Photo courtesy of Curt MacNeill, Boulder Health Revolution

Each year contaminated food sickens 48 million Americans and causes 3,000 deaths.  As the recent federal sequester highlights, Americans depend on programs that inspect food to ensure a safe food supply.  Unfortunately for those who run small farms in New England, the costs of complying with the confusing jumble of federal and state food safety laws can be daunting.

In Maine, nine towns — Brooksville, Sedgwick, Penobscot, Blue Hill, Trenton, Hope, Plymouth, Livermore and Appleton —have passed ordinances allowing food producers and processors to sell their goods directly to consumers without state or federal oversight, exempting them from licensing and inspection laws. These ordinances have created controversy and have landed at least one Maine farmer in court.

The legal issue arises from the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). The clause states that Congress shall have power to regulate commerce among the several States. Congress has long used this authority to regulate the safety of food products placed into inter-state sales. The states can separately regulate food safety of products produced and sold solely within state borders. Maine’s Constitution similarly provides that state laws take precedence over local ordinances that frustrate the purpose of a state law.

Photo courtesy of Foods U chose 2 Eat, UK Website

Recently the State of Maine sued a farmer from Blue Hill Maine. The farmer had been selling unlabeled, unlicensed raw milk at his farm stand under a town ordinance, the Local Food and Community Self Governance Ordinance. Under state law, however, the farmer could not sell his milk without a license and without labeling the raw milk as unpasteurized; he also could not operate a food establishment without a license. The farmer maintained that his sales were legal under the Blue Hill ordinance, which exempts local food vendors from state licensure and inspection, provided they sell their products directly to consumers.

The court recently ruled against the farmer, finding that he was not protected under the Blue Hill ordinance.  The court reasoned that state dairy law pre-empted the local ordinance because the state laws in question were clearly designed to protect consumers from illness caused by improperly handled or unpasteurized milk.  The court wrote that: “It is axiomatic that a municipality may only add to the requirements of the statute, it may not take away from those requirements unless permitted to do so otherwise.”

The court’s ruling makes sense in terms of following constitutional law principles and the existing food safety legal regime. The bigger policy issue not addressed by the legal decision is whether the current food safety regulatory structure is one that prices small scale farmers focused on local markets out of  business. We think this is an important issue to address and are actively working on it as part of CLF’s Farm and Food Initiative.

We’d like to hear from you.

CLF Ventures is working with Wholesome Wave Foundation to offer a complimentary webinar about the Food Safety Modernization Act and implications for food hub operators. The food hub work with Wholesome Wave continues CLF Ventures’ efforts to build capacity and develop resources for sustainable food organizations in New England.

Proposed FDA Food Safety Modernization Act Requirements
for Emerging Food Hub Operators:

Q&A with FDA Representatives
& Perspectives from Local Food Leaders

April 17, 2013
11:00 A.M -12:30 P.M. EDT

 
Comments are due on May 16, 2013 for two proposed rules issued in January under the Food Safety Modernization Act: “Current Good Manufacturing Practices and Hazard Analysis and Risk-Based Preventative Controls for Human Food” and “Standard for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing and Holding of Produce for Human Consumption.” This webinar aims to help food hubs and related enterprises to understand the implications of the proposed rules in time for them to submit comments to FDA by the May comment period deadline.

The webinar will target small and early stage businesses/operators that aggregate, distribute and process farm food products. Speakers will include representatives from FDA to provide detail on the proposed rules as well as representatives from non-profit organizations who will speak about the impacts of proposed FSMA rules on growing local food hubs. The webinar will include an interactive Q&A with speakers as well as help in finding additional resources about the proposed rules and the comment submittal process.

To register for this complimentary webinar, go to https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/640965334.

For more information about registration, contact gabrielle@wholesomewave.org.

For more information on CLF Ventures’ sustainable agriculture work, visit CLF’s Food and Farm page.

Local food is all the rage, but how do you affordably and conveniently get that food from the local farm to the local table? It’s a question a lot of people are asking — and one we at CLF Ventures (CLFV) are working to answer.

CLFV explored some emerging models that seek to connect small local farms to customers and allow these agricultural businesses to flourish. After all, farmers need to earn a living wage in order to keep growing the food we love to eat. We sent a survey to restaurants to better understand the experience of sourcing food directly from small, local farms and learned a lot about the opportunities and barriers for small farm businesses.

