Last week I attended the Ninth Annual Rhode Island Local Food Forum, organized by Farm Fresh Rhode Island. The forum’s theme was “Center of the Plate,” reflecting its focus on local protein production. Particularly enlightening was a panel discussion whose moderator, academic chef Bill Idell, posed questions that resonate across the region.  These questions ultimately boil down to two big ones: First, what does a sustainable food system look like? And second, how can we make one happen?

The panel’s meat experts – local guru Pat McNiff of Pat’s Pastured and Mel Coleman from national good-meat powerhouse Niman Ranch – agreed that sustainable meat means raising animals in their natural habitats (not concentrated feedlots) and in a way that feeds both animals and soil. The panelists also highlighted that sustainable food systems require local capacity because geographically concentrated animal operations are at risk from extreme weather: last summer’s drought, for example, “force[d] livestock producers to liquidate herds because feed [wa]s too expensive.” All this means that local meat is not just grown in a place, but it also grows that place by enriching both land (ecologically) and community (economically).

Building capacity for local meat is tough, however, when farmers have limited access to land. This is the case in Rhode Island. Not only is land itself expensive here (as throughout New England), but property and estate taxes can make it almost impossible to keep productive land in agricultural use when it is more valuable as land for development (and is assessed as such for tax purposes). We at CLF are looking closely at this issue.

Moving from the land to the sea, the discussion yielded different insights from the panel’s seafood experts.  “Eating with the Ecosystem” founder Sarah Schumann and seafood-aggregation specialist Jared Auerbach of Red’s Best noted that sustainability means something much different for seafood than for meat, because so many fish and shellfish stocks are wild. They agreed that a sustainable seafood system should be biodiverse – instead of a singleminded focus on cod, for example, a sustainable system would mean sending more fluke, skate, scup, and squid to market. Diversifying the types of seafood we typically eat would allow overfished stocks to recover, and would also contribute to the resiliency of ocean life in the face of climate change and ocean acidification. Furthermore, a sustainable seafood system would mean – to borrow from Sarah Schumann – eating with the (local) ecosystem. Seafood brought in to local ports is easy to trace and to verify species, boat size, and fishing method – factors that are federally regulated but relatively easy to lose track of as more steps are added to the supply chain. Encouraging demand for diverse seafood products, localizing seafood markets with robust tracing and verification systems, and streamlining state and federal fisheries regulations would all help foster local, sustainable seafood systems.

All four panelists, farmers and fishers alike, agreed on another point: we need local, sustainable food systems both to limit and to respond to harms wrought by carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions cause climate change, leading to droughts and other extreme weather that disrupts agriculture; these disruptions, in turn, require robust local systems to add resilience to the global food system. And carbon dioxide emissions also cause ocean acidification, which poses an immediate risk to shellfish and a long-term risk to all ocean life.

All this highlights the importance of CLF’s farm-and-food and climate-change programs. Our work shutting down coal-fired power plants and promoting renewable energy helps to limit emissions that threaten our current food system (not to mention our planet). And our farm-and-food program promotes local and regional food systems that provide a broad range of environmental benefits. As CLF’s newest staff attorney, I am excited to be joining these efforts here in Rhode Island. The Local Food Forum made it clear that there are many good ideas brewing here – we just need to do the work to get our food policy right.

The Farm Bill will affect many, if not most, Americans. How is it going? Not well. Photo: Chris Koerner @ flickr.

As we reported last October, the 2008 Farm Bill was set to expire in September of 2012. September came and went, but no new Farm Bill was passed. This is no small matter for those of us interested in food systems, as the bill covers the food stamps program (known as “SNAP”), subsidies for crop and dairy producers, and dozens of other programs that assist small farmers, rural development, farmland conservation, and ongoing agricultural research. As you can tell from this list, the bill is not just about farms, nor will it affect just farmers; it will affect many, if not most, Americans.

