This unusual arrangement is one of the first examples of a dual-use solar installation—sometimes called agrivoltaics. It’s a photovoltaic array that’s raised far enough off the ground and spaced in such a way that some crops can still grow around and beneath the panels. The goal is to help farmers diversify their income through renewable energy generation, while keeping land in agricultural use and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“This would seem like a great thing—you get to farm and use the same exact space to generate money from solar production,” said Brad Mitchell, deputy executive director of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation. “But it’s still in the early stages.”

The idea of producing solar energy and growing crops on the same land has been around for a while. Isolated demonstration and research installations are in place or planned in Arizona, Japan, and France. In recent years, however, the concept has become more attractive, as the price of photovoltaic panels has plummeted, interest in renewable energy has risen, and financial pressures on small farmers have grown. And because solar arrays often displace agriculture, causing tension between the two land uses, agrivoltaics is being seen as a potential win-win.

A dual-use solar array in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is at the forefront of the push. The state’s ambitious renewable energy goals—current targets call for 3,600 megawatts of wind and solar capacity by the end of 2020, doubling the state’s current output of 1,800 megawatts—have created a surge of interest in developing solar projects, but the state’s high population density means that available land is scarce.

Furthermore, many local food advocates argue that an inadequate portion of the food consumed in Massachusetts is grown there. The short growing season along with high costs for labor and land can make farming in Massachusetts a financially precarious proposition. Some advocates say that dual-use solar installations have the potential to ease a number of these problems at once.

Traditionally, when solar developers turn to farmland for their projects, the property is leased or sold to the developer, the topsoil is stripped, and the panels are mounted on concrete footings embedded in the land. While the shift boosts renewable energy generation, it weakens the local food supply. Some counties have even started prohibiting large-scale solar developments on agricultural property as a way to preserve the land.

Dual-use developments are particularly suited to Massachusetts’ needs, and the state is seizing the opportunity. The UMass installation, a partnership between private solar company Hyperion Systems and the university, is home to a unique research project aimed at calculating exactly well how different crops fare when grown beneath raised panels. And the state’s new solar incentive program, known as Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART), offers extra compensation for dual-use projects.

“To our knowledge, no place else is doing what we’re doing,” said Michael Lehan, an advisor to Hyperion Systems.

Agrivoltaics’ Origin Story

The story of dual-use projects in Massachusetts dates to 2008, when construction company owner Dave Marley installed a solar array on the roof of his headquarters in Amherst and quickly decided he wanted to generate even more energy. As he started considering farmland as a location, Marley became determined to find a way to avoid interrupting the land’s agricultural use.

“He kept emphasizing, ‘I want to keep the land alive and well. I don’t want to cover up the land,’” said Gerald Palano, renewable energy coordinator for the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources.

In 2009, Marley connected with researchers at UMass and in 2010 his vision became a reality with the construction of a 70-panel array at a research farm in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. The following year, Marley formed Hyperion Solar to pursue this new approach to renewable energy. Marley died in 2013, and his son James has taken over the business.

Today, the dual-use installation Dave Marley envisioned remains in place, advancing his goals. The lower ends of the panels are raised seven feet off the ground and rise to 15 feet in the air. They’re spaced far enough apart to allow sunlight to pass through to the field below and can be shifted horizontally to adjust the gap. The panels are supported by vertical poles embedded 10 feet into the ground. No concrete is used, so the damage to the soil is limited and completely reversible.

“What farmers really care about is the land,” Lehan said. “And there is minimum soil disruption.”

Installing the poles to mount a solar array.

Since the array came online in 2011, Stephen Herbert, professor of agronomy at UMass, has been studying the impact of the panels on crop growth. His results have been encouraging.

When he cultivated grass and other forage plants to support grazing cows, the land under the panels yielded more than 90 percent as much volume as land that received direct sun. For beef or dairy farmers, agrivoltaic arrays are a “no-brainer,” Hebert said, between bites of a fresh Brussels sprout he plucked from a stalk beneath a panel.

Can Agrivoltaics Work?

Early results suggest that, when grown under the panels, vegetables such as peppers, broccoli, and Swiss chard can produce about 60 percent of the volume they would in full sun. At the same time, a dual-use system offers about half the power-generation capacity per acre of a conventional installation, and the costs are higher.

However, while these systems offer less energy generation and lower crop productivity than solar panels or agriculture alone, the combination generally pays off.

“Absolutely,” Lehan, Palano, and James Marley said, nearly in unison.

Hyperion estimates that its dual-use installations pay for themselves in about eight years, under average conditions. State and federal grants can shorten that timeline.

To help accelerate the adoption of this new approach, Massachusetts is putting some money on the line. In November, the state launched the SMART program, which pays solar owners a fixed base rate for every kilowatt-hour of energy they generate. The amount they earn is then deducted from the cost of the electricity they draw from the grid when the panels aren’t producing enough power. If an owner produces more energy than they use, they can apply those credits to future bills.

The underside of a dual-use solar array. The hardware used to mount the panels make it easy to reposition each panel to maximize the light needed to grow crops underneath.

Base rates for these solar installations range from 15 cents to 39 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on the size and location of the development. Projects that combine solar panels with farming earn an extra 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. In practical terms, that means that a 1-megawatt system on agricultural land, with solar panels in fixed positions which could produce around 1.2 million kilowatt-hours of energy in a year, would earn an extra $72,000 toward an electric bill.

In the first six weeks of SMART, five applications proposed dual-use projects and another two have submitted pre-determination requests, an earlier step in the process. Several more developers have inquired about potential developments, Palano said. The proposed projects range from 249 kilowatts to 1.6 megawatts.

“We think the level of interest is there from large-scale developers and others but the concept is new, so they are needing to invest more time to better understand,” he said. “We’re happy to see the interest so far.”

Not every agricultural area will benefit from agrivoltaics. The added costs and effort might not make sense in a region that already has plenty of open, non-agricultural space to host solar arrays, for example.

In places like Massachusetts, however, Palano said the technology is only going to get better and more helpful. He’s already seeing interest in panels that move to follow the sun, maximizing their energy generation. He also expects growing interest in storage, essentially large batteries that can collect power and save it for use when the sun isn’t shining. The future may even include translucent panels that would let more light through to plants growing below, he added.

“We’re saying, ‘let’s see if we can get this to the next level,’” said Palano. “We’re looking forward to the innovation.”

Top photo: Tomatoes growing under solar panels at the University of Massachusetts. (All photos courtesy of Hyperion Systems.)

The post Agrivoltaics: Solar Panels on Farms Could Be a Win-Win appeared first on Civil Eats.

That question has been at the center of much debate over the last five years, but the idea appears to be moving forward.

In September, not long after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scuttled a proposal for a mandatory checkoff program for the organic industry, the Organic Trade Association (OTA) announced its plans to develop a voluntary system. Still in the early stages, the initiative would collect money from willing producers and processors and pool it to promote the sector, provide technical assistance to farmers, and fund consumer and technical research.

“There’s nobody doing anything like this for organic as a whole,” said Melody Meyer, an organic consultant and former president of the OTA board. “The whole idea is, let’s show that the industry can come together and make a difference.”

Organic food is more popular than ever. In 2017, organic food sales hit $45.2 billion, up 6.4 percent from the previous year, outpacing the overall food market, which grew just 1.1 percent, according the OTA. But the U.S.-grown organic supply isn’t keeping up with demand, and imported organics have been at the center of some controversy in recent years. At the same time, many consumers remain unclear what the organic designation means, confusing it with labels like “natural” and “non-GMO.” It is essential, therefore, to find ways to attract more farmers to organic production methods and educate consumers about the true value of organic, advocates said.

“Stakeholders across the whole value chain have always agreed about the need for investment in the long-term health of the industry,” said Laura Batcha, chief executive of the OTA.

The original plan was to create a checkoff through the USDA, a program that would require producers to pay into a central fund that is then used to support the industry. In 2014, the farm bill authorized the creation of checkoffs based not on the commodity itself but by the way it is produced. Then, in 2015, the OTA petitioned the USDA to implement a checkoff including all organic producers and handlers. At the time, an opposition group called No Organic Checkoff pointed to problems other checkoffs have had with mismanagement and corruption and wondered if the money farmers paid would yield any real benefits.

The USDA released its proposal for the program in early 2017 and in April, checkoff opponents submitted a petition signed by nearly 1,900 individuals and groups urging the agency to reject the plan, saying it did not address the challenge of increasing organic acreage and was too broad to create a workable program. Then this May, the administration terminated the process, citing lack of consensus within the industry.

