NEWPORT — Fresh grilled fish straight off the boat is one of life’s great pleasures. Millions visit New England shores for just such delectable bounty. Now, thanks to A. Ross Pearsall and Ocean State Fresh, growing numbers of Aquidneck Islanders and Bristol residents are enjoying a “share” of locally caught fish delivered fresh to their door every week.

With his Ocean State Fresh Community Supported Fishery Program, Pearsall is just that much ahead of the curve, not only in Rhode Island but nationally. Community-supported fisheries will take off in 2012, predicts the most recent issue of Bon Appetite magazine.

A community-supported fishery — or CSF — is similar to the far more prevalent community-supported agriculture program — or CSA. From their beginning in New England in 1986, CSAs grew to nearly 13,000 in 2007, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) figures (pdf).

The CSA model originally inspired by Austrian Rudolf Steiner, creator of Waldorf Schools, creates a dynamic transparent relationship between the farm, local growing conditions, the growers and the consumer. Each week for 12 to 16 weeks subscribers visit their local CSA farm for their share of what’s ripened or been harvested that week.

While CSAs have blossomed across the nation, their sustainable seafood cousins CSFs are just getting started. When Pearsall first conceived of Ocean State Fresh, there were just 14 community-supported fisheries in the entire country. Today, according to The Local Catch Network, there are nearly 80, including The Local Catch Inc. in Narragansett.

Unlike the traditional CSA, where customers go to the farm for pick up their produce, Pearsall delivers fish on ice fresh from the docks to each shareholder. His dock-to-door service facilitated by a new Ford Transit Connect refrigerated van, branded with the Ocean State Fresh logo.

Fish selections vary from week to week, depending upon what’s available fresh just before delivery day, and each is carefully chosen and must be sustainable. “All of it is tracked under management by federal and state government,” Pearsall said. “We are not dealing with bluefin tuna here.”

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has listed bluefin as a “species of concern” because of declining populations. The status of any given fishery can be checked online at Fishwatch.

“We will buy fish from anyone who can assure us it comes from Rhode Island fisherman,” Pearsall said. The Ocean State Fresh selection has featured striped Bass, mackerel, squid, lobster, cod, herring, bluefish, monkfish and whiting, and locally sourced shellfish including oysters, quahogs, mussels and scallops.

So what are the difference makers with CSF seafood from Ocean State Fresh?

“Quality control is high, traveling distance is a lot shorter,” said Pearsall, noting that deliveries are made within 36 hours of being netted. “There’s also a difference in the quality of the fish. Smaller boats and smaller hauls mean less fish, less stress, less lactic acid.”

The result: fresher, higher quality fish on a consumer’s table.

OSF buys primarily from Narragansett-based The Local Catch — a cooperative of several fishing boat owners based in Galilee. A 12-week subscription is sold in either half- or full- shares, and guaranteed fresh and locally caught or Rhode Island farm raised. Aquidneck Islanders or Bristol area locals who want to sample any given week’s share can buy a single week half-share a la’ carte online or look for the Ocean State Fresh van at State Pier 9 on Fridays.

As 2011 comes to a close, just five months since beginning operations, Ocean State Fresh continues to generate new business. “We have sold six shares just in the last month,” Pearsall said, “and 80 percent are return customers.”

The nonprofit was launched the last week of July and in the first day alone sold $7,000 worth of shares. “Everything has been super positive,” Pearsall said, encouraged by the early success of what he describes as a “super-niche market,” one developed by word of mouth and social networking.

However, as Pearsall noted “nothing is being actively done in terms of promoting in-state fishermen.” His answer is to build a statewide local sustainability seal and brand to boost Rhode Island-based fisheries.

The dynamics and public interest that benefit local agriculture and food have the same potential to help local fisheries, according to Ken Ayars, chief of the DEM’s Division of Agriculture.

State efforts could soon support an Ocean State fishing industry that faces problems of fleet consolidation, increasing fuel and labor costs, and market volatility. The recently formed state Seafood Marketing Collaborative signed into law last July could aid Pearsall’s aspirations. It held its first meeting in October and a final report is due April 30.

