When People Want Local —
How Do We Offer Identity?
by Harry MacCormack
The buzz in alternative food awareness the last several years has been a demand for local products. What is this buzz really about? How can the certified organic system be altered to allow consumers to know in a more detailed but simple way where their food comes from?
There are many considerations from various points of view when we entertain notions of local. Let's start with growers who are marketing. How does a small grower differentiate his/her product from products offered by industrial organic operations? What is the dividing line between "small grower" and "large grower"? In recent testimony before the New York state legislature, that line was set at small farms grossing under $500,000 per year. When you are a $20,000 -$50,000 a year grower in markets that also have $300,000 - $400,000 a year growers, you are competing with giants who themselves are small compared to industrial organic operations of several thousand acres. Small ends up being a matter of perception. Equations of local with small only make sense within a given context. For most consumers of alternative foods, small means garden-sized operations. Gardens may be several acres of production, but I know one really good grower who manages 10 acres of gardens and routinely grosses $250,000 a year or more by selling nothing locally.
A big consideration for many alternative consumers in these waning days of the cheap petroleum is distance. How far did a food product travel before purchase? How many products traveled how far to a production plant where they were processed for consumption? The distance definitions of local are again relative. When I sell my basil at the local farmers' market and it is the same basil picked the same day as that we sell in a market 90 miles away, is that a different product? Local in that 90-mile-away market is defined currently as within a radius of 50 miles. Other markets may have shorter or longer definitions of local. New Season's Markets in Portland recently launched a Home Grown campaign to get consumers to be aware of local. When you read their home grown definition you realize that food involved as the target of that campaign is not necessarily from your back yard or even from the Portland area. In fact Home Grown food comes from the Ecotopia region, British Columbia through Northern California. Our local coop also maintains a local definition, which is actually three definitions, different for fresh produce, processed foods, and other products. Fred Meyer advertises local here in Corvallis on produce grown in Yakima WA. Again, local is all a matter of perception.
Another consideration in the local discussion is fresh. Fresh is a time-oriented/nutritional matter. Certain foods have very different nutritional characteristics depending upon (1) time of day picked, (2) time from picking to human ingestion, and (3) post harvest handling techniques. In particular, greens of all kinds change their characteristics rapidly after picking. A lettuce that has been carefully handled but is a week old may look like the lettuce that just got picked, but nutritionally there is little similarity between the two. "Fresh" shouldn't even be applied to some crops. For instance, blueberries are nutritionally better if they are eaten a few days after picking. Well-grown potatoes can be stored and gain in nutrition through storage, up to a point. In fact, many food crops do not need to be fresh. Grains for instance, or beans, or winter squash are examples.
So how might we educate consumers while giving them what they want? And how might we do this easily? This question was put to me several years ago and I made an attempt to come up with a system. If we could use stars to label or identify foods by category, even in farmers' markets, maybe people would have another level of choices. Maybe small farmers would have a way of differentiating the quality of some of their crops from that offered by large industrial organic operations in places like Whole Foods Market. Here's my attempt.
| Distance | 5-star | within 10 miles |
| 4-star | within 100 miles | |
| 3-star | within 300 miles | |
| 2-star | within region | |
| 1-star | within 500 miles | |
| Freshness | 5-star | eaten immediately (U-pick) |
| 4-star | within 12 hours | |
| 3-star | within 24 hours | |
| 2-star | within 3 days | |
| 1-star | within 7 days | |
| Tested | 3-star | residue free |
| 2-star | minute detection of residues | |
| 1-star | near allowed limit |
Oregon Tilth is the only Certification group to actually deals with the residue question in organics. Our research showed that various residues are picked up from previous farming practices by various crops. Residue testing should be done for all root crops, squashes, melons and cucumbers.
A star system could work to educate and inform consumers. As usual it will probably be growers who will have to implement such a system.