The OTA went back to the drawing board, and came back with a twofold plan to develop a voluntary checkoff independent of the USDA, while also launching their own research, marketing, and education initiatives to help strengthen the organic sector right away. Eventually these programs would be folded into a checkoff program, Batcha said, but in the short term, the OTA didn’t want to see them delayed.

“We didn’t want to put those things in a sequential order and wait before having an impact,” Batcha said.

How a Voluntary Checkoff Would Work

The OTA has started the process of determining a governance structure for a voluntary program. A comment period will remain open until April, allowing feedback from industry members.

“We want people to have time to put some good detailed ideas down on paper,” Batcha said.

A voluntary checkoff would almost certainly have less to spend than the $30 million annual budget that was projected for the mandatory USDA program, Batcha said. But it would also be more nimble and flexible, able to respond quickly to changes in the market without the potentially cumbersome process of waiting for government approval.

Furthermore, a voluntary checkoff would not be subject to the same messaging restrictions as a conventional one. The so-called non-disparagement rule prevents checkoffs from denigrating other products while promoting their own. Skeptics of the original plan took this rule to mean marketing efforts couldn’t declare organic foods superior to conventional, a limitation that might have severely hampered promotional efforts.

Supporters of the original plan say it is unclear whether the non-disparagement rule would have been enforced in that way, but agree a voluntary checkoff would be subject to no such restrictions.

At the same time, the association has started raising money to fund several programs it hopes will make an immediate difference. The group has partnered with Organic Voices to promote the organic label. It is also planning to work with the Organic Center to advance research by institutions including Harvard University and the University of California at Riverside into soil health and the impacts of climate change. OTA is also working with a market research firm to learn more about what consumers know about organic and what kind of messaging will resonate with them.

The organization also hopes to raise $100,000 to put more organic technical specialists in the field. Depending on the amount of money raised and feedback from supporters, the OTA could either pursue a cost-sharing arrangement with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to hire new specialists or create a private training program to educate existing technical specialists in organic practices.

Veteran organic farmer Marty Mesh, a co-founder of Florida Certified Organic Growers and Consumers, sees these initiatives as vital to the health of consumers and the organic sector alike. The programs, he said, could promote needed research into crop diseases like citrus greening and identify more alternatives to toxic pesticides. And outreach must be done to counter consumer confusion over labels, he said.

“We, as a sector, have to get our act together to educate consumers as to why organic deserves [their] support,” Mesh said.

Former opponents of the government-sponsored checkoff have mixed feelings about the OTA’s new plan.

In 2014, consumer advocacy group Food and Water Watch (FWW) expressed concerns that a checkoff’s decision-making process would have been dominated by large producers to the detriment of small farmers. However, a voluntary checkoff would mean small farmers do not have to pay into the system, FWW’s assistant director Patty Lovera noted with approval. But she still questioned whether a voluntary system created to serve OTA members, a group she describes as “increasingly corporate,” would serve the needs of smaller producers.

“A lot of this boils down to the power structure of organic at this point,” Lovera said. “I would urge them to really get out there and talk to folks about what they need and not just rely on the biggest players.”

John Bobbe, executive director of the Organic Farmers’ Agency for Relationship Marketing (OFARM), was a member of the No Organic Checkoff coalition and has always argued that a voluntary checkoff would be a better choice than going through the USDA. Conventional checkoffs, he said, have too often been rife with corruption. In 2015, for example, the president of the American Egg Board resigned after the discovery that the checkoff had been waging a secret campaign against Hampton Creek’s vegan Just Mayo spread. In recent years, the National Pork Board has been accused of funneling money to a lobbying group under the pretense of paying for a long-abandoned trademark.

Now that a voluntary plan is in the works, however, the OTA has not asked any former opponents to be part of the process of shaping the new proposal, Bobbe said.

“It’s back to the same old way that OTA tends to do things—they tend to run off and do them,” he said.

A successful voluntary checkoff, Bobbe said, would be guided by what farmers—rather than food processors or distributors—want, and would include mechanisms for funding local entities that can train new organic growers.

Checkoff supporters argue that improving awareness of organic and conducting research has the potential to benefit all farmers, regardless of scale.

“I think it’s a win-win situation,” Mesh said. “Why don’t we try it out and see what happens?”

Top photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash.

The post The Organic Food Industry Forges Its Own Path to Expand Growth appeared first on Civil Eats.

Jimenez’s passion for produce began around the time that her epilepsy started to keep her from working and she found herself signing up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps. In the process, she was automatically enrolled in Massachusetts’ Healthy Incentives Program (HIP), a pioneering initiative that gives low-income residents extra money to spend on locally grown fruits and vegetables.

A HIP sign at a Massachusetts farmers’ market. (Photo courtesy of the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative)

At first, she found it hard to believe the program could really work. But then she bought $43 worth of produce at a nearby farm and saw her SNAP account was only down $3.

“I was ecstatic,” Jimenez said. “It has been a humbling, mind-blowing experience.”

HIP launched in 2017 with the dual goals of improving low-income households’ access to fresh, local produce and helping boost business for the state’s farmers. At a time when food benefits for low-income people are the subject of ideological political jockeying in Washington, D.C., HIP represents the possibility that a program can garner bipartisan support while helping both low-income families and the economy.

“It’s such a great program and we’ve had such a great coalition—it’s proven that it works,” said Winton Pitcoff, executive director of the Massachusetts Food Systems Collaborative, the organization tasked with implementing the state’s local food action plan.

Programs that match spending on healthy food have been around for a while. Nonprofit Wholesome Wave, for example, in 2008 began working with farmers’ markets and grocery stores to double the value of SNAP spending on fresh produce. The Fair Food Network launched a similar program called Double Up Food Bucks in Michigan since 2009 that has since spread to 26 states.

However, HIP is the only one so far to electronically apply the credits to participants’ SNAP accounts. This small procedural difference makes taking advantage of the program a simple proposition for consumers, who don’t have to keep track of the coupons and tokens many other programs use. This ease of use might account for the immediate popularity of the initiative.

During the program’s first full year of operation, more than 70,000 clients received HIP benefits, with a total of $4.6 million in fresh fruits and vegetables going to low-income households. In fact, the program caught on so quickly that in just one year it tore through a budget that had been slated to last three years; the state legislature had to approve an additional $2.15 million to finish out the fiscal year.

“What I’ve seen is people empowered to buy food they might not be able to afford otherwise,” said Hazel Kiefer, an urban agriculture manager for nonprofit farm The Food Project.

At the same time, farmers and farmers’ markets have reported soaring sales. At the farmers’ market in Lynn, one of the state’s lowest-income cities, The Food Project saw twice the sales in the first two weeks of the season in 2017 as compared to the same period the previous year. And the 2018 market has nearly maintained this pace, Kiefer said.

Laura Smith, a farmer who operates Lane Gardens and Oakdale Farms in Southeastern Massachusetts, was startled by the surge in sales at the 11 markets she attends. To meet demand, she bought more seeds and hired more help, and which also contributes to the local economy. And she watched with pleasure as, increasingly, customers at the markets she attends built a sort of fellowship, swapping recipes in line and encouraging their children to help choose produce.

“What has really touched me is the way that each farmers’ market has built such a community of people coming each week to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables,” Smith said.

Here’s how it works: Anyone who receives SNAP benefits is automatically enrolled in HIP. When participants use their SNAP benefits to pay for food from a HIP-qualified farmstand, mobile market, farmers’ market vendor, or community-supported agriculture program, the money they spend is automatically credited back to their account, up to a monthly limit. Households with one or two members can get up to $40 back, those with three to five members get up to $60, and larger households get up to $80.

How HIP Was Born—and the Challenges It Still Faces

The seeds of HIP were planted in 2011, with a federally funded pilot program in Hampden County, a Western Massachusetts region that has some of the lowest incomes in the state. In that case, participants received 30 cents back for every dollar spent on fruits and vegetables.

The final report on the pilot showed that it made a significant difference in participants’ consumption of healthy food: Those who received the incentive consumed 26 percent more fruits and vegetables than those who did not.

Encouraged by these results, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) program to award grants to similar initiatives. Massachusetts applied in the first round and in 2015 was awarded $3.4 million—one of the largest grants given—to establish HIP; the state provided another $1.35 million in last year’s budget.

In total, $31 million in grants was awarded that year, to projects in 26 states—some statewide, others focused on certain regions or counties.

What makes HIP different, however, are the close integration with SNAP’s electronic benefit processing system and the high level of support from state government, Pitcoff said. “This has the potential to be a model that could make a difference all over the country.”

