstrate how the toolkit can be tailored to specific institutions, communities, and organizations.

The final report is available for free download here.

New York City has an impressive track record when it comes to pushing through progressive and groundbreaking legislation, as well as orchestrating comprehensive initiatives for social causes. Take the stomach-churning but nonetheless memorable “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign posters and videos reminding New Yorkers to not “drink themselves sick” with soda and other sugary drinks. Or the mandate to restaurants and quick serve food outlets that make calories publicly available to post them on menus.

So what’s stopping NYC from taking on cool foods? EGA presents a realistic approach to address the clear and present need for addressing climate change through our dietary choices in New York City.

Image: Ariel Dubov

As a long-time regular of Angelica Kitchen restaurant in New York City, I’ve come to consider it a “second kitchen,” a place I feel good about supporting because it shares the values I keep in my own kitchen: High quality ingredients that provide a fair income to farmers who are working to protect the environment–and which provide nutrition without sacrificing any of the flavor–all for the reasonable cost afforded by buying direct.

And I am not alone. Since it opened its door in 1976, Angelica Kitchen has cultivated a loyal following, and their sustainable business model–maintained without serving alcohol (you can BYOB)–is a case study for success outside of the mainstream restaurant industry. Angelica’s is also one of the most popular vegetarian restaurants in New York City, precisely because it attracts a clientele that includes many non-vegetarians. In honor of Vegetarian Awareness Month, I spoke with owner Leslie McEachern–who is being awarded for her long-time advocacy of small, local farms by the Northeast Organic Farming Association this month–about running a restaurant built on relationships.

With over thirty years in New York City, why do you think Angelica Kitchen has been such a success?

We’ve earned the trust of people who are seeking out a plant-based diet. I think people have experienced the satisfaction of eating really fresh organic ingredients and having their body respond well to that, because we’ve really focused on a balanced, nutritional whole foods diet at Angelica. All of the thought that has gone into providing a balanced, whole food meal, especially with the quality of the ingredients from the farmers, I think people just respond well to it sometimes without even knowing why.

Why did Angelica Kitchen decide to be vegan from the outset?

The three guys who started the restaurant were very much into the whole macrobiotic scene. And even though macrobiotic is not vegan, I think they were interested in as clean a diet as possible, and a plant-based diet to them was the way to go.

Why did you decide to maintain Angelica’s as a vegan restaurant?

I had been a vegetarian for over 10 years at that time, and actually, I’d been living out of the woods in North Carolina for six years, out of a little hut with no electricity, no plumbing or anything. I’d been living on a very straight-forward plant-based diet, just living very close to the land. Then I moved to New York all of a sudden because I fell in love with a guy–the guy who owned Angelica’s. So it never even occurred to me to shift away from what was going on because philosophically I was already aligned, not only with seeking out the farmers which was happening when I got involved, but also because I felt it was an intelligent approach to having a restaurant in that neighborhood.

Who do you think Angelica Kitchen’s audience is?

I don’t try to appeal to anyone in specific. We don’t advertise, we’ve always been word-of-mouth. Back in the early 1980s, it was very much the neighborhood coming to the restaurant. When I built the restaurant on 12th Street, where we opened in 1988, there was a lot of education going on about “you are what you eat.” Now, people come from all over the world because there is such an interest in eating clean. And that has continued to grow. We don’t approach or make our menu to meet a certain need. We have our passion, which is really about whole foods, about supporting the local farmers–we support 24 different artisans and farmers year-round–and using their products to show off the plant-based menu.

Do you think there is more awareness now about food than there was when Angelica Kitchen opened in the 1970s?

There is a tremendous amount of awareness. I see people really making intelligent choices now about what they’re putting into their bodies. That’s a broad statement and I’m certainly not including all of western culture. Just the numbers of people that are coming into Angelica’s Kitchen, the number of people who are going to farmers’ markets, the number of books that are available about eating clean and eating well. Like my friend Marion Nestle, she’s written these great books, like Food Politics, What to Eat, and Safe Food–Marion has sold so many books. And I just don’t know that that would have been possible 20 years ago.

What made you decide to focus on organic food when you first got involved with Angelica’s?

My soul responds to nature. When I started reading Wendell Berry in the early 1970s, I found a voice for that. And once I’d found that voice, not only through his philosophical writings, his agricultural writings, his poetry and his novels, I was very inspired. Frank, the owner at the time [I got involved], had already been ordering from local, organic growers. I had always been in the natural foods business, and I had worked with a lot of organic ingredients before, and I knew where my heart stood on that matter. So I had the opportunity to get on my soapbox through my actions once I got involved with Angelica’s and say that this is what I feel is the best way to feed people. And so I continued to network to find the ingredients from local growers–organic, diversified, small, independent family farms.

