PRINTGrowing Locavores
Columbians get savvy and step up to the local food challenge.
Truth Leem
Fruits and vegetables that are now in season can be purchased and preserved until Thanksgiving.
September 18, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
The enticing smell of homemade breakfast burritos drifts through the open air. It doesn’t take long to locate the source. Sho-Me Farms cooks beef on the spot for hungry shoppers at its Columbia Farmers’ Market stand. It sells fresh burger patties and steaks to others who have their own grilling plans. A few booths down, a man quizzes Jim Crocker of Crocker Farms about his pork sausage — the MU football team plays at home today, and several people are here to gather tailgate supplies.
The market is only a few blocks from Stadium Drive and the bustling Columbia Mall, but the atmosphere is something else entirely. One long aisle, formed by trucks and trailers backed up against square tents, quickly fills with strolling shoppers. They pause every few feet to pick up a bundle of fresh herbs, a jar of salsa or a bag full of fruits and veggies. One woman points out a booth to her friend; she says it sells the absolute best frozen pies.
Vendors at the Columbia Farmers' Market offer an array of seasonal fruits, vegetables and meats.
The colors and scents of the crowded food stands carrying items such as peppers, tomatoes ...
Luke Freeman looks for some zucchinis and sweet onions sold by Chanity Shrock, a vendor ...
Despite the early hour, small children and adults alike snack on honey ice cream from Walk-About Acres. A few of its busy workers (the bees) are on display for the especially curious to examine. And throughout the market, customers strike up conversations with farmers and ask questions about exactly how the food arrived at that booth. Everyone here shares one common characteristic: an interest in Missouri food.
Planting local
In the short time it has existed, the local eating trend has grown so much that the “Oxford New American Dictionary” named locavore — one who follows a local diet — its word of the year for 2007. (Columbia calls its local eaters localvores.) The movement took root in 2005 when four friends from the San Francisco area, Jennifer Maiser, Jessica Prentice, DeDe Sampson and Sage Van Wing, challenged themselves during the month of August to only eat foods grown or produced within 100 miles of their homes. Almost three years later, the idea has spread so far that their Web site, locavores.com, lists the names of locavores in places as far away as Japan, Malaysia and Iran, and many communities in North America and Europe have created their own Web pages dedicated to eating locally.
Since its creation, many people have tested the feasibility of eating local both long term and short term. Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family set out to eat only seasonal foods grown on or near their Virginia farm for one year. She compares the experience to the processes of industrial food systems in her 2007 book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The Mad River Valley community in Vermont even organized a week-long locavore challenge in the middle of winter, proving that it’s possible almost anywhere, at any time of year.
In Columbia, it all started with an e-mail. Amy Company contacted Sustainable Farms & Communities July 23, 2007, to find out more information about Missouri food options after reading about local eating trends taking place on the coasts. Her message planted the seed that sprouted into the Columbia Localvores Challenge. The SFC board loved the idea, and Eric Reuter, a small-crop farmer who sits on both the SFC and Columbia Farmers’ Market boards, volunteered to take the lead for organizing the event. In September 2007, SFC, the Columbia Farmers’ Market and Slow Food Katy Trail issued a challenge for residents to eat local for one week. The event’s success inspired a two-day Taste of Spring challenge in late April. Many communities use a 100-mile diet standard for their local food challenges, but Columbians could use anything grown or produced in Missouri. Imported spices and cooking oils didn’t count due to necessity. Challenge participation was on the honor system.
Fresh is best
The goal, after all, is not to restrict people’s choices but to make them more aware of what local growers and producers have to offer. Dorothy Canote, a Harrisburg farmer and retired Hickman teacher, attracted attention to her market stall one Saturday in early September for the baskets of chiles spilled across her table. Deep purple peppers — known as Black Hungarians — stood out among more familiar bright reds, yellows and greens. Each curious shopper who stopped had a single question: “Are they hot?” Canote likened the peppers’ heat to a jalapeño but with a smokier flavor.
Peppers such as Canote’s aren’t readily available at most food retailers. Large stores and retail chains buy produce in bulk, and that produce often travels hundreds of miles on a truck or train. Low-yield plants and fragile heirlooms, despite their unique flavors, get passed over in favor of more durable or outwardly attractive varieties.
Because of the extra travel time needed for these popular selections, produce destined for grocery store shelves gets harvested early and finishes the ripening process in transit. A farmers’ market tomato is picked a day or two before it’s sold, for maximum flavor and nutrition. “A tomato ripens because that’s when it’s meant to be eaten,” Reuter says. “They’re not bred to sit on the shelf for two weeks. You really can’t separate health and quality.”
Dollars and sense
In 2004, Jim and Deanna Crocker founded Crocker Farms in Centralia on the same land they’ve farmed for 30 years. They’re now in their fourth year at the market. “We’re just a small producer,” Jim Crocker says. “We can’t compete with the big guys. Our stall at the market means having another avenue to sell our products.”
A study by the New Economics Foundation in London found that 10 pounds (about $18) spent at a local food market generates a total value of 25 pounds (about $44) for the local economy, 11 pounds more than if the original money had been spent at a supermarket, where farmers earn about six to nine cents per dollar of the purchase price. That effect snowballs when you consider that as a farm grows, it provides more business for its suppliers, who are often also local producers.
“I think it’s important to highlight the economic aspect of this,” Reuter says. “With every small farm or bakery, there’s a really strong economic benefit of having these vibrant operations. That business tends to produce more economic impact because taxes stay in the county, in the region.”
