Eventful: Fill Your Pantry & Winter Vegetable Sagra!

Spring has always been a favorite time of year, coming, as it does, at the end of a cold, damp season here in the Pacific Northwest. The warming temperatures, the first taste of the peppery greens emerging from the soil—it rings my chimes every time! And of course the abundance of summer can't be beat, starting with the region's justifiably renowned berries and the ensuing cavalcade of summer vegetables and fruits.

As colorful as it is delicious!

But I'm finding that, in the last couple of years, fall and winter have wangled their way into my heart, especially with the emergence of new, packed-with-flavor varieties that local farmers have adapted to our maritime climate, many of which can thrive in the field without row covers or hoop houses. I'm not just talking about beets and turnips here, either, but a whole plethora of chicories—bright red radicchio, speckled castelfranco, curly endive and escarole, and even an Italian outlier called puntarelle—with their slightly bitter bite, as well as new squash types that will make your old butternut blush, along with other upstarts like purple sprouting broccoli.

To celebrate this season of deliciousness and sample it first-hand, on Sunday, December 8th, Friends of Family Farmers and the Culinary Breeding Network are joining forces to once again to present the Fill Your Pantry and Winter Vegetable Sagra. Fill Your Pantry is a one-day community bulk-buying event encouraging you to stock your pantry for the winter with items from local farms such as storage vegetables, fruit, beans, pasture-raised meats, grains, canned goods, and other products. Take a look at the incredible list of products and sign up to pre-order. (Pre-ordering is encouraged, with orders to be picked up at the event. Farmers will bring a limited amount of product to sell at the event.)

Fill your pantry and your belly!

The Winter Vegetable Sagra—"sagra" being Italian for a rural festival—will have some of Portland's best-known chefs offering (free!) tastes of dishes featuring the many different varieties of winter vegetables being grown by Oregon farmers, along with cooking demonstrations and activities for kids. Not only that, and this speaks volumes to me, there's a cookbook swap where for every good quality cookbook you bring in, you can swap for another one of your choice!

It's all happening on December 8th from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at The Redd, Portland's hub for local food and farms, at 831 SE Salmon St. in Portland.  Past events have been not only a showcase of the vitality of our local food system, but an opportunity for the community to celebrate the bounty that is available to us year round.

Photos by Shawn Linehan Photography.

Quillisascut Farm: Hands-On Approach Teaches How a Local Food System Works

"It was mind-opening to hear others' opinions, perspectives and how passionate they were about them. I was inspired to see how beautiful everyone's cooking was and how sustainably it was done. To see that it CAN be done with effort and knowledge." - Culinary student attending Quillisascut Farm School

* * *

In the far northeastern corner of Washington State, among the high desert pines populating the northern reaches of the Columbia River, Lora Lea and Rick Misterly have created a hands-on learning center where students spend a week immersed in a living example of what a local food system looks like. No lemons spark the salads; instead, the kitchen uses verjus made from the pressed juice of unripened grapes—the vines left from an abandoned attempt to make wine in the farm's early days. No branded items are allowed at the table, save for wine bottles (thank heavens).

The farm table.

I was invited to Quillisascut Farm to experience the program that now exposes dozens of students a year to small intensive workshops like Farm Culinary 101 (the workshop I attended), Edible Education, and Chefs of Color, among others. Each workshop has a particular focus, and most are aimed at professional chefs and culinary students, though serious cooks and those interested in building strong local food systems will find them perfectly approachable.

Lora Lea Misterly.

Lora Lea and Rick originally bought 26 hillside acres in the early 80s, intending to build a self-sufficient homestead where they could raise animals and have a garden to feed them throughout the year. She had grown up on a dairy farm in the area, so they started with both cows and goats, but Lora Lea was increasingly drawn to goats because of their intelligent and inquisitive natures. She also began making cheese from their milk.

The school building.

They built a home with a cheese room and cellar for Lora Lea, and eventually added another 10 acres to the property. The couple marketed their cheeses to chefs in Seattle, Rick making the exhausting twelve-hour round trip deliveries. Several of their customers became interested in visiting the farm after hearing of their integrated approach to farming and making food from what they grew themselves. These customer visits and the inclusive approach the Misterlys took led them to start offering classes to culinary professionals, students and food writers. The visits prompted Rick to build a large straw-bale building that houses a professional kitchen, a large dining room, a living room for nightly gatherings and dorm rooms upstairs. (He also included a large double-wide barn entrance that farm equipment could access in case the school idea didn't work out.)

Rick demonstrating the farm's compost system.

Conservation and use of resources is a key tenet of the curriculum at the school, and the very first workshop on the week's schedule was a demonstration of making the compost that enriches the soil that feeds the plants, animals and people who live there. It's a holistic approach that underlies everything at the farm, which depends on a well system for water—the bathroom mantra "if it's yellow, let it mellow" is drilled into students' heads—as well as the need to make use of every part of the plants and animals harvested.

