Financing Our Foodshed (3 page)

There’s magic in that moment of empowerment as a check passes from one like-minded person to another. It’s a compelling display of the combination of ingenuity and generosity. It’s a moment of hopefulness — something we could all use more of in our lives — and I find it thrilling.

In this book, I tell the stories behind some of the magic moments that have been facilitated by Slow Money NC. In some cases, the lenders’ names have been changed to give them anonymity, but the borrowers are all as they appear. They each have a spot on our website (
slowmoneync.org
), and we champion them every chance we get.

Hopefully, you will be inspired to participate in this movement in some way as well. There are many entry points, from paying attention to how many miles your food travels before it gets to your plate, to cracking open your portfolio and finding ways to use a portion of it to significantly impact your local food economy.

Whatever you decide to do, I hope you will enjoy meeting the fabulous people whose Slow Money stories are told in this book. I certainly have.

Why the Fuss About Finance? And why Local Food? If small- and medium-scale sustainable agriculture and the food enterprises that rely on them are to remain viable in the US, we need to find new, creative ways to finance them. The Slow Money movement is working to do just that.

1

We all need to eat, and whenever we do, we make choices. We make these choices all day long. Cook at home or eat out? Fresh or frozen? Raw or cooked? Sweet or savory? Cheap or expensive? Healthy or maybe not-so-healthy? Real or decaf? Cream or sugar? Tall or grande?

We base our choices on what we’re in the mood for, what’s convenient, what we like, what we can afford, where we are, how much time we have, how hungry we are, etc. Our choices are also
completely dependent
on what’s available. You can’t eat what isn’t there.

For most of us, hopefully, we have enough of
some
kind of food to eat so that we can afford to ask ourselves
other,
deeper questions. Where did this food come from? Who made it or raised it? Where? With what kind of farming practices was it grown? How was it processed? Is it fresh? Local? How did it get here?

Some of us are part of the growing number of people who now consider these questions as we make choices about our food purchases. We want to know more about where our food comes from and how it’s produced. We may want to know for health reasons, or we may have environmental concerns. We may care about work conditions for food workers or the impact food production has on their
local community. In the interest of reducing our carbon footprint, we may look for foods that travel as few “food miles” as possible, and we want our food produced with as few fossil-fuel derived inputs (like non-organic fertilizers) as possible. We care if a food item is locally grown or shipped in from far away. And if the latter, from
how far
away? If it’s from a farm, which farm? Who was the farmer? In the last few years, such considerations have produced significant shifts in our buying habits.

A growing number of people are actively seeking out “local” in order to reduce the number of miles between the farm and the table. But what does “local” mean? For me, it’s sometimes just the 50 yards from our vegetable garden to the kitchen sink. I consider a farm “local” if it is within 50 miles of where I live. Fortunately, with several farmers markets to choose from within a 30-mile radius, “local” can easily mean buying directly from the farmer who raised the chickens, or heirloom potatoes, or curly kale.

Meanwhile, the number of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) is exploding. In these programs, weekly boxes or bags of goods are picked up at a designated place or delivered to members who pre-pay a local farmer at the beginning of the growing season for a share of their harvest. Sometimes CSA memberships are with an individual farm, sometimes it’s an association of food producers who aggregate their products. Along with freshly harvested produce, some CSA boxes include cheese, fresh bread, meat, and eggs. Some are adding jams, cut flowers, and even locally roasted coffee. A few CSAs even offer recipes incorporating ingredients the member is getting. This is a simple and brilliant idea that is evolving and expanding — as good ideas so often do. In the last 20 years, the number of CSAs in North Carolina has grown from 35 to about 125. (It’s probably more, as I expect I missed quite a few in my count). Just two counties south of me, a community CSA program feeds over 1,200 families.

Alfred selling at the South Durham Farmers Market.

These weekly boxes of local items have become so popular that at least one of the grocery store chains in North Carolina is getting into the act and now offers a similar option. I cannot vouch for the reliability of their claim to “local” (they define it as grown in the state of North Carolina, while sometimes including bordering states), but this development is certainly an indication of the growing interest and demand for local food.

According to USDA’s
2007 Census of Agriculture,
the value of direct farm-to-consumer sales in the US (that’s a combination of farmers markets and CSAs) grew from $32.8 million in 1997 to $39.9 million in 2002 — and then to $67.6 million in 2007. I expect the 2012 census numbers will show a similar trend. (Source:
ams.usda.gov
)

My preferred definition of “local food” includes the dimension of being “sustainably farmed.” I’d rather eat food produced using practices based not only on making a profit, but also on a commitment to the health of consumers and the planet. Among other things, sustainable farming practices replenish our rapidly deteriorating topsoil by using techniques such as seasonal rotations to enrich soils and prevent diseases and pests. They protect rivers and streams from toxic
run-off and minimize the use of fossil fuels. Being sustainable just makes sense if we plan to grow food to feed ourselves not just this season, but for decades to come.