Are there farmers that you’ve kept ties with since the beginning, that you’ve worked with for the past two decades?

Definitely. There are farmers who didn’t even have children then, whose children are now graduated from college. It’s very rewarding having long-term relationships with Guy Jones at Blooming Hill Farm, Mark Denau from Martin Dell Farm, and Lou Harris Farm up in the Finger Lakes. Getting to see the farmers when they bring their produce in on deliveries is a terrific bonus as far as doing this kind of business. In fact, those relationships are the very thing that keeps me inspired to keep going.

What is the most popular dish at the restaurant?

Through the years its definitely been the Dragon Bowl [steamed vegetables, sea vegetables, beans, rice and tofu with a choice of dressing], I think because we’re so close to NYU and its such a complete meal, and lots of times people eat half of it and take the other half home. And [the Wee Dragon] is under $10, and its a well-balanced meal when you are hungry.

You have been asked over the years to expand the restaurant to other locations–why have you said no?

Wendell Berry talks about having a sense of place. In a certain way I would love to see more people doing whole foods, fresh from farms. But the way I’m made up personally, I don’t want another restaurant. It’s really a lot of work to do it well. One of the problems that I came across was that most people who I’ve had this kind of conversation with were concerned only about the bottom line. You can’t do a restaurant like Angelica Kitchen if you are concerned just about the bottom line. Because you’re going to start cutting corners, you’re going to start paying staff less. We deliberately keep our prices low, and this is a point of contingence with people who would be interested in opening more Angelica Kitchens. Its a philosophical conflict for me to undo what I’ve tried to put out there as an example of what is possible to be done: a whole foods restaurant, without alcohol, that is serving the farmer, that is serving the public.

You’ve called yourself a “reluctant restaurateur.” What do you mean?

(Laughs) I think the best way that everyone could eat is to be at home and cook and eat with your friends and family. Ideally–again, how ideal is this world?–there wouldn’t be a need for a restaurant.

Below is a recipe from The Angelica Home Kitchen cookbook, which is available at the restaurant or through the Angelica Kitchen Web site. This stew is just right for the fall, features root vegetables and the fundamental ingredients of Japanese cuisine such as kombu, shoyu, ginger and rice wine (mirin). Enjoy!

Oden (Asian root vegetable stew)

2 teaspoons olive oil
2 cups diced onions
6 cups water
1 cup burdock, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cups carrots, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup daikon, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup rutabagas, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup parsnips, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces
4 to 6dry shiitake mushrooms
1 (3-inch) piece dried kombu
5 slices ginger, each the size of a quarter
1/2 cup shoyu or tamari
2 tablespoons mirin
1/4 cup kuzu
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons sliced scallions for garnish

In a heavy saucepan, sauté the onions and burdock in the olive oil over medium heat for 10 minutes. Add six cups of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the carrots, daikon, rutabagas, parsnips, shiitake mushrooms, kombu, ginger, mirin and tamari. Lower the flame and simmer covered for 30 to 40 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Remove ginger and discard. Remove kombu and shiitake mushrooms, slice into bite-size pieces, and return to the pot. Dissolve the kuzu in 1/4 cup cold water; stir into the stew and simmer for 1 or 2 minutes longer. stir in the sesame oil. NOTE: You should never cook with toasted sesame oil because high heat will release free radicals in the oil, making it toxic. Use toasted sesame oil as a last-minute addition; treat like a flavor enhancer such as salt or vinager. Serve with noodles or rice, accompanied by baked, marinated tofu, kimchee, and scallion garnish.

Photo: jwrkc via Flickr

This Saturday, New York City will be the first participant in a series of international conversations surrounding food and the city. The event is organized by The Foodprint Project, a collaboration between Nicola Twilley and Sarah Rich, a founder of Civil Eats. Their objective is to use food as a lens to study local connections between food and geography, food and social behavior, and food and our future.

Taking their cue from the research of Kathe Newman, who theorized that a spatial analysis of cupcake proliferation could also reveal the flow of capital investment in cities, Twilley and Rich hope to navigate through and uncover New York City’s changing socio-economic patterns by inviting panelists and curious New Yorkers to engage in a discussion centered on the city’s foodscape.

The program features four panels, ranging in topic from policy and zoning to culinary history to food futurism. Panelists include Sean Basinski, founder of the Street Vendor Project and the Vendy Awards; Rebecca Federman, the culinary collections librarian at the New York Public Library; Amale Andraos, architect of the Public Farm at PS1 and New York’s first Edible Schoolyard with Alice Waters; William Grimes, author of Appetite City; as well as many other leading thinkers from the fields of urban studies, science, design, film and literature.

