By DAVID FISHER/ecoRI staff

A lunch crowd gathered recently at the Clover Food Truck, parked on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass. (David Fisher/ecoRI staff)CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The lunch truck, or “roach coach” to use the industry parlance, is usually a pretty unappetizing place to get a meal. The overall cleanliness of these vehicles is questionable at best, they typically offer bland, uninspired fare and fresh, healthy options are rarely the norm for these rolling eateries.

Rhode Island-based chef Rolando Robledo is expanding the breakfast and lunch options for those who pass through the Kendall Square/MIT subway stop on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s Red Line. His company, Clover Fast Food, has challenged the paradigm of the lunch truck by visiting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus with the Clover Food Truck.

Robledo, an assistant professor of culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University, and his business partner Ayr Muir, originally envisioned the lunch truck as a relatively low-cost way to test a menu before opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant. But response to the locally sourced food available on the truck has been so overwhelming that taking it off the streets is no longer an option. In fact, they will soon have a second lunch truck, on Boston Common, and plan to make the trucks more mobile and available for events.

Robledo and Muir hit it off immediately upon meeting in 2008, and seven weeks later, the Clover Food Truck hit the streets.

The truck represents the culmination of a long culinary journey for Robledo. “When I graduated from Johnson and Wales, in 1995, I knew I didn’t want to work for a corporate foodservice company, but I was locked into the old business model of ‘buy the cheapest food you can, cook it to the best of your ability and mark it up as much as the public will accept,’” he said.

Since graduating, with a double major in food service management and food service education, Robledo has worked for some of the best-known chefs in America. Big names like Charlie Trotter, Emeril Lagassee and Wiley Dufresne, but according to Rolando, “working for Thomas Keller at The French Laundry in Napa Valley changed my life. I saw potatoes coming directly from the ground, and being cooked and served on the same day. I had never seen that before.”

When he got to California’s Napa Valley, which is arguably the birthplace of the modern locavore food movement, Rolando saw a vibrant community that insisted on the freshest, locally grown fruits and vegetables, and chefs and restaurants that echoed that demand.

Upon returning to his home state of Connecticut, he started to be more concerned about the food that was available to him and his growing family. His wife was pregnant at the time, and he was diagnosed with high blood pressure shortly after returning to the Northeast. This new awareness forced him to challenge the state of education at Johnson & Wales University. He formed a “Green Collaborative” for students attending Rhode Island colleges and universities to express and address their concerns about the future of our food and energy security.

His alma mater is changing its approaches to building — its newest structure on campus is LEED certified — and food production, as the university recently raised a garden to which students and instructors tend, from seed to plate.

The three cornerstones of the food philosophy behind the Clover Food Truck are a small menu, a small price and using only the freshest local food in season. Sandwiches like BBQ seitan, soy BLT and chickpea fritter are all $5, sides like cucumber and seaweed (wakama) and fennel, grapefruit, hazelnut and coriander salads are $3, and drinks like lavender lemonade and hibiscus iced tea are $2. The truck also serves coffee and light breakfast items in the morning, and get this, the menu changes every day.

In an effort to speed up service, the business partners had an app created for the iPhone, which functions much like the touch-screen terminals seen in so many restaurants. The order is taken on one phone, and then the individual orders are transmitted to up to three different phones at the trucks “stations.” The app also tracks all of the transactions and puts them in a database, which makes paying sales tax and balancing the books that much easier.

I opted for the chickpea fritter, some rosemary french fries and lavender lemonade. The fritters were crispy and stuffed into a pita with fresh cabbage, carrots and hummus that was not too garlicky or too lemony. The fries were cut not five minutes before they were fried, and lightly drizzled with olive oil and just a hint of fresh rosemary. The lemonade was perfectly sweetened, and just scented with lavender.

Robledo and Muir will be opening their main location, Clover Food Lab, in Harvard Square this fall and hope to bring the business model to Providence within two years.

To learn more about Clover’s mission to bring healthy local food to the masses, visit cloverfoodtruck.com.