Slaughtering and cleaning chickens.

A typical day at Quillisascut begins in the pre-dawn dark after a (very) quick cup of coffee made by the saintly staff who volunteer their time at these workshops—and fyi, that 5:45 start time was tough for this freelance writer. The morning session usually begins at the barn up the hill with anything from butchering a neighbor's heritage Karakul ram killed earlier that morning, to slaughtering and eviscerating several of the farm's chickens, to helping Lora Lea milk her goats.

Cracking walnuts for walnut oil.

After the early morning session, a large breakfast of farm-grown fruit and eggs, with breads made from grains milled onsite, is served buffet-style off the butcher block counter in the kitchen along with (thank the goddess once again) lots more (locally roasted) coffee. Each day has a "Word of the Day" theme—the first word was "Respect"—which students are encouraged to consider as they move through their assignments. The schedule moves swiftly from breakfast to classes on cheesemaking with Lora Lea, or a foraging walk with Chef Kären Jurgenson, or feeding and watering the pigs, chickens and goats. At least one morning is dedicated to harvesting whatever is in season in the garden (top photo), which will be pickled, cooked, baked or otherwise utilized in meals that week.

Making bread with Chef Don Reed.

After a hearty farm lunch prepared by students, who are divided into four or five-person "teams" for the week, classes continue apace with field trips to other area farms—John and Michelle Progar of Meadowlark Farm's innovative organic cropping system was fascinating—a presentation on bees and pollinators with beekeeper Steve Schott or bread baking with Chef Don Reed. After dinner is discussion and reflection on the day's activities led by Lora Lea, followed by well-earned sleep.

* * *

[Quillisascut] really created some sort of special bond.  Maybe it was the community that type of work creates, but on the last day, our final word was "grateful." It was a wonderful experience and one of those places your soul likes to stay for a while even after you have left." - Professional chef attending Quillisascut Farm School

* * *

Student making goat cheese.

The farm school at Quillisascut has drawn participants from around the country, indeed from around the globe, but is primarily attended by students from Seattle-area culinary programs who compete for scholarships to the workshops. The school has become successful enough that it provides the bulk of the farm's income, and Lora Lea has cut back her milking goats to seven from a high of around 40, and they have found a distributor for the cheeses so that Rick no longer needs to make the long deliveries to Seattle.

Now in their mid-60s, the Misterlys believe that their primary mission is to spread the message about the hard work and care it takes to produce good food, with the intention that not just the education, but the interactions with the people and animals, as well as the quality and flavor of the sustainably grown food that students harvest, make and eat, will become an integral part of their lives as they move forward in their careers.

See more photos from my trip to Quillisascut Farm on my Instagram feed.

Impossible Burger: Industrial Scam with a Side of Glyphosate

A couple of articles have come across my radar lately that are worth noting, and they fit in with some conversations I've been having, both casually and work-wise. Those conversations have to do with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), laboratory-produced synthetic meat products—the industry likes the hygenic "clean meat" label because it doesn't have the "dirty" association with farms and killing animals for food—and glyphosate, the active ingredient in the pesticide Roundup made by Monsanto, which has been found guilty of causing plaintiffs' cancers in three recent trials, as well as being labeled a carcinogen by the state of California.

Impossible burger.

The articles involve the Impossible Burger, which its manufacturer enthusiastically lauds as "making meat using plants, so that we never have to use animals again. That way, we can eat all the meat we want, for as long as we want. And save the best planet in the known universe." It claims to taste just like meat, too, and to "bleed" (i.e. leak juices) when cooked just like a normal hamburger.

All this good news has the tech-bros in Silicon Valley and the VC dudes weak in the knees and climbing over each other to finance products that can be industrially manufactured by the zillions and sold to a public clamoring for healthy, climate-friendly, humanely produced food.

Aerial spraying of pesticides.

What the manufacturer, Impossible Foods, has neglected to say amid all this hoopla is that the soy proteins used in its burgers are derived from soybeans that were genetically modified to resist applications of Monsanto's Roundup—sold as "Roundup Ready" seeds—that is used to kill weeds that might compete with the soy plants in the field and/or impede harvest. Roundup is also sprayed on fields just before harvest to dessicate, or dry out, the soy plants before harvest.

The organization Moms Across America, with a mission to educate the public about the dangers of GMOs and toxins in the food supply, recently published an article titled "GMO Impossible Burger Positive for Carcinogenic Glyphosate" that describes tests done by Health Research Institute Laboratories showing that the levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible burger "were 11 times higher than the Beyond Meat Burger [a competing lab-produced product]. The total result (glyphosate and its break down AMPA) was 11.3 parts per billion (ppb). Moms Across America also tested the Beyond Meat Burger and the results were 1 ppb."