Foodprint Project’s trans-discipline approach melds both appreciation for and arguments against New York’s edible life. As the urban population continues to grow, our questions surrounding sustainability and the access to fresh, healthy, nutritious food, deepen as well. Panelists will discuss possible solutions to current food deserts, the future of design and architecture—as related to resource shortages and urban agriculture—and the visibility of New York’s social and economic inequalities within its changing neighborhoods.

“I feel that insights often come from applying the framework for one thing to a completely different thing,” explains Twilley. “Food and cities are both incredibly complex systems, but when you use one as the lens through which to examine the other, you learn something new about both.”

Foodprint NYC takes place at Studio X, a venue of the Columbia School of Architecture, located at 180 Varick St., Suite 1610. The event is open to the public. To see the complete program and read speaker bios, visit www.foodprintproject.com.

I’m always amazed by the number of folks who think that most of Central Park is some kind of natural habitat of indigenous plants, a pristine terrain onto which we plunked our bike paths, boathouses and pretzel vendors.

In reality, nearly every square inch of Central Park was painstakingly landscaped back in the mid-nineteenth century to the specifications of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux. A massive public works project, it required some 20,000 workers to subvert existing swamps and blow up bluffs to create a soothing pastoral landscape in the English romantic tradition.

Oh, and there was the little matter of evicting the Irish pig farmers and German gardeners who’d built shantytowns on the land. And destroying Seneca Village, the “first significant community of African American property owners on Manhattan”. The five acre settlement, which included three churches and a school, was seized through eminent domain and demolished.

All this, so that cooped-up city dwellers could get their fix of “nature”. Our civilized way of life is so removed from the natural world that Central Park’s manicured, manipulated acres are as close to a bit of wilderness as we can hope to get within the borough of Manhattan.

But you can catch a glimpse of what Manhattan was really like before we invaded it and tamed it by watching the fascinating video that architect/educator Fritz Haeg’s created in collaboration with The Mannahatta Project. The video documents Haeg’s Lenape Edible Estate installation, which was designed to “provide a view back to the lives of the native Lenape people, how they lived off the land 400 years ago” on the island that was then called Mannahatta.

The Lenape project was installed back in June when Haeg and a team of volunteers descended with shovels and soil on a triangle of uncultivated land in front of a Chelsea housing project to plant the beans, corn, squash, berries, and other edibles that the Lenape tribe lived on centuries ago.

The project offers a “meditation both on the historical facts and the future possibilities for our occupation of the island,” as Haeg notes. He hopes that it “may also serve as a model for modest small scale urban edible landscapes and as a possible prototype for future green spaces on similar housing sites across the city.”

I’m delighted to see Haeg bring his verve and vision to an American urban setting. His U.S. plantings have been primarily in the ‘burbs, as documented in his book Edible Estates: Attack On The Front Lawn (which also includes an installation at a London housing project). Edible Estates, written in 2007 and published in the winter of 2008, anticipated–and surely helped inspire–the recent kitchen garden renaissance. Haeg’s book sold so well that it’s now out of print.

Happily, a new edition will be released next spring. The new Edible Estates will include more stories of lawn-to-lettuce conversions and an expanded preface from Haeg on how the edible landscape scene has changed since the first edition. Urban ag genius Will Allen‘s contributing a piece, and there will be a nod to the White House kitchen garden, whose role in helping to inspire millions of new gardeners this year is indisputable.

As Haeg noted in an op-ed this past spring in the Guardian, the First Family’s 1,100 square foot patch of veggies is “not just a pretty garden, or an empty symbol, but a place for a family to grow the food that they like to eat, on the land that is around them” (that’s why there’s plenty of cilantro and tomatillos, for salsa, but no beets–Obama doesn’t like ‘em). Haeg adds:

Many American children today do not see evidence that food comes out of the ground or experience the pleasure of eating food fresh from plants. Instead their diet is causing epidemic childhood illness. The introduction of a food-producing garden into their early lives is our best hope for changing the situation in a meaningful way.

But there’s another compelling reason to start growing some of your own food, whether it’s in your yard, on a rooftop, or in a window box: it’s one way to help curb your carbon footprint, or, rather, foodprint. No one is seriously suggesting that city dwellers can produce all our own food in our yards, community gardens, or urban farms, but it’s just one of the many steps that we can take to lower our impact.

During World War II, planting a kitchen garden was pitched as our patriotic duty. Isn’t it time we made growing your own food a civic virtue once again? Only this time, the fight is against the fossil-fueled American life that’s given us an increasingly unhealthy populace and an overheated planet.

And we’re in imminent danger of losing that battle. “Current emissions trajectories” are hurtling us towards the point of no return, i.e. “the worst-case scenarios” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to the New York Times.

