change comes to dinner; how vertical farmers, urban growers, and other innovators are...

822019 Change Comes to Dinner How Vertical Farmers Urban Growers and Other Innovators Are Revolutionizing How Amhellip

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullchange-comes-to-dinner-how-vertical-farmers-urban-growers-and-other-innovators 112



983139983144983137983150983143983141 983139983151983149983141983155 983156983151 983140983145983150983150983141983154 Copyright copy 2012 by Katherine Gustafson Allrights reserved Printed in the United States of America For information addressSt Martinrsquos Press 175 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010

wwwstmartinscom

Design by Steven Seighman

ISBN 978-0-312-57737-7 (trade paperback)ISBN 978-1-4668-0241-4 (e-book)

First Edition May 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1



MY HOPERAKING JOURNEY BEGAN like so many voyages of discov-

ery do on an old yellow school bus This bus was not full of chil-

dren though but foodmdashtomatoes potatoes lettuce apple cider

milk ribs chicken barbeque saucemdashall of it from farms within 150

miles of the Richmond street corner where I filled up my shopping

basket in this unlikely vehicle

Up by the steering wheel Mark Lilly presided over the bus with

a proprietary air greeting people as they came aboard to browse in

the apple barrels wooden shelves and freezers he had installed

showing kids the baby chicks he was keeping in a cage out on the

sidewalk The products I picked out to purchasemdasha tub of frozen

pit-cooked barbeque made by a Mennonite family a whole chicken

from the famous Polyface Farm a glass bottle of yogurt topped

with blackberry jammdashwere things that I had spent ten hours driv-

ing all over the Virginia countryside with Mark to pick up a few

days before I couldnrsquot wait to see how they tastedA visit with a local-food entrepreneur like Mark was I felt the

logical place to start my journey the commitment to eating locally

is the sacred cow of the sustainable food movement There seems

CHAPTER 1

School Bus Farm Market

An unusual small business brings farm- fresh to the city



18 Change Comes to Dinner

to be a generalmdashthough sometimes only vaguely justifiedmdash

consensus that sourcing as much of our food as possible from within

a short driving distance of our houses is one of the most important

things we can do to right the sinking ship of the US food system

I wondered if this was true Is relocalizing our food economy

the answer to our woes It seemed improbable to me that small

farmers selling at urban marketsmdashthe image almost universally as-

sociated with the idea of ldquoeating localrdquomdashcould be the much sought-

after solution to all the complicated problems of our industrially

dominated food system Arenrsquot these local farms just too small and

too few and too apt to be growing things like garlic scapes and

ramps whichmdashletrsquos be honestmdashsound more like pieces of equip-

ment found in a skateboard park than food

The most familiar argument for locavorism arises from an ob-

jection to the massive distances that the vast majority of food

eaten in the United States travels before it reaches dinner plates

The figure fifteen hundred miles is thrown around a lot and while

that numbermdashcalculated by the Leopold Center for Sustainable

Agriculturemdashis only kind of true and then only if you live in Chi-

cago the exact number doesnrsquot really matter the sticking point is

that we eat many things that have flown on airplanes from other

hemispheres or been trucked across continents (or back and forth

between states in a pointless bureaucratic shuf fle) to get to us

The ghastly carbon footprint of all that global food shipping is

the more commonly reiterated reason to eat more locally The envi-

ronmental impact of getting an apple from five miles away the

logic goes must surely be less than that of shipping your fruit in

from New Zealand Unfortunately for the locavores the ecologicalargument for eating locally doesnrsquot always stand up well to scru-

tiny An apple in a load of millions shipped cross-country in an ef-



School Bus Farm Market 19

ficient eighteen-wheeler might well account for fewer carbon

emissions than an apple in a single bushel driven thirty miles to a

farmersrsquo market in an old diesel farm truck And that comparison

doesnrsquot account for the carbon dioxide expended by the shoppers

getting to and from the place of purchasemdasha figure that might

be lower for those who shop at grocery stores where only one

trip is necessary than for those who take separate trips to farm-

ersrsquo markets specialty shops and other stores to put the weekrsquos

menu together

Making local and regional food distribution systems more ro-

bust and ef ficient would change the environmental calculus consid-

erably But as things stand now other reasons for eating locally

turn out to be far more compelling What people want by and large

it seems to me is to live in communities that are thriving where

they can find the means to be happy and healthy What better

way to make sure our communities thrive than by locating a chunk

of the most important businesses of our livesmdashthe work of feeding

ourselvesmdashclose to our cities and in our own neighborhoods Bol-

stering local food economies means creating and keeping local

jobs maintaining food producersrsquo interest in and responsiveness to

the needs and wants of the community (including the need for safe

and healthy food) ensuring greater freshness and providing local

consumers with more instead of fewer options regarding where

when and how to buy their food

I still had my doubts about whether all those little guys farming

their hearts out on their one- five- and twenty-acre parcels and

dragging their wares to the farmersrsquo market every week could feed

our country effectively but logic had it that they were doing vitalwork to keep our country from inexorably being taken over part