Monsanto's Roundup sold for home use.

"This new product is being marketed as a solution for 'healthy' eating, when in fact 11 ppb of glyphosate herbicide consumption can be highly dangerous," according to Zen Honeycutt, the founder of Moms Across America. "Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to alter the gene function of over 4000 genes in the livers, kidneys and cause severe organ damage in rats."

It must be noted here that almost no mention is made of agricultural workers and the dangers they and their children face from exposure to this toxic pesticide, which can cause damage during pregnancy and developmental delays in addition to causing cancer and other health issues.

The article goes on to list the ingredients in the Impossible Burger, which it says could contain as much as 80 percent genetically modified ingredients like sunflower oil, potato protein, yeast extract, cultured dextrose, modified food starch and many others in addition to the soy protein.

Another problem with the soy protein in the Impossible Burger is described in an article from the Organic Consumers Association. It states that "in the messy world of soy studies, where 'soy' can be defined as almost anything with soy in it, there are just as many studies showing no or only marginal benefits, and in some cases, potential for harm" from diets high in soy. Contrary to the beneficial reputation of fermented soy products like tofu or miso, these highly processed soy proteins are made from defatted soybean flakes that have been washed in either alcohol or water to remove the sugars and dietary fiber. "Alcohol is the most common process, as it produces products with a neutral taste. But the beneficial isoflavones in soy are removed by this method. Soy protein concentrate has the lowest level of healthful isoflavones—including daidzein, genistein and glycitein—of any form of processed soy."

But the biotech industry isn't taking all this lying down. An article describing the steps manufacturers are taking to undermine media reports states that "the biotech industry is particularly focused on taming controversies surrounding GMOs and the chemicals that are used on genetically modified crops, including Monsanto’s weedkiller glyphosate. The world’s most widely used herbicide, glyphosate is critical for the successful cultivation of GMO corn and soybeans. A recent study found that the chemical’s use by farmers has jumped fifteen-fold since 1996.

"One tactic industry allies employ to discredit questions about GMOs is to narrow the discussion to food safety. Pro-GMO scientists and writers mock experts and critics, by portraying them as loonies who think eating a bag of corn chips is akin to ingesting a bottle of arsenic. But this is a misleading line of attack, since GMO concerns are wide-ranging, including how well they are tested for safety, their impact on agriculture and the ecosystem, and the toxicity of glyphosate."

The article quotes author Michael Pollan as saying, "The industry’s PR campaign to reframe the GMO debate and intimidate journalists through harassment and name-calling has been remarkably successful in my view."

It remains to be seen if the recent guilty verdicts have any effect on people's willingness to subject not just themselves, their children and their pets to these pesticides, but their communities and the air, water and climate that we all depend on.

Photo of boxed burger from Wikipedia.

Make a Difference in Our Food System: Join a Commodity Commission!

Love West Coast albacore? Passionate about beer? Want to do something to change Oregon's food system for the better? If you care about where your food comes from and how it's produced, please consider joining one of Oregon's commodity crop commissions. Most include a member of the public, so check out this list of the positions available and make a difference in our food system!

Oregon albacore.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) is recruiting for 63 commodity commissions, with a deadline to apply on May 10, 2019. Oregon’s 23 grower-funded commodity commissions support promotion, research and education to improve market conditions for their commodity. A key point: they also give industry members direct access to key Oregon agricultural opinion leaders and decision makers.

Oregon strawberries.

Each commission has a board that includes producer and handler positions. Producers grow or harvest the commodity; handlers are the first to purchase the commodity from the producer and often are processors, distributors, or marketers. And most commissions also include a member of the public. (The dairy commission has a public member position available…just sayin'.)

Time commitment varies depending on the commission, but can be from four to 10 times a year, and phone participation is a possibility. Meetings generally last two hours, but can sometimes be as long as two days, with some expenses reimbursed. For more information, e-mail Kris Anderson. You can make a difference!

Click to see the list and apply.

An Unexpected Accolade

My friends and family know better than to go to a farmers' market or food event with me, because I'll end up seeing people I know and chatting about "the latest this or did you hear that" until they want to pull their hair out and run screaming from the scene. Just the other day a friend and I were wandering through the Eat Oregon Now event, a pre-Christmas show of local producers and makers showcasing their food and food-related wares.

I got in a conversation with Lyf Gildersleeve about his essay on seafood trade wars and we got talking about the farm bill that was about to be voted on—my friend had wisely wandered off by this point—when he pulled out a little booklet from Earl Blumenauer. Titled "The Fight for Food: Why You Deserve a Better Farm Bill," it distills the complexities of this massive piece of legislation down into bite-sized pieces easily digestible for we normal folk.