At a daylong conference on climate change held Tuesday at the United Nations, Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the world’s leaders that “Science leaves us no space for inaction now”.

This bleak pronouncement comes on the heels of a headline blaring “We’re Screwed“ on the front page of Monday’s New York Post–or, rather, a remarkably New York Post-like publication that was passed out to unsuspecting commuters by activists. The hoax was orchestrated by the Yes Men, that pair of pranksters who’ve so masterfully manipulated the mainstream media, as documented in their upcoming film, The Yes Men Fix The World.

It looked an awful lot like the real thing and fooled a lot of folks. But on close inspection, you could tell that it was a fake because, unlike Rupert Murdoch’s publication, “the faux Post is filled with factual information on the threats posed by climate change,” as USA Today observed.

You’d never see an article in the real Post touting the potential of rooftop farming to help curb New York City’s carbon foodprint, or a shout-out to an upcoming presentation hosted by NYU on Food and Climate Change: The Meat of the Matter, that explores the significant contribution that meat and dairy production make to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, Monday’s edition of The Daily News ran an article about the 18,000 pounds of fresh produce that inmates on Rikers Island have grown this year to supply the city’s soup kitchens and food pantries–further proof of the tangible, quantifiable benefits of urban agriculture.

Monday’s Financial Times also echoed the Yes Men’s “We’re Screwed” headline with an article entitled “Scientific Consensus Over Dire Consequences,” which noted that:

The gap between the glacial pace of negotiations and the rapid progress of global warming is now endangering the safety of the planet, scientists are warning. Martin Parry, of Imperial College, London, says: “That is what is at stake. I don’t think people have realised. We are nowhere near tackling this.”

Can we muster the collective will to alter the way we live in order to avert the worst repercussions of climate change? Those of us who live in densely populated cities already have the advantage of mass transit–and, ironically, greater access through farmers markets and CSAs (though not nearly enough in many communities) to the freshly harvested plant-based foods that form the cornerstone of a low-impact diet.

I don’t know if we’ll ever manage to liberate ourselves from the petroleum-based processed foods that currently dominate our food chain. But I’m heartened by the sight of so many New Yorkers attempting to grow food, whether it’s on the roof of a Brooklyn warehouse or the back of a Brooklyn-based pick-up truck, behind the barbed wire of Rikers Island, or in front of a housing project on the island formerly known as Mannahatta. Let freedom spring!

Originally published on The Green Fork.

New Amsterdam Market is a market of purveyors – independent, locally owned businesses committed to sourcing and selling food from the region extending in a radius of approximately 500 miles from the City of New York. As engines of rural development, cities play a key role in the revival of regional food systems. New Amsterdam Market encourages commerce that is mutually beneficial to both urban and rural economies – a model long promoted by cities through the institution of the public market. Using municipal market space in this way harnesses the buying power of urban populations and reinvests it into regional farmland. Within the context of the current economic and ecological crisis, New Amsterdam Market represents a practical level of political and economic governance for food production.

“New Amsterdam Market is exactly what we need at South Street Seaport: a resource for the community and an attraction for the world,” said State Senator Daniel Squadron. “The market brings the best of regional produce to the heart of the city. This fall, it will continue to link the people of New York City with farmers around the state, helping develop a sustainable food system and strengthening our regional economy.”

The Market will feature innovative New York City food entrepreneurs such as Saxelby Cheesemongers, Marlow and Sons, Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, BoBo Poultry, and Hot Bread Kitchen. Many others will join these pioneering craftsman and their businesses, which provide local jobs while specializing in sourcing and utilizing regional products. These emergent vendors, who welcome the boom in demand for quality foods of regional provenance, need supportive, promotional infrastructure in place to incubate and sustain their business. All American cities once had public markets – markets filled with vendors whose primary concern was selling food they valued, produced by farmers they knew.

While not new, this type of public market must be re-established and reinvented for the modern urban context. Markets are cohesive, site-specific and socially useful urban development mechanisms, as much for the city’s growth as for the preservation of its heritage. Through illuminating the specific geological and historical conditions of urban food landscapes, public markets can help inform today’s sustainable food solutions. Markets were once considered civic institutions because they were held on common ground, and fulfilled a public agenda: providing urban populations with a reliable, affordable, and healthy source of food while fostering regional economic enterprise. As a gathering of individuals committed to pursuing goals for the common good, the public market becomes a venue that builds community and restores the public trust – functions of a robust civic institution.

New Amsterdam Market will be held on Sunday, September 13, 2009, from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm. The markets will take place on South Street, between Beekman Street and Peck Slip in Lower Manhattan, and will also convene at the same time and location on the following Sundays, October 25, November 22, and December 20, 2009.