Some small farms have created Restaurant Supported Agriculture (RSA) models that mimic existing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Generally, restaurants receive one box of food per week that contains substantially more food than a standard CSA share. However, the RSA model is not necessarily an ideal solution for small growers that want to sell food to restaurants. The typical restaurant purchasing model doesn’t match well with the typical small farm sales model. Additional insight from CLFV’s survey of local restaurants is shown in the infographic below.

Restaurants can be a great market for small farms because they are local and create steady demand. Innovative farmers and restaurateurs continue to seek ways to collaborate to their mutual benefit. However, the complexities of restaurant purchasing and the differences in menu selection and food preparation between restaurants complicate these contractual relationships.

Without innovative solutions it is likely that farm-to-restaurant partnerships will remain one-off endeavors rather than a stable market for small, local farms. That would inhibit growth in an area that we sincerely hope — for the sake of our environment, and our communities — will grow.

CLF and CLF Ventures couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities for innovation in financing that build our regional food system. We’re working to foster greater investment in the innovations that will transform our communities, make us more self-sufficient and resilient to climate change, and build a sector that will sustain us over the long term. That’s why we recently partnered with Federal Street Advisors, a wealth management advisory firm for families and foundations, to co-sponsor a regional summit, Financing a Sustainable Food System for New England. Together with Federal Street Advisors, we gathered a select audience of interested investors and invited both seasoned and emerging entrepreneurs and experts from around New England to tell their stories, focusing on the critical issues in growing and financing sustainable food businesses. The room was full of excitement, stories, and passion for food, and several important themes emerged:

• GROWING DEMAND FOR SUSTAINABLE FOOD:
  

  (L-R) Mass. Agricultural Commissioner Greg Watson and Ed Maltby of Adams Farm Slaughterhouse

  Greg Watson, Massachusetts Agricultural Commissioner, explained that supply currently can’t match demand. He proclaimed that this is not a trend, “this is the future of agriculture!”

• NEED FOR ALTERNATIVE FINANCING:
  Several entrepreneurs, including Ed Maltby of Adams Farm Slaughterhouse and Bill Eldridge of Maine’s Own Organic Milk, spoke of the need for alternative financing that allows the organic growth of their business and matches the timing and return expectations of their business models. While some models do create high value, others are challenging to do profitably, because the value of the sustainable dimension is not yet captured in the economics. For example, farming organically creates the need to certify, but for smaller growers, the “local” advantage can’t compete with large national businesses.

• CONTRIBUTION TO CLIMATE RESILIENCY: 
  

  Dorothy Suput, The Carrot Project

  Many panelists discussed the role of sustainable agriculture in addressing resiliency to climate change, including Roger Berkowitz of Legal Sea Foods, who mentioned fish ranching as a strategy to address the declining coastal fish populations resulting from warming waters, and Henry Lovejoy of EcoFish, who explained, “We don’t need to raise any food that’s bad for the planet.”

• NEED FOR AGGREGATION: Aggregation was a theme — farmers and investors alike can benefit from pooling resources to make innovations, and investments in them, sustainable.

There were many key ideas conveyed, but I have to commend Chuck Lacy of Hardwick Beef for delivering two memorable take-aways:

• “You can’t just show up and get my tenderloins!” (Relationships are critical)

• “If you’re lucky, you will plant a seed that will help change an industry” (to potential investors)

Raw bar, courtesy of Island Creek Oysters

Of course, no sustainable food summit would be complete without good eats, and the Financing Sustainable Food System summit showcased an abundance of local and regional treats, including grass-fed beef stew with panelist Chuck Lacy’s Hardwick Beef, fish and seafood from panelist Jared Auerbach’s Red’s Best, and many donated items, including an Island Creek Oysters raw bar, desserts from Henrietta’s Table of Cambridge, an assortment of prepared foods produced at Boston culinary incubator CropCircle Kitchen, and dozens of other tempting New England products.

CLF has a long history of work on sustainable agriculture issues in New England, including efforts to improve the sustainability of our fisheries.

