Is Village Farming on the Way In?

Gene Logsdon, who writes under the banner of The Contrary Farmer, posted an interesting commentary recently on the ascendance of Village Farming. He writes: “As far as I can find in history and archeology, as the hunting and gathering age gradually evolved into settled communities, farming was very much a village affair, not an individual family undertaking.” The new age of local market gardening, he says, is a way to reinvigorate village life, and in so doing strengthen the bonds between rural farmers and urban consumers.

(Photo credit: Flickr user earth_photos CC BY)

Jails in the Farm Economy

Work has been part of the experience of being incarcerated for a very long time, including work in the fields. Virginia happens to have a pretty impressive farming operation in its state prisons. One article from a few years ago said that inmates produced 1.2 million pounds of milk yearly, as well as 2.7 million pounds of fresh vegetables. This helps the prisons meet their needs in an efficient manner (the $0.45 hourly wage doesn’t hurt) and provides job training inmates can use once they are released.

Now a planning agency in Tidewater is looking at how its local jail can help expand markets for area farmers, as well as provide food and training to inmates. The Middle Peninsula Regional Commission wants to see if it’s feasible to build a flash-freezing facility inside the the jail, which serves several counties in that region. Lewis Lawrence, who directs the commission, told me the inspiration for the idea came from Deerfield, a state prison in Southampton County, which has a facility like this now that allows products grown on the prison farm to be preserved for later use. In some cases products may be shipped to other prisons, because they are packed and frozen.

But Lawrence wants to serve not just the jail, but also watermen and farmers on the Middle Peninsula who may not have any place to freeze their products now. It could help these small businesses to add value to their products and find new markets. The Middle Peninsula happens to be a region where most people have to drive elsewhere for work, and those who do work in the region make below-average incomes. That includes a lot of people who work the land and water for a living.

How exactly farmers would use a facility located inside a jail is unclear – Lawrence says that’s one of the questions he’s hoping to find an answer for.

The regional commission recently issued a request for proposals for a consultant to study whether a flash freezing facility at the jail would be a good idea. No one responded to the request, probably because the idea was too novel. Lawrence said they will break the request into parts, maybe with one part for a farming consultant and one for a specialist in jails, and try again.

Richmond Says No to Another Convenience Store

In Richmond’s Oak Grove neighborhood, they’d rather have a vacant structure like this than another purveyor of unhealthy food.

Ah, the neighborhood convenience store. It’s a bit of a relic these days, what with Wal-Mart and other large groceries having long ago stolen their thunder. You used to be able to walk from your house to the corner shop to buy milk, a loaf of bread and an ice cream cone. The few remaining corner stores are more likely to specialize in cigarettes, lottery tickets, soda and fried food. The latter sounds a bit less wholesome, even if the ice cream cone might not have been the healthiest.

It’s the somewhat unsavory nature of the contemporary corner store that explains why a lot of people who live in urban neighborhoods would like the stores to go away. Last Monday, the Richmond City Council voted against a proposal to open one in the Oak Grove community, on the city’s Southside. The council acted after several neighborhood leaders said they didn’t want the store because it would bring more unhealthy food and trash to an area that has plenty already.

Writing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, columnist Bart Hinkle lambasted these residents as “malcontents.” He said they had no right to tell the business owner what foods he could sell, and dismissed their argument that the store would prey upon the community. “Please,” he writes. “A guy who walks into a convenience store and orders some fried fish and a lemonade is not being victimized. He’s having a snack. If enough customers ask for a salad bar with organic tomatoes and free-range eggs, they’ll get one.”

I think Hinkle is completely wrong about what influence neighborhood residents should be able to have in these decisions. Perhaps Hinkle, who usually takes a libertarian stance in his columns, would decline to comment if a similar business opened next door to his house. But particularly in neighborhoods beset by drugs, gang activity and other ills common in poor areas, fighting an unwanted business is one of the few ways residents can control their surroundings. I would say they are not just fighting something here, but advocating for something better when they call for healthier food to be sold.

It’s arguable the residents could have talked to the store owner before they came out strongly against him at a public meeting. They could have had the folks at Tricycle Gardens talk to him. This group has been trying to get convenience stores all over Richmond to invest in healthier food. But it’s also true that residents won’t get healthy food in their neighborhood stores just by asking for it. The median income level in these communities makes a prospective shop owner highly unlikely to sell products that contain fresh, healthy ingredients. That’s not where the money is. Tricycle’s program has the potential to show store owners they can sell some fresh food and do well. But it’s going to be an uphill struggle.

Hinkle also attacked the City Council for being anti-business. Maybe so, but they were also following the city master plan, which says that corner stores should be phased out. The plan includes these words: “Such uses … frequently generate neighborhood nuisances.”

For some reason, stores selling lots of greasy food have more of a trash problem than groceries where you can buy fresh food. Maybe it’s because you have to take the fresh food home and cook it, so there’s no reason to throw the bag it came in out on the sidewalk.

Incidentally, a couple years ago I edited an article for a book on planning success stories that included the Bellemeade neighborhood, just south of where this store would have located. Residents have been working hard to make their community more green, planning new walking paths and clearing trash out of a creek that flows through the area. It’s not surprising, given their recent emphasis on making their community healthier, that they wouldn’t look kindly on a store that seems to belie the trend.