The September 13th market will offer market fare and other prepared foods to take away and enjoy along the public piers on South Street or take on Harbor Day ferryboat services to other waterfront destinations around New York City. An estimated 150,000 New Yorkers are expected to attend the citywide Harbor Day events, which are being produced by NYC and Company, New York City’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization.

Local food campaigns rest on the food miles argument, that it is inherently bad that American food travels on average 1500 miles from farm to plate. This argument is not universally empirically based. Fossil fuel inputs in agriculture include more than just transport miles. A study from Lincoln University in New Zealand found that because New Zealand lamb are grazed on grass grown by our cleanest and most renewable energy source – the sun – it is more ecological for the British to import lamb from New Zealand than to eat the lamb raised in southern England. Also, the economic argument of the multiplier effect (another cornerstone of local foods), that one dollar spent on farm fresh food in one’s geographic area will be exchanged multiple times within the same geographic area, can be used to validate the support of farms farther a field as well. In the Honduran valley of Comayagua where I have done research, the production of Asian vegetable exports for NYC markets provides livelihoods for 450 farmers, and over 5000 affiliated industry workers.

Since World War II the number of farms in the United States has been declining, but between 2002 and 2007 there has been a four percent increase. According to the US Census of Agriculture, these new farms are half the size of the average US farm, have younger operators, and have sales where one product accounts for no more than 50% of the farm income. These small and diversified farms run by a new generation of farmers, are precisely the farms that farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture and chef-farm partnerships have been the primary supporters of. But direct marketing arrangements are not enough to support a sustained increase in farm number, or to support small, diversified farms. The volume of food sold directly from farm to consumer is a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of food that is sold through wholesale distribution. We need to get commodity agriculture involved as well as supermarkets on board, and city government needs to think about how they can create policies to ensure access to urban markets by regional farmers.

I would not argue for a solely provincial approach to food distribution—it is either impractical or impossible—but I do argue that each bioregion should be encouraged to grow what it is best suited for and that regional farmers should have access to their regional markets. Why should NY, the second largest apple producing state in the nation, export its apples in order to import apples from Chile and New Zealand for New Yorkers to eat? Why should the US export just under 4,000 metric tons of yogurt in order to import just over the same volume? This is the current state of affairs because there are fundamental aspects of the “mainstream” food system that prohibit regional farmers from accessing their regional urban markets. The distribution of food for supermarkets has been centralizing over the last two decades. Fewer food retail companies have more market share and they control more stages of food products life cycles, from production through retail. This has favored a get big or get out mantra in American agriculture and pits US farmers against farmers with lower costs of production in other countries, and domestically pits farmers from hilly rocky regions like the Northeast against those from the flat fertile valleys of California and the Midwest.

Farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture, and the wholesale food system that I have studied that supplies New York’s Chinatown with ethnic produce, allow farms of many sizes, with fluctuating yields and diverse product inventories to participate because they feature a decentralized marketing structure. By decentralized, I mean that there are many wholesalers and retailers selling farm goods, not just a few. This is the strength of direct marketing where farmers sell their own goods, but decentralization can also be a feature of wholesale distribution as I have observed in Chinatown’s food system. If individual supermarket stores could source their own inventories, instead of being integrated into company marketing channels, then regional farmers would have a better chance of accessing these markets.

Supermarkets in urban areas have a particular advantage in testing out this new distribution strategy. Consumer demand exists and competition is mounting. New York City is on the verge of building a wholesale farmers’ market to provide the infrastructure to connect stores with farmers right here in the city, and has released a document entitled “Food In the Public Interest” [PDF] from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s Office which expresses interest in re-assessing the city’s food distribution. Fairway, one of New York City’s premier supermarkets, has started a “Jersey Fresh” display in the produce section to feature tomatoes, zucchini, and other vegetables from New Jersey. San Francisco completed a food system study that concluded that the top ten agricultural commodities milk, tomatoes, beef and lettuce, to name a few, consumed in that city could be supplied by its regional farms. The only problem is getting the food on the shelf.

Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of lending a hand as a volunteer at Rooftop Farms in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The name says it all: it is a 6000 square foot urban vegetable farm on the roof of an industrial building, growing rows inter-cropped with lettuces, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, kale and much more, which they sell directly to restaurants and at a farm stand inside the building every Sunday from 9am – 4pm.

Annie Novak and Ben Flanner are the farming minds behind the project. Both are passionate about how food gets to our table (Novak works with farmer with Kira Kenney of Evolutionary Organics at the Greenmarket, and works as the Children’s Gardening Program Coordinator at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Flanner is new to farming but seems to get a kick out of hawking produce). Chris and Lisa Goode of Goode Green, a green roofing company, found the roof and funded Rooftop Farms as a test. With this project, the team hopes to determine what is possible in terms of scale for growing on rooftops in the city.