“I think the legislation was well intended but it doesn’t have a lot of teeth,” said the city’s pioneering fresh fish purveyor. “It’s a good start.”

The Gerlachs: Bill, Sara, Will (8), Amelia (6) and Bodhi (2). (Dave Fisher/ecoRI News)TIVERTON — Everyone has his or her own idea of what is considered local food. Certainly, local in Rhode Island can't stop at the state border, but where is the cutoff for local food?

A 500-mile radius will get you well into Canada, west to Illinois and as far south as North Carolina. That is a pretty broad net to cast, and the smaller you make that radius, the more difficult it is to maintain a diet sourced completely within those boundaries. Recently, a local family found out just how difficult that is, when it undertook the 14-day, 125-mile local food EcoChallenge sponsored by the Northwest Earth Institute.

Bill and Sara Gerlach, and their three children Will, 8, Amelia, 6, and Bodhi, 2, live less than a mile from the Massachusetts border. A 125-mile radius around their home covers all of Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and extends into Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. While that is a pretty significant chunk of land, trying to source all of your food from within that circle exposes holes in the local food system pretty quickly.

“The local food system has great power to create communities,” Bill said. "It’s healthier food, and buying locally and creating meals from scratch forces you to slow down and really savor your food.”

For the Gerlachs’ challenge, household staples such as orange juice and rice were out of the question. Conveniences such as microwave popcorn and mass-produced breakfast cereals were off the shopping list, too. Much of one’s diet can disappear immediately when you eliminate anything from a box or bag.

They decided to go all in for the challenge, and began preparing much of their food from scratch. Most of that responsibility fell to Sara. “Everything took more time. Dinners took much longer. I’d have to prep the next day’s meals the night before,” she said.

Luckily, Bill didn’t mind doing the seemingly endless stream of pots, pans, plates and utensils that cooking from scratch creates. Shopping took much more planning as well. Trips to the farmers’ market become longer. Sara went so far as to begin making homemade yogurt and butter using milk and cream from a local dairy, and preserving some local fruits in jams and jellies. Their four chickens began to lay eggs just in time for the challenge.

“We found that we not only connected to our local farmers and producers during the challenge,” Bill said, “but Sara and I would spend our evenings chatting and laughing while preparing the next day’s meal.”

One of the biggest holes exposed when attempting to localize a New England diet is a lack of grains. Though some farms grow rye and wheat as a cover crop, few of them actually mill the grains into flour, and even if they did, there isn’t enough farmland in New England to support a vibrant grain industry. If you’ve eaten bread lately, chances are the flour came from somewhere in the Midwest.

“We did find that we could buy wheat flour from Schartner’s farm, milled at Kenyon’s Grist Mill,” Bill said. His wife began baking bread at home with the flour. “But it’s really roughly milled,” Sara said. “I had to add a more refined flour when baking bread, otherwise it was like a brick.”

Much of the protein in the vegetarian family’s diet comes from dried beans, also difficult to find on southern New England farms. Mushrooms, another family favorite, are only cultivated on a couple of farms in New England.

Trying to balance the lives of three young children with this lifestyle change wasn't an easy task. “I found myself yelling at the kids to quiet down when the bread was rising or in the oven,” Sara said. During the two-week period, the kids could often be heard asking, “Are we done yet?”

Sara admitted to a couple of culinary disasters during the challenge. There were a few bad loaf days, the gnocchi experiment was a failure, and the kids weren’t fans of the butternut ravioli or johnnycakes, but they loved the homemade applesauce that accompanied them.

And how did the youngsters take to the challenge? “It was kinda weird,” Amelia said. "We couldn’t eat things that we used to.”

“We always try to get stuff locally, but we tried new ways of having things,” Will said.

Though the family has since gone back to buying O.J., rice and cereal, some of the changes that were made during the challenge have stuck around. Yogurt making and bread baking have retained spots on the family schedule.

One’s first assumption is that a mostly local diet would quickly put a family of five in the poor house. “The money that we spent was just about equal. Some things cost more, some cost less — especially the things that we made ourselves,” Bill said.