Much of the debate in Congress during 2012 centered around the $80 billion food stamp program and the billions in annual subsidies to growers of corn, soy, cotton, and rice. These subsidies have become more controversial in recent years because they encourage the growth of high calorie crops with relatively little nutritional content, discourage crop diversity, and because the majority of funds go to wealthy owners of large-scale farming operations rather than the struggling family farmers that the subsidies were meant to help. As seems to increasingly be the case in Washington, a heated debate led to an overdue, last minute compromise that appears to be the worst of both worlds.

With the “Fiscal Cliff” looming, Congress passed 112 H.R. 8, the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012” on New Year’s Day. Title VII of the Act extended the 2008 Farm Bill through September of this year. Rather than making any changes or cuts to the big ticket items, the extension opts to cut funding to a variety of smaller, less newsworthy efforts, including grant programs to support research into higher quality organics, fruits, and vegetables, an education and outreach program for new and young farmers, a grant program to fund the creation of farmers markets and other direct-to-consumer efforts, and a cost share program that helped defray the cost of organic certification.

Sadly, the new “compromise” did very little to improve either the fiscal outlook of the nation or provide any long-term security to farmers or SNAP recipients, who must sit at the edge of their seats as  a second round of debate rages in D.C. about what to include in the 2013 Farm Bill. Direct payment program to commodity crop growers will continue for at least 9 months, even though there were many proposed reforms to this outdated program.

Instead, politicians focused on entirely eliminating the funding for a variety of forward-looking, progressive efforts. These were dollars that were being spent in ways that might actually provide a future with a more balanced, safe, and healthy American food system, with more local and organic options for consumers, and with more sustainable local economies from rural to urban areas of America. Programs such as these actually have the potential to reduce health care and energy costs by increasing the consumption of healthy, local foods. Sadly, these shortsighted cuts will be difficult to reverse at a time when Congress will likely be under pressure to come up with further cuts in a 2013 Farm Bill. We can only hope that the backlash from these events provides enough pressure on politicians that these or similar efforts will continue into the future.

Grounded in our Colonial history, America’s harvest feast – Thanksgiving – is a quintessentially New England holiday, a time to be grateful for our region’s rich agricultural traditions of hard-fought bounty and community-minded collaboration.

As we head off to celebrate with our families (as the famous New England poem goes), it is worth remembering that many of our neighbors in New England are struggling, day in day out, to cobble together three meals of good, healthy food. We know that, here in my relatively prosperous state of New Hampshire, more than 1 in 5 households with children experience food insecurity, and more than 130,000 people turn to emergency sources of food like food pantries every year (a number that has more than doubled in the last six years). Hunger and poor nutrition pose special risks for children, who may experience lasting damage to their health, educational outcomes, and economic opportunities.

The stark reality of childhood hunger is one of the driving forces behind CLF’s Farm and Food Initiative, our ongoing work to build a thriving, sustainable food system that grows our region’s farming economy – in rural and urban areas alike – to benefit all people in New England.

In this spirit, CLF is grateful to be a part of a new effort in New Hampshire to tackle childhood hunger, which was formally launched yesterday. Spearheaded by Children’s Alliance of New Hampshire and a diverse coalition of stakeholders known as NH Hunger Solutions, the effort – New Hampshire’s Roadmap to End Child Hunger – has identified three key goals for the state: (1) increase access to healthy food by expanding the number of families that benefit from school meal, food assistance, and nutrition programs, (2) strengthen New Hampshire’s food systems with policies that improve the availability of affordable, local, healthy foods for families of all economic groups and that strengthen farmers’ connections with schools and community food programs, and (3) ensure overall economic security for all families by enhancing public financial assistance for those in need. Yesterday’s rollout of the Roadmap was a terrific event in the gymnasium at Henniker’s Community School, featuring a number of community and food system leaders. You can read more about the event in this NewHampshire.com article.

We at CLF are particularly gratified that the Roadmap recognizes the importance of a strong, resilient food system that connects all people to healthy, affordable foods produced locally and sustainably by New England and New Hampshire farmers. As we noted on Food Day last month, CLF and others are hard at work identifying the policy and practical barriers to this kind of system and developing recommended solutions.