By DAVID FISHER/ecoRI staff

The contest winners from the Met School Yanilka Hernandez, Genesis Mercedes and Karissa Arias. (David Fisher/ecoRI staff)PROVIDENCE — Students from three city high schools participated Friday night in a cooking competition dubbed “Iron Chef: Providence.” The three teams had 45 minutes to prepare their dishes from raw ingredients. The dishes and teams were then judged in a breadth of areas, from flavor and nutrition to presentation and teamwork.

The only rules of the competition were: an eye toward nutritional value had to be used when shopping and the ingredients couldn’t cost more than $10 and had to be bought in a neighborhood corner store. The students cooked the meals in front of the audience that had gathered at Feinstein High School.

Ashley Benson, Sahymi Ciprian and Jesus Holguin from Feinstein High made pasta sauce with fresh tomatoes, garlic, onions, peppers and basil, with fresh fruit and yogurt for dessert. Jennifer Sanchez and Miguel Ruiz of Alvarez High School made a veggie and tofu stir-fry over brown rice. Met School students Yanilka Hernandez, Genesis Mercedes and Karissa Arias prepared a black bean and corn quesadilla with avocado and salsa. All of the dishes looked and smelled terrific.

The Met School team’s recipe was judged the winner. Sodexo chefs with use the students’ recipe to make and serve veggie quesadillas, in whole-wheat tortillas, throughout the city’s public school district.

“This experience has made me be more open to new foods,” Karissa said. Yanilka, who works as an intern at Silver Star Bakery, said it was fun learning how to prepare and cook healthy foods.

Last week’s event kicked off the Providence Healthy Corner Store Initiative. The program brings together the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island, Farm Fresh Rhode Island, Kids First, the state Department of Health and two pilot stores — New Battambang, 366 Elmwood Ave., and Mi Quisqueya, 933 Broad St. — to bring a greater variety of fresh, high-quality, high-nutrition, locally grown vegetables to neighborhood stores on the South Side.

The initiative also is working to bring whole-grain breads and pastas, low-salt and low-sugar canned goods and healthier snacks to corner stores around the city.

“Everywhere in America, the cheapest, easiest-to-find food is also the worst for you,” said Amelia Rose, director of the Environmental Justice League. “The Providence Healthy Corner Store Initiative is working to change this. We want to make healthy food the easy option for Providence residents by getting healthier options into corner stores in our neighborhoods.”

The initiative was precipitated by an assessment by South Providence Neighborhood Ministries, in coordination with the Department of Heath that found only five stores in South Providence that simultaneously carry whole fruits and vegetables and 1 percent milk. They also found that even in stores that did carry produce, in many cases, the produce was of low quality.

Most of the neighborhood stores in Providence accept WIC checks, and in some cases, a majority of the financial intake of these stores is state reimbursement for WIC and EBT transactions. The Department of Health’s new WIC voucher program provides families receiving assistance with checks for $6, $8 or $10 weekly for the purchase of fruits and vegetables. Whether they are canned, frozen or fresh, is up to the consumer.

“These students showed the audience that cooking and eating healthy can be fun, affordable and delicious,” Rose said. “Now it’s the community’s turn to show storeowners that there’s demand for healthier products so that both our local economy and our community’s health thrive.”

Local Grains Bring R.I. Rye Bread to Kitchen Tables

By DAVID FISHER/ecoRI staff

The seeds, the ground flour and the finished product, rye bread. (David Fisher/ecoRI staff)PROVIDENCE — For most folks, there’s no middle ground when it comes to rye bread. You either love it, or you hate it. For those of you in the former group, here’s one more reason to love it.

As of last week, “Rhode Island Rye” is now available at Seven Stars cafes in Providence and Rumford, and will be available at the springtime farmers’ market in Pawtucket and at five other farmers’ markets statewide.

Why is it called Rhode Island Rye, you might ask?

