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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The New Rules of Food
  • Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:26:56 -0700

http://www.alternet.org/story/48930/
The New Rules of Food
By Alan Mammoser, Conscious Choice
Posted on March 21, 2007

What if you knew the story behind everything you ate, such as where
the food came from, who grew it and how? Imagine the landscape from
which it came, perhaps a thriving collection of family farms. What if
you knew the people that grew the food, knew that they got a fair
price for it and that they actively worked to protect the landscape?

How differently would we eat if we got to know our food better?

Basic knowledge of where food comes from and how it is produced is
lost on many Americans today and with it a trust in the food supply
that sustains us.

With the rise of a highly industrialized society, an industrial
farming system has developed along with it. Farms have become ever
more mechanized, specialized and distant from most of the population.
The federal government has contributed to the trend through
legislation, with consecutive farm bills that favor big concentrated
commodity growers -- sometimes known as "factory farms" -- while
nearly ignoring local growers with smaller operations, sometimes
collectively called "family farmers."

Now, when you walk into your local grocery, you see shelves chock
full of all the marvels of our food system, with colorful packaging
and displays. But do you know where it comes from? Do you trust it?
In most cases, there is no information beyond the basic government
approvals and ingredient lists. But for a growing number of people,
particularly in the age of food safety scares, the lack of
information is unacceptable. Many Americans want to get to know their
food, and the story behind it, better.

A new food movement is growing out of these concerns. Concerned
citizens, farmers and others are starting to work on a new set of
rules for the food system. These rules or standards would ensure
sufficient incomes for family farmers, fair treatment of farm
workers, proper care of farm animals and conservation of the
environment. While some are working on the specific rules, others are
figuring out how to communicate about the issue and efforts to
others. They're devising ways to convey the stories behind food, so
grocery shoppers know more about a cut of meat or a bag of beans and
can use this information to make better choices.

This food and farming conversation is gathering force, appropriately,
in the Midwest. Many leading thinkers are gathering in March at the
Family Farmed Expo (familyfarmed.org), a two-day event in Chicago
that contains events for the general public. Local experts on the
subject will be on hand as well.

"When national organic food standards were adopted in the early 90s,
there was a choice," says Jim Slama of Sustain USA, a Chicago-based
non-profit that works on food and farming issues. "At that time, the
feds chose to emphasize environmental standards in the strictest
sense, to certify whether the food production system avoided
artificial fertilizers and chemicals. But they chose to ignore other
values related to producing and selling food, values that many people
care about."

Slama and his colleagues are at the forefront of a "food
convergence." Previously, food-related issues were addressed
separately as individual groups focused on organics, local
production, fair trade or family farm issues. Today, these groups are
coming together to look at food from all angles with the belief that
collectively, they can have far greater impact.

Four key topics of discussion include certifying family farms; fair
trade standards; organics and beyond; and local food and flavor.

Certifying Family Farms

Fred Kirschenmann has watched with alarm as the number of independent
family farms decline across the Midwest. The North Dakota farmer and
senior fellow at Iowa State University's Leopold Center for
Sustainable Agriculture noted that this tragic disappearance was
occurring even as demand was growing for specialty food products.

"New markets are opening," says Kirschenmann. "In many cases, markets
for organic foods, but they really take organic to another level.
They come from peoples' rising desire to buy food that protects the
land and animals, supports farm families and farm workers. These
markets demand food products that independent family farmers can, by
their very nature, best provide."

This new demand for food can be summed up in three things food must
convey: memory, story and relationship. People want food that carries
the land's qualities and nutrients to their tables -- that's its
memory. They want to know where it came from and follow it to its
source -- that's its story. And they want to enjoy a trusting
relationship through real communication with the producer.

Kirschenmann joined like-minded rural advocates and food activists to
form the Association of Family Farms (AFF). The organization's goal
is to differentiate themselves in the marketplace by forming
cooperatives and creating their own unique brands, which they will
certify with a special seal.