It begins: "The Farm Bill is a law that helps determine: what we eat; how and where it's grown; and how we take care of the land it's grown in" with the purpose "to provide adequate food for the country, ensure fair prices for farmers and consumers, and protect the land." It then segues into a description of how it got from this original simple premise to "become distorted and distracted…giving too much to the wrong people to grow the wrong food in the wrong places." (You can get your own copy for a donation of $3.)

My point? In the back of the booklet is a collection of publications where you can learn more, listing books by acclaimed authors Dan Barber, Michael Pollan, Anna Lappé and Mark Bittman, along with websites like Civil Eats, Slow Food, the Food & Environment Reporting Network and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition blog.

The last item on the list? Good Stuff NW, the very blog you are reading right now. To say I was blown away to have it included on this list of some of the most important food folks in the country is the understatement of the decade. Holy moly!

What can I say but thanks, Earl, I'm honored. And here's to carrying on the fight for good food!

Guest Essay: Defining Food Justice

The following essay on the topic of food justice was written by Azul Tellez Wright, the new assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers' Market, and was published in its most recent newsletter. If you would like to engage further in this topic, I would suggest volunteering or donating to the organizations that Ms. Wright lists below, or consider making a donation in the name of someone on your holiday gift list.

When you think of the term "Food Justice," what comes to mind? Perhaps it’s a vacant lot being converted into an urban farm or cooking classes at a local community center that are open to all. I wanted to take some time this week to flesh out the term and give some examples of local organizations that are doing good work in this area.

Healthy food should be accessible to everyone.

The food justice movement is a social movement that arose to address the inequities in our food system and is inextricably linked to the racial, environmental and economic justice movements. The term is said to have arisen in 1996 from the Community Food Security Coalition, which received criticism for not including the voices of those primarily affected by food injustices. Since then, the term has evolved to fit the specific food culture of our time. The organization Just Food defines Food Justice as follows: “Food Justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food. Healthy food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers and animals.

Farmers' markets support food justice in their communities.

This is a very broad definition of a term that is subjective to each community. I find that the best way to understand food justice is to offer some examples of organizations that are enacting change in their communities. Here are three local organizations that are dedicated to the cause of food justice:

• Urban Gleaners. Based in SE Portland, Urban Gleaners addresses both food insecurity and food waste in their community. They pick up food that would normally be thrown out from restaurants, grocery stores, corporate campuses and farms and distribute it to people experiencing hunger. Their mobile market van travels to low-income housing complexes and 25 schools across the city on a weekly basis.
• Adelante Mujeres Sustainable Agriculture Program. Adelante Mujeres, which translates as "rise up women," is a nonprofit in Forest Grove, Oregon, that works to support Latina women and their families in Washington county. One of their many programs is the Sustainable Agriculture program which provides local Latino farmers with training to grow and sell their produce in a sustainable manner. Through the courses and trainings they offer, farmers gain the skills to eventually run their own farm businesses.
• Mudbone Grown/Unity Farm. Located on the Oregon Food Bank’s Northeast Portland headquarters, Unity Farm is run by the organization Mudbone Grown and the Black Food Sovereignty council. Unity Farm is a black-owned and operated urban farm that focuses on intergenerational, community-based farming. The food grown on the farm goes to several groups working to decrease food insecurity as well as to its CSA members. They also offer a beginning farmer training program for people of color in an effort to increase representation in the Portland farming scene.

The Hillsdale Farmers Market is also dedicated to food justice. By supporting local farmers and businesses, we are creating a resilient food system. We also accept SNAP benefits and offer a Double Up Food Bucks program in which SNAP recipients receive up to $10 to spend on produce each visit. [Watch this video about the program.]

The market is planning to expand its involvement in food justice issues in the following ways:

• Expand our SNAP customer base in order to increase access to healthy, affordable food in our community.
• Host cooking and nutrition classes at the market and at other sites in the community.
• Engage our community in shopping at farmers' markets and debunk the myth that farmers' markets are more expensive than grocery stores.

Azul Tellez Wright grew up in Portland, went to Connecticut College, then worked at Greensgrow Farms in Philadelphia. She ran its CSA program for SNAP recipients and wrote the weekly newsletter. Azul moved back to Portland and worked at Adelante Mujeres in the micro-enterprise program. Azul is also a three-year fellow in 99 Girlfriends.

Fill Your Pantry, Support Local Farmers!

I don't know about you, but I've been watching the squirrels in our neighborhood and they seem particularly frantic this year to collect and bury as many nuts as possible against the winter. (And is anyone else noticing a lot more of those little swirly holes in the lawn from the squirrel activity?)

Making a list, checking it twice…

It's got me thinking that maybe I need to follow suit and get my pantry stocked, too, which is why I got all excited when I heard about the Fill Your Pantry Winter Stock-Up event coming on Sunday, December 9th. Sponsored by Friends of Family Farmers, this one-day market is a unique opportunity to meet and support local farmers and ranchers who will be bringing a bounty of locally grown winter squash, root veggies, onions, garlic, cabbage, frozen pasture-raised meats, honey, beans, grains, fruit, and much more to Faubion Elementary School in Northeast Portland.