Flanner was managing the farm stand while I was there, encouraging everyone to try a tomato, or a leaf of the alternative sweetener stevia. Most of the people who came by were neighbors. The stand quickly sold out of red and green kale, and I joined Flanner in the field selecting the largest leaves for new bunches.

Novak, meanwhile, handled coordinating the fifteen or so volunteers. On Sunday we removed sweet peas plants (the season had ended), harvesting the beans and breaking down the rest into compost. We also harvested lettuces growing in between the tomato plants, planted radish seeds (the Rooftop Farms radishes have been quite a hit with local restaurants like Marlow and Sons and Anella, and they get quickly bought out by the neighbors at the farm stand, too), applied fertilizing compost tea and did pest management, among other tasks. As a new grower myself, I found it all to be quite educational; Annie showed me some pests to look out for in my own garden, and she gave me some information on how organically minded growers are dealing with the tomato blight. (Luckily Rooftop Farms grew almost everything from seed, and are not as worried as they would be with transplants, but she is still taking precautions like spraying copper in some areas.)

This is part of the point for her: She wants others to jump in and learn and hopefully create their own version of what Rooftop Farms is doing in other parts of the city. One rooftop is enough for Novak for the time being, as what needs to be done there is at times keeping her up at night. But what they are doing is replicable, and she is willing to teach all who come to help out about her methods.

One of the first questions she often gets asked is about the soil: they had to lift all 200,000 lbs to the roof with a crane. And yes, an engineer was brought in to get clearance on the weight. The soil is a mix containing shale, a light material made specifically for rooftop applications. But as Novak tells it, they are experimenting with growing vegetables instead of sedum, the succulents considered the standard green roof plant species. The experiment seems to be working, as they’ve harvested 600 pounds of produce since early June, and the tomatoes and cucumbers are just getting started.

Novak wants even beginners, or New Yorkers without much growing room to get in on the act. One row on her farm even showcases what can be done in a small plot. “The square foot bed is an example of the amount of space a renter might have,” she said. “We’re using that space to show that you don’t have to be confined to one tomato plant.” (In photo, vegetables growing together include swiss chard, cabbage, tomatoes, lettuces, peppers, beans, onions and more)

The roof is exposed from all directions, overlooking the East River and a glorius view of the city. Novak said that it can get windy, but that the plants compensate when grown from seed by growing denser, deeper root systems and heartier stems. Standing on the rooftop soaking in the lush rows and the abundance of food growing there (not to mention the view) was enough to make an urban farmer out of almost anyone.

I’ve always admired honeybees for their elegant cooperation, and of course because they make more honey than they need out of sheer industriousness, which I love to eat.  So I was excited when I heard that I could learn to keep bees myself, in the city. (after the jump: how to build a hive)

For the past few weeks, I’ve been attending the basic course for beekeepers given by the New York City Beekeeper’s Association.  The focus of the course, which will be given again in March (but is currently taking names for the waiting-list only), was on the order of the hive, hive maintenance, the diseases that can affect a hive and how to treat them without chemicals, how to build your own hive, managing swarms, and when and how to collect honey.  But there was one catch: this is an illegal activity in New York City.

Chicago has beehives on the roof of City Hall, and in other cities like San Francisco and Atlanta, beekeeping within city limits is permitted.  But here in New York, the health code disallows the keeping of “venomous insects.”

Luckily we have the food advocates at Just Food taking the lead with their petition to legalize beekeeping in New York, who have also found an ally in Councilman David Yasskey, who put forward a bill that would override the health code and make beekeeping legal.  He spoke to the New York City Beekeeper’s Association on Sunday about his proposal, in which he describes beekeeping as an economic and environmental enterprise. He spoke about honey-gathering as a small business, an alternative for those struggling in this economy.  “With bees come flowers,” he added, going on to say that beekeeping is a part of building a greener city.  As a second-tier approach to the problem, Just Food has worked to encourage a re-evaluation of the health code, which will be taking place this summer.  Unfortunately, this is not in time for beekeepers to feel at ease in mounting their new hives this April.

Many beekeepers have been keeping bees covertly in the city for years, including many of the members of the association.  The threat they face is a fine of up to $2000, though this is rarely enforced.  Enforcement follows a complaint by the neighbors, who might assume that bees are like wasps, and sting without reason.  But Italian honey bees of the variety used by beekeepers in the city, Apis mellifera ligustica, have been selectively bred for gentleness, disease resistance and industriousness.

