Articles

In Oregon, Thinking Local
Melanie Conner for The New York Times

Published: January 4, 2006

SIX years ago "organic" was the next big thing in grocery shopping, but the term has begun to lose its luster. It has been co-opted by agribusiness, which has succeeded in watering down the restrictions of the definition. Today "local" and "sustainable" are the new culinary buzzwords.

Produce at New Seasons Market stores in Portland, Ore., carries country-of-origin labeling. Nowhere is this more evident than in the six New Seasons markets in and around Portland, Ore. At New Seasons, "homegrown" is not only the coin of the realm, it's the heavily promoted mantra.

Considering how eating has changed over the years, stores like New Seasons were almost inevitable. First came the tiny natural food stores and the local farmers' markets selling organically grown food. They marked the beginning of an interest in artisanal foods and in the desire for quality and a sustainable environment. Restaurants followed, and now schools and colleges have joined the movement as a way to get their students to eat more healthfully while supporting local farmers and food processors.

"I think there is a gathering sense that organic and local are not the same," said Michael Pollan, the author of a forthcoming book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. "Buying national organic products does very little for the local economy. Local food chains are very, very important. Organic has important values having to do with pesticides and how land is treated, but now that it is industrialized, buying organic doesn't necessarily support living in a place that still has farmers consuming less energy."

He added: "Moving organic food across the country uses just as much energy as conventional. I think this is becoming more important."

Kristen Crittenden, a technical writer for Cascade Microtech, is the quintessential New Seasons shopper. "It's nice to know where our food is coming from because you know how it was raised," she said. "It makes you feel good about supporting your local farmer and your local fishing industry."

These services come at a price. "I feel at times it's a little more expensive than it has to be," said Justin Miller, a mediator, public radio fund-raiser and New Seasons customer.

Brian Rohter, chief executive of New Seasons and one of its three founders, says the company conducts monthly surveys and has found that its pricing does not vary more than 3 percent either way when compared to national chains, including Whole Foods.

The company's definition of homegrown is food grown, caught or processed in its region, the northwest, including Northern California. Locally grown items carry yellow shelf tags. Of the 30,000 items on each store's shelves, 8,142, or 27 percent, have yellow tags. The company, which was founded in 2000, sells conventional items like Oreos and Velveeta, but about 75 percent of its inventory is either natural or organic.

All produce and meats carry country-of-origin labeling. Because the overwhelming majority of the milk is local, very little of it is ultrapasteurized.

Staff members make frequent visits to farms, ranches, dairies and farmers' markets, looking for new products. And farmers who sell to the chain can deliver directly to the stores without going through a central distribution warehouse.

The opportunity to sell locally has kept some area ranchers from going out of business in Oregon and nearby states. Doc and Connie Hatfield, who founded the Country Natural Beef cooperative in 1986, said the co-op now has 70 ranchers, who raise beef on a vegetarian diet free of hormones, antibiotics and genetically modified feed. "Nineteen years ago we were going broke," Mr. Hatfield said. "Now we are paying income taxes."

Mr. Hatfield was just as pleased about an unexpected byproduct of selling locally: the bond forged between rural and urban residents. "Most of the ranchers are rural, religious, conservative Republicans," Mr. Hatfield said. "And most of the customers are urban, secular, liberal Democrats. When it comes to healthy land, healthy food, healthy people and healthy diets, those tags mean nothing. Urbanites are just as concerned about open spaces and healthy rural communities as people who live there. When ranchers get to the city, they realize rural areas don't have a corner on values. I think that's what we are most excited about."

Locally raised meat is one of the things Mr. Miller said he liked best about New Seasons. "I'm an omnivore, and the meat comes from nearby," he said. "Unlike a conventional market, where everything is packaged in plastic, this is more like an old-fashioned butcher, so I can talk to the guy and see what he thinks about the meat." Talk to the butcher: A customer ordering hand-crafted sausages, one of the many local products at the store.

If there is any doubt about the impact purchasing locally has on nearby farms, the United States Department of Agriculture's agriculture census tells the story. In Oregon the number of farms has risen, from 26,753 in 1974 to 40,033 in 2002, the latest year for which figures are available.

The emphasis on local is not the only thing that distinguishes New Seasons from other chains. Its employees are given "get out of jail free" cards with the instructions to do anything a customer wants. Mr. Rohter said one young clerk opened 81 jars of mustard for a customer to taste. Then he went to his supervisor, handed the card to him and explained what happened.

Printed on the back of the card:
"Dear Supervisor: The holder of this card was, in their best judgment, doing whatever was necessary to make a happy customer. If you think they may have gone overboard, please take the following steps: 1. Thank them for giving great customer service. 2. Listen to the story about the events. 3. Offer feedback on how they might do it differently next time. 4. Thank them for giving great customer service."

"We never reprimand someone for helping a customer," Mr. Rohter said.