Hard to resist so much gorgeous produce!

Want to browse through some of the offerings and develop your shopping list? Check out this list of products available for pre-order from now through December 2nd if you'd like to get your shopping done ahead of time (and guarantee availability). You can pick up your pre-order at the event, but make sure there's room for impulse purchases, since most farmers will be bringing other must-have products the day of the market—think holiday gift-giving and host/hostess gifts for holiday parties!

Tips and tricks from pros will be on offer.

As if that's not enough to get you out, the Culinary Breeding Network and Friends of Family Farmers are co-hosting a Squash and Bean Sagra in conjunction with the market, a festival offering a chance to learn about, celebrate and taste the many different varieties of winter squash and dry beans being grown by Oregon farmers—many of whom will be at the market—through tastings, cooking demonstrations and more.

Fun for the whole family!

I went to these events last year and it was so inspiring to not only see the vast aisles of gorgeous products our farmers are growing, but the positive energy on display, the meetings-and-greetings of friends new and old and the delicious samples on offer made it something to remember. I'm thinking about picking up my eight-year-old nephew for a field trip, since it's great for kids (and their parents) to see what a thriving food community looks like.

Hope to see you there!

Fill Your Pantry event photos by Shawn Linehan. Check out more photos from last year's event.

Two Thousand Five Hundred Posts? Really?

Yikes!

A little more than a dozen years ago this blog began, and 2,500 posts seems like a good time to pause for a moment and reflect on that significant milestone. I had not a clue at the time I wrote my first post what Good Stuff NW would become, or how many passionate people I would meet, people who would let me tell their stories and show me what a truly vibrant, equitable and accessible food system could look like, as well as how we could achieve it by working toward that goal together.

I'd like to thank the many contributors and guest essayists, particularly Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm, who've added their voices to this effort, and helped to expand it beyond my "I'm just one person" scope. And a big shout-out to the sponsors who have seen fit to contribute their support in so many ways to making Good Stuff NW the success it is.

Lastly, thanks to all of you readers for your support. Your feedback and participation has made this journey so very worthwhile.

Going forward, look for more reporting from the fields, profiles of farmers and producers, recipes for delicious food to serve those you love and, always, in-depth posts on food policy and politics you can act on. As Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer always says in closing, "Courage!"

Guest Essay: Time to Zero in on the Farm Bill

This opinion piece from Congressman Earl Blumenauer, released on June 14, 2018, states that both the House and Senate versions of the Farm Bill—both have since passed their respective versions—maintain a deeply flawed status quo and weaken support for healthy food and sustainable farming. Blumenauer believes there is a better path forward. Please consider contacting your representatives in the Senate and the House regarding this issue.

Health care, climate change, economic development, and jobs are some of the major issues at the heart of current American politics. And there’s major legislation making its way through Congress right now that impacts all of these areas and every American who eats. Yet, most people know nothing about it.

Bigger isn't better.

The farm bill has flown under the radar for too long, with large agribusinesses and their lobbyists exercising an outsized influence on our nation’s food and farm policy while the rest of the country is left fighting for crumbs. That is, unless more people raise their voices.

As Congress works to reauthorize a new farm bill by September 30 [of 2018], it’s time for everyone to wake up and get involved.

Sadly, our current food and farm policies fail to meet the needs of the American people. We pay too much to the wrong people to grow the wrong food in the wrong places. The federal government spends an exorbitant amount of taxpayer dollars to help the wealthiest and most powerful agriculture operations get bigger and more profitable. Recent data shows that the bill’s high dollar farm subsidy programs paid the same 28,000 farmers $19 billion for 32 straight years.

Family farms mean business.

Meanwhile, small and medium-sized farmers and ranchers, the environment, and American families receive too little attention, too little concern, and too little help. This is unacceptable.

This Congress, unfortunately, only promises more of the same, and in some cases it has been working to make the situation worse.

In May, Republican leadership tried to force its farm bill through the House of Representatives. The legislation failed in a highly partisan, dramatic vote on the floor of the House. Several far-right Republicans, who want draconian changes to U.S. immigration policy, voted no. And every Democrat was unified in opposition to the bill’s blatant attack on those in need.

Everyone wins when everyone has access to good food.

The controversial bill drastically cuts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, enacts burdensome requirements for recipients, and forces them to attend an untested, unproven job-training program with strict penalties. While these cruel policies alone should be enough to defeat the House Republican farm bill, they are only the most obvious of many egregious provisions in the bill.