As HIP works its way through its second year, however, challenges remain.

First there’s the question of software. Novo Dia, a company that provides benefits processing software to approximately a quarter of the country’s farmers’ markets, announced earlier this year that, due to lack of support from the USDA, it would terminate its service at the end of July, leaving 1,700 markets with no way to process benefits payments. The National Association of Farmers’ Market Nutrition Programs has said it will provide funding to keep Novo Dia going through August, and New York state recently announced an agreement with the company to keep its services operational for the near future, but a long-term solution has not yet emerged.

“That poses an existential threat to HIP,” Pitcoff said. “If these terminals go away, farmers don’t have other options.”

Furthermore, funding remains a perennial issue. When the program used up its initial budget in April, it was suspended for five weeks until the legislature approved additional money.

For the current fiscal year, which began July 1, the legislature has approved $4 million for HIP, and Governor Charlie Baker signed the budget containing that funding into law on July 26. But program advocates still doubt the sum will be enough to meet demand for a full year. Lawmakers have been unanimously supportive of HIP, Pitcoff said, but there is a limit to how far the state’s annual budget can go.

As the program faces an uncertain future, advocates, farmers, and especially clients are hoping it becomes a sustainable, long-term endeavor. For Jimenez, HIP has been about more than just buying healthier food. It’s about going deeper on health and nutrition and becoming more engaged with her local food system.

“I can’t believe I actually get money back for supporting my community,” she said.

Top photo courtesy of Massachusetts Food System Collaborative.

The post A Pioneering Massachusetts Program Helps Low-Income Residents Eat Healthier and Supports Local Farmers appeared first on Civil Eats.

“Agriculture was embedded in everything I did from when I was little,” she says.

For two decades, Flack has travelled throughout the United States as a speaker and consultant, teaching farmers how to harness the inherent power of the ecosystem to transform their land by grazing livestock intentionally. In addition to traveling to farms to meet with clients and teaching three or four workshops each month, Flack is an active author. Her book, The Art and Science of Grazing: How Grass Farmers Can Create Sustainable Systems for Healthy Animals and Farm Ecosystems, was released in 2016, and before that, she published two books on organic dairy production.

As Flack sees it, effective grazing involves far more than simply letting animals loose in the fields. Her philosophy involves looking at each farm from the individual perspectives of plants, animals, and soil. By considering the needs of each of these components, she teaches farmers to create a system in which they all thrive.

“Well-managed, grass-based livestock feeding can create benefits for ecosystem health and produce really healthy meat, milk, and fiber,” Flack says.

The agricultural community has not always embraced Flack’s approach. When she started her work in the late 1990s, few consumers or farmers were interested in pasture-based meat and dairy. During graduate school, one of Flack’s professors even accused her of being a “fringe radical” when she suggested cows be allowed to leave the barn to graze in pastures.

Today, however, grass-fed meat is hot. Between 2012 and 2016, U.S. retail sales doubled every year, soaring from $17 million to $272 million, according to a recent report from the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Research has found that, compared to conventionally raised meat, grass-feed beef contains more healthy fatty acids and is only half as likely to harbor dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

While there are still some corners of academia that find Flack’s thinking a bit unorthodox, she says that the people actually working the land have embraced her style of grazing management more fully. “Farmers have led the way. They quickly figured out this helped them run more efficient farms and get better results.”

From a Small Dairy Farm to a Holistic Grazing Philosophy

Flack’s path to this unusual line of work developed, well, organically.

In New Zealand, her father, a wildlife ecologist, worked restoring the habitat of the endangered black robin, a project that helped develop Flack’s interest in the ways animals, plants, and their environments interact. Upon returning to the U.S., Flack’s family moved to Northern Vermont and in 1978, started a small dairy farm—still in operation today—that uses biodynamic and organic practices, including some of the ones Flack teaches, such as high-stock-density grazing.

Living on the farm stoked Flack’s already-growing fascination with ecological systems.

“At that point, I was already completely engrossed in daily discussions of ecology and agriculture and livestock and the interface and animals and plants,” Flack says. “Moving back to Vermont built on that interest and passion that I already had.”

Flack went to the University of Vermont, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental agriculture and a master’s in plant and soil science. She also did post-graduate studies in business management, organic production practices, and biodynamic certification.

Flack always entertained the possibility that she would end up a commercial farmer. “I certainly had some close calls with farming,” she joked, but she kept finding work teaching, consulting, and writing. She followed her career where it led her and now helps farmers make sustainable changes to their operations, including transitioning to organic production, receiving non-GMO certification, and switching to or improving their managed grazing practices.

“It’s kept me fully engaged and more than fully employed doing what I love,” she says. “It’s kind of amazing.”

And she’s good at what she does.

One night in March, despite frigid temperatures and recent snow, more than 20 people gathered in a meeting room at a New Hampshire farm to hear Flack talk about how to improve the production and quality of pastures. She wore a fitted fleece vest, striped wool socks, and no shoes as she stood at the front of the room running through her slideshow. The presentation was engaging and substantive, full of useful science clearly translated into functional advice. She stopped often to answer questions from the audience.

She is also sought-after by those in the agricultural nonprofit world.

“Sarah is just really on her game,” says Jack Algiere, farm director at the Stone Barns Center, where Flack lectures on grass-fed grazing. “She’s sharing good ideas, classic ideas, but giving them to farmers in a modern perspective and in a modern market. That, I think, is very important and rare.”

Digging into Soil, Offering Practical Advice

The essence of Flack’s advice is that farmers can use the very process of grazing animals to create healthier soil, more robust pastures, improved animal welfare, and a more financially sustainable operation. Though each farm is different, she promotes a few universal principles, such dividing pasture into paddocks—the more the better—and rotating animals through them. She also advises to graze animals in each paddock for a short period of time and vary the lengths of time each paddock is allowed to recover.

This approach keeps the plants from being grazed too short and gives them enough time to recover, yielding better, more nutritious feed and spurring the growth of more perennial forage. At the same time, the animals’ waste and the tramping action of their hooves helps enrich the soil. Farmers save time and money by having to do less tilling, seeding, and fertilizing of their fields and by having to buy less additional feed to support their livestock.

“It’s the only way I know of where we can actually use the animals to improve ecosystem health,” Flack says. “All of the other forms of livestock agriculture are, to at least a certain degree, mining the ecosystem of resources or relocating them in ways that are not healthy.”

Though many different systems, each with its own specific name, embrace these principles, Flack prefers the more generic term “grass-based livestock farming.” This name, she says, avoids sounding dogmatic or trendy and leaves the focus on the basic tenets of good grazing practice.

“It’s simple and straightforward,” says Robin Hulbert, a New Hampshire dairy farmer and client of Flack’s.

Flack helped Hulbert create individualized plans this year for each of his fields—adding more composted manure on parts of one, cutting the sod before re-seeding in another. Together, they also set long-term goals for the pastures, and Hulbert hopes to bring Flack back every year for the next few years.

At the same time, Flack’s instruction is full of universal lessons that often verge on philosophical: Get to know the plants in your pasture and their individual needs. Ignore peer pressure to keep your fields more tidy.

“Don’t get overly focused on the annoying weed,” Flack told the audience at her New Hampshire workshop. “Try to focus on what’s really good in your pasture.”

When she’s not on the road, Flack lives in northern Vermont, just shy of the Canadian border, on her own off-the-grid property. She raises most of her own food in her permaculture-style gardens, orchards, and greenhouse. Because she is on the road so often, she no longer raises her own livestock, but her father frequently grazes his cows and sheep in her fields. Flack is surrounded by pastures full of grazing cows and sheep, fields of organic produce, and a community that lives the same values she brings to her work.

She appreciates the chance to improve both the environment and make farms more sustainable, especially in parts of the country where managed grazing has yet to take off and aspiring grass-feeders have few role models and little support. And her work constantly teaches her new things and is never, ever boring.

“Last week I got completely soaked with manure and rainwater and snow, and I felt mildly hypothermic but still able to be useful,” she says. “I really love what I do. I feel like I am making a difference.”

Photos courtesy of Sarah Flack.

The post The Grazing Expert Helping Farmers Build Resilient Ecosystems appeared first on Civil Eats.

On March 21, actor and activist Adrian Grenier asked Starbucks shareholders to vote for a proposal to phase out the use of these straws and make the company’s other packaging more easily recyclable. Investors representing 29 percent of Starbucks’ shares did just that. Facing such vocal advocacy, Starbucks is making some moves in this more sustainable direction. Even before the vote, the company announced a plan to invest $10 million in developing greener to-go cups.