As implementation of the Roadmap begins – in collaboration with the companion efforts of Food Solutions New England to build a statewide Food Advisory Council – we look forward to helping New Hampshire achieve the Roadmap’s ambitious goals. As we share Thanksgiving with our families, CLF and our partners are committed to living up to New England’s heritage of sharing the harvest.

On October 24, CLF will join with people around the country to celebrate Food Day as part of a nationwide movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. This is a time for us to gather and reflect on the agricultural abundance our region can provide, and the importance of making sure that our food systems not only supply bodily nutrition, but  also contribute in a healthful way to our community ecosystems.

At the smallest scale, CLF’s Boston staff will celebrate Food Day by breaking local bread (and cheese!) from Allandale Farm and sharing in the story of one urban community fighting for food justice: we’ll be getting together to watch The Garden, a documentary about the community’s fight to save a14-acre community garden in South Central Los Angeles from being sold for development. This important story reflects the struggles that many of our communities of color and low income communities face in order to gain access to a basic right: nutritious food. (For more on CLF’s Farm & Food work, check out this page.)

But CLF’s celebration of healthy, affordable, and sustainable food is not limited to October 24th. CLF attorneys working on our Farm and Food Initiative work year round to protect, expand, and improve our regional food system, tackling some of our region’s most pressing environmental and health issues, and making our region more resilient to the impacts of climate change already underway.

From our efforts in Vermont working with farmers and other professionals to demystify community-financing tools available to farmers seeking to start, or grow, their farms, to our study of policy and market barriers related to urban agriculture in Greater Boston, CLF and CLF Ventures’ Farm and Food work is both advocating sustainable farming practices and unlocking the economic development potential of agricultural development. And this is just the beginning: over the next two years, CLF will engage in the most comprehensive regional policy analysis that has ever been done for commercial agriculture in New England, leading to a suite of policy recommendations that will enable our region to develop a self-supporting food system.

CLF understands that food lies at the intersection of many of our most pressing problems – the obesity epidemic, soaring healthcare costs, a faltering economy, climate change, and social inequity. We hope you’ll not only join CLF in celebrating Food Day on October 24 (check out activities in your area here), but continue the journey with us as we advocate solutions that bring healthy food to all of New England’s communities using sustainable farming practices and reducing the impacts of climate change.

Image courtesy Library of Congress.

This week the 2008 Farm Bill expired without a new Farm Bill to replace it. If you’re confused about what exactly this means for United States farmers and consumers then you’re in good company. At over 1,000 pages with 205 programs organized under 12 titles, the Farm Bill is a complex animal. The delayed 2012 Farm Bill (“Farm Bill”) is the latest in a long line of omnibus bills that temporarily suspend parts of the permanent 1949 Agricultural Act. Every five years when the Farm Bill expires, legislators need to pass a new one to take its place before its broad swath of agriculture, conservation, and nutrition programs are cut, leaving farmers and low income individuals out in the cold.

While this delay certainly presents challenges, don’t panic! A delayed Farm Bill doesn’t mean the end of the world for our nation’s farmers – at least not yet. The expired 2008 Farm Bill continues to fund its programs through the calendar year, so impacts won’t really be felt until 2013 when the archaic 1949 Act swings back into full force – causing wheat and dairy prices to double, the elimination of virtually all federal agricultural conservation programs, the slashing of crop insurance subsidies desperately needed this year for drought-ridden farmers, and a slew of others. Some programs would be continued through other legislation, but the effects would present major challenges nonetheless.

Nobody is looking forward to the New Year without a Farm Bill, so what’s the delay? The Farm Bill costs hundreds of billions of dollars, and lawmakers on both sides are wrestling over just how much of it to cut. Many programs are facing total elimination such as direct payments to farmers. However, the program causing the most delays for the Farm Bill is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”) formerly called Food Stamps. The Senate passed a version of the Farm Bill in June cutting $4.5 billion out of SNAP funding over 10 years, while the House is debating along party lines whether to cut a whopping $16 billion out of the program. While SNAP isn’t the only program going under the knife, it’s causing the bulk of the delays.