• In our current Sustainable Farm and Food Initiative, CLF and CLF Ventures focuses on issues of growing urban agriculture, developing innovations to overcome market and policy barriers, here in Boston and throughout the region.

• CLF Ventures is working to regionalize a fish permit investment fund in the Gulf of Maine, aiming at the triple bottom line of social, environmental, and economic benefits.

• And through our partnerships with Federal Street Advisors and others, we are evaluating the sustainability claims and working to bring structure and discipline to the innovation and excitement of social entrepreneurship.

CLF and CLF Ventures have a vision for reinventing our food supply that

• builds on our region’s history and tradition of self-reliance and our roots in fishing and farming;
• leverages our culture of innovation as a firm foundation for our regional economy;
• creates healthier ways to feed ourselves;
• combats climate change; and
• rebuilds the health of our environment.

CLF Ventures co-organized the Sustainable Food System summit to discuss the benefits of investing in this growing economic sector, including greater food security and higher quality food, job creation, and improved quality of life for our urban and rural communities. The need to build capacity and sustainability in our food supply creates an opportunity to invest in sustainable economic growth for our region. Key to this growth is an understanding of the barriers — such as the need to aggregate production and distribution to scale, the need for effective financing models, for policy changes, for new public and private partnerships, for market development — and understanding the extent to which the emerging alternatives unlock the potential.

By design, there was a lot of expertise and activity in the room — from seasoned entrepreneurs and investors as well as from the next generation of innovators. We were fortunate to have generous co-sponsors: Goodwin Procter, Pinnacle Associates, Trillium Asset Management, and Eastern Bank. We are not the inventors of the idea, but we are the ones to carry it forward.

Stay tuned for updates on our urban farming work, triple-bottom-line funds, links between climate change, resilience, and sustainable farming practices, as well as entrepreneur stories, expert advising and more.

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.

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.

Fifty years ago this week the world was gripped by the Cuban Missile Crisis, then unfolding. It was the low point, perhaps, of the cold war, a several-decade period in which hundreds of millions of people got used to the idea that absolute, global catastrophe could be just 20 minutes away.

Or at least we tried to get used to it. I recall being very confused, as a first-grader in the early 1960’s, about why sometimes when the alarm bell rang we quickly went outside, and other times we hunkered down next to the thick brick walls deep inside the school, and waited.

Fortunately, that catastrophe hasn’t happened. However, the mindset that most American baby-boomers grew up with – the entire world could change very drastically and permanently, during our lifetime if not during the afternoon – is still embedded in our psyches. It gave many of us nightmares when we were young.

We need to tap that well of concern, now. The world is changing dramatically. It’s happening more slowly than ICBMs delivering nuclear warheads over the North Pole, but it is speeding up. Everybody who goes outside knows that. Unlike the destruction-in-a-flash that many of us grew up imagining, it’s now change-within-a-decade, or change-by-next-growing-season. And we’re not only imagining. We’re seeing it.

So what’s an American Boomer to do? Wake up. Accept responsibility. Our resource-gobbling lifestyle has caused this mess. Suburbanization has wasted US resources for two generations. Change it, now. And use your still-massive influence to change regressive policies. It’s outrageous that both major candidates for President fully endorse dramatic expansion of drilling for fossil fuels. Don’t stand for that. Demand that we change course, and lead the world in doing so. If we don’t, large parts of our planet will become as inhospitable as we feared in our nuclear nightmares as children. Only then it will be a reality for our grandchildren and their children.

Then, set the table for the next generation, and get out of the way. The “Millenials” are intuitively heading in the right direction. Whether they are reacting to the ecological mess we are leaving them or the economic constraints they feel matters little: they’ve got the right ideas. They are investing their time and money locally.  They want smaller living spaces. They own fewer cars and use transit more. They are much more inclined toward sharing – cars, space, resources, goods, politics – than exclusive ownership. They are fond of repurposed goods.

And this is not just urban hipsters. All sorts of 20-somethings are living with their parents, shopping on Craigslist and launching businesses through crowd-sourced investment platforms like Kickstarter. They are revitalizing places across New England that Boomers and their parents left behind: from cities like Boston, Providence and Portland, to towns like Portsmouth, NH, Winooski, VT and Pittsfield, MA. They are eating food grown closeby by people they know. And all of this will create – in the decades to come – a way of living in New England that is healthier for all, lower-carbon, and more resilient to our changing climate than the way we have lived in this country since 1945.