Like the ubiquitous "UL" (Underwriters Laboratories) label on
household goods, the AFF seal will appear on food products from meat
to wheat. It will certify food in three ways: 1) environmental
stewardship on the farm; 2) social standards, such as fair treatment
of farm workers; and 3) fair business practices including fair
compensation for family farmers.

AFF is composed of farmers from local marketing organizations and co-
ops and is gradually expanding through regional committees. In
addition to the AFF seal, Kirschenmann foresees an interactive
website that will provide detailed information about the food, and
the farmers and practices used to produce it.

Fair Trade Standards

For AFF to work, it needs solid rules and agreed-upon standards by
which to judge whether a food item deserves the seal. The group is
drawing upon the Portland-based Food Alliance, whose certification
programs support sustainable agriculture. Their standards are
comprehensive and touch on every aspect of the farm economy and call
upon farmers and ranchers for the following:

Provide safe and fair conditions for workers
Ensure healthy and humane care for livestock
Avoid use of hormones or related antibiotics
Avoid genetically modified crops or livestock
Reduce their use of pesticides and other toxins
Actively conserve soil and water resources
Protect wildlife habitat
Plan for continuous improvement
Michael Sligh of the North Carolina-based Rural Advancement
Foundation is working to adapt international fair trade standards,
such as those well-recognized for coffee, to the domestic food
market. "The standards are tools to help small farmers make a claim,
to make their products more unique and more valuable," Sligh says.

Organic and Beyond

Organic Valley is a LaFarge, Wisconsin-based cooperative that is
owned by 900 independent farmers, most with small to mid-sized family
farms. The Organic Valley label provides a powerful seal that
guarantees social justice and environmental care. Now, the company is
moving toward adopting some form of fair trade standard.

"Organic and beyond," is how the company's CEO, George Siemon,
describes it, signaling Organic Valley's desire to reach buyers who
care about a wide range of values in their food.

Erin Ford, a project coordinator at the company, notes that good
standards require good metrics. "To create useful standards, we need
to answer basic questions, such as 'what is a family farm?'" she
says. "Another is, 'what is local food?'"

Organic Valley has done much to provide answers, just through the
guidelines it has established for its members. "We've got good
working definitions, based upon our experience as a national brand
working through a regional business model," says Ford. For example,
to define a family farm, the company sets out certain thresholds,
such as the number of heads of cattle (the maximum allowed for
members is 500 without special approval, although their farmer
average is 65). Their local milk is seen in a broad yet well-defined
regional context, with seven major trade areas across the country
broken up into the following regions: Pacific Northwest, California,
Rocky Mountain, Texas, Midwest, Northeast and New England. Their goal
is to ship within their regions, so the milk in the stores comes from
relatively local producers.

Local Food and Flavor

To tell the food story, to convey trust, means food must become more
local, in both a real and a figurative sense. The food buyer must
come to know the landscape, the scene of the harvest, whether it be
across the continent or in the buyer's own region. Locality plays a
big role in any new standards for food.

The creation, or restoration, of local food systems goes to the heart
of what people love most about food, namely, flavor. The
international Slow Food movement sees this instinctively, placing the
concern for good flavor into broader agendas for land conservation
and the survival of diverse plant and animal varieties. Slow Food
brings the discussion of fair trade down to where it really matters
most: the plate.

"The universal aspect of food is pleasure," says Erika Lesser of Slow
Food USA. "It's not gluttony. It's just the reality of how food
motivates people. It's like doing good by eating well."

This appeal to taste could bring huge numbers of people into the fair
trade fold, by getting them to look for good -- and good-tasting --
meals. Slow Food projects bring producers together around agreed-upon
standards for special heritage varieties, such as raw milk cheese,
Gravenstein Apples or other high value or unique foods.

There is still a lot of work ahead to make the "memories, stories and
relationships" of food accessible to most city folk who live far away
from farms and food production. The evolving conversation -- with new
farmer-oriented standards, seals and methods to communicate food
stories -- may create a growing swell that will shake our food
system, and our ways of interacting with it, to its very roots.

--

Alan Mammoser is a Chicago-based writer and regional planner.





  • [Livingontheland] The New Rules of Food, TradingPostPaul, 03/21/2007

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