While I have yet to find a place to keep bees myself, preferably cooperatively (like in a community garden), I do plan to take part in as many “hivings” (introducing bees to their new home), inspections, and honey collections as I can this year.  Hopefully, my helpfulness will render jarred, sweet rewards.

Check back here for updates on the legal status of beekeeping in New York City, and for more posts about visiting city hives.

Building a Langstroth Hive

The class watched on Sunday at the Tompkin’s Square Park Greenmarket as our instructors, the family beekeepers Andrew and his father Norm, showed us the art of building a Langstroth hive.  The Langstroth is the most commonly used hive-type, and that is because it has mastered the concept of “bee space,” allowing just enough area between frames for bees to pass so that they won’t build a bridge of comb, which makes it more difficult to inspect the hive.  The wood being used is locally grown and milled in Maine.  It is cut into individual pieces, which you then hammer, glue, paint and stack, and voila! You have a home for your new “pets.”  Here is the photographic explanation on building the “deep,” or the main partition where the bees will produce the honey for their food and where they will raise their larvae:

Inside the deep will be placed the frames:

Then you do the process over again for another deep, so the bees have room to grow into the hive and will be less likely to swarm, and a “shallow,” a smaller box where you might have honey to eat by August.

New Amsterdam Market is a non-profit organization dedicated to reinventing the indoor public market as a civic institution, in the City of New York. To date, we have held three seasonal market events that have drawn thousands of supporters from all five boroughs and beyond. Beginning this summer, we will hold monthly markets at a public site, whereby the aim is to increase the visibility of and demand for regional food, thus making the case to the city and the public alike for a permanent site.

To kick-off this effort, we are holding our very first fundraiser in Manhattan this Saturday, February 21, from 5-8PM, Founded on Oyster Shells. Come for a night of oysters, cask conditioned local beers, chowders and stews, spent grain bread, and winter vegetable pickles. Or, if you would like to show your support but are outside the immediate NYC area, check out our online auction with dozens of unique experiential items to choose from. The auction runs through Tuesday, February 24th.

New Amsterdam Market will be a market of purveyors – independent, locally owned businesses such as butchers, grocers, mongers, provisioners, and other vendors who will commit to sourcing and selling food from the region extending in a radius of approximately 500 miles from the City of New York. This type of public market is nothing new. All American cities once had public markets filled with just such vendors; and these vendors were primarily concerned with selling food produced by farms they knew in person. These markets were considered civic institutions because they were held on common ground, and fulfilled a public agenda: providing urban populations with a reliable, affordable, and healthy source of food while supporting regional economies.

New Amsterdam Market is one of many projects taking place right now to revive regional food systems and provide alternatives to the type of agriculture and food production we know we would all be better off without. The challenge is very real: how do we produce and distribute food without damaging the environment, compromising biodiversity, mistreating workers and animals, or compromising public health – all hallmarks of our present food system?

We believe that meaningful change results when individual, incremental efforts are combined under one roof. What results is a new entity whose sum is larger than its many parts. In New York, we have identified a number of passionate, committed individuals who have started businesses to support local farms, especially those at the forefront of sustainable production. For example, Anne Saxelby, who has built a business supporting cheese producers from the northeast – primarily from farms too busy or distant to participate in New York’s excellent Greenmarket system. These cheesemakers have come to view Anne as their trusted representative; and the same can now be said of several Regional meat producers whose products are being sourced by another business much like Anne’s – Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, owned by Jacob Dickson, or a store like Marlow and Daughters, a new butcher shop in Williamsburg Brooklyn that sells only responsibly raised meat. Or like Sweet Deliverance – a catering company owned by Kelly Geary, who sources from farmers markets and makes home-cooked meals for professionals who don’t have time to cook themselves.

New Amsterdam Market will be populated by vendors like this, including many who don’t exist yet but who will emerge when they find the haven to incubate their businesses. This type of economic development, which benefits both the urban and rural economy, has long been promoted by cities through the institution of the public market. Furthermore, as a gathering of individuals committed to pursuing a common goal and representing only what they believe is real, the public market becomes a venue that restores the public trust – another function of a civic institution. This is the goal of New Amsterdam Market.

I’d heard about “secret” supper clubs. The basic concept is that it’s an under the radar local, organic foodie evening seasoned with camaraderie, where you pay a (usually low) flat fee for a dinner in someone’s apartment cooked by seriously talented chefs. Isn’t there even some group that will bring livestock to your apartment and slaughter it in your bathroom and then cook it for you? Ok, maybe I’m not quite ready for that.

Two weekends ago I emerged from L train in industrial-ugly-chic Bushwick (a neighborhood in Brooklyn with a fair amount of hipster street cred) and made my way to One Big Table, a supper club/speakeasy. My friend Taylor Brown had been invited to be an after dinner musical performer and the moment I heard about the event I emailed and snagged a spot.