The House bill takes the “savings” from cutting programs benefiting the neediest Americans and puts much of it in the hands of corporate farms, helping them get even richer, all in the name of the farm “safety net.” But current farm subsidy programs are less of a safety net and more of a corporate welfare program. The House bill doubled down by creating new loopholes for those who don’t need more help. For example, a farmer’s nieces, nephews, or cousins who do not even live or work on the farm would become eligible for additional farm subsidies.

Sustainable farms benefit our health, our communities and our environment.

Rather than investing in family farmers who grow real and healthy foods, the legislation helps large operations grow six commodity crops—many of which we already have in excess and are made into unhealthy processed foods. The bill also shortchanges farmers’ markets and local food promotion programs. All of this together puts Americans at greater risk of health problems, such as diabetes and obesity. We are subsidizing a diet that is literally making Americans sick.

The House bill also threatens our environment by further removing incentives for farmers to protect sensitive land. It puts wildlife habitat and water quality at risk. Rather than offering meaningful reforms such as rewarding performance-based conservation, the bill instead proposes drastic cuts to urgently needed conservation programs while failing to do enough for sustainable farming practices.

One of the most outrageous provisions in the bill is the King amendment, which guts consumer, environmental, and animal welfare protections and allows any state with strong standards to be undercut by states with weaker protections. The Harvard Law School’s analysis of the provision should be deeply disturbing for those who want states to have the power to protect their residents.

Read the rest of the article posted on Civil Eats.

[Since Rep. Blumenauer wrote this, the deeply misguided House version described above passed on June 21, 2018, by a razor-thin margin of 213 to 211. The Senate version passed on June 28, 2018. Both houses of Congress need to vote on a final reconciled version by Sept. 30th. Please consider sharing your opinion on this critical legislation with your representatives in the Senate and the House.

Read Rep. Blumenauer's follow-up statement on the House and Senate-passed versions of the bill. For an explanation of the provisions of each version of the Farm Bill and what is required for passage, read the National Journal's excellent explainer.

Read my interview with Rep. Blumenauer on his solutions to the challenges facing Oregon and the nation's food system.

Posted with permission.

Guest Essay: What Does Real Change in Our Food System Look Like?

Lyf Gildersleeve, owner of Flying Fish Company, a sustainable seafood retailer in Providore Fine Foods, is a second-generation fishmonger and a vocal advocate for national fisheries policy. This is a guest post he wrote for the Marine Fish Conservation Network, a coalition of fishermen, conservationists, scientists and citizens around a mission to conserve and revitalize wild ocean fisheries.

Obesity, chronic heart disease, depression, cancer, diabetes, and malnourishment are all components of our failing food system. Worldwide, we produce enough calories of food to feed the entire planet, but due to economic inequality and unequal distribution of power there are billions of people who are starving.

Here in the United States we have a different problem: the food we are eating could be killing us.

Comparison of wild Atlantic salmon (left) and farmed (right). Note misshapen jaws of the farmed fish.

In land-based agriculture we often overuse artificial chemical fertilizers, growth-enhancing hormones, and antibiotics. In most open ocean fish farming we use artificial color in the feed to make the fish look like wild salmon, we overstock the pens so disease is commonplace, and the finished product is less nutritious than its wild counterpart. Additionally, we abuse the use of preservatives in order to cater to our industrialized distribution of the food. These examples and many more show the alarming discrepancies between how our food used to be produced and how it is produced today.

The communities in which we live depend on the infrastructure of the old food systems. Rather than keeping jobs in the USA, however, corporations are shipping products overseas to be processed by cheaper labor. This doesn’t come without additional price tags, including child labor, green house gas emissions, inferior food safety standards, loss of domestic jobs, increased trade deficits, and lower food quality. We need to wake up and realize this isn’t okay; big changes need to happen.

So-called "free range" chickens in a factory farm.

There is a reason why large multi-national corporations don’t want consumers to see behind the doors of their production and processing facilities. The industrial food production system is structured to maximize output, minimize input, and maximize profit. What is missing is the humane, logical, reasonable conditions in which we would want animals to be raised, the commitment to using our natural resources sustainably, using minimal additives in order to provide our bodies with maximum nutrition and healthy antioxidants to fight off illnesses.

Now how do we change that?

The answer is: one bite at a time. In the famous writing of the Tao Te Ching, Laozi stated, “The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.” This saying teaches that even the longest and most difficult ventures have a starting point; something which only begins with taking the first step. The same goes for the food system. We have to learn to be conscious consumers, choosing to support local fishermen and community supported fisheries like Tre-Fin Foods from Ilwaco, Washington, which catch, process and distribute their own albacore tuna directly to consumers and restaurants. This is how we become active citizens who stand up against our current unsustainable food system.

Money spent at farmers' markets goes directly to farmers, ranchers and fishermen.

Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding area is an amazing mecca of food culture, world-renowned chefs and restaurants, biodynamic farms, non-profit organizations fighting the good fight, and a consumer base that genuinely wants to do good for the environment and for their bodies. Portland has a burning desire to learn, grow, and do things differently than the status quo. We are hungry to learn and change; we just need the information. It’s in communities like this that real change happens. We have the opportunity to be leaders in our nation by leading by example.

Changing a massive food system takes a whole gamut of folks. It’s people like Jeremy Coon, who is investing in infrastructure in the fishing port of Garibaldi, Oregon, to make it easier for fishermen to offload their catch and sell direct to small buyers, instead of being forced to sell to the massive seafood processing and distribution companies, which have been alleged to price-set and manipulate the market for their own financial gains.

It’s non-profit organizations like Ecotrust, which is investing millions of dollars in a food hub that provides a platform for local farms and fishermen to store and distribute their products in the Portland metropolitan marketplace. Finally, it’s the consumers who choose to shop at the small local artisan store or marketplace or, better yet, their local farmers' market, where they get to talk with the producers and put more money in local farmers, ranchers and fishermen's pockets by going outside the mainstream food system channels.

That’s how we change a food system, one step (and dollar) at a time.

Disclaimer: Providore Fine Foods is an advertiser on Good Stuff NW.

Your Food, Your Legislature: 2018 Session May Be Short on Agreement

The 2018 session of the Oregon Legislature may end up like the vacation we took to France many years—by that I mean decades—ago. I'd studied maps and read guide books, planning what I was sure would be a leisurely road trip through the French countryside, sipping coffee at sidewalk cafés, staying in small inns and meeting charming locals. While it certainly had moments of leisure and charm, it turned out to be a two-week, cross-country marathon of rushing from one pre-arranged reservation to the next.

In other words, I had bitten off more than we could (comfortably) chew.

Do we want our farms to look like this?

That little tale relates to this year's legislative session in the fact that legislators, by law, have just 35 days to convene, conduct and finish their work in Salem. That's because, in 2010, Oregon went from bi-annual sessions to annual sessions, lasting 160-days in odd-numbered years with the shorter sessions in even-numbered years.

These shorter sessions were originally designed so legislators could take care of budget issues that might arise between the longer sessions. But, of course, politicians being politicians, the agenda often strays beyond that boundary. This year is no different.

Originally the session would have dealt with a devastating budget shortfall that would have befallen the state had Measure 101, the Healthcare Insurance Premiums Tax for Medicaid Referendum—a fee on hospitals and insurance companies to fund Medicaid, which provides healthcare coverage to 1 in 4 Oregonians—not passed.

Or like this?

Though Oregon still faces a $200 to $300 million dollar shortfall due to cuts in federal tax laws passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in Washington, DC, legislators have decided to take up a bill they're calling the Clean Energy Jobs bill (Senate bill SB 1507 and a House version, HB 4001). According to an article in the Oregonian, it would create "a limit on greenhouse gas emissions [that] would require many of Oregon's largest polluters to pay for their emissions by purchasing allowances at an auction. The state would spend the proceeds from the auctions to reduce the financial impact to households, support projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help areas disproportionately impacted by climate change."

In other words, a classic cap-and-trade system.

Though House leaders like Speaker Tina Kotek and Majority Leader Jennifer Williamson are working hard to push it forward, Senate leaders, particularly Senate President Peter Courtney, are already backing away from committing to pass a major piece of legislation on such a short timeline.

And how does this affect issues of the state's food system, which you'd expect to read about here?

Like this?

When establishing this cap on greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources, it will create a fund to address the impacts of climate change and support climate-friendly farming practices.

"While the amount of money available is unknown at this stage, the bills have the potential to support a wide range of activities and practices on farms that sequester carbon in soils, reduce energy use, encourage irrigation efficiency, and protect both working land and natural areas on farms and ranches," wrote Friends of Family Farmers Policy Director Ivan Maluski. "Farmers are not only on the front lines of experiencing climate change impacts like extreme weather and uncertain water supplies, as land managers we can also be part of the solution."

Or like this?

Not unexpectedly, industrial representatives are working to alter, if not quash, the legislation. Already the state's largest mega-dairies have inserted a loophole to exempt them from reducing, or even reporting, their annual methane emissions. And Shelly Boshart Davis, Monsanto's 2015 Farm Mom of the Year, weighed in on the bill in an op-ed, writing  that she was "dismayed" by legislation she feels would "stifle my ability to invest in sustainable technology and dramatically increase the cost of running my company," complaining about the increase of "$50 per month by some estimates" to her family's business, Boshart Trucking, reported to have annual sales of more than $8 million.

Whether this bill actually makes it to a vote this session or legislators decide to postpone it until 2019, you can get more information and weigh in on this legislation now.

