Focus on (local) foods for health and profit

It’s all fine and dandy to tell consumers they should buy groceries from local or regional farmers and growers.

But what if you live in Grant County, West Virginia, where there are only two grocery stores but 12 convenience stores? Where 297 of the 4,500 households are without a car and live more than a mile from the nearest store of any kind. Where the average income is less than $16,000, where nearly 13 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and where there is one farmers market. Where the average household spending on direct food sales – from the farm or farmers market – was $3 in 2007.

At the seventh annual Forum for Rural Innovation, March 11 in Winchester, Va., Savanna Lyons (savanna.may@gmail.com), program manager of the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition, gave a rundown of her efforts to keep West Virginia food dollars in West Virginia. Lessons learned in West Virginia can be applied in other jurisdictions represented at the forum, including Loudoun, Fauquier, Frederick and Clarke counties in Virginia, and Jefferson and Berkeley counties in West Virginia.

The annual forum brings together working farmers, agricultural entrepreneurs, extension agents and academics to talk about the types of rural innovation that can make farms more profitable in northwestern Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

The 2011 forum focused on local and regional food production, marketing and distribution.

In West Virginia, Lyons said, farmers spend more than they make and consumers buy a vast majority of their food from out of state. West Virginians receive $314 million each year from the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly federal food stamps). Lyons would like to divert a lot of that spending power to West Virginia grown products.

“Many communities have no grocery store and consumers use the SNAP money at convenience stores for junk food,” Lyons said. They can’t use them at most farmers market and there probably isn’t a farmers market within walking distance.

Her job, since last August (“This is history in the making”) is to “assess, develop and support production, aggregation, distribution and consumption of West Virginia food.”

Step one, this April, will be roundtable discussions in six regions of the state that will bring together extension agents, department of agriculture and department of education representatives, producers, farmers, non-profits and anyone else with a stake in jump starting West Virginia local buying.

Working groups across the state will follow the roundtables, and their results and recommendations will be sent out to the public for comment. Finally, the coalition will encourage local governments and school districts to adopt the West Virginia Good Food Charter (similar to one in use in Michigan).

Why is promoting local foods, Lyons asked. First, it keeps local food dollars in the local economy. A West Virginia University study concludes that West Virginians spend $6.6 billion each year on food, and that 90 percent of that spending goes out of state.

“If we increase the amount of West Virginia-produced food we consume by just 10%, the economic impact would be approximately $66 million in revenues that would stay inside the state instead of going food producers and processors elsewhere.”

Keeping those dollars in West Virginia also creates jobs, Lyons said.

In addition to the economic benefits, Lyons stressed the health benefits, enhanced food safety and accountability, and the development of community and appreciation of heritage.

“Farmers markets are a really amazing tool for civic engagement,” she added.

West Virginians now have access to 50 farmers markets, and nine of them accept SNAP coupons.

Paul Mock (info@mocksgreenhouse.com) addressed the “Ins and outs of filling the wholesale gap in a regional food system.”

Mock settled in Berkeley Springs in 2003, looked around, counted the population of Morgan County and concluded he could never make a living selling to those 16,000 people. Wholesale was the way to go.

Today, 97 percent of his business is wholesale – buy a head of Bibb lettuce in Wegmans or Whole Foods and it mostly likely came for Mock’s Greenhouse. His most profitable crop is watercress, and he grows greens, tomatoes and vegetables year round. Don’t be afraid to start small, he advised. He started in 2005 with three greenhouses and delivered the lettuce in a rented U-Haul truck. Today, there are 13 greenhouses, soon to 19, and he has three reefer trucks that keep lettuce a happy and fresh 38 degrees both summer and winter.

Be aggressive, he advised. When he was getting starting, looking for wholesale distributors who would sign on, he wrote down the names of delivery trucks on the Beltway. He sat outside the produce yards at Jessup, Md., and noted the names of wholesalers. Then he contacted them directly. Sometimes you need to just walk in the door, he said.

After that, make yourself more attractive: Use some advertising language. He doesn’t sell mere Christmas trees. He sells “immaculate” trees. His greenhouses are on the very short list of USDA Good Agricultural Product certified hydroponic farming operations.

And he has a long range plan: within six years, he will be delivering fresh ramps to those distributors, and – an idea he picked up at last year’s forum – he’ll be growing hydroponic ginger root.

The speakers list concluded with Stephen Mackey (Stephen@notavivavineyards.com), vineyard owner in Loudoun County and self-proclaimed “TechnoBillie,” speaking on the necessity for today’s farmers to get on Facebook; Dr. Gordon Johnson gcjohn@UDel.edu), Extension Fruit and Vegetable Specialist for the University of Delaware, on “Transitioning to Wholesale Vegetable Production and Sales”; and Rich Pirog (rspirog@iastate.edu), program leader for marketing and food systems at the Leopold Center in Iowa, on developing local food networks and on the economic impact of local foods.

The 2011 Innovation Awards went to the Fauquier Education Farm in Marshall, Va.; Hedgebrook Farm in Winchester, Va; Moo Thru Ice Cream in Remington, Va.; and Kevin Grove’s Quarter Branch Farm (www.QuarterBranchFarm.com) in Lovettsville in Loudoun County, Va.

In his second year of operation, Grove is bringing in $30,000 an acre on his two-acre “micro farm.” He will expand onto a third acre this year, and with a solar heated high tunnel keeps raspberries coming to local farm markets and to his CSA members through November. He promises that his plants – from Certified Organic seed when possible, never GMO – grow in real dirt for maximum nutrition and health.

And he plans to double the income next year.

A good part of Grove’s marketing relies on a fledgling local food network, also in Lovettsville. His produce can be ordered on Loudoun Flavor (www.loudouflavor.com), an on-line farmers market, and picked up at local drop points every week.

To get on the list for next year’s forum or to offer nominees for the 2012 Innovation Award, go to www.loudounfarms.org.