“It’s nowhere near enough, but a typical initial corporate move to acknowledge some responsibility,” said Conrad MacKerron, senior vice president for As You Sow, the nonprofit that introduced the measure.

And this effort is just one of the latest in a rising tide of shareholder activism aimed at making the food we eat healthier, environmentally friendly, and financially sustainable.

From Mergers to Burgers

As You Sow and other groups like it—many of which are run by groups of nuns with sizable retirement funds—work to organize those who own stock in large public companies in an attempt to influence the businesses’ policies or practices. It’s a decades-old approach commonly associated with hard-nosed investors demanding mergers or layoffs in an attempt to pump up short-term earnings. The goal of the strategy is generally to engage with the company’s leaders directly; if that doesn’t work, activists can then file proposals to be voted on at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

The tactic is increasingly being put to use by groups with social or environmental goals: asking companies to better assess their carbon emissions, addressing gun violence, or curbing executive pay, for example. In 2012, shareholders filed 393 proposals focused on social and environmental concerns, according to the Sustainable Investments Institute; last year that number was up to 494.

Resolutions may not effect change directly, but they can spark public attention or highlight the urgency of issues companies had previously overlooked. In 2017, As You Sow asked Mississippi-based Sanderson Farms–the country’s third largest poultry producer–to phase out the use of antibiotics, citing evidence that antibiotic use in meat production is linked to the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections, as well as the fact that Sanderson’s leading competitors Tyson Foods and Perdue have made pledges to move their supply chains away from antibiotic use.

When the company refused, As You Sow filed a shareholder resolution on behalf of concerned investors; at the company’s next annual meeting, investors who own 43 percent of Sanderson voting shares supported the proposal—an impressive number for an environmentally focused resolution.

“The support for change is overwhelming,” said Austin Wilson, environmental health program manager at As You Sow. “It’s an important sign that a company’s investors are looking for a certain course of action.”

Food-focused shareholders are using their power to push for a range of issues, from improving working conditions at major food companies to eliminating nanotechnology in ingredients. Environmentally focused investment advisor Green Century has engaged with J.M. Smucker, parent company to brands including Folgers, Pillsbury, and Jif, to increase transparency regarding pesticide use. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) is talking to large companies including Costco and Hilton about ways to reduce food waste.

Despite its generally progressive goals, this kind of shareholder activism is an essentially capitalist endeavor, using market forces and the incentive of profits to drive change. The goal, said Wilson, is to advocate for policies that have long-term impact not just environmentally or socially, but financially as well, to demonstrate that ethical changes can also be profitable.

“Long-term shareholders need to be more represented than the Wall Street companies that are just concerned with quarter-to-quarter results,” Wilson said. “We want the entire company to be around in 100 years.”

And there’s evidence that the strategy can be effective.

Many companies targeted by activist investors have moved their practices in more sustainable directions, though few appear willing to acknowledge that shareholder pressure played a role. In just the past year, following related shareholder actions, McDonald’s has agreed to recycle all post-consumer packaging at its restaurants, Dunkin’ Donuts’ parent company has announced a plan to phase out the use of polystyrene cups, and Burger King, Starbucks, and KFC all agreed to reduce use of antibiotics in their poultry supply chain.

How Shareholder Activism Works

Organizations like As You Sow and ICCR bring together institutional and individual investors to amplify their influence. These groups research issues related to their missions and identify companies whose practices they believe need improvement. Members and partners of these organizations might buy shares specifically to get themselves a seat at the table when an issue is particularly important to them.

They then begin their campaigns by contacting companies, explaining their case, and attempting to convince the board and executives that change is in their best interest. ICCR is currently engaging with a number of large companies including Costco, Whole Foods, Denny’s Corp., Domino’s Pizza, and Yum! Brands (the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and other fast food restaurants) on antibiotics and food waste reduction.

If the companies are not responsive, many organizations will then submit a shareholder resolution, a proposal of no more than 500 words that suggests a course of action for a public company. The investor who makes the proposal files it with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); the company then has the right to challenge the resolution. If the SEC allows the resolution, it becomes public and must be voted on at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

Sometimes, simply filing these proposals is enough to make a company rethink its position. The company may offer a concession if the filing organization agrees to withdraw the resolution, thus avoiding the potential hit to their reputation should the issue make headlines.

“Companies do not like the fact that these proposals become public,” said Nadira Narine, who oversees food and water issues for ICCR. “It is our major leverage and negotiating tool with a company.”

A company that holds its ground and lets a resolution come to a vote could also take a financial hit, according to research by Brayden King, professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

In a 2012 study, King concludes companies that have been the subject of these resolutions are more likely to be rated by analysts as environmentally risky, even if their practices are no different from companies who were not the targets of activist shareholders. This higher risk rating has a negative effect on financial performance.

When proposals do get voted on, they hardly ever receive majority support; only four environmentally oriented resolutions and no food-specific ones crossed the 50 percent threshold in 2017. And they are not binding even when they do receive a majority.

What’s more, it often takes several years for resolutions to pick up a significant number of votes—but most shareholder activists propose them several years in a row to gain traction. A resolution can be re-introduced in subsequent years if it receives at least 3 percent of the vote in its initial submission.

Still, the process undoubtedly makes a difference, King said.

“We know for sure [shareholder activism] helps drive the agenda of issues boards and executives consider,” King said. “It can change the discussion.”

There are, of course, those opposed to socially responsible shareholder activism. Right-leaning groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have argued that special-interest shareholder proposals damage a company’s bottom line and hurt investors.

And, indeed, not all proposals promise the financial sustainability Wilson says As You Sow strives for. A 2016 Harvard Business School study showed that resolutions related to “immaterial issues”–issues that are not likely to make investors rethink their investment–often damage the overall valuation of the company.

Furthermore, the work can be slow going. ICCR’s Narine points to the issue of antibiotics. Though many companies are jumping on the bandwagon recently, Narine notes that groups like hers first started reaching out to companies 10 years ago.

“Don’t expect change in six months,” Narine said. “You’re in it for the long term.”

The post Activists Take the Fight for Fair Food to Shareholder Meetings appeared first on Civil Eats.

“I would sometimes come up against some discomfort—people were not particularly familiar with everything I had on the truck,” Kiley said. “I had the idea that it might be helpful to provide more information.”

So, two years ago, Kiley and Lovin’ Spoonfuls turned this inspiration into Plenty, a program that partners with notable Boston chefs to teach people how to cook fresh, healthy food on a budget. Since its inception, the program has run 14 workshops showing participants—primarily low-income residents, senior citizens, and immigrants—skills like stretching a roasted chicken into several meals or making creative use of pantry staples. Teachers have included prominent Boston restaurateurs, James Beard award winners, and even two Top Chef alums.

“I am super excited to be involved in the project,” said Karen Akunowicz, executive chef at Myers + Chang and a contestant on season 13 of Top Chef. “Sometimes it feels like magic. Folks are trying something new, and that is really exciting.”

Founded in 2010, Lovin’ Spoonfuls has recovered more than 5 million pounds of edible-but-expired or just plain unwanted food from farms, supermarkets, and wholesalers. The food—mainly produce, bread, and dairy products—is delivered to partner groups including homeless shelters, veterans’ centers, after-school programs, elderly services agencies, and addiction recovery centers.

Cooking Classes for the Masses

Each Plenty workshop is offered in collaboration with one of these beneficiary organizations. They determine class topics based on the season and the needs of the particular audience. All of the sessions, however, promote Lovin’ Spoonfuls’ basic values: teaching recipes that are nutritious, budget-friendly, and low-waste. Workshops include a cooking demonstration, food tastings, and lots of time for questions and answers.

Food rescue organizations—for example, New York’s City Harvest and Maryland-based Food Recovery Network, which has 200 chapters on college campuses in 44 states—have become increasingly common as the issue of food waste gains wider attention. And there are a number of groups that offer cooking classes for disadvantaged populations; Cooking Matters, headquartered in Washington, D.C., for example, provides culinary curricula to partner groups across the country.

Lovin’ Spoonfuls’ Plenty program aims to combine those missions to give each an even bigger impact.

Irene Li, owner of restaurant and food truck Mei Mei, has taught workshops to a group made up largely of young mothers and to senior citizens, many of whom were Chinese. Over the summer she led a session focused on seasonal produce like zucchini and eggplant; in the winter she focused on root vegetables. Li also explained how to use healthy fats and how herbs and spices build flavor without using salt.

“We talked about things they don’t need a complicated recipe for, things that are time-saving and energy-saving,” Li said.

