NGO Spotlight: FoodRoutes Network

FoodRoutes begs you to ask the question: Where does my food come from? Not surprisingly in today's mechanised, industrialized world, much of America's food supply comes from large corporate farms, grown in large scale and spending days being packaged and shipped from field to plate - hardly fresh and hardly environmentally friendly.

The FoodRoutes Network wants to reintroduce America to its food. They use community based grassroots chapters to rebuild local food systems and promote sustainable agriculture. You may have seen or are familiar with the "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" signage (shown above) used by local chapters to promote buying local food.

Why buy locally grown food? If you tend your own backyard garden or purchase produce from a farmer's market, you already know that you get exceptional taste and freshness over supermarket produce shipped from afar. You get regional varieties of food with a name and a face you can trust, things you may not get at chain supermarket. You also strengthen the local economy, support family farms, and protect the environment.

What is sustainable agriculture? Sustainable agriculture refers to the ability of a farm to produces food indefinitely, without causing severe or irreversible damage to ecosystem health. Industrial farms often require a large investment in resources such as water, fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics in order to replenish the soil and keep animals healthy. Smaller farms producing a variety of food goods require fewer resources and leave a smaller carbon footprint.

FoodRoutes with the help of their "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" community chapters work at the state and local level to involve more consumers in revitalization of our local food systems. They connect farmer's markets, restaurants, grocery stores, food co-ops, and large scale institutions, like colleges and retirement homes, with local food supplies. They organize outreach events and produce local food guides and educational materials in order to make it easy for consumers to find and connect with local food from farmers they can know and trust.

How do you get involved? It's as easy as going to your local farmer's market or food co-op and purchasing produce and meat grown locally. Now that's a vote for change you can taste! You can also join or form your own "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" community chapter. Visit the foodroutes.org for more information.

_______________________

The FoodRoutes Network is part of a larger Buy Local movement to encourage Americans to purchase food and goods made or grown closer to home and is something I have written about previously.

I encourage you to always ask the question: Can I buy local?

A Food Movement for Everyone

The September issue of National Geographic ran a small section entitled “Eco-Living: Food” describing 4 food movements. As I could not find links online, I took excerpts and listed them below. The food movements listed are not completely distinct and some are more restrictive than others, but for someone interested in reducing America’s dependence on oil, eating healthier, reducing the unnecessary chemicals introduced to our foods, or simply to appreciate food better, there is a movement or combination of movements for everyone (and it's not just for city slickers).

Eating Green
"What does eating green mean? It’s choosing organics when possible, emphasizing vegetables, fruits, and grains over meats, and striving to find locally produced foods that travel fewer miles from field to market to kitchen. These can help cut down a meal’s carbon footprint, or 'foodprint,' according to Cornell University nutrition researcher Jennifer Wilkins. Shoppers who walk, bicycle, or take public transportation to nearby farmers markets will reduce it even further. Maintaining a small foodprint minimizes the amount of natural resources used, but it doesn’t have to mean depriving the palate. Consumers, Wilkins says, can eat a seasonal selection that 'celebrates what your local farmers grow, week by week.' Such flavorful ingredients might be reward enough for saving the world – one meal at a time." –Diane Cole

Slow Food
Because it takes time to savor each of the courses that make up a traditional Italian meal, it seems fitting that the Slow Food movement – fast food’s antithesis – was founded in Italy. Created by gastronome Carlo Petrini in the late 1980s, the now international organization does not advocate spending endless hours in the kitchen, however. It promotes a style of eating and cooking based on taste, freshness, and quality of local ingredients. Equally important to its mission is the preservation of individual regional specialties, the cultivation of local plants, and the rediscovery of artisanal food-production techniques.

Organic Farming
More than 76.6 million acres of land around the world now carry organic certification, a boom fueled by a $40 billion international demand for organic foods. As a 2007 study from the University of Michigan challenges old assumptions that yields from organic farms can’t compete with those from conventional agriculture, an even greener map appears likely.

The Fife Diet
Food’s a subject close to home for Mike Small. In November 2007 the Fife, Scotland, man convinced local people to dine for a year solely on foods produced in their 40-by-30 mile area. Air-freighted goods – not from Scotland – are off-limits. Permitted in the Fife Diet are produce, eggs, and meat from nearby farms, as well as home-brewed beer. “It’s liberating, discovering what your region can and can’t produce,” says Small. Even for those outside Fife, eating what’s grown close by has benefits. Buying local food just three times a week “would make an enormous impact,” says New York University food studies professor Marion Nestle, by increasing demand and supporting farmers.

The major thread through three of these movements is "local," but don't think it's just a big city fad. There are many places in Western Montana to buy produce and meat grown and harvested locally. For example, farmers markets in Hamilton (Saturdays 9-12:30), Stevensville (Saturdays 9-1:00), and Darby (Tuesdays 4-8pm) offer a good selection of local goods throughout the summer and fall. And the Missoula farmers market just a few miles farther North, offers a slightly larger selection and runs Saturday 9-noon. If you want beef, Maki Farms, located outside of Corvallis, specializes in "beef bred, born, raised, fed, and finished... with homegrown food supply." And if it's organic dairy products you crave, check out the Lifeline Farm in Victor. So whatever your food movement, whatever your reasoning, there are local options available to meet your needs (and save the world - one meal at a time).

Other informative links: Our Good Earth – the future rests on the soil beneath our feet (pic above); Green Guide – learn more about green living

Common Sense Things We Can Do To Decrease America’s Reliance On Oil (and Save a Few Bucks) (Part 10 of 10)

Buy Local

The organic food movement has changed the way American’s look at food. We no longer take for granted how produce in the supermarket was grown, the meat raised, and the prepackaged food put together. We read box labels and ingredient lists looking for unnecessary additives. We question where food came from. Seeing this, food companies identified the organic food niche and now market food as organically grown. Americans more then ever understand the saying ‘you are what you eat’.

There is another food movement that is as important and maybe even more relevant with today’s high gasoline prices. It is Buy Local. How far does food travel to get to your plate? Much of the food we see in our supermarkets, organic or not, comes from hundreds, even thousands of miles away, often spending days being trucked or flown from field to store. Transportation of food costs money, energy, and adds pollution to our ecosystem. Your local farmer’s market, community garden, food co-op, or seed savers group specializes in food grown locally. Some independently owned supermarkets supplement their stocks with locally grown food. Select restaurants (Charleston, Twin Cities) fill a niche by only preparing locally grown food. There is a name for people who buy and eat only locally grown food. Call them locavores.

There are many benefits to buying local. By cutting out the middle man, more money from the purchase of local food ends up in the farmer’s pocket and stays in the local economy. Local food systems encourage multiple cropping, in other words, growing multiple species and a wide variety of crops at the same time and same place, as opposed to the prevalent commercial practice of large-scale, single-crop farms. This encourages crop rotation, keeping the soil in better condition. More, smaller farms decrease the risk of a bio-terrorist attack crippling the entire nation’s food supply. That’s something even President Bush could get behind (maybe). Criticisms to the buy local food movement include loss of variety and availability year round. Local food proponents turn these negatives into positives by saying that local food translates to more variety because farmers are free to try small crop varieties and regional varieties. And by eating with the seasons, you eat foods when they are at their peak taste, and are the most abundant, and the least expensive. This is something our grandparents would appreciate.

The Buy Local movement can be applied to anything, not just food. How many goods do we get from half way around the world? Do we need them and can we Buy Local?