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Will investors show an appetite for local food?
Cyndia Zwahlen, LA Times
The Let’s Be Frank food trailer parked most days outside the old Helms Bakery complex in Culver City is no ordinary lunch wagon.
The San Francisco company that operates the hot-dog vendor serves franks and sausages made from cows that ate only grass or pigs that were raised humanely. Customers also can choose turkey or soy dogs, all on buns from L.A. Breadworks.
The small business was funded in part by venture capitalist Peter Rogers and his Dry Creek Ventures, which targets clean energy, water and food businesses.
Such small local food outfits, especially those that are gentle on the environment, are key to the long-term health of the economy but need formal access to local investors to succeed, says social venture-capitalist and entrepreneur Woody Tasch.
Shifting capital to organic farmers, independent food entrepreneurs, farmers markets and restaurateurs will pay off in stronger local economies, a healthier environment and improved supplies of affordable, healthful food, Tasch said…
(22 Sept 2009)
Can farmland be saved without the farmer?
Tim Wheeler, B’More Green blog
Environmentalists have long felt a bit schizophrenic about agriculture – love the farmers, hate what they do sometimes, especially if they pollute the bay or sell the farm to developers.
Now the anti-sprawl group 1000 Friends of Maryland is trying a new tack to keep farmland from growing houses. It’s decided to extend a hand to farmers, offering to support tax reforms, public funding and other incentives to keep farming profitable and the developers at bay. Under the slogan “Keep Farmers Farming”, the Baltimore-based group is launching its new campaign tonight with a $65-a-head bash at the Green Spring Valley Hounds hunt club in Reisterstown, featuring locally produced food and drink, and a chance to meet and mingle with the farmers who produced it.
“We’ve always supported agriculture,” maintains Dru Schmidt-Perkins, Friends’ executive director. The group has long advocated for farmland preservation as a key part of the state’s Smart Growth policy, which seeks to preserve rural and environmentally sensitive lands by steering development into existing urban areas. But Friends has favored putting more teeth in the state’s growth management laws, something farmers have tended to fight because they have more clout at the county courthouses.
Now the group has decided to throw its lobbying weight behind helping farmers in the belief that the best way to save the farmland is to help ease the economic pressures driving farmers out of business…
(24 Sept 2009)
USDA grant program benefits farmers market producers
Dan Piller, Des Moines Register
Growers who produce for farmers markets can get up to $300,000 to help them fulfill the demand for local foods under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s $18 million Value Added Producer Grant program.
Interest in local production and farmers’ markets has risen in recent years; the latest census of agriculture by the USDA identified more than 4,000 new farms in Iowa, mostly 50 acres or less and producing for local markets.
One example is Carol Berg and Tom Cobb of Cedar Rapids, who have begun producing organic eggs, free-range chickens, vegetables, blackberries and apples on 15 acres southeast of Cedar Rapids.
“We’ve just begun producing, but we hope to begin selling in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City farmers markets,” Berg said. “We want to farm in a socially responsible and sustainable way.”
Small farmers have until Nov. 30 to submit applications for grants of up to $300,000 for working capital under the grant program…
(22 Sept 2009)
Grass-finished beef market sees exponential growth
Omaha World-Herald
In five years, the market for grass-finished beef has grown from less than 50 producers to 1,200 companies, said Allan Nation, editor, The Stockman Grass Farmer.
Though grass-finished beef amounts to only one percent of the market, that one percent amounts to a billion dollars, he told producers at the recent Nebraska Grazing Conference.
“What we are learning about how to finish an animal with no grain can be used by others to greatly lower the amount of grain fed and allow a producer to finish an animal much more cheaply than in the present high-grain system,” he said.
Success with grass finishing requires early-maturing, mid-sized cattle, Nation said. A steer would finish at about 1100 pounds and a heifer slightly less. Today, most cattle in Nebraska are bigger than that. The heifers finish at about the optimum size for steers, he said…
(23 Sept 2009)
Thanks to kalpa for these.
County to hear local food plan
Eric Timmons, Galesburg Register-Mail
The Knox County Board will listen to a plan tonight to create a local food council that would pool the resources of small farmers to help them find a bigger market for their products and create sustainable jobs.
Gov. Pat Quinn signed a new law earlier this month that would require state agencies to buy 20 percent of their food locally by 2020, while state-funded agencies such as schools would have a goal of 10 percent by 2020.
The county’s development and communications director, Gary Tomlin, said the legislation created a new market for local growers, which Knox County could capitalize on.
At present, it’s estimated that 96 percent of the food consumed in Illinois is produced outside the state. Tomlin, on behalf of the county, has submitted an application for a $325,000 grant, with a $160,000 local match spread over three years, from the Environmental Protection Agency, that would kick-start his proposal to establish a council of stakeholders in the local food sector.
The EPA wants more food to be consumed close to its source to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced by transporting food far from where it’s produced…
(26 Aug 2009)
related: Taste on the Prairie. Sent in by EB reader Robert Haugland, who “…has a small farm which is part of Th Local Growers Network. LGN is a group of small local farmers supplying several West Central Illinois counties, as well as Knox College, with fresh produce and eggs.”
It seems like the market and support for more locally and sustainably produced food from small family farmers just keep growing in the US, if still mainly at the local government and grassroots level. And now perhaps even the EPA and the USDA are waking up to some of these issues. -KS