Well, for starters (pun totally intended), the rye grain is raised and harvested by local farmer Rich Schartner of Schartner Farms in Exeter. The rye has been grown as a cover crop, to replenish nutrients and reduce erosion, at Schartner’s for years, but only recently has there been interest in milling it and producing flour.

Schartner’s family has been involved in Rhode Island agriculture for three generations. Originally a wholesale dairy farm, the farm shifted to producing fruits and vegetables in the 1960s, and recently began growing the rye grain used to make the bread.

Schartner said the farm would begin growing wheat for grinding wheat flour in the near future. “These kinds of products and these new, innovative ideas are crucial to agriculture in Rhode Island and the sustainability of farms,” he said.

In keeping with the local, ground-up approach (pun No. 2), the grain is milled by Kenyon’s Grist Mill in the hamlet of Usquepaug — a mere six miles away from Schartner Farms.

“We’ve gotten a tremendous quality rye from Schartner’s,” Paul Drumm, owner of the mill, said. “Of course, we grind in the traditional method of single pass stone grinding which is, in my estimation, the most healthful way to produce flour. (This project) is all about growing things locally and making things locally.”

Flour isn’t good for much except baking, and rising to the task (OK, I’ll stop with the puns) is Seven Stars Bakery in Pawtucket. They bake the flour into a traditional, very dense loaf called volkenbrot. That’s German for “the people’s bread.”

Jim Williams, owner and head baker at Seven Stars, said, “100 percent rye bread is something that we’ve always wanted to do, but we never felt like it would really sell, and we felt like this would be a good way for us to bring on a bread that we’ve always wanted to do, and also have something very local.

“I don’t know of any bakeries, except for a couple in the Midwest, that can say that their flour comes from right down the road.”

The Rhode Island Rye traveled less than 40 miles from harvest to table and provided income for three local businesses. This takes the concept of buying local to a whole new level.

The project was envisioned by the tireless local food crusaders at Farm Fresh Rhode Island, in particular, Hannah Mellion, from Americorps VISTA, and announced this week at the Seven Stars Bakery on Hope Street.

“This venture kicks off our ‘Local Grains Initiative,’ which about expanding grain production in Rhode Island,” she said. “This is a story about connecting businesses … bringing them together in new and exciting ways.”

Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, who began the Buy Local RI campaign, said, “This is a great story. This is really about buying local, because what you’re seeing is grown in Rhode Island soil, and then goes all the way through the process, and a unique product winds up on my kitchen table, or in a restaurant here in Rhode Island. When you buy local, 50 percent more money stays in the local economy.”

Also in attendance was Ken Ayars, director of DEM’s Department of Agriculture, who said, “I hope that this is an example of the future of Rhode Island. Our current food production system has Rhode Island at the end of a very long train that is subject to disruption. We need to recreate a local food production system and a local food shed. That is the future of agriculture in Rhode Island, and we will work to support it.”

The bread is available at Seven Stars cafes and at local farmers’ markets on Saturdays, but you may want to call ahead and reserve a loaf, because the bread has been selling out every week.

New Agricultural Partnership Formed

to Help R.I. Farmers Market Local Food

By DAVID FISHER/ecoRI staff

The recently created Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership is dedicated to improving the Ocean State’s position at the forefront of the local food movement. (ecoRI file photo)Traditionally, regional agricultural support in the United States has been run by federal and state agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and through land-grant colleges. But funding for these programs has been slashed or halted in the wake of the country’s economic downturn.

Despite having limited access to federal and state funding and organizational assistance, Rhode Island’s agriculture system has continued to flourish. However, the lack of a cohesive, integrated support system has led to a rather fragmented infrastructure for Ocean State farmers and food producers. This fragmentation has led to smaller nonprofits, such Farm Fresh Rhode Island and the Southside Community Land Trust, taking the lead, but often being bogged down trying to generate revenue, mostly through applying for grants, rather than promoting Rhode Island agriculture.

All of that is about to change.

