Sunday, June 08, 2008
Feeding the locavores
Rising demand for locally grown food has created challenges for Southwest Virginia farmers.
Local foods
Photos by Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times
Cedric Shannon, along with his family, sell rabbits, turkey, chickens, eggs and hogs to local restaurants, markets and stores.
Walter Rieck, owner of Sandy River Pork, moves younger pigs into a larger pen at his farm in Axton.
Helen Feete and her husband Rick own Meadow Creek Dairy in Galax.
Ron Hanawalt removes a queen bee from the case she is mailed in so that he can mark her.
Richard Ursomarso, owner of Waterbear Mountain Organic Farm, got into farming because he wanted to do something outside working with the seasons.
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Local food is famous.
It is the subject of best-selling books and national news articles. It can be found in gourmet specialty shops and the finest restaurants in the country.
More and more, people are choosing food that didn’t travel thousands of miles before landing on their dinner table. They see it as the path to more healthful food, a sound environment and a better life for farmers.
The demand is just as high in Southwest Virginia, where many small-time farmers are busier than ever. The problem is, they say they are still up against the same roadblocks — and a few new ones — that make farming one of the hardest ways to make a living.
At the top of their list these days: managing the skyrocketing prices of feed and fuel, dealing with restrictive government regulations and finding ways to market their products.
“To really make a sustainable living at this and survive,” said Axton hog farmer Walter Rieck, “you need to have the resources and you need to have the contacts.”
Anthony Flaccavento, executive director of an Abingdon nonprofit group called Appalachian Sustainable Development, said the country is at a major crossroads. The direction we take now, he said, will affect how we eat for generations to come.
The locavore movement
In 2007, the Oxford English Dictionary approved the term “locavore” and defined it as “a person who endeavors to eat only locally produced food.”
There are plenty of locavores in Southwest Virginia.
Farmers such as Cedric Shannon at Weathertop Farm and Richard Ursomarso at Waterbear Farm, both in Floyd, say they can barely meet the demand for their products.
“We have noticed a tremendous increase in demand for naturally raised food and an increased mistrust of what is in the stores,” said Patricia Houchin, a Patrick County cattle farmer. “People don’t have a lot of faith in the system anymore. They are looking for good, clean food.”
Brigitte Williams, a 41-year-old stay-at-home mom in Floyd, said a number of factors drove her to buy as much local food as she can find and afford.
“It just felt really good to buy things from people that I knew,” she said. “When I continued on my own personal research, I discovered all these good reasons for what I was doing: travel, taste, freshness, all those reasons that are out there in the press recently.”
Many consumers find local food at farmers markets. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of operating farmers markets in the country increased from 1,755 in 1994 to more than 4,300 in 2006.
Some locavores use Community Supported Agriculture, where customers essentially pay farmers up front for a season’s worth of fresh, local foods, which may include fruit, produce and dairy. Still others shop cooperatives like Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op or Harvest Moon Food Store in Floyd, which are supplied with an array of local products.
In growing numbers, chain grocery stores are also choosing to carry local goods. Flaccavento’s group, which helps local farmers package and sell their organic produce, is now supplying companies such as Food City, Whole Foods and Ukrop’s.
Last but not least, the local food movement is highly visible in the world of fine dining. In some places, it is the gourmet chefs who are at the forefront of local food sourcing.
If a pork chop came from Mountain Run Farm in Bedford County, chances are that will be noted on restaurant menus, right along with the Full Circle Farms fingerling potatoes and Waterbear Farm kale.
'Swapping dollars’
This part of the state is home to dozens of small farmers who sell everything from seasonal vegetables and herbs to grass-fed lamb and rabbits.
Eco-Friendly Foods in Moneta and Meadow Creek Dairy in Galax are among the largest and most successful of those producers, in part because they do not rely solely on a local consumer base. At the opposite end of the spectrum are folks such as Sam Old, a 50-year-old purchasing agent for the Craig-Botetourt Electrical Co-op who grows three acres of vegetables on the side.