Tiffani Faison, owner of two Boston restaurants and a finalist on the first season of Top Chef, taught a session tailored to people living without access to a kitchen, including a recipe for microwave meatloaf. James Beard award-winner and restaurateur Jamie Bissonnette demonstrated how to use pantry staples to make flavorful meatless meals, including dal and spiced chickpea stew.

Tailoring the workshops to each population has been Plenty’s primary challenge, said Katy Jordan, communications director for Lovin’ Spoonfuls. Knowledge of cooking and ingredients vary so much between different cultures and populations that each workshop must be carefully customized to be neither too basic nor too advanced.

While the workshops have generally been well attended, with as many as 60 people piling in to learn new recipes and cooking techniques, ensuring attendance is another of the program’s main challenges, Jordan said. Many of the clients they serve work two jobs or spend their days looking for work, and the teacher-chefs need to be in their restaurants in the evenings, so keeping workshops full has required an ongoing marketing effort.

Diana Garcia, a resident of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, attended a workshop where she learned how to cook a simple creamed turnip. She had seen turnips available from Lovin’ Spoonfuls, but had no idea what to do with them. The Plenty session was far more useful than a simple recipe, she said, because seeing someone make the dish confirms that she’s actually doing it right.

Since the workshop, Garcia has made creamed turnips for her 10-person household, and it was a hit. “My father loved it, my nephew loved it,” she said. “I even have one kid who is anti-vegetable all the way through and he ate it, so it was a success.”

Tiffany Faison filming a Plenty cooking class video. (Credit: Lovin’ Spoonfuls)

The program also produces video lessons that are posted on the Lovin’ Spoonfuls website. In one, Akunowicz demonstrates how to turn one chicken into three different meals; in another, chef Louis DiBiccari explains how to use entire vegetables—think fennel fronds and celery leaves.

Though the chefs leading these workshops have a certain level of renown, it is not their fame drawing students to the sessions, Jordan said. Instead, they are just hungry for good information about healthy home cooking, she said.

“I won’t say that star power is the thing that is attracting people,” she said. “It’s just an added benefit.”

Plenty is also about more than just learning new ingredients and recipes, said some of the participating chefs. Though Li’s livelihood depends on people going out to eat, she pointed out that home-cooking is a vital component to improving the environment and alleviating hunger. And Akunowicz said that helping people become more knowledgeable and confident in the kitchen can only help strengthen Lovin’ Spoonfuls’ mission of reducing food waste.

“It is teaching them what to do with the food when you get it,” she said. “They go hand and hand.”

Cooking class photo CC-licensed by Dorota Trupp.

The post Lovin’ Spoonfuls Serves Up Cooking Skills with Less Food Waste appeared first on Civil Eats.

Previous update: On April 19, 2017, the No Organic Checkoff Coalition submitted a petition signed by nearly 1,900 groups and individuals urging the USDA to reject the checkoff proposal. Public comment ends April 20.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released a proposal intended to get more organic food onto shopping lists and dinner plates across the country by pooling money from organic farmers, handlers, and processors to promote the sector, educate consumers, and conduct research on organic production methods. Once up and running, the program could invest more than $30 million annually, according to estimates by the Organic Trade Association (OTA).

“We’re really pleased the USDA is moving forward this well vetted proposal,” said Laura Batcha, CEO and executive director of the OTA. “It is an industry self-investment that makes a lot of sense now and will make a lot of sense in the new administration as well.”

The proposal appeared on the Federal Register today, and it’s a big step in a process that has already taken over two years of collaboration by multiple stakeholders. It also arrives at a critical moment for the organic industry. Though organic food is increasingly popular—sales were up 11 percent to $43.5 billion in 2015—U.S.-grown supply isn’t keeping up with demand. Despite the growing market, the complicated and costly process of becoming a certified organic grower keeps many farmers from attempting the transition. At the same time, labels like “natural” and “non-GMO” are sowing confusion with consumers about the true meaning and value of the organic designation. OTA says the proposed program is designed to address these challenges.

But not everyone in the organic industry is on board. Several branches of the Northeast Organic Farming Association, the National Family Farm Coalition, the Western Organic Dairy Producers, and nearly 60 other groups oppose the idea of the program, which they call “an additional tax” on farmers.

Similar plans—called “checkoff” programs—have long existed for commodities such as milk, beef, and eggs. Producers are required to pay into a central fund, and the money goes to education, research, and promotions—think “Got Milk?” or “Pork: The Other White Meat.”

In 2014, a new Farm Bill was signed into law. The legislation allowed organic producers to opt out of conventional commodity checkoffs and called for the creation of an organic program if there was sufficient interest. For the first time, a checkoff program could be defined by how a food is produced rather than by what it is. OTA then submitted an application in May 2015 to the USDA to get the process started.

Here’s how it would work, according to the current proposal: The program, called GRO Organic (Generic Research and Promotion Order for Organic), would be run by a 17-member board of directors, independent of the OTA. Any larger business with an organic certification—from the farmer who grows the organic cucumbers to the processor who turns them into organic pickles—would contribute, unless it already belongs to another checkoff program and chooses to stay with that group. Small businesses—those with less than $250,000 in revenue—are not required to join but can opt in. The board will be made up of a split between farmers and handlers.

“The entire value chain is inextricably linked,” Batcha said. “Acknowledging that, the program is built so that everybody participates.”

Supporters of the proposal include leaders of Organic Valley’s dairy cooperative, Stonyfield Farm, Pete and Gerry’s Organic Eggs, and Late July Snacks.

The board would run educational initiatives and promotional campaigns intended to boost demand by helping consumers understand the benefits of organic foods. Growing demand, in turn, should help lure more farmers into making the leap from conventional agriculture.

According to the checkoff’s supporters, farmers and processors wouldn’t be the only ones to benefit, however. Together, greater supply and more efficient farming should make organic a more affordable option, said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group.

“Over time, real prices should fall,” said Cook. “That’s a positive thing for consumers.”

At the same time, the program would conduct research into areas such as farming technology and more effective pest control techniques, making production more efficient. At least 25 percent of the GRO Organic funds would go to local and regional research. These funds would also support technical assistance, helping organic farmers improve their growing practices.

Support for the proposal, however, is far from universal.

“The concern we have is checkoffs have not done what they are designed to do,” said John Bobbe, executive director of the Organic Farmers’ Agency for Relationship Marketing, which opposes the proposed program.

Checkoff organizations have a long history of mismanagement and abuse, he said, pointing for example to recent allegations that the American Egg Board illegally used funds to conspire against the vegan mayonnaise company Hampton Creek. Furthermore, he worries that the needs of processors and handlers could override the interests of farmers—who have traditionally received a small portion of the profit from the $40 billion-and-growing organic market.

Batcha stresses that the proposal is designed to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued some conventional commodity checkoffs. Board members are limited to two three-year terms to prevent any one person from accumulating too much influence. In addition, members of the program would have to vote on whether to continue the checkoff every seven years, to hold the organization accountable to those it represents, Batcha said.

“Stakeholders paying in have the comfort that they get to evaluate every seven years whether it’s working,” she said.

Still, many are skeptical of any program overseen by the government. Checkoffs overseen by the USDA are not allowed to disparage other products; some wonder whether it makes sense to promote organic foods without claiming that they are healthier or safer than their less-pricey conventional alternatives.

“You can be more flexible with your messaging and even more efficient with the dollars if you’re not tied to the government,” said Harriet Behar, senior organic specialist with the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES).

And there are alternatives to going through the USDA, she noted. Pistachio growers, for example, have formed a voluntary, independent checkoff that is not subject to the same governmental restrictions.

The proposal released today will be open for public comment for 60 days. Supporters are hoping the incoming administration won’t do anything to interfere with the program.

“This is an industry that came to Washington and said, ‘We want regulation so we can grow,’” Cook said. “That kind of entrepreneurial zeal should not be discouraged.”

Once the proposal has been finalized, organic farmers and processors will get to vote on whether to make the program a reality.

“A yes vote in this referendum would begin this grand seven-year experiment, to see whether industry coordination can make a difference,” Batcha said.

The post Organic Checkoff Program Advances appeared first on Civil Eats.

As a growing number of people become aware of the vast environmental havoc this small fish can wreak, a group of fish vendors, chefs, and diners are realizing that the best way to control the threat might just be to eat our way out of it.

Seafood Watch, a program that assesses and rates the sustainability of seafood options, started looking into lionfish last year after fielding inquiries from local chefs and consumers who were interested in eating the species. At first, the organization declined to provide a recommendation because there is not yet an established commercial fishery for lionfish, said Ryan Bigelow, outreach program manager for the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. But the more they heard, the more interested they became, and, in October 2015, the group released its first report on lionfish, labeling it a “best choice,” the highest available rating.