“But we spent a lot more time cooking and gathering ingredients," Sara said.

Bill believes the biggest shortfalls in the local food system are access and convenience, and given the results of the family’s challenge, we’d guess he’s right. You can eat almost entirely locally, but you might have to quit your job and spend all day shopping and cooking.

You can read more about the family's challenge on Bill's blog, The New Pursuit.

PROVIDENCE — Food Day delivered something special to City Hall: cartons of vegetables.

To show support for local agriculture and organizations that bring produce to our communities, Mayor Angel Taveras recently signed on for the Veggie Box program — a produce delivery service run by Farm Fresh Rhode Island. Every other week, Farm Fresh's innovative market mobile delivers boxes of fresh veggies from farms in Rhode Island and Massachusetts directly to employees at their businesses.

For participating city employees, the program delivers boxes containing about 10 pounds of produce directly to City Hall. The convenience offers well-priced and healthy options for employees and their families. The contents are a mix of recently harvested produce — some common, other less so. So far it has included apples, beets, cabbage, carrots, cranberries, pea greens, garlic, potatoes, kale, turnips and winter squash.

Farm Fresh offers the program to businesses and organizations throughout the city. Since the program started in August, participation has grown to include the state Department of Health, Blue Cross & Blue Shield, Miriam Hospital, Delta Dental and Shape Up Rhode Island. Farm Fresh hopes to expand the program next year.

Each box costs $20 per delivery over two months. Participants also get an e-mail with recipes and information about the farm where the food was grown.

"It's growing and growing and has exceeded expectations from the first run," said Hannah Mellion of Farm Fresh. More than $25,000 of revenue has gone to local farmers in five months, she said.

The Veggie Box program was rolled out for city employees Oct. 24 in time for Rhode Island’s celebration of National Food Day.

“By increasing access to fresh, local and healthy food choices for all families, the Food Policy Council and its community partners are working to make Providence residents and all Rhode Islanders healthier, especially those who suffer from the effects of childhood obesity and malnutrition,” Taveras said.

NEWPORT —Local farmers, food producers and policymakers joined forces Oct. 26 at the inaugural Food & Farming Community Forum at the Community College of Rhode Island’s City-by-the-Sea campus.

Moderated by Kyle Hence, the public forum served as the platform to showcase the new “Rhode Island Agriculture: Five Year Strategic Plan” created by the Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership.

The forum’s panelists included was Ken Ayars, chief of the Division of Agriculture for the state Department of Environmental Management; Ted Clement, executive director of the Aquidneck Land Trust; Sanne Kure-Jensen, writer and landscape consultant; Brian Simmons, of Simmons Farm in Middletown; Jeff Mello, of Aquidneck Honey; Paul Nunes, of Newport Vineyards; and Stu Nunnery, of New England FarmWays.

The forum acted as a jumping-off point for leaders in the local food economy to introduce the issues Rhode Island is facing in terms of food security and land preservation, and how the state can begin to transition into a more sustainable economy.

Rhode Island only produces 1 percent of its own food supply, taking advantage of far less of its potential than it should be, Hence said.

“There is a vast potential to increase a locally based food system,” Ayars said. “Although we are only using one percent of our own food production at the moment, there is major room for growth.”

Despite a growing number of farms and farmers in the state, Rhode Island has the leading percentage of farmland lost to development — 80 percent lost since the 1940s, according Clement.

It will take drastic action to turn this statistic around, starting with awareness, he said. “We have to be warriors for change.”

Mello made an analogy between a beehive and a community, noting that like a beehive, it is imperative that communities work together and utilize neighbors’ resources in order to build a self-sufficient community.

A major factor of such an effort is creating direct farmer-to-consumer relationships, the importance of which was echoed by the panelists. Cultivating a relationship with those who grow and those who buy food is an integral part of farming, Simmons said. He does this through making sure either him or his wife is present at any farmers’ market they sell at, stressing the importance of being able to educate the consumer.

The local food system is about “control over your own future, your own environment,” Ayars said, and should be a “more permanent and bigger part of our state’s economy.”