In the mid-1990s, the Slow Food Movement emerged as a reaction to the growing prevalence of fast food and the decline in access to traditional, good quality, locally grown food. It got its start from Carlo Petrini, a lover of traditional regional cuisines. When Petrini protested the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome in 1986, he spawned a movement of like-minded eaters that now has local chapters around the world and over 100,000 members. The Slow Food Movement and its sister, the Local Food Movement, are growing (pun intended).

There are
many
reasons to want access to local, sustainably grown food. Good taste, appealing texture, a vibrant farm community, a stronger local economy, fertile soils — the list goes on. Yet the number of small- and medium-scale farms feeding our local communities was declining so rapidly, they nearly faced extinction.

According to the USDA’s
2007 Census of Agriculture,
between 2002 and 2007 North Carolina alone lost more than 604,000 acres of farmland. Partly to blame was the loss of tobacco as a cash crop as well as the intense financial pressure to convert farmland to more lucrative development. Big retailers found it more cost effective to buy from fewer farmers, squeezing out the small farms. They demanded huge acreages that would produce perfectly standardized product (same size and appearance) — requirements that are unreasonable for small- and medium-sized farms to meet.

An added difficulty for the smaller farm is access to affordable
financing.
That’s where Slow Money comes in.

Like most businesses, farms and food-related enterprises need capital to get started, to keep going until the profits kick in, and, at some point, maybe even to expand. Money may be needed for equipment, supplies, or renovations. Finding this capital can be an insurmountable
obstacle. Banks are reluctant to make loans to small businesses; credit card rates are exorbitantly high; and not all credit unions will make commercial loans. Since the “clunk” in the economy in 2008, most banks are not making
any
commercial loans to small businesses.

Recently, a loan officer at a well-known bank told me, “We aren’t making any commercial loans these days. We’ve laid off that loan officer. I don’t know when we’ll start making them again.” So, what’s a beginning farmer — or an established farmer looking to hold on or expand — to do?

If we want sustainable farms to survive as viable businesses, we need to find ways to
finance
the folks who have the passion, the willingness, and the determination to farm them. If we want to keep their products in our diets, we also need to look for places they can sell their products locally. And we need to fund
those
businesses as well.

Farming is hard, demanding work. The hours are long and the weather, which is so critical to most farming operations, has a mind of its own. And, like any other business, farms eat cash. They cost money to run on the days they make a profit,
and
on the days they don’t.

Small business start-ups usually need to cover expenses for 1–3 years until there is enough profit to keep things going. Often, it takes even longer. A crucial enabler to creating and sustaining these farms and food enterprises until they reach self-sufficiency is access to affordable credit. We have the power and the passion to get them this money. With the advent of Slow Money, now we also have the mechanism.

But, along the way, we need to fix a few things.

I was recently in eastern North Carolina, where acres of sweet potatoes are grown each year. Once harvested, they are loaded onto trucks and shipped to distribution sites hundreds of miles away, and
from there they get sent all over the country. Or canned. Or sliced and fried. The friend I was visiting lamented that the local supermarket only carried sweet potatoes from Florida. The only way to get a local sweet potato, she said, would be to sneak into one of the fields and steal one, which was not a good option.

I don’t blame the farmers; it’s the food system that’s broken. The route from farm to kitchen now loops around, drops off profits to a variety of corporations along the way (while the food deteriorates in quality), and finally ends up, miles later, in our mouths. Except, sadly, for the 40% that is wasted.

I am reminded of my father’s favorite joke. The way he tells it, there was a farmer out working in his field. Down at one end of the field was a railroad track. One day, he watched as a train came full speed from one direction. He went back to work, but a few minutes later he heard another train coming full speed from the other direction. He stopped, leaned on his hoe, and watched as they collided. It was a terrible crash, and a reporter — seeing that this farmer had obviously witnessed the entire incident — approached him. “What did you think,” he asked, “when you saw those two trains speeding right toward each other?” The farmer paused. “I thought,” he said deliberately, “that’s a helluva way to run a railroad.” Then Dad would chuckle.

I thought this a silly joke when I was younger. I didn’t get why it was funny. But the farmer’s reply has come back to me many times as I watch how the world operates. Standing in the Food Lion supermarket in Pittsboro, NC, staring at fresh blueberries imported from Chile during the height of our North Carolina blueberry season, I thought “That’s a helluva way to run a produce section!” But the produce manager explained it to me. “I order them on the computer, and they’re the only ones on the list.”

Wow. Not only is that a senseless waste of energy, but the local ones taste so much better,
and
buying them supports local farmers. I once bought big, beautiful blueberries at a fruit stand in Manhattan
that were grown in Rocky Mount, NC. I guess they were on the fruit stand owner’s computer list.