“It really is a grassroots sort of campaign that pushed it into the spotlight,” Bigelow said.

The Seafood Watch rating, in turn, sparked interest from Whole Foods, which only sells fish that has been highly rated by the organization.

Though the natural foods chain told NPR in 2011 that there wasn’t enough buyer interest to research the possibility of carrying lionfish, the company recently told Civil Eats that it will begin selling lionfish in its stores over the next six months, beginning on the West coast.

The announcement is welcomed by Justine Burt, a Palo Alto resident who had been petitioning the store to carry lionfish since she first tasted it on a trip to Belize last year. “It’s something that needs to be eaten, instead of fish coming from fisheries that are collapsing,” she said.

Until recently, creating a reliable supply chain for this hard-to-catch fish was a major challenge. But the recent moves by both Seafood Watch and Whole Foods hints that the lionfish market might now be on the cusp of entering the seafood mainstream.

“It has a white, flaky delicious meat—a lot of restaurants are very interested in that,” said Emily Stokes, lionfish program assistant at the Reef Environmental Education Foundation in Key Largo, Florida. “The problem is the supply.”

To most Americans, the lionfish is better known as a pet than as a meal. The species, native to the South Pacific and Indian oceans, boasts dramatic stripes, flamboyant fins, and intimidating, venomous spines. They have long been a popular choice for saltwater fish tanks. No one is certain how the fish made their way into the wild, but it is believed that some were released into the ocean by aquarium owners at least 30 years ago. The hearty species took it from there.

“They are such voracious eaters, they will eat just about anything, and because of their poisonous spikes, nothing can really eat them,” said Bigelow. “Once they hit the waters around Florida, there was really no stopping them–they were clearing out reefs.”

Today, lionfish have spread throughout the coral reefs of the Caribbean, where they prey on and compete with other species, generally decimating the native ecosystem. In areas the fish has invaded, the biomass of native reef fish species has dropped by an average of 65 percent, according to one study.

Lionfish can only be removed from the ecosystem without damaging other species by spear-fishing, however. And professional spear fishermen have generally been more apt to go after familiar and reliable targets like group or snapper, rather than take chances with the fish’s venomous spines and the uncertain demand for the fish, Stokes said.

But that might be changing as chefs and restaurateurs like New York City’s Ryan Chadwick are developing demand for the prickly predator. Chadwick opened his Caribbean-themed restaurant Norman’s Cay in 2013, shortly after he first learned about the lionfish invasion. From the beginning, the invasive fish was a central item on his menu: jerk lionfish, lionfish ceviche, curried lionfish. He trained waitstaff to explain the lionfish problem to diners and made literature on the issue available.

Customers were very responsive and soon supply was unable to keep up with demand. Chadwick had been diving for his own lionfish, taking regular trips to the Bahamas and bringing back coolers stocked with 50 pounds of fish at a time. As the popularity of the species grew, he developed a network of Caribbean spear-fishermen whom he could count on to supply the fish.

Now he is in the midst of launching what he believes to be the country’s only lionfish wholesale business, Norman’s Lionfish.

“We’ve got divers calling us every day,” Chadwick said. “Now my job is to push this nationally to other chefs, other restaurants.”

He is also working on developing a trap that will lure in lionfish without accidentally catching the very native species he is trying to protect. If he can find a way to catch more of the fish without depending on labor-intensive spear-fishing, it would suddenly become much easier to scale up lionfish sales and have a bigger impact on damaged reefs.

Still, Chadwick remains realistic about the chances of solving the lionfish problem once and for all.

“I don’t think eradication is possible—it’s part of our ecosystem now,” he said. “We just have to figure out ways to deal with it.”

Photos by Ethan Daniels/Shutterstock.

The post Invasive Lionfish Coming to a Menu Near You appeared first on Civil Eats.

But these students are not just trying to land a new job, they’re shaping a new life.

“You get to find yourself,” said recent center graduate Julia Ramesar, a former pharmacy employee who now aspires to open her own catering business. “As long as you have the courage, the drive, and the confidence, you’ll find yourself.”

NE-CAT trainees are mostly drawn from the surrounding neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, some of Boston’s most disadvantaged areas. About 80 percent come to the program after a stretch of unemployment lasting an average of two years. One-third have been incarcerated and one-fifth are homeless or live in transitional housing.

“They definitely have significant barriers to stable employment,” said Ashley Bartell, the center’s director of development. “We see such a profound change in the students from the time they enter to the time they graduate.”

Program alumni have gone on to jobs at local food business incubators, restaurants, private clubs, and some of the city’s most upscale hotels. Celebrity chef Ming Tsai, owner of two acclaimed Boston-area restaurants, has a few NE-CAT graduates on staff.

“I am proud that we have the opportunity to hire NE-CAT graduates just as much as I am grateful to have them here, cooking on the line,” Tsai said.

The program was launched in 2013 to help unemployed Boston residents train for new careers while also addressing a staffing shortage in the city’s restaurants and food service businesses. Funded mostly by grants from private foundation, the program is entirely free to participants, in the hope they will be able to launch new careers without the burden of student loans.

Cohorts of 24 trainees work their way through the training at once. Their instructors are professionals with years of experience both working and teaching in the industry. The program, which recently changed from 28 weeks to 16 weeks, starts off with classroom training, in which students learn everything from basic knife skills and proper table service to resume-writing and conflict resolution.

In the second half, students take to the kitchen where they learn how to use the kitchen equipment and practice simmering stocks, grilling meats, and baking desserts. Every day, they prepare lunch for one another and for any guests who may be visiting the Center that day.

Job placement opportunities are woven throughout the curriculum. All students also complete “stages,” or unpaid shifts in various kitchens, designed to give both aspiring cooks—and their potential employers—a sense of whether the position is a good fit. NE-CAT trainees learn about work in restaurants, food trucks, institutional food service, and food manufacturing.

“The program really gets them ready for any work in the food industry and really gets them ready to learn,” said Roz Freeman, community and operations manager for Commonwealth Kitchen, a food business incubator that employs several program alums. “Also, the commitment that it takes for folks to go through the NE-CAT program fits in with commitment it takes to start a new job.”

The facility is modeled on the Bidwell Training Center in Pittsburgh, which launched in 1968. Over the years, the Bidwell Center developed a philosophy of working with local businesses to match its training programs to the community’s needs. The model was such a success that the Center’s parent company has replicated it at eight affiliate centers across the country, each training disadvantaged local residents in skills that are in particular demand in each community. In San Francisco, BAYCAT offers training in digital media skills; the NewBridge Cleveland Center for Arts and Technology in Ohio trains students to be phlebotomists and pharmacy technicians.

An essential element of the model is the creation of beautiful learning spaces that show trainees they are valued and worth the investment. NE-CAT is housed in a former Chinese restaurant renovated specifically for the program. The kitchen is outfitted with professional equipment, gleaming stainless steel, and shelves stacked with pots, pans, and ingredients. Classroom instruction takes place in a spotless, wood paneled auditorium, and the hallways are decked with colorful artwork.

“It’s a little oasis,” Bartell said. “It really does raise the level of expectations they set for themselves.”

On average, 80 percent of students complete the program. About 80 percent of those graduates are then successfully placed in jobs. In 2016, NE-CAT plans to increase enrollment to 144 participants to meet demand from both employers and students.

Explaining how NE-CAT has changed her life, Ramesar simply gestured at her broad smile. “If you see, it’s all in my face.”

Photos courtesy of New England Center for Arts and Technology.

The post A Second Chance in the Kitchen appeared first on Civil Eats.

In the coming year, the company plans to expand its presence into the Chicago and Washington, D.C. areas, boosted by a recent $13.7-million round of funding.

“We look at BrightFarms as an expansion of the local food movement,” CEO Paul Lightfoot told Civil Eats.

But not everyone agrees with that characterization.

As the U.S. Department of Agriculture describes it, local food generally involves farmers selling directly to their communities. Indeed, many consumers buy local in the interest in supporting small-scale family farmers and preserving rapidly disappearing agricultural land. With local produce continuing its reign as one of the most sought-after food categories, some agricultural advocates worry that this element of local is in danger of falling by the wayside as companies focus on a more literal interpretation: any fresh food that is grown nearby.

Poppy Davis, the program director for Sustainable Agricultural Education, a nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, worries that the term has been co-opted. “I have an issue with a large corporate structure taking up a lot of space in the niche that is local farming,” she said.

