What a Load of Crap

by Slow Food USA intern Sara Hoffman

The State of Vermont is going to court against a compost pile.

The Vermont Compost Company (VCC), started to meet the needs of farmers and amateur gardeners for high quality composts and soil mixes, has been served an $18,000 fine by the state. The Natural Resources Board says that owner Karl Hammer violated Vermont's land use development law, ACT 250 by commencing development without a land-use permit. The development in question was the composting operation, which the state considers to be a manufacturing and not an agricultural business. On July 7th, Karl Hammer was ordered to cease operations, remove all compost from his farm, and pay up.

Composting is not always pleasant, as I experienced my freshman year of college dragging the dorm hall's compost bin down two flights of stairs, but it's a necessary part of a sustainable organic food cycle. Its smell and appearance can be unsettling, and there has been some tension between neighbors of the VCC about food waste and chickens (or rats) migrating onto their property. Still, the site of fermenting trash is more than compensated for by its benefits. Compost provides the healthy soils necessary for any expansion of local agriculture and closes the circle of production from farming to waste.

Karl Hammer has been working his Montpelier property for 14 years and diverting food remains from the waste stream into agricultural potential with 9 other employees. He also raises free-range chickens, which forage in the compost pile, and he sells thousands of eggs locally, earning him farming status from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.
Closing down a major compost supplier like the VCC means big trouble for the organic farmers and business who depend upon a reliably high-quality supply of living soil for growing. VCC's products aren't just used in the Northeast but also as far away as farms in Illinois and Wisconsin. Shutting down such a large scale-composting agency will hurt the local foods movement beyond Vermont.

Obviously, ACT 250 needs to be modified to acknowledge that composting is an integral part of agriculture so that future farmers don't run into the same trouble as the VCC or Burlington's Intervale. An appeal is now pending with Vermont's Environmental Court. Another example of how well-meaning state and national regulations often hinder and hurt farmers and lead to absurdities like fining the VCC for performing a public service.

To read an article on the issue in the Vermont Times-Argus, click here.

To take action visit the Northeast Organic Farming Farming Association of Vermont.

How Does Your Coffee Get to Your Cup?

A snap shot view of what happens to coffee after it leaves its origin and is ready for distribution.

by Slow Food USA staffer Julia De Martini Day

Last week I traveled to Newark, New Jersey to participate in the unloading of 20 tons of green coffee beans just off the boat from approximately 600 small farmers in the Mount Elgon highlands region of Uganda. This was the second shipment for Crop to Cup, a small, very young coffee business, and everyone was anxious to see whether the washed Arabica Grade A beans had become moldy or infested with bugs during the month long boat ride and New Jersey customs inspection.
The director of the terminal walked us through the aisles of the humid warehouse, which smelled sweet from the 50-foot columns of jute/burlap sacks lining the wide, dark walkways. The warehouse is certified organic, stores up to 750,000 bags of coffee at a time (each bag weighing over 130lbs), and is 1 of 4 the company operates along the east coast.

As we walked to the container we had to jump to the sides of the aisles a few times to avoid being hit by speeding forklifts transferring coffee. Larry, a worker opening the container, broke the wires holding the metal doors shut, letting bags of coffee spill onto the cement floor. Quickly he and another man began to "palletize" the bags – organize them into small pyramids the forklifts could pick-up, weigh, and put in storage before they are trucked and delivered to NYC roasters and markets.

While the bags were unloaded, the terminal director showed us how to take a sample of the green beans and ensure they are not rotten or damaged. Using a metal tool that looked like a narrow funnel, but that could be inserted into the burlap bag without tearing a hole in the side, he pulled out green beans from an assortment of sacks and put them in a Ziploc bag for us to examine back in the fluorescently lit office.
Looking consistently green, beautiful and healthy (no holes in the beans, not too many brown/black spots or cracks), we moved on to Phase II of the know-how-your-coffee-gets-to-your-cup daylong adventure: Roasting.

