Community Farms Help Feed the State’s Needy

By IAN HOLLIDAY/ecoRI correspondent

Franklin Farm Community Garden volunteers help grow produce that is donated to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. (Franklin Farm Community Garden)CUMBERLAND — On Monday and Thursday nights in the summer, Rhode Island’s only intact Colonial-era farm comes to life with the sounds of workers in the fields. But instead of a family trying to earn a living, the workers are members of the community, volunteering for a cause.

That cause is helping to feed the hungry. Franklin Farm Community Garden, on Abbott Run Valley Road, is one of seven nonprofit farms and gardens that make up the Rhode Island Community Farm Association, a network of local growers that donate most of their produce to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.

Started with a single garden in 2001, the program now produces between 15 and 16 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables over the course of a growing season. A substantial portion of that yield comes from the garden at Franklin Farm, which has produced almost 25 tons in the four years since it joined the community farm association.

“We had this farm, and we had people who were willing to volunteer, so we said, ‘Let’s try it,’” said Frank Geary, president of the Historic Metcalf-Franklin Farm Preservation Association, which maintains the property and organizes the community garden project.

Geary said the 64-acre property the association protects dates back to the late 1700s, when it was bought from the Wampanoag Indians. It was operated as a dairy farm until 1990, when its aging owner could no longer keep up with it. He sold the fields and the barn to the town of Cumberland, which acquired the farmhouse after his death.

For this reason, Geary said, Franklin Farm has the distinction of being the only “complete” farm — one that never sold off land for development — in Rhode Island. Today, the farm is an island of open space, bounded on all sides by suburban neighborhoods. One of the association’s goals is to preserve this open space for the community to use, said Denise Mudge, volunteer coordinator for the Franklin Farm Community Garden.

“We encourage people to come out for passive use,” she said. “There are kids who will sled, cross-country skiing, picnics, hiking … things like that.”

After an initial “planting day” in the spring, which usually features educational presentations for visiting schoolchildren, the Franklin Farm Community Garden invites volunteers to help out on Monday and Thursday nights throughout the summer. While corporate or social groups will often come from far away for a single night, both Mudge and Geary stress the importance of working in the garden to the local community.

“The neighbors have rallied around us,” Geary said. “It’s turned into an opportunity for neighbors to come and really share the neighborhood because they all meet in the garden.”

“It’s very laid back,” Mudge said. “Come once; come ten times, whatever you like.”

Of course, not all members of the Rhode Island Community Farm Association are preservation projects like Franklin Farm. One of the more interesting groups that grow crops for the food bank is The University of Rhode Island’s College of Environment and Life Sciences.

As a land grant institution, URI is charged with teaching, researching and serving the community, particularly in the field of agriculture. For six years, the university has been donating the produce grown for research or teaching purposes in its agronomy fields to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.

Unlike other members of the community farm association, URI’s planting choices are informed less by the needs of the food bank and more by intellectual or scientific curiosity. Kristin Castrataro, an agricultural extension agent for the university and one of the project’s overseers, said many of the vegetables she plants are chosen for comparative trials.

“(We’ll) plant, say, 50 different varieties of something in small pieces and then go in and collect data throughout the growing season,” she said. “We can also try out some oddball new varieties or some heirloom varieties so that we can give (commercial) farmers access to a wider variety of stuff without them having to take a risk.”

The College of Environmental and Life Sciences garden also is an educational tool. “Master gardeners” — adults who have taken a URI course in gardening to earn the title — do much of the spring planting. During the summer, students are involved in the data collection and research process. The fall harvest is done by first-semester freshmen as a part of their freshman seminar.

Though they’ve gone about it in different ways, both URI and Franklin Farm have taken the idea of providing fresh produce to those who need it and expanded it into a way to better serve the citizens of Rhode Island.

“It’s so much more than just growing vegetables for the food bank,” Geary said. “It’s being a part of the community and inviting the community to be a part of this.”

Ian Holliday is a recent graduate of Ithaca College with a degree in journalism. He grew up in Rhode Island, but is currently living in exile in western Massachusetts.