Thought of slashed agricultural programs, or their total elimination, is troubling, but some farmers may sleep better at night remembering that the same events happen approximately every five years with each new Farm Bill. In fact, over the past few decades, only one Farm Bill was passed on time. The 2008 bill, formerly “2007”, wasn’t passed until June after numerous executive vetoes and debates over funding for Food Stamps (sound familiar?).

Although nobody is advocating returning to the 1940s, legislators can’t quite agree on how to move into 2013. Stay tuned to hear more about the Farm Bill’s progress when the House reconvenes in mid-November.

Warren (where I live) has become the first municipality in the state of Rhode Island to lease town-owned land to a farmer. The Warren Town Council unanimously agreed to lease two acres of land at the Community Farm and Gardens to Bleu Grijalva, founder and executive director of New Urban Farmers. The New Urban Farmers is a non-profit organization that works to preserve and restore the environment by creating sustainable agricultural systems by increasing healthy food access while nurturing minds in the cities of Pawtucket, Central Falls, and surrounding areas by eliminating barriers to healthy food and empowering low-income individuals, families, and at-risk-youth with education and collaboration. It believes that a community that grows together grows together.

Urban agriculture can play an important role in creating a more livable, carbon resilient, healthier, economically vibrant, and environmentally sustainable town — when smart policies are put in place — and this is just what CLF is doing now with the announcement of the Growing Green report. By addressing New England’s regional food system, CLF can begin to make New England more resilient to the impacts of climate change already underway. CLF and CLF Ventures are working together to shape and foster the development of a robust New England regional food system.

What exciting news for urban farmers! Mr. Grijalva will spend the next decade growing berries, setting up an orchard, making honey, and start growing mushrooms (a wooded, dark area is perfect). Part of the vision is to teach young children about local farming, sustainability, and organics.

This is real boon for urban agriculture in our state!

Urban agriculture holds great promise for Boston.

This post was coauthored by Melissa Hoffer & Jo Anne Shatkin.

We are excited to share with you the news that today CLF and CLF Ventures released a report that, for the first time, details the economic development potential for urban agriculture in Greater Boston, assesses its environmental and health co-benefits, and examines current market and policy barriers to expanded food production in Greater Boston. The report‘s findings confirm that urban agriculture can play an important role in creating a more livable, carbon resilient, healthier, economically vibrant, and environmentally sustainable city—if we put smart policies in place and encourage market development for Boston grown foods.

Download a free copy of the report here: http://clf.org/growing-green/

The City of Boston has taken important steps over the past two years to advance urban agriculture, and new businesses are taking root, including City Growers, a Mattapan-based farming business that is featured in this report. There is a palpable sense of excitement about the potential of this new urban vision for agriculture for communities; possibilities abound. But CLF and CLF Ventures believe it is more than possible— it is a necessity, and an urgent one at that as we face the challenges of climate change, an obesity epidemic, lack of availability of healthy foods in many communities, and a fragile economy.

The report found that converting as few as 50 acres of vacant or underutilized land around Boston into agricultural production would spur job creation, improve access to healthy, local, fresh food, and reduce environmental harms. Key findings of the report include:

• Land is available. 50 acres – an area the size of Boston Common – is a small portion of the vacant or underutilized land available in Boston.
• Urban farms would stimulate the economy by creating jobs. 50 acres of urban agriculture in Boston will likely generate at least 130 direct farming jobs and may generate over 200 jobs depending on actual business characteristics and revenue.
• Healthy, local and affordable food. 50 acres in agricultural production would provide enough fresh produce to feed over 3,600 people over a six-month retail season. If the produce is used to prepare healthy school lunches in Boston Public Schools, 50 acres could provide more than one serving of fresh produce for each lunch served to a student eligible for free or reduced school lunch over a six month period. If 800 acres of potentially available City-owned land were put into agricultural production, the food needs of approximately 10 percent of Boston’s total population could be fully satisfied during a six-month retail season.
• Significant environmental impacts. Urban agriculture in Boston will result in a net reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. 50 acres of properly managed soils would sequester about 114 tons of cabon dioxide (CO2) per year and may result in an additional CO2 reduction of up to 4,700 tons per year.
• Community adaptation. No less than 6,000 new temperature records were set during the recent March 2012 heat wave, and more than 40,000 have been set for the year-to-date. Meanwhile, the July 2011-June 2012 period was the warmest 12-month period of any 12-months on record for the contiguous U.S., with the first half of 2012 being the hottest ever recorded. The International Energy Agency’s recent projection of a 10.8 degree F temperature increase over pre-industrial levels by the end of this century underscores the fact that a more decentralized food system will be necessary to enable our communities to better adapt to changing climate conditions, including the impacts of more frequent severe weather. Urban agriculture is a part of this solution.

