4th 5th Day: Sustainable Meat Production
With an excessive heat warning for the day, we met at Bellarmine and started down the path of discussing meat. The consumption of meat is, I believe, one of the most controversial topics to discuss in looking at social justice, environmental impact, morality and nutrition. Surprisingly, there is only one consistent vegetarian in the group which offered fertile ground to explore these different impact areas of meat production and consumption.
We headed north on 71 out of the city to Fox Hollow Farms where we were greeted by our host, Maggie Keith. She quickly rattled off a list of activities she had already knocked out for the day as well as the cattle crew and the rest of the farm. We realized that 9:30 am was late on this farm. We hopped into a mule ATV and the back of a pick-up to travel across the road which splits the property and by the sweet smell of manure, knew we were going to meed the herd. After a quick history of the farm and Maggie's family, a cowboy sauntered over, authentic down to the boots but missing a six gun and the faded ring on the back left pocket from repeatedly sitting on a dip can. Entering the paddock a group of 20 heifers lowed and eyed our group as we discussed some of the finer points of raising grass fed cattle, processing, marketing and breeding. I could see in the eyes of the interns the juxtaposition of the promise of a delicious steak and the cute calf standing by his mother.
Getting back into the vehicles the mercury was creeping close to three digits, perfect time to work in the garden. As a group we weeded the okra, ground cherries, tomatoes and peppers followed by laying a thick layer of mulch, the best tool to fight water loss during the drought. At the end, with a nice coat of sweat, we ate cucumbers right out of the garden while talking about the business model of the farm and the challenges which Maggie has faced.
Moving the mobile chicken tractor was next (see picture below). I provided a crash course in chicken raising for meat and eggs before we set about our task of catching 15 chickens and getting them back in their coop. As anyone with chicken experience knows, this can be pretty challenging. 20 minutes and a skinned knee later, the chickens are in the coop, and we drop the pin in the hitch to move the chicken trailer to set up their new home.
At 1:30 we succumb to the heat and proceed into the Fox Hollow Farm store where you can not only purchase beautiful meats, dairy and value added products, but can also have a fresh burger raised within a half mile of where you stand. As the grease dripped down their chins, I realized this was the wrong place to bring the crew if I wanted to make vegetarians.
5th 5th Day: Food Policy
Ties, skirts, and slacks replaced the tank tops and ball caps of the prior week. Over the course of the day we would meet with the heads of the Jefferson County Public School System Nutrition Service Center, movers and shakers in the Health Department and the mayor of the city.
The JCPS NSC is a plain brick building from the outside but few realize it is a national model that is well on its way to change school lunches from the stereotype of a drab, soggy, sustenance on styrofoam to a nutritional, local, tasty meal where students have input on what they eat. The history of the site quickly developed into a conversation that spans federal guidelines on school lunch to the purchase of thousands of pounds of local food to stats on free and reduced lunch prices and participants. After a tour of the production kitchen, built to centralize the food production of the 100,000 student school district, we discussed the tough reality of food and nutrition having to overcome a budget and fight for education time as core content becomes more specific to raise test scores.
Marigny Bostock and Teresa Zawacki welcomed us to the health department. As you might imagine the discussions encompassed just about every institution we had interacted with so far, deeper societal trends, larger governmental projects and backyard chickens. Mayor Fischer arrived and, after delineating his perspective on the food reality in Louisville, he helped us recognize some of the issues specific to Louisville such as trying to cement a local food culture that is also nutritional and healthy for the community. He challenged FoodWorks to find the gaps in the Louisville food system and said he expected to meet again at the end of the summer for a report.
Over the course of the day we discussed a wide range of topics as well as explored some of our own thoughts as we gained insights into new perspectives. Overall the impression was positive as we saw two major pieces of the city making positive steps to try to fight the tide of disease and behaviors that are negatively associated with food.
6th 5th Day: Food Retail
In planning this 5th day, I tried to encompass as many models of retail possible. That is how I justify not allowing time for lunch. We are in places that purvey food all day. Not a big problem. We started by meeting a local hero, Ron Smith, founder of the Root Cellar. We book ended the day with Ron, visiting his current store in the morning that acts as a 6 day a week farmers market for the farmer and his future site in an old textile mill in the afternoon. Ron embodied the business model of one person going forward and fighting tooth and nail to create a living, a viable business and something to help the community.
We drove to Butchertown, east of down town, passing the Swift butchering plant which offers an authentic aroma to this area of the city. Here we met with the founder of Rooibee Red Tea who offered insights into the creation of an organic food product, its marketing and the potential growth models. Going three blocks to the west onto Market St., we sat at a large conference table with the head of Creation Gardens, a produce provider for restaurants and other large institutions within Ky and the surrounding states. The presentation offered a macro level perspective of the production of produce in America, the challenges of providing local foods and the impacts of changes in production systems.
Traveling to the west end, following the tip by Mayor Fischer, we arrived in the Park Duvalle neighborhood, a recently revitalized area but until three weeks ago, a food desert. The change we came to explore was the First Choice supermarket, a collaboration between Metro Government and a local supermarket ValuMarket. I was filled with warm fuzzies as I saw the dedication to the community seen in hiring people from the neighborhood, murals that include the managers faces and foods that match the wants of the community while providing access to good food at a fair price.