(Photo credit: Flickr user Bradley Gordon CC BY)

Crowdfunding Community Gardens

Crowdfunding campaigns are common these days, but one I stumbled upon today is novel enough to report on. The New River-Highlands Resource Conservation & Development Council, a nonprofit group that is active in a large area of Southwest Virginia, is crowdfunding community gardens through Indiegogo. You can contribute online to make it possible for the council to build at least three gardens in towns around the region.

Organizers want the gardens to be located in proximity to existing farmer’s markets, to create opportunities for growers to sell their products. But for produce that doesn’t sell, growers will be encouraged to donate some of it to the local food banks. A helpful video on the Indiegogo site includes interviews with some of the folks planning a garden in Wytheville, which will be close to the existing farmer’s market there.

In addition to providing a possible source of income and fresh food for growers, the gardens will also provide educational opportunities for kids to learn about healthy eating, and they will be a shared community space.

I just recently became aware of RC&Ds, which is the shorthand for organizations like New River-Highlands. These groups exist in many parts of rural Virginia and are a product of the 1960s, when the federal government encouraged the creation of grassroots anti-poverty, community development and conservation groups. In 2011 Congress cut off funding for the RC&Ds (they had been funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture). It looks like New River-Highlands has found some creative ways to maintain their momentum.

(Photo credit: New River-Highlands Resource Conservation & Development Council)

The So-Called “Bake Sale” Debate

If only they sold these sticky buns at more school fundraisers.

As in many states, there’s been a bit of a backlash in Virginia to the recent effort by the Obama Administration to make public school food healthier. One aspect of that effort that has drawn particular ire is a restriction on school fundraisers where the food for sale does not meet nutrition guidelines. Krispy Kreme donuts would be an example of one of the more common fundraiser foods. Basically, the feds did away with school fundraisers as we know and love them, but they gave states the option of passing a law to allow a certain number of these events. This has forced state legislatures to have at least some debate on the merits of encouraging schoolkids to eat food that is really bad for them.

The debate happened in the Virginia Senate on Monday, where for what the Richmond Times-Dispatch described as a seemingly interminable period of a half-hour, our elected officials discussed the relative merits of selling cookies, pizza and the like during school hours. In the end the Senate passed a bill, by a narrow margin, to allow a school to sponsor up to 12 fundraisers, each of five days’ duration, to help raise money for school activities.

Many schools rely on these fundraisers to help pay for athletic teams and other extracurriculars, so this is not just a matter of people wanting to preserve their kids’ right to eat junk food. Teachers will tell you the best way to get around the problem of unhealthy fundraisers is simply to better fund the schools.

Still, it’s notable how these fundraisers have been referred to by some as “bake sales” to create the impression the federal government is trampling on an all-American tradition. When was the last time a school fundraiser included anything homemade such as brownies or Rice Krispie treats? As noted in a recent column on Civil Eats, most of what kids are selling at fundraisers is corporate food. Not that pushing kids to eat homemade sugar-laden treats would be so much better, but at least the treats might contain identifiable ingredients such as butter.

Food Nodes, Hubs, Webs, Oh My!

In a recent blog post on rooflines.org, I wrote about an activist in Philadelphia who questioned how many food hubs would still be around a few years from now. A food hub aggregates farmers’ products and sells them to restaurants, hospitals and retailers, so farmers can just focus on growing the food.

Ken Meter, a consultant who is helping several counties in the northern Piedmont region to write a “food system plan” that can help them grow the local food economy, is also skeptical of the potential for many food hubs to succeed. The problem is that even though they are providing a valuable service to farmers, many of them still rely on donations to pay their bills. They can only grow so much with that approach, he argues. Here is a presentation he gave recently in Culpeper.

Meter advises his clients in the Piedmont and elsewhere in the country to not necessarily make building a food hub a priority. In this case the Local Food Hub of Charlottesville already provides that service, although it doesn’t currently have a relationship with any farmers in Culpeper, Fauquier and other northern Piedmont counties. Meter argues the northern Piedmont would be better off if it used the services of the Local Food Hub, rather than developing a food hub of its own.

Instead, he says the region should try to create what he calls food production nodes. As an example, you might have five separate farms, all growing vegetables and located in relatively close proximity to one another. There could be a “node” consisting of a single packing shed that would provide services for all five farms, such as food storage, washing facilities, a processing kitchen, and an office. This would enable farmers to meet their needs as they grow, without having to spend time and money to reach distant processing facilities in other parts of the state or region. Food hubs wouldn’t have to spend so much time helping farmers with their infrastructure needs, since the infrastructure would be right at or near the farms.

It’s an interesting concept and one Meter has previously proposed in South Carolina. There, he envisioned production nodes feeding into food hubs as part of a “food web.” This language sounds a bit overly complex at times, like a discussion about food hijacked by chaos theorists. But, hey, the food system is a puzzle. Farmers and activists around the country are trying to figure out how to make the different pieces of the system work well together so people can eat better and farmers can make a better living.

(Photo credit: Flickr user applesnpearsau CC BY)