Old is hoping his business, Craig Creek Gardens, will supplement his income after retirement, but right now he makes just enough to pay the taxes on his place each year.
“By the time I buy everything and turn everything around, it’s basically just swapping dollars,” he said.
Local food advocates want to create a regional economy that makes it possible for every small farmer, whether he’s got three acres of vegetables or 500 pigs, to make the best living possible. Today’s economy isn’t helping.
“The inputs — gas, seed, fertilizer, tractor tires, whatever — those costs are going up,” said Elaine Lidholm with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, “and they can’t always pass those costs on to the consumer.”
Livestock farmers say the cost of feed is out of sight. For example, at Weathertop Farm in Floyd County, 1 ton of layer feed, not including nutritional supplements, went up about 53 percent between early 2006 and February 2008, according to owners Cedric and Sarah Shannon.
The cost of fuel, too, affects small farmers. Not only do they use diesel fuel for tractors and other equipment, but transportation to and from slaughtering facilities, stores and farmers markets is getting more and more expensive.
“If they are not able to make some type of an income and be viable and sustainable, they are going to get gone,” said Grayson County cattle farmer Danny Boyer, who also works for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. “And much of our farms are going away in a hurry.”
But farmers such as Kendall Harris of Cedar Ridge Farm in Christiansburg are standing their ground, refusing to switch to cheaper, less natural feed even if it causes them to raise prices. They hope the desire for high-quality food will take precedence over cheapness.
“I told my customers in my customer letter this year that I was not going to do it; I was not going to compromise,” Harris said. “I was not going to offer anything but the best for my customers.”
Although many goods, particularly meat, can still be had cheaper at the big box grocery stores, Flaccavento expects the price of local food to become more competitive as shipping costs increase.
“I do know that our buyers are paying much higher shipping charges for the produce they are getting in now than they used to,” he said.
Strict regulations
Slaughtering is a necessary part of creating food, but it’s another stumbling block for farmers.
In Virginia, if a farmer wants to package his meat and sell it to customers, he can’t just take a hog out to the woodshed for its final moments.
Chickens can be butchered on the farm, but only if that farm processes fewer than 1,000 birds a year. Most other animals that will be sold retail must first pass muster with an inspector from either the USDA or VDACS. Every state with a livestock industry must at least abide by the federal standards.
“The whole point of food inspection is food safety,” Lidholm, with VDACS, said.
Small farmers say they understand the need for clean, safe food, but that doesn’t change the fact that some regulations make their lives more difficult.
Not every city in Southwest Virginia has a USDA slaughterhouse. Some farmers drive hundreds of miles one-way to the slaughterhouse, even crossing the state line. They worry that extensive traveling stresses their animals unnecessarily.
Rieck was able to set up a facility on his own property where he can process his pork products, but it cost him about $15,000 to meet all the requirements. About half that was financed through loans, he said, and it would have been more if he hadn’t found used equipment.
Rieck still can’t butcher his hogs on-site, though. He drives them to the butchering facility to be killed and inspected, then brings them home to cut up the meat, make sausage and package everything for sale.
At Weathertop Farm, the Shannons recently lost some of their business when they found out that although rabbit inspection is voluntary in Virginia, health department rules prohibit restaurants from purchasing rabbits that were not USDA-inspected.
“We’d have to take them a long ways away and probably have to charge at least twice as much,” Cedric Shannon said. “If we made it $12 per pound, who is going to buy it?”
Inspection can be avoided if farmers sell animals “off the hoof,” a process that involves selling an animal to a customer while it is still alive. The farmer then takes the animal to a butchering facility, but customers must pick up the meat and pay the processing fee on top of what they already paid for the animal.
“The problem is all these little things add up,” Shannon said. “Before, we streamlined things for everybody. When you add it up, it’s like five times more work.”
The USDA and VDACS are not unaware of these issues. Amanda Eamich, a USDA spokeswoman, said they recently formed a new program called the Office of Outreach, Education and Employee Training with an eye toward servicing small and very small slaughtering facilities, which often deal directly with small farmers.