Food Sustainability Faces Plenty of Challenges

Food Forum Focused On Buying Locally to Help R.I. Economy, Your Health

By DAVID FISHER/ecoRI staff

PROVIDENCE — A gathering last week of forward-thinking people, businesses and organizations at the sixth annual Rhode Island Local Food Forum lent an air of optimism to the room in spite of the many sustainability problems facing the state, country and planet.

The event was held at the Andrews Dining Hall on Brown University’s campus, and it featured more than 275 people representing about 200 farms, farmers’ markets, restaurants, retail interests and organizations dedicated to sustainable living.

The keynote speaker was the former Undersecretary of Agriculture and current chairman of the Wholesome Wave Foundation, Gus Schumacher. Presentations and speeches also were made by Kenneth Ayars, director of the state Department of Environmental Management’s Department of Agriculture; Noah Fulmer, director of Farm Fresh Rhode Island; and Lauren Piluso and Max Liwanga, from the state’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children — better known as the WIC program.

Their presentations were followed by several roundtable discussions on topics ranging from community gardens to schools and hospitals that have adopted policies of buying local produce.

The theme of this year’s forum was “Fresh for All,” and focused on bringing fresh, local products and sustainable living practices to every Rhode Islander, especially seniors and the economically deprived.

Kenneth Ayars: Rhode Island is a leader on the issue of sustainable local food systems. (David Fisher/ecoRI staff photos)Ayars touted Rhode Island as “very much a leader” on the issue of sustainable local food systems. He noted such successes as the expansion of Rhody Fresh from five to eight farms, Farm Fresh’s Mobile Market program, the improvement of the University of Rhode Island’s sustainable agriculture program and the “Get Fresh, Buy Local” program that works in conjunction with many other public programs in the state.

“Agriculture is one of the few bright spots in the economy of the state right now, but we need to build a structure that also sustains this movement into the future,” Ayars said.

He also spoke of future developments such as revisions to state and local planning requirements to include agricultural zoning provisions, the upcoming creation of a Rhode Island Food Security Council and the recent approval by the governors of all six New England states to approach food security on a regional level.

In spite of this progress, Ayars said, “there’s still a disconnect. Why is it that 65 percent of the produce consumed in Rhode Island comes from out of state? Why is it that California produces 55 percent of all the fruits and vegetables grown in this country?”
It’s because the country is dealing with the residue of a food-production system that is, in his words, “highly fossil-fuel based, dependent on cheap energy and relies on the transportation system from two centers of production, California and Florida.”

In these days of peak oil, peak water and peak natural gas production, Ayars said, “We have no choice but to emphasize local, family farms and regional food systems. It’s not only a good idea, but is essential to future generations.”

Fulmer spoke about the doubling of farmers’ markets in the state, Farm Fresh’s Local 365 program, which led to the founding of the winter farmers’ market in Pawtucket, and the organization’s commitment to grow the local food economy and to make sure everyone in Rhode Island has a stake in it.

Noah Fulmer: Farmers’ markets address health issues directly.He lauded companies such as Chartwells that are committed to bringing fresh, local produce into the schools for which they provides service. Fulmer talked about the role that local agriculture has to play in the battle against such prevalent problems as childhood obesity, which, he said, is “just one example of the health issues happening because people are so disconnected from their food.”

He called farmers’ markets “outposts to reconnect with food and farmers, and to address health issues directly.”

Piluso and Liwanga, from the state’s WIC division, talked about new guidelines and the expansion of the federal WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program.

Organizers of the forum and program advocates encourage local farmers to enroll in WIC programs, to assist in bringing healthy foods to low-income households. It is well worth it, according to advocates of the local food movement.

If just 15 percent of all national WIC purchases and 1 percent of all national food stamp — or EBT — purchases took place at farmers’ markets, that would put $700 million to $1 billion in the pockets of local farmers across the country.