BrightFarms is far from the only business moving local food from the traditional farm context to easily scalable, tech-heavy, and warehouse-based models. In Boston, for example, Freight Farms is building technologically advanced growing systems in shipping containers, and in Chicago, MightyVine grows tomatoes in a 7.5-acre greenhouse for distribution to retailers and restaurants in the urban area. New York’s AeroFarms uses vertically stacked aeroponic beds to grow greens for regional buyers, and just raised $20 million in a Series B round of venture funding, bringing its financing total to $70 million.

BrightFarms started working in urban agriculture in 2007. When Lightfoot came on-board in 2011, he shifted the vision to a focus on commercial scale greenhouses. The plan is to partner with retailers, who sign long-term purchase agreements. BrightFarms builds, owns, and operates greenhouses near these stores; the markets agree to buy vegetables—generally greens and tomatoes—grown there.

By drastically reducing the distance between the place where the food is grown and the store shelf, BrightFarms reduces the amount of shipping fuel by 98 percent, as compared to greens from California, where most supermarket lettuce is grown, Lightfoot said. Shorter travel time also means fresher, more nutritious produce and less food waste, he said.

The latest round of funding will allow the company to focus on getting two new greenhouses up and running over the next year. In 2017 and 2018, Lightfoot intends to expand aggressively, looking at new crops—strawberries have a lot of potential, he said—and new locations.

“I’d like to find us with greenhouse farms all up and down the 95 corridor and the Midwest as well,” he said.

For some, however, this kind of corporate adoption of the local food ethos is troublesome. Davis would rather see a local food system that preserves agricultural land and strengthens communities.

“To the extent that [small] farmers are seen in their communities, selling into their communities, they’re also going to be motivated to be accountable to their communities,” Davis added, noting that she doubts a corporate structure can engender the same effect.

Some studies suggest that this sense of community is, indeed, part of what local food shoppers are seeking. Consulting firm A.T. Kearney recently found that consumers are drawn to local foods because they perceived it to be good for local economies (64 percent), offering a better variety (60 percent), and healthier (45 percent).

Local food advocate Jodi Koberinski, the Oak Fellow for Human Rights at Colby College, argues that a company like BrightFarms, which sells its produce through conventional, established channels like supermarkets, is doing little to reshape a broken food system.

“We’re swapping out a piece and it’s not looking at the overall system,” she said. “You put that kind of money into a corporation of that size, that’s money that is not going into the truly localized food systems.”

Rachel Greenberger, director of the Food Sol sustainable food entrepreneurship program at Babson College in Massachusetts, advocates looking at demand as well as supply. Different local food enthusiasts care about different benefits, she said; more sustainable options on the market means more consumers engaging with the values behind their food supply.

Companies like BrightFarms “are a part of a portfolio of new options,” Greenberger said. “It’s a little limiting to see it as a zero-sum.”

Lightfoot is very comfortable describing BrightFarms as a local food venture. What his company does is “squarely agricultural,” even if it doesn’t fit the classic image of a farmer plowing a field with a team of oxen, he said. The company is careful to hire local employees to staff its greenhouses, he added. The Chicago location, for example, will create approximately 25 full-time, agricultural jobs.

BrightFarms targets product categories that are generally shipped thousands of miles before hitting supermarket shelves, his rivals are mega-growers in California, not small farmers, he noted. The company’s practices might even do some good for the local food category, Lighfoot added, by helping supermarkets become more comfortable with the concept and practice of local sourcing.

“We’re only competing in market categories where we can replace long-distance and complex food chains with a simpler, shorter one,” Lightfoot said. “We never feel like we’re competing with local farmers.”

The post Can Large, Corporate Urban Farms Grow ‘Local Food’? appeared first on Civil Eats.

“It’s awesome,” said the restaurant’s owner, Daniele Barrick. “It’s healthier for people and for the local economy.”

Martha’s Vineyard, the 87-square-mile island south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, is probably best known as a summer vacation spot for the affluent and famous—including, this month, the Obama family. But behind the chic boutiques and impeccably groomed golf courses, the island is also home to a thriving, if largely unsung, agricultural community.

Though the island’s year-round population is just 17,000, some three dozen farms operate on Martha’s Vineyard, selling fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, honey, and cheese. Oyster cultivators and fishermen add to the local food scene, and it’s hard to drive far without seeing roadside stands where backyard growers are selling their produce, flowers, or honey.

“There’s a very strong interest in agriculture, all over the island, on every level, in almost every household,” said Jon Previant, executive director of the FARM Institute, a nonprofit that runs a small farm and educational program on Martha’s Vineyard.

This interest reaches beyond traditional growing activities.

The Island Grown Initiative, or IGI, a sustainable agriculture advocacy group, operates several programs designed to integrate local food into residents’ lives. Island Grown Gleaning organizes efforts to gather leftover produce from the fields—12 tons last year alone—for donation to area schools and hunger relief groups. The initiative has also launched farm-to-school programs in each of the island’s seven schools; students learn about local food in the classroom, eat it in their cafeterias, and grow it in their school gardens.

The IGI’s Mobile Poultry Processing Trailer, introduced in 2007, travels from farm to farm, supplying the equipment small chicken farmers need to slaughter their birds for retail sale. Since the trailer became active, it has processed more than 10,000 chickens, adding $100,000 to the Vineyard’s agricultural economy, the program estimates.

A handful of Vineyard farms are certified organic, and most of those that aren’t still use organic, sustainable, and humane practices. Morning Glory Farm, which includes a perpetually bustling farm stand and 120 acres of land, sells produce under the label “morganic,” meaning they use many of the same growing practices that certified organic farms do and then some.

At Grey Barn, a certified organic dairy and meat farm in the rural island town of Chilmark, the cows all have names and are milked in stalls positioned to allow eye contact between the milker and the animal. The Good Farm houses its chickens in bottomless pens that are moved around the pasture every day; the birds supplement their diets with insects and grubs from the grass and their waste helps fertilize the field.

Both operations raise pigs in spacious pens within wooded areas. The pigs loll under shaded trees in summer, shuffle up to the fence to greet visitors, and feast on acorns in the fall.

“We try to give our pigs a lot more square footage,” said Grey Barn owner Eric Glasgow. “We try to keep it very natural.”

The island’s unique—and highly seasonal—demographics create both opportunities and challenges for farmers. In the summer, the influx of well-off, food-conscious tourists provides plenty of customers for high-end offerings like pasture-raised meat and organic, island-made cheese. In the winter, the local population keeps some level of demand going; the FARM Institute sold twice as much meat in local stores last winter as it had in previous off-seasons, Previant said.

Still, the year-round population has less money to spend on upscale food, farmers noted. Furthermore, harsh weather and the relatively high cost of importing supplies to the island can make for some long and difficult months.

“It’s hard to survive through the winter,” said Rebecca Gilbert, owner of Native Earth Teaching Farm, which offers classes and raises heritage breed pigs and poultry.

The community, however, is working to preserve the Vineyard’s agricultural traditions. Finding land to farm on is perhaps the biggest challenge on an island where a 5-acre plot can fetch millions from wealthy buyers looking to build vacation homes.

To respond to this trend, the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank buys land for agricultural use and environmental preservation, using money from a 2 percent surcharge imposed on every real estate transaction on the island. The Vineyard Conservation Society also pays landowners the difference between the agricultural value and the fair market price of their property if they agree to a deed restriction that will put the land in permanent agricultural use.

Programs like these are essential to the survival of farming on Martha’s Vineyard —and elsewhere—said Jefferson Munroe, the owner of the Good Farm.

“I don’t think anyone in America can farm on land they bought at market value,” he said, walking up a hill on the property he leases from the Land Bank, a cluster of guinea fowl skittering away in front of him.

And in the end, most of the farmers and local food purveyors on Martha’s Vineyard are not aiming to get rich, Barrick said, looking out over the tomato-filled hoop houses of the bakehouse garden.

“It’s so nice that people are really into the craft of their profession here,” she said. “It’s not about money when it gets down to good food.”

Photos, from top: Produce at a Farmers’ Market in Martha’s Vineyard by Tambriann/Flickr. A farm tour, by Sarah Shemkus.

The post How Martha’s Vineyard Has Become a Local Food Haven appeared first on Civil Eats.

“Not even pushing it, we should be able to store about 300,000 pounds [of produce],” Fisher-Merritt said. “It’s going to be really nice.”