Phil Lempert, who identifies supermarket and consumer trends as the editor of Supermarketguru.com, praised the company.

"The New Seasons model is a brilliant concept because it brings back the days of food co-ops, the feeling of being closer to nature, to the food supply, to the neighborhood," he said. "What they are saying is, we are your store and we want to build a relationship with you. That lack of relationship has been the downfall of supermarkets. "National and seminational chains are yesterday's news. There is no question people are willing to spend more on local just as they are on organic."

New Seasons's decisions about what it will and will not sell are based on a balance of its owners' standards and what its shoppers want. It does not sell cigarettes or farmed salmon, because, Mr. Rohter said, "some things are so obviously wrong."

Rather than ban certain endangered fish from their counters, the stores color-code them according to their sustainability: red means avoid. When I visited, the only fish with a red label was local red snapper. In an effort to persuade customers to make more sustainable choices, the company offers comparative fish tastings. "We aren't trying to guilt-trip anyone," Mr. Rohter said. "We aren't the food police."

But the chain has stopped selling the Rockstar energy drink, and not because it is made with caffeine, sugar and corn syrup. Rockstar's chief executive is Russell Goldencloud Weiner, who developed the company with the help of his mother and his father, Michael Savage, the far-right talk radio host. Mr. Rohter said he made the decision because he vehemently opposes Mr. Savage's views. "We have a few products we choose to make a stand on to help influence the direction of our community," he said. Mr. Savage did not respond to a message left at his workplace and could not be reached at home.

Can people in other cities expect their own versions of New Seasons? Yes, Mr. Rohter said, but they will not be run by him or his company. "We give advice all the time," he said.

He said he and his partners, who have three more stores on the way, do not plan to open any beyond Portland's suburbs. "I believe it would fundamentally change the way we do business," he said.

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"Local Flavours" Article from The Canadian Organic Grower - Fall 2005

While the global steam roller of free trade continues to flatten out the local diversities of ecology and community, replacing them with monoculture, monopoly and monotony, there is a less obvious process going in precisely the opposite direction creating a few bumps in the road. It is called localization and the leading component of it is the local food movement. I am convinced that both the globalization and localization processes are gathering speed. If true, we are in for interesting times as the Chinese curse has it.

One of the more recent examples of the local food movement in Canada was officially launched on July 23rd, 2005 at the Brockville Farmers' Market on a bright sunny day. It is called "Local Flavours" and is an initiative of the UNESCO Frontenac Arch Biosphere which occupies a triangular area in the Thousand Islands/Rideau region of Eastern Ontario. At the founding AGM of the Biosphere in early 2004 a proposal for a Buy Local project was made. Out of this a committee was formed that decided to focus on the promotion of locally produced foods. We started meeting in the summer of 2004.
Our main sources of inspiration were the Local Flavour project operated by ecoPerth in Lanark County, just northwest of our area and the Local Heroes campaign run in three counties in western Massachusetts by Community Involved In Sustaining Agriculture (CISA). They were both started in 1999.

While all the groups involved in the local food movement encourage and help to develop the production and marketing of local foods they vary as to which issues they concentrate on. For instance, ecoPerth has a strong emphasis on local food as a means of reducing greenhouse gasses, FarmFolk/CityFolk in B.C. gets involved in social issues, Vermont Fresh Network is interested in preserving farms for their scenic value as well as their food. Besides linking producers and consumers, many also include chef/farm partnerships. Some of these groups focus entirely on organic foods but an increasing number are more inclusive, putting an emphasis on local small and medium producers whether they use organic, certified organic or conventional methods of production. A number of recent magazine and newspaper articles have referred to the local food movement as the "new organic".

The numerous advantages of a strong locally-based food production system are generally agreed upon by its proponents, regardless of their primary focus. These include:

• building a healthier community - creating relationships between producers and customers.
• making farming more profitable by direct marketing - farmers' share of the food dollar has declined from a range of 40 to 60% to about 8%.
• developing a stronger local economy - the multiplying economic factor of locally-owned businesses which spend more of their money in the community. Plugging the economic leaks which creates more permanent jobs.
• reducing greenhouse gases and climate change by reduction in transportation and refrigeration. Average food travels about 2000 km. It could be reduced to less than 100 km.
• security of food supply.
• fresher food and more variety. 

The primary focus of the Local Flavours project is on supporting local producers and building a stronger local economy and community. The following principles were used in developing our program:

• All types of producers would be included - conventional, organic, certified organic. We did not want to divide the farm community or expend energy in endless debates.
• The program would initially be free for producers. We would raise funds to run it.
• Our emphasis would be on action rather than advocacy.
• Our method would be to encourage consumers to buy locally produced food by identifying and removing barriers to do so. We would do this by providing them with useful information not preaching.
• Local producers are not really competitors; they are collaborators. By cooperating and working together they will all sell more product. Competitors are in California, Florida and around the world.
• We will create a partnership between producers and customers. We really are all in this together.