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island’s local food system has enjoyed a renaissance during the past 10 years. The number of farmers' markets has swelled to nearly 50 statewide, the number of farms increased 42 percent between 2002 and 2007, we lead the nation in direct-to-consumer sales from farms and Ocean State fishermen are enjoying the benefits of the state's new Seafood Marketing Collaborative.

While organizations such as Farm Fresh Rhode Island and Kids First have made significant strides toward providing access to fresh, healthful, local foods to Rhode Islanders, only about 1 percent of food consumed in Rhode Island is grown, produced or harvested in state.

In an effort to continue the positive growth of the state's local food system, the Rhode Island Food Policy Council was launched at a ceremony Oct. 24 at the Statehouse. The council is comprised of representatives from 16 Rhode Island governmental, nongovernmental, academic and nonprofit organizations. The council will be guided in creating a comprehensive food policy for L’il Rhody by the Rhode Island Food Assessment, which also was released, in part, on National Food Day.

"The state of Rhode Island possesses a rich local food culture that supports and promotes the health and well-being of Rhode Island communities and the local economy," state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) Director Janet Coit said. "Strengthening our food system and increasing access to healthy and affordable food will take creativity, dedication and collaboration among all Rhode Islanders.”

Increasingly nationwide, strong local food systems are becoming viewed as a lynchpin of efforts to improve health, build robust, sustainable communities, fortify local economies, preserve open space and protect environmental assets. Localized food systems also seem to be a key component in adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change.

In Rhode Island, nearly 15 percent of households experience food insecurity, that is, they lack the money and resources to acquire the food they need. That percentage becomes even more shameful when one considers that nearly 50 percent of the edible food raised in the United States is thrown out at some stage of the food supply chain. Of those that do have enough — or too much — to eat on a regular basis, 24 percent of Rhode Islanders are considered clinically obese, and about 7 percent of the population suffers from type 2 diabetes.

"Available, affordable and locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables help Rhode Islanders stay healthy," said state Director of Health Dr. Michael Fine. "A healthier diet combined with more physical activity, will help Rhode Islanders reduce their risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer."

The assessment process posed many questions and sought many answers about local food supply chains. How do they function and how could they work better? How do they connect, or not connect, consumers, especially those with limited access to fresh foods, to food industry actors? Where are the opportunities for development of supply-chain connections that will contribute to Rhode Island’s food security? All of these are relatively simple questions with extremely complex answers.

The assessment identified 15 points in the food system that could be leveraged to bolster food security throughout the state, including improving the coordination and maximizing food benefits for those in need at farmers’ markets, increasing urban and winter food production, creatively using existing and new infrastructure, increasing consumer access in larger retail establishments, simplifying food safety regulations, and understanding and mitigating the food system’s environmental impact.

Sen. Susan Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown, chairwoman of the Committee on Environment and Agriculture, said, "As we continue to address the health and food needs for all the citizens of Rhode Island, it is essential that we foster locally produced, sustainable food sources that promote economic vitality and protect farmers for generations to come."

The Rhode Island Food Policy Council's full report will be released in December.

By KENNETH D. AYARS/special to ecoRI News

The face of Rhode Island agriculture is changing, driven by global, regional and local influences. Among those changes is a dramatic increase in small farmers and a fast-developing local food economy that is surging despite the general economic downturn.

Last year, a coalition of farmers, agencies and nongovernmental organizations formed the Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership, and published the inaugural “Rhode Island Agriculture: Five Year Strategic Plan” this past May. The rest of this article is excerpts taken directly from various sections of the plan that best describe the current trends and influences on Rhode Island agriculture.

The van Beuren Foundation also has provided funding to a separate coalition headed by the Southside Community Land Trust to conduct the first complete food assessment for Rhode Island. The partners have formed a Food Policy Council and will release the results of the assessment on Rhode Island Food Day, Oct. 24, at the Statehouse.

Subsistence farming was the primary occupation of many early Colonial Rhode Islanders, and the most of the state’s land area was once farmed. As population levels increased and society and economies developed, so did the market for various agricultural products within Rhode Island, New England, other parts of Colonial America and beyond.