The project is not just about satisfying a craving for local carrots in February. The outsized root cellar, supporters say, has the potential to build local food infrastructure, improve the energy efficiency of agriculture in the region, and act as a model for other farmers with short, northern growing seasons.

To help pay for the ambitious plan, the popular farm is turning to the community. In June, it launched a Kickstarter campaign asking for a minimum of $25,000. The rest of the budget—up to $300,000 for all the bells and whistles—will come from grants, loans, and savings.

“This is an idea that is completely needed,” said Kathryn Draeger, director of the University of Minnesota’s Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships program. “That concept of root cellaring is absolutely the next step we need to strengthen the local food system in Minnesota.”

Root cellars were once ubiquitous on farms (though on a much smaller scale than what Fisher-Merritt is planning). The premise is simple: A room dug into the earth will maintain a remarkably stable temperature range, even during the winter. It will rarely get cold enough to freeze your potatoes or hot enough to spoil your parsnips. Little, if any, extra energy is needed to keep vegetables edible for months.

Food Farm has had some version of a root cellar since Fisher-Merritt’s parents first bought the land in 1988. Looking for a way to improve their winter storage options, they decided to adapt a 5-foot by 9-foot room in the basement, adding insulation and a small ventilation fan to blow in cold air if the temperature crept too high. Despite its modest size, this first cellar could hold over a ton of potatoes and 1,000 pounds of carrots, Fisher-Merritt said.

“It was a pretty simple design and it worked really well,” he said.

By 2000, however, the tiny room was no longer enough and the farm installed a 24-foot by 52-foot cellar that can hold up to 85,000 pounds of food. This new version, still in operation today, has a computer-controlled ventilation system and three temperature zones, but remains remarkably energy efficient. While the energy to power a typical walk-in cooler may cost more than $100 a month, this cellar used just $150 in electricity over the entire past year, Fisher-Merritt said.

Now, however, this space is bursting at the seams as well.

“We’ve been using every square foot we can for storage,” Fisher-Merritt said. “It’s a game of Tetris when you go to pack boxes down there—you have to move three things to get one.”

So the Food Farm-ers have decided to undertake a massive expansion, more than tripling the footprint of the space, giving their own farm more room and also making the benefits of root cellaring available to the community. Area farmers will be able to rent space in the new cellar, allowing them to offer community-supported agriculture shares into the winter or supply wholesale customers for months longer than previously.

Rick Dalen, owner of the nearby Northern Harvest Farm, has already expressed interest in becoming one of the cellar’s first customers. Better cold storage could allow his farm to sell vegetables throughout the winter, offer more stable employment to its workers, and even out its cash flow during normally slow months.

“The amount we can do out of our cooler is limited,” Dalen said. “This would potentially open up something much more significant.”

Minnesota is particularly fertile ground for root cellars, Draeger said. The state is very farm-friendly, with rich soil, long hours of sunlight during the summer, and rain-fed fields that require minimal irrigation, she said. But it also has a short growing season that leaves many farms waiting out winter with little business. And an equal number of potential customers wait out the season, wishing they had access to more local food.

Root cellars are a logical way to address both problems, say supporters. Dalen thinks it likely the Food Farm project will spark imitators as fuel prices increase making local food ever more important and the savings the cellars offer even more attractive. Food Farm has already released its construction plans online to give a boost to anyone interested in building a similar cellar.

Draeger, for one, hopes the idea catches on.

“We are seeing a need for larger root cellars—community or regional scale,” she said. “The idea is absolutely spot-on.”

Photos courtesy of the Food Farm.

The post How a Modern Root Cellar Could Help Small Farms Sell Food Year-Round appeared first on Civil Eats.

The Boston Public Market will be home to about 40 vendors, who will sell fruits and vegetables, fish and meat, and honey—all grown, caught or produced in New England.

Most major cities either have large public markets these days or have one in works — think Detroit’s Eastern Market, San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace, or Portland, Oregon’s James Beard Public Market, scheduled to open in 2018. While these markets are all champions of local food and farmers, however, none have taken their sourcing rules quite as far.

Boston’s market will be the first permanent, year-round market in the country to require its products—not just its proprietors—to be all-local, a model that is both exciting and risky, said Elizabeth Morningstar, chief executive of the Boston Public Market Association, the nonprofit that will operate the new enterprise.

“Do I know if it’s going to succeed? I don’t,” Morningstar said. “Do I think it’s the right thing to do? One hundred percent.”

The goals behind the ambitious rules are the same as those driving the burgeoning local food movement: boost economic development, help people eat healthier, reduce carbon emissions from long-haul transportation, and encourage consumers to reconnect with the land where their food is grown.

The state of Massachusetts is paying for half of the estimated $13 million it will cost to get the market up and running. The environmental nonprofit The Conservation Fund has given the project a $3 million line of credit; private and foundation donations make up the rest of the budget.

The building is still a work in progress. Men and women in hard hats walk the raw concrete floors where shoppers will meander come summer. Visible ducts and wires run along the ceiling and a stack of pipes obscures a wall that will be covered in a cascade of flowers. The banks of floor-to-ceiling windows that line the front of the building are covered in colorful posters that promote the coming market and prevent passers-by from peering in at the unfinished space.

As the market nears completion, however, questions remain about its pioneering local-only mandate. Will the farms of highly seasonal New England have anything to sell in winter? Will consumers find the selection too limited?

Morningstar has conquered any doubts she once had about supply. More than 300 potential vendors–the vast majority from Massachusetts–have expressed interest in setting up shop in the market, she said. Applicants must submit a rigorous business plan guaranteeing their ability to provide enough product all year. “Even the small businesses have been very diligent about their supply model,” Morningstar said.

The growers selling fruits and vegetables have all found ways to extend their offerings through the colder, less fertile months. For instance, Corner Stalk Farm grows greens in converted shipping containers all year. Red Apple Farm will supplement its fruit with cider and treats like doughnuts. Other farms plan to offer items that will store well throughout the winter like root vegetables and winter squash. The first round of vendors also includes businesses selling meat, cheese, milk, ice cream, honey, wine, smoked fish, and greenhouse-grown flowers.

Not every ingredient will come from New England–market rules allow prepared foods to use components from outside the region, though the final product must be produced locally. The market will also sell chocolate and seasoned nuts grown out of New England, but processed in neighboring Somerville. And it will have a coffee vendor and some smoothies for sale there that will contain coconut.

The question of demand is not as clearly resolved, but there is every reason for optimism.

“Local” continues to be one of the most commercially appealing words in the food business, said Rachel Greenberger, director of food entrepreneurship program Food Sol at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachussets. Though the market will not have the one-stop convenience of a traditional supermarket, Morningstar points to data that indicate most shoppers already make multiple stops to buy all of the groceries they want.

Still, consumer education will be essential if the market is to succeed, said Gregory Watson, who was commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources when the plans for the market were taking shape.

“You want to manage those customer expectations right up front, so [they] don’t come in expecting tropical fruit,” he said.

Several vendors will include educational pieces in their own stalls, Morningstar said. An active beehive will buzz behind plexiglass at the booth of the Boston Honey Company of Holliston and Taza Chocolate of Somerville will have a traditional chocolate grinding stone on display.

In the market’s kitchen, a versatile space in the corner of the facility, visitors will be able to sample produce or practice their stir-fry technique in hands-on cooking classes. Area conservation group the Trustees of Reservations will coordinate the programming.

“This is definitely a radical concept, so the education becomes all the more important,” said Mimi Hall, market programming director for the Trustees of Reservations.

Though a market is always a tourist draw, planners are shaping the Boston facility to serve residents first and foremost, Morningstar said. Most vendors will serve some prepared food options, but the only seating will be eight small tables in the center of the space. The goal is not to become a dining destination, but to stay focused on the needs of local shoppers looking for dinner ingredients, she said

To make sure the market is an option for all residents regardless of income, all vendors are required to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, (AKA food stamps). Classes will also be priced to make them affordable to a wide range of participants, Hall said. One-third of the events will be free, she said, and another third will cost less than $20.

“We’re making sure people of all different backgrounds and all different means get connected to the land,” Hall said.

If the market succeeds, it could be an important catalyst for growth in the local food economy in New England, several people said. Having a guaranteed year-round outlet could encourage farmers to look at boosting greenhouse production, for instance, said Watson.

The market is also an important step in building needed local food infrastructure, Greenberger said. And for Morningstar, the market will help both grow and satisfy Boston’s corps of local food devotees.

“Shopping in a public market is a value statement,” she said. “People go because they like what it says about them and about the community.”

The post Boston to Launch the Nation’s First ‘All-Local’ Public Market appeared first on Civil Eats.