In these trying economic times, 1 out of 10 Rhode Islanders receives food stamps — that’s about 100,000 individuals receiving state aid. When that money is spent at farmers’ markets, it remains in the state economy, and the profits remain local. Rhode Island saw an eightfold increase in food stamp redemption at farmers’ markets between 2008 and 2009, and is on track for a similar increase this year.

Gus Schumacher: Healthy foods are key.Schumacher, whose family has farmed since the late 1800s in New York City and Massachusetts, has served the public in Massachusetts as commissioner of agriculture, and nationally as Undersecretary of Agriculture for the Clinton administration and chairman of the Wholesome Wave Foundation, founded by the late Paul Newman.

During his keynote address, he commended programs such as  “Healthy Foods, Healthy Farms,” promotions at local farmers’ markets — including free tokens used to buy fruit and vegetables — and the social, cultural and biodiversity that he has seen in the Ocean State’s farms and markets.

The Wholesome Wave Foundation is dedicated to five cornerstones of local and regional farming systems. They are:
    • Healthy foods. This is the foundation’s top concern, because of rising health-care costs and epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes. According to Schumacher, 30 percent of American children younger than 5 are pre-diabetic. With that numbers rapidly on the rise, the foundation saw fit to procure grants to double the value of WIC vouchers in many U.S. farmers’ markets, including those in Rhode Island, which allows aid recipients to have greater access and buying power when purchasing fresher, more local and healthier produce.
    • Sustainability. Wholesome Wave is committed to finding ways, through organizations such as Farm Fresh, to connect local farms with local consumers, and making sure the farms that receive money from them are using sustainable farming practices.
    • Affordability. Price should not be an issue when buying fresh produce. On top of doubling WIC vouchers, the foundation also adds value to purchases made with food stamps or EBT cards. They also have a part in the state’s Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program, which provides low-income seniors with access to locally grown produce.
    • Fair pricing. It wouldn’t be worth it to local farmers to not get a fair market value for their products, so Wholesome Wave facilitates programs to make sure local farmers are being compensated properly. They also have received grants to buy wireless credit/debit/EBT card readers for individual farmers and farmers’ markets.
    • Diversity. Becoming a part of a community means embracing cultural diversity. Wholesome Wave encourages farmers to ask the people that buy from their stands and markets what they would like to see grown and sold. This has led to some farmers that are selling in predominantly Asian or Latino communities to change what they grow.

Schumacher also discussed the growth of the local farming industry, which is, in no small part, due to immigration from Southeast Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South and Central America, where the people are still connected to their farms and farmers because their food systems haven’t been industrialized.

“We’ve come from the original, regional food system of fifty to seventy years ago,” he said, “to an industrial system in the last 20 years … (and now we’re) returning to a regional food system.”

Because of the efforts of organizations such as Farm Fresh, the Southside Community Land Trust, the Franklin Farm Community Garden and others, Rhode Island is at the forefront of the local/regional food movement. In the past five years, the number of farms in Rhode Island has nearly doubled, representing the second-highest percentage increase in the country.

The early 1900s was the last time Rhode Island was “food sufficient.” That’s before the advent of the automobile and the advent of mass transit, when we lived in a food-based society. We need to get back to those practices and values in order to, as Ayars said, to “create a future for our children … (in which) we know where our food comes from, and that it is healthy, and that it is properly produced and produced well environmentally.”

For more information, visit health.ri.gov or fns.usda.gov.

To listen to ecoRI’s entire conversation with Farm Fresh’s Noah Fulmer click here.

Don’t Let the Food-Labeling Movement Fool You

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

The nation’s local food movement is defined by words and phrases that aren’t necessarily as friendly as they sound. Labels often are designed with marketing, not sustainability, humanity or even health, in mind.

Phrases such as “free range,” “grass fed,” “cage free” and “certified organic” can be deceiving. When the food-labeling movement began in the 1970s in California, it was intended to let consumers know that their produce wasn’t tainted with herbicide and pesticide residue.

Back then, buying food certified with the California Organic Standard meant you were an “earthy-crunchy, bean-sprout and granola-eating hippy.” It also meant you were in a small percentage of consumers who worried about chemical use in the production of their food.