Rhode Island was well situated to take advantage of market opportunities given its proximity to Narragansett Bay, the ocean and trade routes, combined with the moderating climatic effect of the ocean and substantial coastal farmlands. Commercial agriculture became an integral and important part of the early state economy.

The Ocean State also was the birthplace of the industrial revolution, and the ascendance of a manufacturing-based economy, and later, intense real estate development, contributed to a dramatic decline in agriculture, particularly in the 20th century. Farmland decreased by about 80 percent from the beginning to the end of century.

After World War II, Rhode Island and New England became less and less dependent upon local agriculture for food production. Most of the area’s food came from other regions of the United States and world. Rhode Island also became unique within New England in the high percentage of its agricultural economy attributed to nursery plants, ornamentals and turf, which reflected the state’s suburban development and strong housing market. As people no longer depended on local farming for their food, the state began to lose its understanding of the economic value of farmland.

Rhode Island’s 1 million consumers now rely on an increasingly global food system. New England produces less than 10 percent of the fruits and vegetables consumed in the region and barely half of its milk and cheese. Like the rest of the region, the Ocean State has a food system that is increasingly vulnerable to short- and long-term supply and price disruptions. Natural disasters, weather events, terrorist acts, food safety scares, transportation disruptions and energy shocks can each cut off food supplies in a short period of time, especially perishable items such as fruits, vegetables and milk.

The first decade of the 21st century, however, saw a market shift in the American attitude toward food. Until then, most Americans had shopped solely in supermarkets for their foods and were generally unaware of, and uninterested in, their food’s origins. But an increase in incidences of food contamination, both domestic and foreign, heightened awareness of food safety issues and of American dependence on imported foods.

Concern about the sharp increase in obesity has focused public attention on nutritional health, and a growing interest in cooking has sparked demand for fresh foods, ethnic cuisines and new products. This shift in attitudes has been clearly evident in Rhode Island. Even the recent recession didn’t slow rising consumer demand for locally grown farm products.

In a remarkable turn around from the prior century, the state is now growing new farms and farmers. According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, the number of farms in Rhode Island swelled from 858 to 1,219 between 2002 and 2007 — an increase of 42 percent that is the highest in New England and 10 times the national average.

Much of this growth has been in the state’s smallest farms. Farms with less than $5,000 in annual sales now constitute more than half of the farms in the state. These farms, however, produce less than 1 percent of the value of the state’s agricultural products. Most of the state’s agricultural market value is produced by 167 farms with annual sales of between $50,000 and $1 million. Thirteen farms have annual sales of more than $1 million and account for 35 percent of market share, while the 419 farms with sales between $5,000 and $50,000 constitute the remainder.

Once driven almost exclusively by wholesale market, today’s agricultural industry is more diverse, with greater emphasis on direct-to-consumer sales. While many farmers continue to sell through wholesale markets, more than 27 percent of Rhode Island farms are selling a least some of their product directly to consumers. In 2002, direct-to-consumer sales of agricultural products for human consumption totaled $3.7 million. By 2007, it had grown to $6.3 million, or nearly 10 percent of all agricultural market sales in Rhode Island.

Similarly, from 1998 to 2009, the number of horticultural operations with more than $10,000 in annual sales marketing directly to consumers rose from 77 to 88, with retail sales rising from $6.12 million to $7.2 million. In fact, the Ocean State now leads the country in the percentage of agricultural market sales derived from direct marketing.

Eliminating the middleman helps improve farm profits. According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, the 281 farms that are marketing raw foods directly to consumers had, on average, more that double the annual net cash farm income in 2007 than farms that were not involved in these types of ventures. The retail-oriented focus of Rhode Island farms includes an emphasis on diversification and value-added products and venues, and initiatives such as farmers’ markets, roadside stands and cooperative marketing. The changes in the marketplace combined with state, local and non-governmental support have contributed to the resurgence in farming.

This resurgence also has been bolstered of late by the local food movement, which has its origins in the increasing recognition of vulnerabilities in the current global food system and the need to recreate a more sustainable, healthy and locally based food system.