Eamich said the program resulted from several workshops and town hall meetings across the country. It will include a newsletter for small plants as well as online resources for plant owners and their employees to help them better understand processes.
Lidholm said promoting locally grown products is the thrust behind their Virginia Grown program, but producers need to be aware that the agency must also keep consumer safety in mind.
“We have to enforce the laws, and I think a lot of people don’t realize that we are enforcing federal laws,” she said. “We don’t make them and we can’t change them, other than through the administrative process.”
Getting the word out
Sandy River Pork is located in a rural corner of Pittsylvania County. Just about every pork chop, ham steak and sausage link that leaves the farm is sold in the local market.
Still, Walter and Yvonne Rieck sometimes feel a world away from their customers.
“You can have the best product out there, but if you can’t get it in front of the right people, you’re not going to do anything,” Walter Rieck said.
He has a background in saw mills. His wife is a full-time lab technician at Morehead Memorial Hospital in Eden, N.C. Most of their hours are spent caring for nearly 250 hogs and processing them when the time comes.
The Riecks admit that they have little time and resources for marketing. Their food is sold in a couple of small stores and on two farmers markets, which isn’t making them a solid living.
Marketing challenges are not unique to the Riecks. Charlie Jackson, executive director of Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, said many small farmers need help connecting with people who are looking for high-quality local products.
“Although they have a major impact on the economy and landscape of the region, their voices are often a lone voice,” Jackson said. “They don’t have good ways to speak and act collectively.”
Jackson’s Asheville, N.C., group helps small farmers market their products to stores. It is similar to Appalachian Sustainable Development in Abingdon, except ASD actually packages produce for the farmer under an 8-year-old program called Appalachian Harvest.
Flaccavento, the ASD chief, said Appalachian Harvest has helped 60 to 65 former tobacco farmers transition to certified organic farming. Their produce is then packaged in an ASD-owned facility, labeled “local” and “organic” and sold in stores across the region.
When their new packaging facility is finished (the original, which was housed in an old tobacco barn, burned down in an electrical fire), Flaccavento estimates that “tons and tons” of produce will pass through on a weekly basis.
“We won’t even begin to meet the demand,” he said, “but we are increasing the supply every year.”
Although neither nonprofit extends into central Southwest Virginia, both Flaccavento and Jackson said they want to help as many Virginia farmers as possible.
Flaccavento recently met with producers in Blacksburg and Floyd to share what he has learned at ASD that might help them in the future. He said they talked about what it would take to set up a project like Appalachian Harvest in other parts of the state.
Until that happens, Flaccavento said, farmers who need marketing help should meet with their local extension agent for ideas and take advantage of farmers markets as much as possible. And they shouldn’t rule out smaller collaborations with other farmers that might give them added strength in the marketplace.
One example is Good Food – Good People, a cooperative distributor of local food grown and raised in and around Floyd County. Good Food – Good People represents up to 25 growers in a given season, many of whom collaborate on marketing and distributing the goods to health food stores, farmers markets and restaurants.
The key, said member Tenley Weaver, is that chefs and other buyers don’t have to deal with 15 different farmers to get the produce they want.
Weaver said Good Food – Good People is growing as fast as they can keep up.
“We kind of have dreams that eventually we will grow to the size” of Appalachian Sustainable Development, Weaver said.
More relief may come from VDACS, which is in the process of hiring a marketing specialist who will consult with Virginia farmers one-on-one to help them find ways to market directly to customers. Lidholm said the specialist will likely be based out of Richmond but should have a couple of assistants who travel the state.
Folks like Flaccavento hope these ideas and resources are just the beginning of a national thrust toward better eating for everyone. And although he said he doesn’t know a single well-to-do farmer, he’d like to see more comfortable farmers, fewer paved-over farms and an influx of young people interested in that way of life.
“It is a very exciting and promising time, but also critical,” Flaccavento said, “because if we don’t enable farmers to plug into good markets and follow the sustainability approach very soon and very quickly, then this will pass. The desire for local food will become a fad.”