That group of concerned consumers started to grow in the late 1980s, when reports about a cancer-causing chemical called Alar being sprayed on apples to keep them on the trees longer and to enhance their crunch and look went public.

A decade later, when super-sized food manufactures like General Mills and Coca-Cola discovered that words and phrases such as “organic,” “farm raised” and “old-fashioned” produced profits, there was an explosion of food labels claiming this or promising that.

These mega companies started buying up organic companies to diversify their portfolios, and, since then, the labeling of food continues to be watered-down.

“It’s scary what is going on out there with our food system,” Kathryn DeMaster, a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at Brown University, recently told a crowd that had gathered in AS220’s community arts space in downtown Providence to hear her speak about food justice and consumer choices.

The crowd of about 50 people consisted mostly of students from Providence College, Johnson & Wales University and Brown University, a group of high school students from Providence and North Kingstown and a handful of more-seasoned consumers, including a journalist who will remain unnamed.

DeMaster teaches a course entitled “Humans, Nature and the Environment: Addressing Environmental Change in the 21st Century,” and her 45-minute presentation last week dealt with such issues as: Which is better: local or organic? What do labels mean? Who gets access to what kinds of foods in urban areas?

The well-attended event, she said, “speaks to how interesting and engaging these topics are. We all eat.”

We just don’t know how much pesticide and herbicide is sprayed on our food, how much hormones and antibiotics are injected into it and how much big agribusinesses such as Monsanto control it.

“There’s a lot labels tell us and don’t tell us,” DeMaster said. “Labels have specific meaning and politics behind them.”

For example, she explained that the label “free range” doesn’t mean chickens, pigs and cattle enjoy their limited existence roaming lush-green pastures and sunlit farmyards. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations for free-range certification apply only to poultry.

The USDA requires that chickens and turkeys raised for their meat have “access” to the outside. There is no requirement for access to pasture, and there may be access to only dirt or gravel. There also are no requirements for the size of this “outside range” or the amount of time an animal must have access to the outdoors.

There is no legal definition for “free-range” chicken eggs, and the term doesn’t explain what an animal eats. It’s likely genetically modified feed massed produced by Monsanto, not bugs.

Many “free-range” chickens are raised quickly for profit, in about seven weeks, DeMaster said. For the first five weeks, they’re not allowed outside — exercise would decrease the size of their breasts, which provide the more-popular white meat — and live in smelly and often filthy chicken houses that may allow sunlight in.

“After five weeks, a small door opens that allows in light and strange noises,” she said. “But after spending five weeks inside, they’re afraid. Most never go outside.”

The term “free range” and other similar labels such as “low stocking density,” “pasture raised,” “humanely raised,” “grass fed” and “cage free” are less husbandry terms and instead manipulated as advertising gimmicks.

“Grass fed” certification by the USDA, at least, doesn’t deal with the use of hormones and antibiotics, confinement of animals and environmental stewardship. “Cage free” simply means chickens can’t be raised in conventional practices, such as in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) like battery cages.

Many of these animals, though, are raised in cage-like boxes without access to the outdoors or sunlight, according to DeMaster. They often have their beaks forcibly mutilated.

The use of the term “certified organic” is no less confusing or manipulative.

Federal organic legislation defines three levels of organics. Products made entirely with certified organic ingredients and methods can be labeled “100 percent organic.” Products with at least 95 percent organic ingredients can use the word “organic” — even if the other 5 percent was bathed in a concoction of pesticides, herbicides, hormones and antibiotics. Both designations can display the USDA organic seal.

A third category, containing a minimum of 70 percent organic ingredients, can be labeled “made with organic ingredients.”

Much like our cumbersome and loophole-ridden tax system, our food-labeling system was crafted with the help of special interests and big business. The more confusing the better — at least for the political donor class.

The solution? Get to know your local farmers, DeMaster said.