With 2 jute bags loaded into the trunk we drove to Raus Coffee, an even younger company than Crop to Cup that currently operates a roaster out of a home basement (shhh). The Raus Coffee roaster takes about 14 minutes to roast 4 pounds of coffee. Using this machine and a small counter top roaster, we roasted the coffee 5 different ways, altering the temperature and timing slightly to get darker or lighter, dryer or oilier, roasts.

The Coffee Cupping and small scale roasting atmosphere is vastly different at first glance than the coffee terminal/storage environment – in one the coffee appears to be a commodity and in the other a precious, specialty item. Instead of throwing bags of coffee around we now delicately measured and weighed green beans out for roasting. In a bright, ventilated room, we sat around a wooden table with small glasses and spit cups in front of us, smelling, tasting, and taking notes on the different roasts. Raus Coffee was experimenting with what worked best, and Crop to Cup was searching for the perfect roast (something they can take to a bigger roaster to be replicated).

That day we didn't completely and directly follow the coffee's path from farmer to co-producer, but we tried to get as close as possible to doing so without traveling to the equator.

To read profiles that the farmers who exported the coffee have written about themselves, click here.

Friday Links

1. A delightful little review of a deep-fried sandwich, notable both for the sandwich, yes (and YUM), but also for the intro paragraph which gets at the great food divide in this country–the growing interest in real, slow food and the consistent, persistent presence of fake, fast food.
2. A new survey shows that "consumers … want their foods to clearly display key information, including country of origin, so they can make more informed buying decisions."
3. The Washington Post covers how these three gals took the road less traveled, a slow bike journey across the country to "chronicle(d) a grass-roots movement seeking to change the way we put food on our table." Speaking of bike rides, check out this post from Grist on Kurt Friese's cross-Iowa ride…
4. Land-grant universities in this country are working towards addressing the world's food security issues. Read about how "land-grant institutions, including Texas A&M, play a vital part in international agriculture through providing developing countries with technical assistance, educational outreach, improved technology and agricultural practices, scientific training and research, and hands-on instruction."

Gardens and Ranchers et al

Some Thursday links for your all:

• Slow Food Nation's Victory Garden is complete and it's beautiful. And Alice Waters talks up the street food section of the event.
• But can edible gardens save our broken food system? Check out this very interesting article from one of the people who had his lawn transformed by artist Fritz Haeg's Edible Estate project. He says that "to repair the broken system that supplies the bulk of the nation's diet will require Americans to step out of the garden and into the public arena."
• A Montana environmentalist spends the day with some ranchers and opens her eyes to the threats that ranchers are facing out west.
• Check out the new "Eco-tube" and watch a video about you can reduce energy use in your home.

Buying the Farm

An email that farmer David Perkins from Wisconsin shared with us about the flood damage on his property articulates perfectly the importance of the concept of a co-producer.

Here's what David wrote: "A theme near and dear to Slow Food that you may want to follow up on is the support that exists between those farms with direct relationships with their co-producers. Our farm would be taking a significant financial hit if we sold by the pound. Our model is Community Supported Agriculture. It is the best "flood insurance" possible. Our members expressed concern for us as the rains fell; we've have wonderful supporting communications with the people we feed. There are several CSA farms that have had greater losses that would be extremely badly off without their members continued support. So I'd suggest to use your network of people to find and highlight these stories. In times of stress (floods, hurricane…) the producer to co-producer relationship is key to weathering the storm. Unfortunately, few farms have that producer/co-producer relationship; and flood insurance does not save the farm. "

For more on the CSA model, and how the purchase of a share provides major financial support to the farm, see this recent article from the NY Times.

Now, to David's above suggestion: can you share with us stories of the CSA model saving a farm from the ruin of a natural disaster? We'd love to hear from you in the comments section.

Weekend Links

It's hot out there. Should you need to take a break from your gardening, farming, grilling, etc. this weekend, you can sit down at your computer with an ice cold lemonade and and check out the following:

1. Five Great Websites for Farmers, Wannabe Farmers, and Consumers

2. How to navigate the mysterious origins of those nuts you buy at the store.

3. Talk about rose colored glasses: Have you heard about this miracle berry that makes everything taste sweet?

Stay cool….