As Jo Anne said in the press release announcing Growing Green, it’s clear that even 50 acres of sustainable agriculture on available land would be an economic stimulus and environmental resource for Boston. While we focused on a 50 acre test scenario, these conclusions are scalable across New England. Imagine how vibrant New England would be like with a robust and sustainable regional food system.

In addition to the potential benefits, the report also considers the policy and market barriers to fully realizing the potential of urban agriculture, examining the ways in which promoting urban agriculture will require city and state involvement and key needs for such involvement. Such barriers include the need for policies that provide affordable access to land, one of the key market barriers for both new and experienced farmers; strategies to reduce the risks associated with the Commonwealth’s hazardous material cleanup law; improved access to high quality compost; and better financing options to overcoming prohibitive capital and operating costs, amongst other findings.

Our ongoing work seeks to link urban agriculture to the larger regional food system, and focuses on how to overcome some of the barriers we have identified.

Boston is ideally positioned to play a lead role in coordinating with the Massachusetts Food Policy Council, other New England states, and cities around the region to build a vision for a New England regional food system and make it happen. Boston is emerging as a national leader in urban agriculture innovation, and can be a voice for the benefits of urban agriculture and as one of the region’s largest consumers, help to build the market for regionally grown food.

For more resources on this topic:

Find a copy of the report here: www.clf.org/growing-green/
Find an infographic detailing the report here: http://bit.ly/clfgrowinggreen
To read more about CLF’s Farm & Food Initiative, click here: http://www.clf.org/our-work/healthy-communities/food-and-farm-initiative/

An urban garden -- precisely what we need more of. Photo courtesy of Tony Fischer Photography @ flickr.

It began with our tomatoes. As I’ve written before, my wife and I are avid gardeners and have grown tomatoes many times before but these – these tomatoes were proving difficult to grow. This was not due to the plants, but due to me and to the setting in which we were growing them: the rooftop of our apartment building in the city of Somerville, MA.

My wife and I had decided to grow tomatoes in containers on our roof for the same reasons many do: we wanted to continue our hobby after moving to the city, and we wanted fresh vegetables we had grown our selves. Much like catching a trout on a fly you yourself have tied, there is something immensely gratifying about this sort of self-reliance. The tomatoes just taste better.

But they did prove difficult. Growing tomatoes in plastic buckets on a black roof under the summer sun requires mastering the art of properly irrigating your plants. First we watered them too much. Then we watered them too little. I remember at one point standing over my plants, wondering at what I had done wrong, and looking enviously at the elaborate, automatic watering system my engineering neighbor had constructed and perfected for her tomatoes. Finally, we got it right.

Adapting to growing a garden on an urban roof, not a field in Vermont, proved to be a challenge. And I learned some lessons that help me to understand some of CLF’s work better.

We need to grow food in areas we don’t think of as farmland. As I hear more about urban agriculture growing in our cities, the more I am convinced that our cities are fertile ground for growing food. Cities are not only sites of consumption, but also of production, and are essential to a strong regional food system. Just as we support traditional New England farms, so too should we support community gardens, rooftop gardens, porch and patios plantings, and other urban horticulture. To eat in the city, we need to grow in the city.

As I look around, I see plenty of evidence that we’re on the way to making this happen.

Many of the staff at CLF are growing their own food: a few have plots in community gardens, one works for a CSA in Concord, MA, many have gardens, one raises goats, another a slew of barn animals, while plenty others have small porch or window plantings at their apartments and homes.