It’s time. As the cold war has fizzled we’ve not been sure what would follow. Globalization, the rise of Petro-states, the incredible growth of China as an economic power, increasing inequality of wealth, climate change – these are centuries of chickens coming home to roost. There’s a lot going on. But at least it’s happening more or less in front of us, in the public eye, and in a way that offers opportunities to actually do something about it.

In that way, it’s a different kind of crisis than global nuclear annihilation. We all felt powerless to avert that. Perhaps that’s part of why it was so scary.The forces imperiling the planet now may be even more powerful, as they emanate from many different places and have quite a head of steam.

But they are not impenetrable. Smart, inspired and hopeful people all over are finding ways to bend those forces toward a better future. It is our responsibility, fellow Boomers, to help them.

I am reminded  of the story of the so-called Big A dam on the Penobscot River in Maine – a project that, after much debate, was never built.

Twenty five years ago CLF and others opposed this ill-advised project, advancing the then-novel argument that energy efficiency could satisfy the power needs of the time better than a dam that would have turned two outstanding reaches of river into a slackwater impoundment. A nice summary of the controversy and its context is here. The author, David Platt, a long-time journalist who covered the story, notes that it “became a fascinating discussion about energy, engineering, corporate power, the rising influence of non-corporate interests, the need to protect the environment, and the changing nature of the paper industry and the economy in Maine.”

A generation later, and amplified 1,000 times, that is our story – the story of our challenges and our opportunities at the beginning of the 21st century. At the end of this century we will and should be remembered as much for what we started as for what we stopped, as much for what we were for as for what we where against. At this time in history, while several generations – and people from many perspectives, not only the environmental movement – share the stage, it is imperative that we come together and get it right.

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.

New England Cranberry Harvest. Photo courtesy of Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs @ flickr

Cranberries. Fall is the season for the sweet-tart fruit from this New England crop, grown and enjoyed across the region for generations. According to a recent story in the Portland Press Herald, this year’s crop looks especially abundant due to unusually warm weather. But these changes could come at a cost that’s greater than the price of cranberries to accompany your holiday turkey.

According to a Cooperative Extension cranberry specialist quoted in the Press Herald, the reason for the bumper crop may be warmer weather related to climate change. What’s more, this trend could make it possible to successfully grow other crops not usually found in northern New England, like peaches. One farmer has already decided to plant kiwi.

CLF is partnering with the American Farmland Trust and the New England Sustainable Agriculture working group to advance the regionally-produced share of agricultural products in our grocery stores, and to sustain New England’s working farms. With that goal in mind, this expansion of crops and diversification of business may seem like good news.  As any working farmer will tell you, adapting to changing conditions by selecting new varieties and hedging against loss is something they do all the time. But as that same farmer would tell you, gaining the opportunity for one new crop will likely come at the expense of losing another.

Cranberries did well this year because of an exceptionally early thaw. Many maple syrup producers, on the other hand, struggled with a much shorter tapping season, a situation that is becoming more likely every year. The maple trees will still be there (they grow as far south as Virginia), but the sap we love as syrup won’t flow if the ground hasn’t frozen for the required time.

Up with cranberries and down with maple syrup – the rise of one may come with the fall of the other. Is this a cost we are willing to accept?

Even though the exact path of climate change affecting both New England and New England’s agriculture remains uncertain, one thing is clear: our climate is changing – a reality already documented in the northern migration of harmful insects and the redrawing of the USDA plant hardiness map.  While we may applaud the efforts of New England farmers to adapt to changing circumstances and become more “climate resilient,” we can’t afford to ignore what’s causing the changes in the first place.  We need to do more to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution causing global warming. Our current climate trajectory involves risks, the scope of which we’re still trying to understand – and likely won’t be able to fully map until it’s far too late.

And so, as much I enjoy Maine peaches, it’s important that we recognize that there will be climate change winners and losers. Not only will this be on the farm: it will be true across New England’s economy. CLF’s support for sustainable regional agriculture, whether in a vacant lot in Boston or northern Aroostook County, Maine, will be critical.