When we arrived we were greeted by the One Big Table hostess, Heather, the quiet and elegantly tattooed mastermind and workhorse behind the monthly gathering.

As we put our coats down, we saw The Board, a chalkboard with the night’s 6 course menu written out, complete with the farms from which the ingredients came from. It only got better from there.

Heather is a 25 year-old nanny by day and self taught cook who’s understatedly passionate about food as well as the art of entertaining. The whole event is clearly a labor of love which she does mostly on her own with a few friends who help with serving and last minute touches. For $45 you get the meal and free-flowing bottles of organic wine with each course. I pondered that she probably just breaks even on the evening.

I could give you detailed paragraphs of food porn as the meal was explicitly delicious, but I’ll hit you with the highlights. What struck me most about the meal was how inspired the dishes were, which Heather mostly makes up — like the poached pear with ricotta appetizer topped with honeycomb, salt and thyme, and the ginger molasses bacon (!) cookies (her aunt’s recipe) for dessert.

What enchanted me the most about the evening besides the food was the concept. Literally, one big table, about 15 unpretentious guests who didn’t already all know each other, the delight of incredible food cooked with love, easygoing but well planned serving of courses (I used to be a catering waitress, this is a lot harder than it seems) a homey, relaxed environment and no dishes to do at the end. No dishes to do at the end. My momma always taught me that good guests clean up, and dinners at friends’ houses are always delightful except for this hanging over your head.

Heather says a close friend encouraged her to start a supper club after attending a dinner party at her house. “I had no idea things like that went on in the city. After months of talking, people began asking when they could come. So, really, it was peer pressure that made the first event happen.” She’s been at it for about a year, and plans to attend culinary school in the fall.

Her plan after she finishes her formal culinary training is as follows: “I’ll be taking One Big Table on tour. During the week I’ll be working on organic farms across the country. On the weekend, I’ll be creating meals using the produce I earn on the farm and hosting dinners in the homes of people I know in whatever state of the country I happen to be in. I plan to document the whole experience and hope to gain an understanding of regional American cuisine and the local farm inspirations for such. After that, I’ll be settling somewhere to establish a high end, farm-to-table event and catering business.”

Sounds like a plan to me!

What I love about the concept is that it seems so of the times. Restaurants are great, but they are a business. And I feel like more and more people are looking for dining experiences, that are about more than food — knowing not only where the food comes from, but the people who make it, and the folks who are enjoying it around you. Nothing beats eating in someone’s home. Also, dinner parties are an underrated place to actually talk to people you don’t already know. (When was the last time you made friends with another diner at restaurant?) The mix of guests was a classic Brooklyn gambit, musicians/social workers/graphic designers/journalist types. And with wallets thinning and tightening, this is an amazing way to eat fabulously for not a lot of money. I know I never would have been able to afford a replication of that meal at a restaurant, and it undoubtedly wouldn’t have been as fun.

After dinner, Heather opens the apartment up for guests to invite friends — I’ve yet to hear of another supper club that has the live music/concert component at the end. As we listened to Taylor Brown and Matt Singer play, (The evening was loosely done in conjunction with Family Records), and Heather whipped up cocktails such as “Gitmo-no-mo’” and “Aretha’s Hat” which she sold for $3. At peak there were probably 35-40 people there. Eventually the music switched to ipod-DJing and we danced til around 2.

This is the sort of night that makes me fall in love with New York all over again. I loved it so much that despite my general efforts to keep my email address on the DL I’m going to put it in this post with the powerful hope that people will tell me about/invite me to more of these kinds of supper clubs. Maybe I can turn this into some kind of series.

kgoldstein at huffingtonpost dot com …..

oh and just so you can bring a little magic to your own table, the recipe for my favorite dish of the evening….

Parsley Root Soup with Chestnuts
* 1 large chopped onion
* 3 garlic cloves, chopped
* 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
* 3 pounds parsley root, tops discarded and root peeled and chopped
* 4 sprigs thyme
* 1 Turkish bay leaf
* 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
* 6 cups water
* 3 cups chicken broth
* 3 tablespoons olive oil
* 8 to 10 peeled roasted whole chestnuts (from a jar)

Cook onion and garlic in butter over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until onion is softened and golden, 6 to 8 minutes.

Add parsley root, thyme, bay leaf, white pepper, and 1 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until parsley root begins to soften, 8 to 10 minutes. Add water and broth and simmer, until parsley root is very tender, about 30 to 40 minutes.

Discard thyme and bay leaf and stir in oil. Purée!

Chop chestnuts as thinly as possible and serve on top.