I know we’re not alone, either. Young people are turning to farming not just as avocation but as vocation. They’re tilling rural soil, certainly, but also planting new beds amongst our city streets. It’s a new generation, in more ways than one.

I also see more CSAs now than I ever noticed before. My wife and I have been members of several CSAs for a number of years, in Burlington, VT, and Boston, MA. Now, I see more access, in more areas, to the kinds of food provided by these CSAs than ever before.

We participate in food systems whether we choose to or not, by virtue of the fact that we all eat. And, as the old saying goes, you are what you eat. Phrased slightly differently, food is at the heart of many of our problems: our thirst for fossil fuels, our polluting farm infrastructure, economic inequity and the obesity epidemic. If we fix our food problem, we make it easier to fix some of these other problems as well.

In the current issue of Conservation Matters, there is an article about how CLF and CLF Ventures are working to improve our regional food system. As I said in my president’s letter, “sustainable agriculture, when applied to cities, makes them more resilient, economically vibrant and livable.”

Standing on my rooftop, viewing my tomatoes, this struck me as true: we need to grow more food in areas we don’t think of as farmland. We will be more vibrant as a region, stronger as communities, and healthier as individuals.

Photo courtesy of Putneypics @ flickr. Creative Commons.

A couple of weeks ago I met a young farmer near Rutland, VT who was stunned to be out plowing his fields in the month of March. At that time the fields are usually knee-deep muddy, if not still covered in snow, ice or the slow-melting crust of the long winter. He was stunned:  if he plows and plants now, what’s going to happen next? How will his crops respond? Should he wait, for something more like a “normal” planting season to return?

These are questions that thousands of us gardeners across New England have been struggling with lately, in the wake of an unseasonably warm spell, and a winter that broke records first for early snowfall, and then low overall snowfall and high temperatures. Looking out our windows when the weather warms, we are drawn to one place: the soil – we long to get our hands in the dirt, and smell the wonderful scents of spring. For the farmer I mentioned above, the decision wasn’t just recreational or therapeutic; the crops for the CSA he recently founded with his partner were at risk. He had to plan carefully, not knowing what lies ahead.

In Vermont, where my wife and I have tended our garden for years, you start your seeds on Town Meeting Day and plant on Memorial Day. But this year, that timeline is way off.

Recently, for the first time in 22 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released an updated version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map. The map charts average winter minimum temperatures, or cold intensity. What this map confirmed in VT is what we have observed anecdotally across New England and the United States: that our world is warming, as this map by the Arbor Day Foundation shows vividly. For the first time in VT, for instance, zone 5b has crept into the southern edges of our state. And the south coast of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts includes zone 7a, which is also found in Northern Alabama. The commentary on the new map carefully avoids concluding the shifts are the results of climate change; most gardeners will draw their own conclusions.

For me, the question of whether or not to plant returned me to a question about my greenhouse. Previous owners of our house built a small, traditional greenhouse that helped with the slow and wet transition from winter to spring, with consistency and in the same place for 15 years. It succumbed to the elements recently, and we decided to try smaller, portable hoop houses over our raised beds. They’re more suitable to highly variable temperatures. Where once a rigid structure suited our weather and our needs, that’s no longer the case. We need to be more flexible. More adaptable.

This winter ranks as the 4th warmest nationally since the late 1880s, when climatologists began keeping records. People still consider Memorial Day as a safe time to plant, but the average last frost day is 10 days prior, as Vern Grubinger, University of Vermont Extension vegetable and berry specialist, said in this Brattelboro Reformer article.

What happens when you plan according to tradition, but the seasonal calendar is out of kilter? What happens when convention no longer suits our contemporary reality? These are questions of adaptation, and they apply to backyard gardens – and also flood zone mapping, transportation, and almost everything we do in the natural world. We have to start building differently, for a different world.

And so I wanted to ask you – CLF members, and members of the public alike – how are you adapting? What have you done with your garden this spring?  Are you anticipating odd weather in the months ahead? How will you respond? Please share your comments here and share your photos with us on our Facebook page.

I look forward to hearing from you. And happy planting.