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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Vetting Local Producers
  • Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:14:37 -0400


On Apr 13, 2010, at 6:58 PM, Allan.Balliett wrote:


A colleague of mine is writing a document to help localavores in our
area to evaluate "producers" at local farmers markets.

What they want is a list of questions that, when answered, will allow
anyone to determine if a vendor is offering food of authentic value
to a localvore.

They've passed the document on to me for comment.

I thought it would be nice to get comments from this group,
particularly from farmers like myself who whole heartedly support the
'local grower-only' concept of farmers marketing.

Thanks

-Allan in WV


Well I am in favor of eating locally as much as reasonably possible; but I don't think the people who wrote this up have a very good grasp of what they're talking about.

The document as a whole is a bit confounding, and I'm not going to try to tackle all of it, but a few comments on portions of it are interspersed below: 


==============================================================================================================================
The Document:

[. . . ]

- Confirm no pesticides/insecticides/chemicals used AT ALL

I think that what they mean here is "no synthetic pesticides" (insectides are pesticides). "No chemicals used" is obvious nonsense, as everything is made up of chemicals. Organic growers may in some cases be using naturally-occuring materials that are permissible for use in organic agriculture. It's possible, of course, that this group objects to those also; but I think asking for an explanation of what's being used and why is a better way to go.

.
. Cows are rumins

No, they're ruminants.


o What processing plant do you use?  (also called abboittoir)

Abattoir.  Also, I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that around here. The common term in this area is slaughterhouse.


- Under any circumstances are cows giving antibiotics and if
so, does dairy production halt so as not to contaminate milk?

I don't think anybody, conventional or not, is selling milk from cows actively undergoing antibiotic treatment. So I think they're only going to sound silly asking that one; although not as silly as they're going to sound asking if there are any ingredients in the cheese.

It would also be possible to clarify the document considerably by not listing the same question multiple times: for instance, if you've already asked what the livestock are fed, what the source of the seed is, and whether it's GMO, why run through all the same questions again specifically about soybeans? If they have a specific concern about feeding soy to livestock, they ought to explain what this concern is.

If I were writing up a list of things for locavores to ask, I think I'd focus first on questions designed to determine whether the product had actually been grown by the vendor, or if not where specifically the product did come from. If it was grown by the vendor's next door neighbor, this is not the same thing as if it was bought at the nearest large city's wholesale auction. Questions focusing on growing practices, if sensibly phrased, can do double duty as if the vendor doesn't know how something was grown this casts doubt on that person's being the grower -- although I know cases in which the seed source, for instance, is only known to the family member who orders the seed; the family member at market may not be able to answer all the questions, even though the produce was genuinely grown on their farm.

They left out what seems to me a fairly obvious question: can the customers visit the farm? While there might be good reasons why this isn't possible in a particular case, a "yes" answer almost certainly means that there actually is a farm there growing at least most of what they claim to be growing.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale






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