At last month’s Rhode Island Local Food Forum, held at Brown University, Tom Sandham, former manager of the Eastern and Southern Rhode Island Conservation districts, announced the formation of the Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership. A consortium of farmers, food producers, state and local agencies and nonprofits such as Grow Smart Rhode Island will lead the partnership. It will be dedicated to improving the communication between the state’s various stakeholders.

The idea is to develop a statewide support structure by designing and implementing a five-year plan to “address problems before they present themselves,” according to Sandham. The American Farmland Trust has been hired as a consultant.

The demand for more locally grown and produced food has initiated a new type of agricultural industry, according to the 15 members of the partnership’s steering committee. There are 43 percent more farms in Rhode Island than there were five years ago, and many of these farms tend to be smaller and more diversified. Small farms are small businesses that create an agricultural industry that is one of the state’s few growth industries.

The newly created Agricultural Partnership formed just prior to the designation of agriculture as a recognized industry in Rhode Island, which will undoubtedly open the door to more state oversight and regulation. This partnership, hailed by Sandham as “the first of its kind in the nation,” will approach agriculture “from the production end, to find out what producers need.”

Consider this: You are a farmer who grows peppers. The cost to produce those peppers and the market value are nearly equal. You need to add value to those peppers, in order to make money on them. One way to increase your margin is to sell those peppers directly at a farm stand or at a farmers’ market. This will add about 50 percent to the value of those peppers, by eliminating distribution costs. The Agricultural Partnership aims to help local farmers in getting their produce to market in an economical way.

Another way is to use those peppers in a prepared dish. You, the farmer, decide that you would like to make your own sausages and serve sausage and pepper sandwiches to the public. In order to do that, you now need a production facility that is certified and monitored by several state and local offices.

Hello, red tape.

The Agricultural Partnership is working closely with the Department of Health, the Department of Environmental Management (DEM) and other state agencies to reduce, facilitate or eliminate many of the bureaucratic hoops through which Rhode Island food producers are required to jump, while still maintaining focus on the safety and quality of local food.

The partnership’s mission doesn’t end at the larger farms’ concerns. There are representatives from the state and municipal planning offices, various conservation districts and Grow Smart Rhode Island on the board to address planning and zoning issues that may arise for urban and suburban growers. There also are representatives of the van Beuren Charitable Foundation, which provided the grant for the establishment of the collaborative. The grant was co-written by Sandham and Ken Ayars of the DEM’s Division of Agriculture.

Food security is national security in the days of peak oil and peak water, but the security of the U.S. food production system is at risk. It relies on too much petroleum, too much water irrigated to drought-prone areas, too many pesticides and herbicides, and a level of industrialization that isn’t seen in any other nation.

Most of the country’s fruit and vegetable production takes place in California and Florida. These regions offer longer growing seasons for farmers, increasing yield, but shipping food from the extremities of America requires a tremendous amount of energy, and therefore, money. This centralization and standardization of the agriculture industry began a little more than 60 years ago, and yet, it has drastically changed the way we grow, ship, store and consume food.

The Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership aims to maintain the Ocean State’s position at the forefront of the local food movement. With input from all phases of food production, and its “farm-to-Statehouse” approach, it seems poised to do just that.

For more information about the Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership, visit nefarmways.com.

Rhode Island Farmers Your Voices are Needed

The newly created Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership and the American Farmland Trust are developing a five-year plan to address the future of farming in the Ocean State.

The Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership and American Farmland Trust invite farmers to help with the creation of the document, entitled the “Five Year Strategic Plan for Agriculture,” that will guide state and municipal farming policies.

Three meetings will be held regarding the document:
• Tuesday, March 30, from 6-8 p.m. at Schartners Farm, Bald Hill facility, Route 102, Exeter.
• Wednesday, March 31, from 6-8 p.m. at Heritage Hall, 101 Green St., Slatersville.
• Thursday, April 15, from 6-8 p.m. at Masonic Lodge, 81 Sprague St., Portsmouth.

To RSVP, call 401-294-1334 or send an e-mail to tisdale.farm@verizon.net.

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.