and parcel by corporate food concerns Local-food entrepreneurs




were on the front lines bringing us all hope And hope is what I was

after In trying to find some small answer to the question ldquoWhat

would a better food system look likerdquo I clearly needed to see ldquolocal

foodrdquo in action If what I found didnrsquot appear to be the final glorious

solution to our food dilemmas perhaps I could gain some hints about

what such a solution might be

So one April evening I headed south from my home in Wash-

ington DC to Richmond the capital of Virginia where Mark is

making a go of it with his school bus-cum-roving farmersrsquo market

an unusual business venture he calls Farm to Family His bus route

follows a schedule but he uses his BlackBerry to remind his thou-

sands of Facebook and Twitter fans of his location and to update

them about any change of plans which happen occasionally due to

parking problems absence of shoppers or previously unscheduled

visits

When I inquired whether I might see his operation Mark had

kindly invited me to stay at his house for the night so I could come

on his purchasing rounds at local farms early the following day

Thatrsquos how I found myself sitting at a dining room table in a cozy

house somewhere in Richmond eating a bowl of yogurt criss-

crossed with a drizzle of maple syrup products Mark buys from

local farmers and sells on his bus

ldquoThis is the best stuff yoursquove ever tastedrdquo Mark said pointing at

my bowl Something about his friendly low-key demeanor shaved

head and sun-reddened cheeks reminded me obscurely of a fire-

fighter His wife Suzi a warm woman in a teal ldquoeat localrdquo T-shirt and

reddish hair twisted up in a clip chatted with me about her job in the

alternative healing and body care section of Ellwood Thompsonrsquos aunique Richmond grocery store focused on local food Not long after

my visit she would begin working full-time with mark on Farm to

Family




ldquoThe Fs should be green darker green Donrsquot you thinkrdquo

Mark interrupted leaning over and showing Suzi a picture on his

BlackBerrymdashthe drafts of a Farm to Family logo sent by his de-

signer

ldquoItrsquos a little busyrdquo she said ldquoYou have to picture it on everythingrdquo

He brooded on this for a few moments then stalked away from

the table leaving Suzi to install me in a sweet-smelling crimson

guest room with an antique bedstead a shelf of Buddhist relics and

a tinkling wind chime made of slices of pink stone

The next morning as we sped down the highway toward the

Shenandoah Valley in his truck dragging a trailer equipped with

six giant plastic coolers Mark told me how he got the idea for the

bus venture after experiencing a political awakening about issues

of industrial food during a masterrsquos program in disaster science and

emergency management A research project about Californiarsquos San

Joaquin Valley for a class called Hazards and Threats to the Future

led him into a sobering investigation of soil salination monocul-

tures water shortages labor issues and petroleumrsquos role in an area

that grows almost 13 percent of the countryrsquos produce

ldquoIt is really bad what is going on out thererdquo he said propping

his arm on the steering wheel ldquoIf that system fails thatrsquos going to

have a major major impact on the countryrdquo The idea for the bus

venture started simmering in the back of his mind but he would

never have gone ahead if he hadnrsquot lost his job working in food ser-

vice at a university By then he had already bought the old bus from

Craigslist on a hunch

All around us spring had burst upon the countryside the pink

cotton candy fluff of redbud trees lacing the edges of the roadwayIt was an unusually hot day for April the temperature reading in