To get to Rainbow Blossom, a 35 year old local grocery that provides not only local produce but healthy foods and supplements, we hopped on 64 and traveled back east. Ron Auerbach, the owner, greeted us as we entered, just having finished with the local TV station WHAS who was documenting their 35th anniversary as a business. Tracey, one of the most passionate people I have ever met, toured us through the store expounding the role of Rainbow Blossom in Louisville's food system as well as in her life.
To end the day we headed to my neighborhood, Germantown. We walked to Hauck's, a relic of the local corner store that has been in the neighborhood for close to a century. Strolling back through Germantown, we arrived at the Worsted Hope Mills and below timbers whose size can no longer be found unless you cut a redwood, listed to Ron as he shared his vision of how his model will grow.
Discussion Questions: Please feel free to chime in and become part of the conversation
1) As a group, we have a general abhorrence to industrial meat production. How do we change the system and culture to create a healthier, more sustainable, and humane system to produce meat?
2) How can we mesh a healthy food culture to the local culture which has a foundation in fried chicken and hot browns?
3) In researching meat, policy and retail, socioeconomic status seems to dictate what foods are available to you. What are some of the ways Louisville is succeeding in tackling this condition? Where do you see potential to ameliorate this problem in the city?
4) Open forum: Post as question.
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| Fox Hollow Farms, Cowboy Up. picture by Charlie Steinberg |
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| picture by Charlie Steinberg |
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| Catching chickens! |
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| Chicken Tractor Ho! |
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| Was it tough eating this in the cattle paddock? picture by Charlie Steinberg |
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| Netting up for the NSC kitchen. |
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| Keeping it real at the Health Dept. |
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| Ron at the Root Cellar, Old Louisville |
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| Park Duvalle murals and frozen section. |
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| The home of dainty. |
these past few weeks have brought forth a lot of obstacles in my mind. I think that there are a lot of promising ideas that are working to overcome these obstacles, but the end product (as of now) is not necessarily a good representative of these ideas at work. for example, I was a little disappointed when we went to JCPS NSC. before the tour, we heard how they were trying to incorporate more fresh fruits, vegetables, and healthy options. when we took the tour, however, the lunch and breakfast boxes did not match those ideals. a doughnut and grape juice breakfast, and a bologna and cheese sandwich on white bread, grape juice, chocolate milk (not skim) and an apple for lunch did not seem like nutritious meals. in fact, it seems like the only nutritious ingredient was the apple, which some children may not even eat. even though its summer, I expected more fruits and vegetables in the meal. I think a big issue with large food production facilities like JCPS NSC is that they cannot take small quantities of fruits and vegetables that are available. I see this in Dare to Care as well. the food bank stresses the importance of produce (which makes up 30% of our inventory) but at the same time, it is not productive or effective for the warehouse to accept small quantities of food (sometimes, 10,000 lbs is considered a 'small amount'). all food has to be systematically counted and distributed in a uniform manner (probably similar to JCPS NSC). therefore, it is difficult for the food bank to accept gleaned produce because it is a hodgepodge of miscellaneous produce that is difficult to quantify. i think a lot of large distribution facilities struggle with this. in effect, there is a lot of wasted food. even with smaller companies like creation gardens, only produce in a certain condition can be accepted. so, to pin point my question, how can we productively incorporate left over produce? some of it goes to smaller companies like the root cellar but there is so much of it that is wasted because it is not 'perfect'. there has to be a better way to use this produce that is all too often wasted.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways, socioeconomic status certainly does determine what you can buy. The organic produce at Rainbow Blossom was much more expensive than the very similar, conventional produce at the First Choice supermarket. Whether one was healthier than the other is in my mind debatable, but an argument can be made that organics are mostly a luxury of the wealthy. However, identical boxes of Kashi cereal were found in both supermarkets. The only difference in those products was the price: $6.50 per box at one, and $2 per box, on sale, at the other (I bet you can guess which was which). That price difference isn’t driven by any perceived difference in health benefits, and entirely by the socioeconomic status of the clientele and staff in each place. That’s my favorite cereal, and I usually pay $4 a box at the Kroger or ValuMarket in the Highlands, right in the middle both price-wise and geographically.
ReplyDeleteAnother way to compare: the store manager of First Choice said that about 75% of their customers use food stamps. I asked the manager of Rainbow Blossom about her clientele—she didn’t know exactly, but she said that it was “a fairly large number.” I wonder what that number is. Because if I were using food stamps, I would rather get three boxes of cereal for $6 than one box for $6.50, and I know where I would choose to shop.
In some ways, the cereal example represents a success. Someone living in Park Duvalle can get exactly what the St. Matthews residents do—a healthy box of cereal for the same price, if not cheaper than an unhealthy one (think Kashi vs. Cocoa Puffs). But even if the low prices are there, what will the customers at First Choice choose to buy? We talked about this briefly as a group. Several of us noticed that despite the beautiful, bountiful display of produce at the front of the store, many customers were walking out with mostly processed items. But, we thought, the mere presence of those vegetables might slowly start to change the habits of the neighborhood. Maybe next week they’ll try some green beans, and a few days later get a head of broccoli, or decide to buy apples instead of apple juice.