Meat of the Matter: Upending the Status Quo

This series looks at how one small processor, Marks Meats in Canby, is transitioning from the founding owner-operators to a new generation of ownership under the name Revel Meat Company. This post was developed in collaboration with Old Salt Marketplace, a supporter of Good Stuff NW.

"The first thing to note about Ben Meyer is not his polite Midwestern manners, his oh-so-Portland uniform of stocking cap, flannel shirt and scruffy beard or that he's opened two restaurants in what were then—and still are, to some extent —underserved areas of the city. It's not even that he's been interviewed by the likes of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal wanting to hear about the local pasture-raised beef and pork he features on his menus. The key to Meyer is that this evangelist for whole animal butchery, whose walk-in is chock-full of large cuts of dry-aged beef, spent 10 years as a vegan."

Planning a day's work.

Since the time I wrote those words three years ago for the Oregonian, the scruffy beard has come and gone (and come and gone again), the stocking cap and flannel shirt can vary with the season and his two restaurants are still putting out luscious plates of grass-fed meat and farm-raised vegetables. And this former vegan-turned-omnivore is still intent on upending a system he sees as intrinsically unhealthy for his family, his community and the environment.

"I always say that Old Salt and Grain & Gristle are a food system," Meyer said. "We buy raw ingredients from people and we turn them into all the products that we use, [like] grains that are custom-milled to turn into the breads and contract tomatoes where I give the seed to the farmer and they grow it out for us."

But in his latest venture he's diving deeper into the stream that our food travels in getting from the field to our plates. With partners Jimmy Serlin and Ryan Ramage, his Revel Meat Company is attempting to bring local meat back to local tables, in the process revitalizing a nearly extinct local meat processing industry that enables small farmers to bring their animals to a market hungry for the kind of meat they raise.

Bringing local meat to market.

In the spirit of upending the status quo they tossed around the idea of calling their venture Revolution Meat, or saluting the history of Marks by calling it High Mark Meat, but then Serlin suggested Revel Meat for what he thought of as a gustatory celebration of the best the region had to offer. The name stuck.

An unusual part of this new venture is that Meyer isn't just branding all the meat they process under the Revel Meat banner, regardless of the source. According to a 2015 article, discussing the practice of "localwashing," many large processors, like Carlton Farms in Oregon, buy animals from Canada or elsewhere, bring them to their facility for slaughter and processing, then brand the products with their name. Meyer's plan for Revel Meat is to have the name of the ranch or farm that raised the animals follow the product, whether it ends up as hamburger or sausage or charcuterie, all the way to the consumer.

"My whole goal with all food is getting rid of the smoke and mirrors,"  he said. "We want to make sure that if somebody’s buying it, they know who they’re buying it from, the name of the ranch and where it is. We’re not going to co-brand it; it’s not just going be Revel Meat pork, it’s going to be Payne Family Farms pork delivered by Revel Meat."

Jimmy Serlin, a happy man.

Since Meyer and Serlin are both chefs, they are intimately connected to Portland's restaurant community and have already begun wholesaling their meat products like sausages to some of the city's restaurants. But entering the wholesale business has meant adding layers of complexity to an already complicated process.

In the normal course of running his restaurants, Meyer said, he would talk to his ranchers a week ahead for pork and two weeks or more for beef so that the animals would be in the pipeline to go to the processor. They would then hang for two to three weeks, after which he would butcher and process them for his menus.

With wholesaling, not only does he need to have pork in hand to make the sausage in time to get it to restaurant chefs for their menu, he said, "I now have to plan weeks out to make sure that we have pigs lined up to get them killed, cleaned, hung up, turned into sausage, packaged, labeled and then driven up to the city. It’s just a whole other layer back."

As if that wasn't enough, the partners are adding animal husbandry into the mix, raising their own animals on two parcels of land near the facility. It means working not weeks or months, but years out, he said, with animals on the ground that are slated to come through their process two years from now.

Helping local ranchers thrive.

But even with intimidatingly steep learning curves on multiple fronts, this former vegan never wants to forget that he is responsible for taking the life of a living creature.

"My biggest fear is that you would become callous and not care," Meyer said. It's why he chose to take on the challenge of revitalizing a medium-sized, locally owned slaughterhouse that would serve small farmers and ranchers, rather than scaling up to operate at the same volumes as larger processors.

"You can imagine the level of care when you’re killing 340 head an hour on five different lines," he said. "That’s stunning an animal every 3.2 seconds or something. That is factory work where the cog happens to be a living creature. That is the most mortifying part to me."

"No matter how much love or care you put into the raising of an animal, if that’s how it finishes its life, you’ve broken that covenant with the animal," he added. "That covenant is the most important thing for us. If you break your part of the covenant, then we’re asking that species, this pig or that beef or these sheep or goats, to keep their end without us keeping ours. It’s not fair."

Read the other posts in this series, Rejuvenating Local Processing and Transitioning a Family Business.

Photos by Rich Crowder.