Farmers’ markets are growing, bringing local products to new urban and rural communities. There are now nearly 50 markets statewide. Consumers are also flocking to farm stands, pick-your-own operations and to community supported agriculture (CSA) programs. Many farms and nurseries with direct-to-consumer sales are adding additional attractions, such as corn mazes, hayrides and butterfly houses, to improve profitability.

Farms and farmers are important small businesses, generating jobs, taxes and revenues. A rough and conservative estimate of the sector’s contribution to the state’s economy is $100 million. Two recent studies indicate that that figure is likely far higher. A 2010 study by the University of Connecticut of the economic contribution of agriculture in the Nutmeg State found that agriculture is as $3.5 billion industry that generates more than 20,000 jobs. Especially relevant to Rhode Island is the study’s finding that each dollar in sales generated by the agricultural industry creates up to an additional dollars worth of economic activity statewide.

Kenneth D. Ayars is the chief of the Division of Agriculture for the state Department of Environmental Management. This article originally was published in the Fall 2011 Narragansett Bay Journal.

URI senior Noah Leclaire-Conway harvests cherry tomatoes that will be consumed by students in university dining halls. (Photo courtesy of URI)KINGSTON — Students eating in the University of Rhode Island dining halls and those enjoying catered meals at university events are consuming produce grown and harvested by fellow students.

The project is an outgrowth of the URI Food Agriculture Program, which conducts research and “variety trials” on an assortment of vegetables to support local commercial growers. The bulk of the harvest goes to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, but chef Jeff Marino in URI Dining Services expressed interest in obtaining produce grown on campus for student meals.

“We started out selling them tomatoes, squash and potatoes a year ago, and last spring we asked Chef Jeff what he would like us to grow for him this year,” said Rebecca Brown, URI assistant professor of plant sciences and coordinator of the project. “He said he wanted basil. So we conducted a basil variety trial, which he used over the summer to make pesto for the dining halls. We’re also selling him cherry and grape tomatoes, sauce tomatoes and slicing tomatoes.”

Last year, students in Brown’s classes on vegetable crops grew and sold produce to the dining halls valued at about $1,000; this year they have surpassed that figure with a long harvest season remaining. Brown said she hopes to produce salad greens for the campus throughout the winter in newly installed “high tunnels” — unheated greenhouses that provide protection from the weather and allow plants to be grown directly in the ground.

“We’re trying to bring in more local fresh foods to the dining halls, because students are asking for it and it tastes so much better,” Marino said. “And you can’t get any more local than growing food on campus. It brings us back to the roots of URI as an agricultural college.”

Marino said next year he is considering offering a “farm-to-fork” menu made up entirely of foods grown on the URI campus.

Noah LeClaire-Conway, a URI senior from Narragansett, is in his third year of growing vegetables at the university’s agronomy fields. “I’ve always been interested in agriculture, and when I came back to school I decided I wanted a career where I knew I’d be able to feed my family,” he said. “It’s backbreaking work, but it’s also a lot of fun. And it saves a trip to the store, because at the end of the day I can bring home some food. We eat really well.”

Food production is one of the few growth industries in Rhode Island, according to Brown. She noted that there was a 47 percent increase in the number of farms in the state from 2002 to 2007.

“Situated between New York and Boston, we’re in a perfect location for the new agriculture – locally grown perishable foods,” she said.

Is Stop & Shop missing the boat on what is local? All those vegetables can be found a lot closer than New York and New Jersey. (Dave Fisher/ecoRI News staff)NORTH SMITHFIELD — Imagine my surprise and pleasure when on a recent trip to my local Stop & Shop, the first thing I saw was a large sign touting the influx of local produce to the market.

“Finally, the big markets are starting to get it,” I thought. If you combine the purchasing power and market penetration of a giant like Stop & Shop with produce from local farms, everybody wins. Farmers can increase their profits by selling their wares in bulk, consumers win by having greater access to healthful veggies that, in many cases, aren’t laden with petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and the planet wins due to the decreased carbon output of shipping those fruits and vegetables long distances.