the corner of the rearview mirror was climbing past eighty The

truckrsquos AC was on the fritz




ldquoIt all boils down to moneyrdquo he went on ldquoWhat corporations

do is they want to make as much money as they can and exploit

anything in their path to get that done These lobbyists and players

in Washingtonmdashthe government makes laws to benefit them not to

benefit the peoplerdquo For a guy engaged in such a creative and opti-

mistic business endeavor he exuded a surprisingly intense sense of

outrage

We trundled off the highway onto a country road slicing through

green hills and pulled into the parking lot of a McDonaldrsquos of all

places where a white- bearded Mennonite farmer in a straw hat and

his blue-skirted wife in a pale kerchief were waiting incongruously

for us next to their truck and trailer

This was Mike and Diana Puffenbarger a thirty-years-married

couple who run a farm a barbeque business and a hunting and

fishing guide service Mikersquos family has been producing maple

syrup for five generations and he himself has been at it for at least

three decades Their 4 times 4 sported a window sticker saying ldquoTRUTH

WILL SET YOU FREE JOHN 832rdquo alongside another emblazoned with

a picture of a howling coyote in crosshairs surrounded by the motto

ldquoHUNT HARD SHOOT STRAIGHT KILL CLEAN APOLOGIZE TO NO ONErdquo

As they helped load tubs of their pit-cooked barbeque and

bottles of their syrup into Markrsquos truck I asked Mike about their

biggest challenge as small farmers

ldquoThe governmentrdquo he responded without a pause ldquoTheyrsquore let-

ting in all this junk from China But we try to do something they

hammer us Wersquove been butchering meat for years from our farm and

wersquove never had a recall Whatrsquos that tell yourdquo The Puffenbargers

take their animals destined for sale as meat to a slaughterhouse asrequired by the USDA the closest one being in Harrisonburg eighty

miles from their farm in Bolar Virginia They prefer to butcher at

home the meat they eat themselves




Mikersquos comment highlighted one of the many reasons local-

food advocates cite for buying closer to home The countryrsquos indus-

trial food chain has been busy building itself an abysmal record on

food safety The USDA website posts hundreds of recalls of food

products every year the majority of them for posing a ldquopossible

health riskrdquo The word salmonella makes a distressingly regular ap-

pearance on this list as do E coli and Listeria a dangerous bacte-

rium One compelling reason to buy your foodmdashespecially your

meatmdashfrom smaller-scale farmers who are involved in your com-

munity instead of from corporations whose operations are opaque

remote and likely too massive to be handled safely is that smaller

closer-to-home producers are more likely to have both the ability and

the motivation to make sure their products arenrsquot tainted

Back on the road the pungent odor of manure wafting in the

window and the temperature in the truck climbing toward incendi-

ary Mark told me he had been totally unprepared for what he was

getting into when he started the bus business His original idea was

to go into food desertsmdashurban areas where residents donrsquot have ac-

cess to stores that carry fresh foodmdashand sell his local meat and

produce to these underserved communities He got registered to

accept food stamps and parked in poor neighborhoods waiting for

the rush of customers But the people there looked at him like he

was crazy and continued to spend their money in the corner store

where fresh vegetables are usually absent in favor of fried chicken

chips and soda

ldquoI got blindsided I was really naiumlverdquo he said ldquoA for- profit

business has no incentive to go into a food desert and set up shop

If yoursquore a for- profit business and yoursquore bringing in high-qualitystuff it costs I would be out of business if I were to just go into

low-income areasrdquo Mark was referencing one of the most promi-

nent critiques of the locavore ethos the cost of food from nearby




small farms is almost always substantially higher than the products

of industrial production you can buy in the average supermarket or

at the corner store Critics accuse the eat-local movement of pro-

moting two separate food systems one thatrsquos supplied with healthy

ldquohappyrdquo food for all the people who can afford it and another stocked

with ecologically damaging pesticide laden processed junk for

everyone else

But when yoursquore trying to start a business like Mark Lilly you

donrsquot have the time or money to fix the worldrsquos problems You find

the customers who can help you succeed So while still doing some

work in low-income communities including occasionally giving

away free food (efforts for which he has received high- profile pub-

licity including a three- page spread in People magazine) he has

focused mostly on parts of town where people have a little extra

money to spend and are attuned to the politics of local food He runs

his own version of a community-supported agriculture (CSA) pro-

gram which he calls a USA for ldquourban-supported agriculturerdquo that

has people pay ahead of time for a seasonrsquos worth of biweekly boxes

of fresh food He also delivers milk to peoplersquos doors early in the

morning just like guys used to do back in my grandmotherrsquos time

ldquoIrsquom giving people a way to opt out of the current systemrdquo he

proudly told me as we rattled up a long dirt drive into the cluttered

parking area of Mountain View Dairy Farm Proprietor Christie

Huger dressed for the heat in a white T-shirt athletic shorts and

sandals greeted us as Mark backed the truck up to the loading area

by a dilapidated trailer of fice They consulted for a few moments

by a set of glass-fronted refrigerators before starting to load jars

of blackberry yogurt and glass bottles of milk into the coolers inMarkrsquos trailer