Delicious Revolution: a Conservative Cause?

by Slow Food USA staffer and blog editor, Jerusha Klemperer

Check out this thoughtful article from The American Conservative magazine. Its embrace of Slow Food may be surprising to some, but it's a welcome addition to the conversation.

It reminds me of a lunchtime visitor we had a few weeks ago, a farmer from South Carolina who noted that when it comes to Slow Food, conservatives and liberals may be on common ground. Everyone from homeschooling homesteaders to harvesting hippies can get behind good, clean food and the virtuous revival of sitting down together over a meal and appreciating its bounty.

Now some may flinch, like I did, when the author says that "life's inevitabilities don't warrant our shame," (when referring to Michael Pollan's shame that not everyone in this country has access to delicious food), and some may take issue, like I did, with his assertion that industrialized ag is just more productive than organic ag.* But it is interesting to see how true, traditional "conservatives" don't like the darn Farm Bill and its subsidies any more than the liberal democrats, and that they too would like to see a return to more mid-scale and regionally based food systems and economies.

Most delightful? The realization by an East Coaster like myself that in San Francisco, even the traditional conservatives have CSA shares, cook from The Art of Simple Food and quote Wendell Berry.

* Some may even want to share with him, say, Paul Roberts' The End of Food which explains quite clearly how those large yields end up producing diminishing returns after a few years.

PS: Also check out this interview from the same issue of American Conservative –Michael Pollan and Rod Dreher, the author of Crunchy Cons.

A Not-So-Secret Garden

To add to yesterday's post about planting an edible garden on the White House lawn:

Roger Doiron, over at Kitchen Gardeners International (whom we wrote about earlier this year) also has a petition for you to sign, as well as a fleshed out plan for getting our next President to roll up his sleeves and find his inner farmer.

Also, we heard that Alice (Waters) has gotten a verbal commitment from Obama to do just that…

Riding Coattails

The main civic garden on our minds these days is the Victory Garden being planted on the front lawn of City Hall in San Francisco, for Slow Food Nation. However, there's a group out there that has its eyes on a bigger prize: the White House Lawn.*

Most interesting might be their PR tactics–in an effort to ride the immense PR coattails of the new iPhone that debuts this Friday, they are linking their campaign for an organic garden on the White House lawn to Apple's big push. They call themselves "Waiting for Apples," and although this article paints them as a bit unclear on how these two things mesh beyond their Apple-ness, it provides an opportunity to think about how small grassroots campaigns can piggyback on big corporate ones.

To join the effort, you can, er, buy yourself a new iPhone, or sign a petition here.

To follow the progress of the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden, check out their blog.

* For a fun account of Alice Waters' efforts during the Clinton administration to have Bill plant a garden at the White House, read Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, by Thomas McNamee.

Plant Salvage

by Slow Food USA Intern, Sara Hoffman

According to the American Farmland Trust, "America is losing 1.2 million acres of farmland annually, much of it the best and most productive farmland near where most Americans live." This is a problem not only because fewer farms mean less food productivity. Farmers can be excellent environmental stewards and the loss of farmland exacerbates the problem of unchecked developmental sprawl in the U.S.

Another problem? The loss of plant diversity that occurs when these lands are cleared. The National Plant Salvage Foundation, near Olympia, Washington, has found a wonderful way to rescue the native plants found on land set to be cleared for development. Though the areas to be bulldozed aren't always farmland, these rescues help to preserve biodiversity and restore the vegetation lost to industrial development, much of which does occur on farmland. Their Salvage Program rescues native plants and then rehabilitates them with the help of volunteers. The plants are then replanted on land where habitat and water sources have been damaged by human enterprise.

This replanted native vegetation helps to repair a site by collecting stormwater run-off and replenishing underwater aquifers, for example. The foundation also holds educational workshops and field trips to teach residents about how the native plants can reduce pesticide use and improve natural habitat.

If you are interested in biodiversity protection such as this, you can also check out Slow Food USA's RAFT Program (Renewing America's Food Traditions) which works to identify, protect, restore and celebrate North America's most endangered native seeds and breeds.