Stop & Shop knows the value of branding local products as local. There is a particular market segment that will automatically buy local veggies over the monoculture monstrosities that occupy most of the produce section of your local mega-mart. To that end, S&S has conveniently provided the names of the local farms from which these fruits and vegetables hail.

I expected to see names like Confreda, Schartner and Wishing Stone. Names familiar to those who frequent Rhode Island’s nearly 50 farmers' markets. I was looking forward to buying some of the local cucumbers, green beans, yellow and green squash, and eggplant that the sign boasted.

Well, pleasant surprise gave way to free-market disappointment as I scanned the sign, and found that Stop & Shop’s idea of local differs from what most Rhode Islanders would consider local. Every farm listed on the sign was from New York or New Jersey.

Expanding peoples’ concept of what is local is one of the greatest challenges to small growers and producers. I’ve always felt that if you can drive to the farm and back in a day, that can be considered local. While these New York and New Jersey farms qualify as local according this criterion, farms in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts are certainly more local. Do Stop & Shop locations in New York advertise Rhode Island produce as local?

I contacted Stop & Shop’s corporate office in Quincy, Mass., (more local than New York) to ask that and a few other questions about this produce which, according to the sign, was “Picked fresh today from nearby farms.”

Suzi Robinson, press liaison for Stop & Shop, assured me that the signage at store 721 was merely an oversight. “I would guess that they just got the wrong information,” she said. “We are working with several dozen farms in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

"Over the past five years, we’ve heard our customers asking for more local produce, and we are trying to please those customers. But the fundamental challenges of working with local growers are quality and volume aspects.”

Companies such as Stop & Shop have strict guidelines on the size, shape, color and appearance of blemishes on the produce that they purchase. Purchasing from local growers also presents a volume/supply issue, because most small farmers usually don’t grow any one particular fruit or vegetable in large numbers.

WOONSOCKET — Anyone who doesn’t live under a rock, in a cave on Mars, knows that our health as a nation is threatened by diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and a list of other maladies that can be traced back to one underlying condition — obesity. The health-care profession has largely taken a reactionary, drug-based approach to the symptoms of obesity, and rarely is a diet on your doctor’s prescription pad.

That is changing for the patients at the Thundermist Health Center. As one of seven sites in the pilot of the Wholesome Wave Foundation’s Veggie Rx program, 40 families whose health-care needs are served by the clinic are given “prescriptions” that are basically farmers' market vouchers. Families in the program are given a dollar per day per family member, so a family of four would have a weekly credit of $28 good for fruits and vegetables at the farmers’ market, conveniently located in the clinic’s parking lot.

Funding for the program comes from the Wholesome Wave Foundation and the Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited (CAVU) Foundation, and is administered locally by Thundermist Health and Farm Fresh Rhode Island.

Participating families are referred by their primary physician to the clinic. Patients are then given a complete physical survey and receive nutritional counseling. At that point, a prescription is written that can be redeemed at a local farmers’ market. Participants return to the clinic monthly for re-evaluation.

Families that were chosen for the program were evaluated as “at risk” for diet-related illnesses such as diabetes, high cholesterol and heart disease, as well as families with pregnant women.

Because no pilot program is considered complete without a data set, market manager Kayla Ringelheim diligently records the ID number assigned to each redeemed prescription in a spreadsheet, and that information is sent to staff members at the clinic. The family’s purchases are then matched up with their current health evaluations in the hopes that some positive change can be observed.

Dr. Beata Nelken, a doctor at the clinic, oversees the initial nutritional counseling and subsequent physical check-ups for the participating families.

“The Veggie Rx program works in conjunction with the childhood obesity program that we started last September, which has overall been very successful," Nelken said.

Successful may be an understatement — 78 percent of children participating in the program have decreased their body mass index, 66 percent have decreased their waist circumference and 50 percent have lowered their cholesterol count and insulin production. That trend is only gaining momentum as these families collect and consume fresh, local fruits and veggies with their “prescriptions.”

As the health of families participating in the Veggie Rx pilot improves, it becomes more evident that fresh, local produce is just what the doctor ordered.