Backyard production
About 4,000 people pass through the Columbia Farmers’ Market in the four hours it’s open each Saturday morning, April through November, says Caroline Todd, market manager for the Columbia Farmers’ Market. Wednesday mornings draw a crowd of 250 to 400. The market is a producer’s market, which means each item must be grown or produced by the seller.
Shoppers seek more than just typical backyard-garden fruits and vegetables. They come to buy fish from Troutdale Farm in Morgan County, cheese from Goatsbeard Farm in Harrisburg and certified organic eggs from JJR Family Farm in Callaway County. Bread Box Bakery from Cooper County sells fresh pasta. Columbians don’t even have to go far to find good coffee. Z-Best Coffee roasts beans in small batches in Sturgeon. A little farther away, the Martin Rice Company sells rice from the family farm in the bootheel of the state.
The sense of community created by the locavore lifestyle cannot be discounted. Nine adults, one young boy and a baby capped off their spring challenge experiences with a feast featuring the latest produce from mid-Missouri farms. The potluck could have easily passed as a relaxing Sunday evening at Stephens Lake Park among friends, except that several of the picnic goers were meeting one another for the first time. Few
conversations are ever struck up in the aisles of a supermarket. Yet at a farmers’ market, it’s more like a social event. “For so many people, that’s part of the fun,” Canote says.
Local hiccups
There’s no escaping that local eating takes effort. Going to the farmers’ market or picking out local products in the store requires additional shopping hours. Using in-season fruits and vegetables requires more planning. Working with fresh ingredients requires more effort in the kitchen; there are no Lean Cuisines in local food land. For this reason, some regard local eating as a luxury.
Fortunately, Columbia is a city that supports regional farming efforts. It’s not uncommon to see names of
Missouri farms listed on restaurant menus as providing a particular ingredient in a dish. Pork from Patchwork Family Farms, an organization of 15 hog farmers in mid-Missouri, can be found across the city.
Last spring, the Columbia Localvores Challenge partnered with Café Berlin, Main Squeeze, Sycamore and Uprise Bakery; each offered one or more locally sourced meal throughout the weekend. The restaurants already make an effort to incorporate regional ingredients into their menus, and challenge organizers saw this as a way to recognize the chefs for their dedication. At the same time, the collaboration offered another option for residents who lack either the time or the inclination to prepare everything themselves.
It’s not always as easy as a chef or restaurant owner simply deciding to go local. Rick Robertson, one of the owners of Booche’s, says he would love to contribute to that economic cycle. He would source more of his ingredients locally if he could. For him, it’s a problem of quantity. He orders Patchwork pork loin, but as he points out, not many people come to the iconic Columbia burger joint for pork loin.
“I wish there was someone locally that would say, we’ll take care of all of it, but I guess that’s just a pipe dream,” he says. “There’s no one locally that can supply a large enough order. Of course, then I might have to raise prices, and some people might piss and moan about that.”
Pricing is another major reason why the locavore movement has been criticized as elitist. Higher prices have kept shoppers away from local food in the past. Root Cellar co-owner Kimberly Griffin explains the gap as a difference in scale. Large corporations are able to charge less for items because they produce and sell their goods en masse. Additionally, food corporations require so large a quantity of supplies that they can get away with paying less to each person in the process. “When you buy locally, you are paying the one farm a fair wage,” Griffin says.
But the relative cost of local food is falling fast. With fuel costs rising in the past months, operations that source food from other parts of the country, or even other continents, are facing a budget crunch. In the U.S., food travels an average of 1,500 miles to reach its final destination on someone’s plate.
To get to a farmers’ market, on the other hand, locally grown or produced food generally travels no more than 50 miles. This means local food has a much smaller carbon footprint than commercial products.
Producers and wholesalers are being forced to add fuel surcharges to deliver their products, and those who already had the fees in place have found that they need to raise them. When transportation costs start to eat into profits, consumers bear the brunt of the increase through price hikes. It’s easy to spot the petroleum effect in grocery stores. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall food prices rose 7.5 percent by August 2008 when compared with August 2007.
There’s also the question of food waste to consider. A 5-pound bulk bag of tomatoes from a discount chain is only a bargain if you use all of them before they rot. Given the amount of time the tomatoes have been traveling to and sitting in the store, that might not be possible.
Freshness tops the locavores.com list of 12 reasons to buy locally. “Locally-grown organic fruits and vegetables are usually harvested within 24 hours of being purchased by the consumer,” according to locavores.com. “Produce from California can’t be that fresh.”
Turkey challenge
This fall, the Columbia Farmers’ Market has a new challenge for budding locavores: a local Thanksgiving. The market is promoting the concept this month to encourage both dedicated locavores and the merely curious to start planning now.
There will be one vendor selling turkeys, but those who aren’t tied to a particular Thanksgiving meat can also purchase ham, chicken, beef, pork, trout or even emu for the holiday table. Fruits and vegetables won’t be in short supply either. “We’re so lucky to have a very plentiful region in the Midwest,” Todd says. “Sweet potatoes, okra, eggplant — those things will be there.”
Pumpkins and apples are just starting to come in, so they’ll also be ready for the holiday. The market’s Web site has a harvest calendar to show people what’s still available and how to preserve it for Thanksgiving. Todd plans to turn summer blackberries into pies and cobblers, which she’ll serve for dessert topped with Walk-About Acres’ honey ice cream.
She has invited more than a dozen friends to enjoy her family’s locavore feast in November. Her guests are all interested to see the results of a local Thanksgiving. One friend is particularly excited, she says, after recently tasting another locally sourced meal. “She said it was the best sandwich she’d ever had in her life.”
Todd has made similar discoveries about her own local food purchases. “The potatoes at the farmers’ market are awesome,” she says. “I never realized there was such a difference until I started eating them here.”
