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We Are What We Eat
Does that tired tomato from the grocery store come close to the color, flavor or nutritional value of a juicy, vine-ripened beauty from the farmers' market? There's no contest. Do you worry about pathogens in your supermarket spinach, or about antibiotics, mercury, melamine or even formaldehyde in the food chain? When we don't know where our food comes from, or what went into it, we can't control what gets into us. Finally we're catching on to the idea that food is much more than sustenance; we literally are what we eat.Fresh, in-season local products taste better and are generally more nutritious than foods that have been processed, stored and shipped. And since supermarket food travels an average of 1,500 miles to get to your store, it takes a big bite out of the environment. Another buy-local benefit: fewer chemicals and additives. It's no wonder that from 1994 to 2006, the number of farmers' markets in the country more than doubled, from 1,755 to 4,385, and that growth is continuing, according to the USDA.
Sales of organic foods and beverages are sprouting, too, up about 20 percent a year since 1997, reports the Organic Trade Association. Demand is also increasing for so-called heritage meats -- rare species of pork, lamb or poultry raised on small farms -- which aficionados say beat the flavor, quality and safety of massmarket meats. All this is great news for once-beleaguered owners of small farms. No longer an endangered species, small farms today are surviving, and even thriving.
Sweet Surprise
Kim Tait, 49, who describes herself as a passionate entrepreneur, has helped turn a struggling U-pick operation into a $750,000-a-year business. But Tait Farm Foods in Centre Hall, Pennsylvania, started with disaster.
The year 1987 was great for black raspberries but terrible for U-picks: Torrential rains had kept all the pickers indoors. In desperation, Tait's late husband, David, hired local kids to harvest the crop. But the problem of marketing remained. First he tried to sell the berries on the roadside. No dice.
Next he bagged and froze them, hoping specialty food stores would buy the berries. That didn't work either.
Then came a stroke of luck. A family friend who knew about David's dilemma came across a potentially, well, fruitful 18th-century recipe. "A beverage of choice in Colonial times," according to Tait, was a drink called shrub. This tart-sweet, raspberry-based vinegar, combined with water or soda water, quenched the thirst of Martha Washington and others. David had no idea if modern consumers would like it, but he had plenty of berries at his disposal to find out. For weeks, he tinkered with the recipe, then acquired some secondhand bottling and labeling equipment.
And he put a tiny booklet explaining the drink's pedigree around the neck of each bottle. A value-added product was born.
And so was a business. Merchants were much more receptive to a product they didn't carry than one they did, especially one that looked nice and didn't spoil. Some even liked the taste. "It's refreshing. It's different," says Tait. And the historical connection proved lucrative: Philadelphia's famed City Tavern and Colonial Williamsburg soon became two of the company's biggest buyers. Tait, meanwhile, kept experimenting in the kitchen. Starting with a teriyaki sauce made out of shrub, soy sauce, ginger and garlic, she expanded into blueberry preserves, ginger-peach chutney and more than 40 other original products, made, when possible, using ingredients grown locally.
Tait now sells 5,000 bottles of raspberry shrub annually. And she supports over 100 regional producers (including grass-fed-beef farmers, potters and beekeepers) by carrying their products at her popular on-farm store.
Investing in Organic
Increasingly, visitors to supermarket produce sections are presented with a grim, lesser-of-two-evils choice. Conventionally grown fruits and vegetables, while available year-round, can be bland or tough, since they are often picked before ripe and shipped thousands of miles. Organics might taste better, but they can be expensive.
Jim Kinsel of Pennington, New Jersey, is among a group of farmers who have come up with an answer that combines freshness and economy with a sense of group purpose: community-supported agriculture (CSA). The system seems to be making lots of farmers and consumers happy. Since 1986, the number of CSAs in the United States has grown from two to more than 1,200.
Much like a company that sells stock to raise capital, Kinsel, the manager of Honey Brook Organic Farm, sells shares of his harvest directly to 3,000 to 4,000 people annually. He starts accepting applications in September for the following year. In exchange for their commitment to his farm (Kinsel asks $341 per year for an individual who picks up at the farm, $577 for deliveries to a family), shareholders get weekly allotments of farm-fresh produce throughout the growing season.
The system has economic benefits on both ends. By selling direct to his customers, Kinsel earns about double what he would from selling through supermarkets, even those that purport to be health food markets.
His shareholders, in turn, get an amazing array of locally grown organic produce for roughly half what they'd pay in a store, if they could even find it there.
At a time when so many American children are hooked on fast food and soda and battling diabetes and obesity, shareholders' kids say that during the snowy off-season, they actually miss having their daily salad, a wild profusion of crisp, spicy greens. They also like having access to, and a real stake in, their very own farm. Not many people in New Jersey, the nation's most densely populated state, can make such a claim.
Steak Au Naturel
Young, eager to farm and optimistic: That's how Ron Knopik, a third-generation farmer from Fullerton, Nebraska, felt in 1989. Like many Nebraskans, he'd watched his friends and neighbors grow disillusioned with agriculture and move to cities. Half a dozen shops along Fullerton's main street had closed as a result. But Knopik was undeterred. "It just gets in your blood," he says.
Things started out promising. With $10,000 in loans from the bank, he bought ten calves and the seed and fertilizer needed to grow his first crop of corn, soybeans and alfalfa. By the late 1990s, Knopik's operation was big and productive. Still, he couldn't compete with the corporate mega-farms, which receive the lion's share of government subsidies. He and his wife, Brenda, a full-time nurse, were barely able to support their two children. By his 30th birthday, he was $100,000 in debt. For many farmers, that would have been the end of the road. But not for Knopik.
To set themselves apart from the thousands of other farmers in the area raising livestock using industrial techniques, Knopik and his friends decided to go the natural route. They started North Star Neighbors and weaned their crops off the chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that had boosted yields. They also stopped giving their animals antibiotics and growth stimulants.
"Pulling weeds by hand in 100-degree heat isn't much fun," Knopik says. But it pays dividends. By cutting out the chemicals and pesticides, the group lopped thousands of dollars off their operating expenses. What's more, they claim their naturally raised meats, processed at a small USDA packing plant, are more tender and tasty than meats in the grocery store. Customers agree.
Their approach was especially crucial in December 2003, when a case of mad cow disease was diagnosed in Washington State. Unlike conventional producers, North Star Neighbors could immediately and accurately reassure hundreds of customers via e-mail that its cattle were safe -- they had never been fed animal byproducts, the practice thought to cause the disease. As cattle prices tumbled in the commodity market, North Star's orders increased. "We're not getting rich by any means," Knopik says. "But there's some light at the end of the tunnel."
Knopik, Kinsel and Tait have found their success is not about just the safety and quality of the food; it's about a relationship with the customers and the community. As Knopik says of his patrons, "They really enjoy having that connection to the people who raise their food."
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