“The best way to know what you are eating is to talk to a farmer,” the Wisconsin native said. “That was the rally crying in the ’70s and ’80s and we’re moving back in that direction.”

Family Farms Link Economy to Public Health

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

KINGSTON — To feed Rhode Island’s population properly — based on USDA dietary guidelines — it takes close to 1.5 billion pounds of food a year, meaning the Ocean State is short about 3,700 acres of agricultural land, according to a Michigan State University professor of sustainable agriculture.

Michael W. Hamm, Ph.D., gave a presentation last week entitled “An Economic Development Framework for Sustainable Agriculture” at the University of Rhode Island Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences. The nearly full lecture hall included farmers, academics, students and policymakers.

Hamm’s talk focused on how to produce healthy foods while both maintaining the environment and remaining economically viable. He said it takes 360 billion pounds of food a year to feed this country’s 300 million or so people a healthy diet.

“We under produce our healthy guidelines when it comes to produce,” Hamm said. “During the last fifty years we’ve developed production centers for our produce. Our agriculture was more diversified fifty years ago.”

Climate-change concerns, rising fuel costs and a growing demand for local food are encouraging the return of small farms. “People are developing a reborn appreciation for farmers,” Hamm said. “The profession is seeing some newfound respect.”

That’s a good thing, considering California will have a difficult time maintaining its current rate of produce production. The Golden State currently produces half of the country’s fruits and vegetables. These crops are irrigated largely with runoff from snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which just last month showed below-normal levels and led to the lowest-ever preliminary allocation by the water system that serves cities and farms across this vast West Coast state.

In the past week, a series of winter storms dumped more than 2 feet of snow in those mountains, but California still is in the midst of a three-year drought.

“In twenty to thirty years from now, California will not be producing half of the produce we eat,” Hamm said. “Much of our produce is grown in concentrated areas that are threatened by development.”

In fact, much of our agricultural land is under development pressure. According to Hamm, 63 percent of our dairy farmland and 86 percent of our produce farmland could be lost because of economic pressures.

Much of the rest of the country’s fruits and vegetables not grown in California are imported. But with 48 countries and counting that are faced with stressed or scarce water resources, plus the prominent role the rising cost of energy plays in food production, Hamm said it is time to improve the social, environmental and economic viability of family farms.

“Ten years ago ‘local’ was a dirty word,” he said. “We’re now beginning to understand its importance.”

Family farms across the country are disappearing, with low profitability, developmental pressures and market failures not only displacing the current generation of farmers but also markedly discouraging the next generation, according to Hamm. That trend, he said, needs to be reversed, because to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance requires local farms and an influx of new farmers.

According to the 2007 farm census, Rhode Island has 2,418 acres for vegetable production, 580 acres of orchards and 542 acres that grow potatoes. Those 3,540 combined agricultural acres are nearly 4,000 less than what is needed to feed Rhode Islanders a balanced diet that recommends five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

“Our farming population is getting older,”  said Hamm, noting that the average age of a Rhode Island farmer is 56. “We need to help those who want to be the farmers of the future.”

The next generation of Rhode Island farmers, however, face a substantial hurdle: Ocean State farmland is the most expensive in the country.

This new generation of farmers — a group that still needs to be developed and nurtured locally and nationally — will need training, business development skills, capital, markets, continuing education and, of course, land.

“There is a direct link between public health and economic development opportunities,” Hamm said. “We need more family farms.”

Rhode Island Works Toward

Agricultural Sustainability

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

More consumers want to eat locally grown food, such as these tomatoes that were on sale at the Hope Street farmers’ market in Providence this summer. (Joanna Detz/ecoRI staff)In the early 1940s, Rhode Island had some 300,000 acres of arable farmland, but since the middle of that war-torn decade, the Ocean State has lost about 80 percent of its agricultural space to real estate development.

Today, Rhode Island has roughly 65,000 acres of food-producing farmland, according to Rupert Friday, director of the Rhode Island Land Trust.

“We’ve lost so much of our farmland to development,” he said. “Farms are such a part of our fabric in Rhode Island. It was our way of life for generations.”