Christiersquos tousled hair and tired smile suggested that it had al-

ready been a long day despite it not yet being noon She used to




be an art teacher she told me but she quit teaching two years ago

to attend full-time to the farm I asked her if itrsquos been a hard transi-

tion and she answered unhesitatingly ldquoIf I went back to teaching

itrsquod be easier When you get up at four-thirty and then force your-

self to come inside at eight at night to feed your kids dinner itrsquos

hardrdquo I wondered aloud if she planned to go back to teaching and

her answer was again immediate no way

I followed Christiersquos daughter Isabelle an energetic girl in a

peach tank top and a bowl haircut toward a pen by the house where

a tiny lamb was bleating manically She grabbed a baby bottle full

of water and kneeled down beside the animal

ldquoDo you want to be a farmer when you grow uprdquo I asked

thinking about that statistic I had recently come across the average

age of farmers in the United States is fifty-five and rising We badly

need kids to take an interest in this kind of life

ldquoI already amrdquo she said matter-of-factly squinting up at me in

the sunshine ldquoIrsquom a sheep farmer Because we have this little baby

sheeprdquo

My heart melted and I realized that this moment as much as the

fresh delicious milk itself was what the consumers on Markrsquos bus

are buying From Mennonite farmers to milk in glass bottles to the

old yellow school bus Markrsquos business plays on city dwellersrsquo sense

of nostalgia for what they see as a safe picturesque and pastoral

yesteryear A common theme in the movement to reinvigorate local

food systems is the idea of a David-and-Goliath battle between cor-

porate overlords and the small family farmer with the corporation

representing the evils of mechanized overcrowded stifling isolating

modern life and the little guy laying claim to a virtuous existence ofnature space freedom and community Not to mention little baby

sheep

I mentioned this observation to Mark as we got back on the road




heading to our next stop On the bus he told me visitors often revel

in memories of other types of roving food vendors that populated

their long-ago childhoods Customers reminisce about the guys

who used to come by their urban neighborhoods in trucks or with

handcarts yelling ldquoFresh fishrdquo or ldquoWatermelonrdquo

ldquoBack in the day there was the milkman and the meat delivery

guyrdquo Mark said ldquoYou knew them They came to your house It was

interactive You chatted with them Thatrsquos what I try to do Irsquom in-

teractive I chat with peoplerdquo

Mark tries in short to give his customers ldquoan experiencerdquo He

brings baby animals for children to hold He talks to customers about

what they can do with what he sellsmdashhow to cook a spaghetti squash

for instance or which kind of barbeque sauce will go best on pulled

pork At the time of our journey his bus was plastered with hand-

lettered signs proclaiming a variety of riling slogans such as ldquoEAT

AT HOME COOK HAVE FUNrdquo and ldquoDONrsquoT RELY ON A FAILING HIGHLY

PROCESSED UNSUSTAINABLE TOXIC FOOD SYSTEM GROW AND PRESERVE

YOUR OWN FOOD NOWrdquo

When he invites customers onto his bus hersquos asking them not

only to step inside the vehicle but also to move into another way of

looking at our world of food The way he thinks of it coming onto

his bus is the next best thing to experiencing the bracing goodness

of the farm itself ldquoIrsquom packaging a farm onto a school busrdquo he

said ldquoand bringing it to themrdquo



983139983144983137983150983143983141 983139983151983149983141983155 983156983151 983140983145983150983150983141983154 Copyright copy 2012 by Katherine Gustafson Allrights reserved Printed in the United States of America For information addressSt Martinrsquos Press 175 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010

wwwstmartinscom

Design by Steven Seighman

ISBN 978-0-312-57737-7 (trade paperback)ISBN 978-1-4668-0241-4 (e-book)

First Edition May 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1





















CHAPTER 1














































menu together






































visits















Family







signer




































outrage



















































chips and soda















everyone else












































sheeprdquo











sheep

















































CHAPTER 1














































menu together






































visits















Family







signer




































outrage



















































chips and soda















everyone else












































sheeprdquo











sheep








































































menu together






































visits















Family







signer




































outrage



















































chips and soda















everyone else












































sheeprdquo











sheep














































visits















Family







signer




































outrage



















































chips and soda















everyone else












































sheeprdquo











sheep



































signer




































outrage



















































chips and soda















everyone else












































sheeprdquo











sheep






































outrage



















































chips and soda















everyone else












































sheeprdquo











sheep
























































chips and soda















everyone else












































sheeprdquo











sheep






































everyone else












































sheeprdquo











sheep

















































sheeprdquo











sheep





























change comes to dinner; how vertical farmers, urban growers, and other innovators are...

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