 

Our main purpose is to increase the economic viability of local food producers. The only realistic way to do this in the current economic and political system is to improve the profit margin for them through direct marketing whereby they capture a much larger portion of the food dollar. Therefore we had to concentrate on promoting farm gate and farmers market sales. Having established this we got to work. Following the example of established local food groups we decided that our first year priorities were to produce a brochure with a list of all the producers who wished to participate and a map showing where to find them. This would be backed up by a website. The deadline for the brochure was the late spring of 2005 in order to catch that crop year.

But first we needed to create a data base of the producers. We collected the information with the help of Rural Leeds 2000, a local NGO, and then mailed letters to these producers with a copy of the ecoPerth Local Flavour brochure to show them what we intended to do. This was followed up with telephone interviews to see if they wanted to join the project and to obtain all the pertinent details of contact information, location, products, hours of business and production methods. We ended up with 55 participants which was a higher number than we expected because the process of establishing the data base had turned up producers we were unaware of. Products included herbs, vegetables, meat, fruit, preserves, honey, maple syrup and baked goods.

We held a meeting in January for the producers to give them information and get feedback from them. As a result, ten producers joined our committee and took an active part in determining what information should go into the producers list in the brochure and the website. According to my research, local food programs are seldom organized or operated by the producers themselves but usually by community activists or NGO's. If they get past the startup phase they normally evolve into staff-operated organizations. We hope to move to that stage next year if we can obtain adequate funding.

Providing information about the availability of local produce is one way to reduce the barriers to customers buying from them, but it is also crucial to motivate people to actually do so. This means that the marketing efforts must engage their interest and support. We had purchased a very

informative book published by CISA and FoodRoutes Network entitled "Harvesting Support For Locally Grown Food: Lessons Learned from the Be a Local Hero, Buy Locally Grown Campaign" which I strongly recommend to any group planning a campaign. Extensive customer polling by them indicated that:

• "Advertising messages that highlight the personal contribution a person makes to the Local economy and to his or her neighbours when buying locally grown foods will be more successful than messages that communicate concerns for the environment, safety, the future, and personal health and individual well-being.
• It is important to incorporate into advertising the widely held beliefs that locally grown food is fresher.
• The major obstacle to the sale of locally grown food is the perception that it is inconvenient to buy. A lack of information about where locally grown food can be purchased... reflects and reinforces this perception of inconvenience."

These three messages were then combined into the following slogan: "Support your local economy and neighbours by buying locally grown food that's fresher and tastes great. Available at many locations throughout your area."
A slogan we use is: In the mood for local food? It just got easier with Local Flavours.

Meanwhile we were seeking financial support and were fortunate that the Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition provided initial funding for design of a logo. The major breakthrough was our successful application to the Laidlaw Foundation for a grant of $5,000 which paid for the design and printing of 20,000 brochures in May and the creation of a website www.localflavours.org in July.

Most of our producers' operations are small and almost all of the organic ones are non-certified. Considering that our program is open to everyone I am surprised and encouraged that the proportion of organic producers is significantly higher than the national average. Ten out of 13 meat producers are organic, 11 out of 19 vegetable growers are organic, but only 4 out of

15 fruit producers use organic methods. The larger, longer established producers are almost all conventional. While Local Flavours promotes all the participants equally, I am sure that organic producers will tend to influence and educate the conventional growers rather than the reverse, so that over time, I believe the proportion of organic producers will continue to increase.

The response to Local Flavours has been very positive: from the local media,
"One of the better ideas that's come along recently is the plan by a local group to promote the sale of locally grown produce." began a favourable editorial in the Brockville Recorder and Times in January 2005.
Producers have welcomed the concept and the majority have signed on. Typical comments from the public at the launch in July were "What a great idea" and "They should have done this years ago".

We plan to follow the pattern of established local food programs and form links with restaurants, inns and B and B's and smaller supermarkets in our region as we become better known. We also hope that, as successful local food campaigns have shown, the increased community pride and loyalty to local businesses generated by Local Flavours will serve as an incubator for entrepreneurs who will develop processing ventures utilizing local produce. This has certainly been the case in places as far apart as Vermont, Prince Edward County, the Eastern Townships in Quebec, Salt Spring Island in B.C. and several counties in the U.K.

It is much too early to determine the impact of the Local Flavours campaign but several of our members have told us that they already have new customers who said they found them because of the brochure. While we have been successful in doing everything we planned to do in the first year, we will have to wait until next year to see if we have been successful in achieving our goal - increasing the production and consumption of locally produced foods and hence helping our producers, the local economy, the environment and building a more sustainable community. We are only at the beginning and there is much to do before we achieve our goals. In the meantime, almost all of the food on my table comes from within 50 km, most of it is organic and all of it is tasty. So please join me and, bon appetit.