What will help facilitate those changes? Recipe cards next to the vegetables, or maybe ideas for $10 dinners at the entrance to the store (these might already be there, I didn’t check). Cooking demonstrations, to show how delicious vegetables can be. I know grocery stores around my home have started using some rating systems, to show how healthy the items are. Nutrition education about the importance of getting enough fiber, protein, vitamins. Sales on healthier foods, to encourage people to try them.
Some of these steps will hopefully create more of a demand for healthy, whole foods. And with a high enough demand, more good food will start showing up on supermarket shelves in what were once food deserts, and the same food will be available all across the city.
Response to Question 2, in the form of nine Haikus
ReplyDeleteLouisville cuisine
you hear it’s all about Hot Brown
heavy summertime
go way back in time
Ten thousand five hundred BC
natives ate small seeds
squash corn beans large game
snowed-in and dried-out carcass
trace of wooly mammoth, gone
flash-forward 12 thousand springs
Krishna, Galileo, Cortez,
now taste decimation
tobacco acres
childhood pouch and peace pipe
prayers for the harvest
21 century
Abraham Lincoln George Clooney Colonel Sanders
green beans or pinto beans
fried chicken fried okra fried grits
fried green tomatoes fried mutton
mint julep
white oak barrel bourbon
chess pie pecan pie derby pie
burgoo
where wind will blow seed
we are one slice of history
Louisville cuisine
In the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I eat what I do and what local food means to me. When I decided to stop eating meat, it was based on the idea that by choosing a vegetarian diet I would have more control over the environmental, social, ethical, and health impacts of my food; that by eating vegetarian I could rest assured that my money was not supporting the severe environmental impacts of industrial meat production or the poor working conditions in the meat processing plants; that I was not eating animals that had lived in poor conditions; and that I was not putting nearly as many hormones and antibiotics into my body. With the false sense of comfort over making “the right choices,” I gave myself the freedom to eat any dairy and eggs without taking on the emotional and mental burden of environmental, social, ethical, and health issues associated with industrially produced dairy and eggs. Did I know that I was being contradictory? Yes. But I was unwilling to put the energy and money into changing these practices.
ReplyDeleteFor similar reasons, I attempted to purchase organic versions of any processed goods. The idea that the company was willing to make the product organic, to me meant that they had environmental, social, ethical, and health impacts in mind when they created the item. I felt comfort in purchasing from the local co-op, the organic section at the supermarket, or the big-named organic grocery stores. Was this ignorant and naive to take labels and attach values to them? Yes. But I was unwilling to put effort into following up on various practices of organic companies.
Lastly, over the past three years of being a “more informed” food consumer, I began to highly value local vegetables, dairy, and eggs. This was in part because of the vast quantity of articles and books citing the benefits of small-scale local food production, particularly in regards to environmental and social impacts. But another part of this decision was to further my sense of control over what I was putting into my body and supporting with my money. Knowing that my food traveled fewer miles to get to my plate, made me feel as if I knew more about their farming practices and could trust that they were superior to large scale farming in the environmental, social, ethical, and health realms. Did I ever put in the effort to visit these farms, learn about their practices, and meet the farmer? Maybe for a few farms, but I was unwilling to put time and effort into further investigating my food.
continued...
DeleteThe New York Times recently released somewhat of an expose on large-scale organic companies, disclosing many synthetic items on their approved lists and the politics of the National Organic Standards Board. The thesis of this article is that organic has been transformed from statement of trust and quality to a marketing label. Now, I’m not saying that local food is, or will become, a scam or just a tool used to market higher priced goods. Unlike vegetarian and organic products, local food inherently has better impacts on the environment and local economy. But the principle here is the same. I’ve been a lazy consumer, because I have the privilege of buying items with labels that imbue a sense of trust. But if I want to feel truly comforted that my consumption decisions are environmentally friendly, socially responsible, ethically sound, and healthy I should go talk to farmers, explore the farms, and read up on company practices. Visiting many farms, touring retail operations, and lingering at farmers’ market stands this summer has been an amazing chance to do just that. I have never known so much about the locations, the people, and the hard work* that has contributed to the food on my plate, as I have this summer. To borrow from what Maggie Keith told us during our visit to Fox Hollow Farms, it is important to “shake the farmers’ hands,” because until you put the effort into learning about where my food came from, rather than trusting a label, you don’t really know the environmental, social, ethical, or health impacts of my decisions. Eating “good food” means a whole lot more than purchasing something based on assumptions of labels. It means putting effort into knowing where it came from—either shaking the hand of your farmer or growing it yourself.
Please excuse this post for leaning more towards self-reflection. I am aware and grateful of the privileged situations that have allowed me to even enter into this thought process. And I have certainly not forgotten about the many societal issues we have been talking about, but chose in this post to loop back to the reflection of “what is good food?” after gaining greater exposure to the local food movement here in Louisville.
*Side Note: Dad, if you ever happen to read this—I do know about all the hard work that goes into our garden at home!