That way of life is slowly returning.

Witness the rise in community-supported agriculture programs, the heightened interest in urban and school gardening and the growing popularity of farmers’ markets.

“People want to grow food,” said Leo Pollock, education director for the Southside Community Land Trust. “It’s not a hobby for these people; they’re feeding their families with these gardens.”

In the past 25 years, the South Providence nonprofit has transformed nearly 5 acres of degraded vacant lots overgrown with weeds, littered with broken glass and tires and soil polluted with heavy metals into community gardens. Its three-quarters-of-an-acre City Farm provides food and flowers for local farmers’ markets, grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops and food pantries.

During the past decade, the nationwide emergence of a local food movement has brought increased attention to such programs. The Southside Community Land Trust now boasts a farm operation on 50 preserved acres in Cranston, has established the Broad Street Farmers’ Market and has helped 15 schools plant their own gardens and start garden clubs.

South Providence’s agriculturally savvy Hmong population, for example, grows a type of bitter melon, Asian eggplant and pumpkin that are hard to find anywhere else in the United States.

“People are producing food, they’re part of a garden, part of a community, and that is a powerful concept,” Pollock said.

It’s a concept that is being embraced across Rhode Island, and across the country.

Rising fuel prices, declining petroleum reserves, mounting concerns about climate change and health problems associated with diets rich in processed foods, has produced a swell of interest in eating locally grown and raised food. This trend toward localized food is reflected in the recent rise in the number of farms in the United States, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

Since 2002, the number of farms in the United States has increased by about 4 percent to nearly 2.5 million, according to the Washington, D.C.-based environmental organization.

The quickly gaining-steam local food movement is beginning to reverse a century-long trend of farm consolidation. A mass industrial approach to farming, coupled with substantial government subsidies, put the production of America’s food into the control of mega-sized cattle, dairy, hog and poultry operations and massive agricultural conglomerates.

The mechanized farming of food corporations brought with it increased chemical use and government policies that favored maximizing production. It crippled many rural communities.

While this transformation in U.S. food production, which began in earnest shortly after World War II, resulted in many positive changes, it also forced lots of family farms to sell part or all of their land to developers, led to topsoil depletion, groundwater contamination and a substantial carbon footprint.

Since 1985, activists, environmentalists and land trusts have helped protect 81 Rhode Island farms and 6,232 acres of productive farmland, according to the Southside Community Land Trust.

This effort to become more agriculturally sustainable, and, thus, more environmentally friendly, doesn’t come without significant challenges, especially in the wake of a sputtering economy and the state’s high cost for land. Rhode Island has the second-highest farmland prices in the Northeast, an average of $12,000 an acre, according to the Southside Community Land Trust. The national average price of farmland is $2,350 an acre.

“It’s about how to protect what farmland is left in the state and how to keep it an active, productive farm instead of becoming a hobby farm,” Friday said. “There’s lots of farmers willing to protect their land but there’s not enough money to buy all of these development rights.”

In the past two decades, however, farmers’ markets, which largely had been replaced by chain supermarkets and food brokers, have regained their popularity. Increased demand in Rhode Island has allowed the Coastal Growers Market and Farm Fresh to run wintertime farmers’ markets in North Kingstown and Pawtucket, respectively.

In fact, the number of farmers’ markets in the United States has increased from 1,755 in 1994 to nearly 5,000 today, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

Small family farms have redeveloped niches in local communities and within local food systems, often selling directly to grocery store owners and/or individual consumers. More and more restaurants, such as the Garden Grille Café in Pawtucket and La Laiterie at Farmstead and Local 121, both in Providence, are emphasizing locally grown food on their menus. That’s welcome news to Rhode Island’s 600 or so working farms.

And as concern for the environment grows — 60 percent of American children say they are more afraid of global warming than of terrorism, car accidents or cancer, according to a recent survey administered by BrainPop to 1,000 middle-school students across the country — future generations likely will prefer food that isn’t mass shipped via planes, trains and trucks.