Louella Hill, local-food ambassador, answers questions | Grist | InterActivist

Questions from Grist editors | Questions from readers

Do you have any plans to extend your work to other communities throughout the country? What about producing literature or training for other groups to use as a model for their work? -- Jessica Van Houten, New York, N.Y.

I am one of many food fighters. In New England, for example, you'll find: Cindy and Sara at Southeastern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership, Kelly Erwin working with the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture on Farm to Cafeteria, Danielle Mullen at Berkshire Grown, Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture in western Massachusetts, the Vermont Fresh Network, Martha Putnum with Farm Fresh Connection in Maine, and more.

Networks are forming between grassroots organizations such as Local Harvest, the Farm-to-Cafeteria Listserv, and Buy Local! Buy Fresh! campaigns sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation. Through these networks, I am interested in circulating materials or running trainings to help more communities grow more local.

Though, to be honest, I really would like to have a herd of sheep. I would like to be Rhode Island's first commercial producer of sheep cheese and yogurt. Who knows my next step!

Do you have any advice for persuading a college to use local products in the cafeterias? Do you have any resources for locating farmers in Connecticut? -- Timothy Hinkle, Summit, N.J.

Start by telling everyone you can about your idea to bring more locally grown foods to campus. Find allies in the agricultural community, in the kitchen, within the school administration. Gather parents and picky eaters, activists, your roommates, rotten tomatoes. To locate farmers in Connecticut, start with the Connecticut Department of Agriculture. You should also check out the Connecticut Farmland Trust; they do great work.

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You mentioned that one of the things that burns you up is the junk food available in schools now. Does your organization have any thoughts about moving this local-food effort into the public schools? -- Marc Chapman, Wahkon, Minn.

Getting fresh, locally grown foods into public schools is a thought always present in my mind. Unfortunately, at the moment we are almost overwhelmed by our website, working with Brown University Dining Services, doing outreach to local farmers, connecting with restaurants, fund-raising, etc. Most of this work is easy in that private schools and restaurant chefs really want to buy local and they have more money to do so.

The harder work is ahead: figuring out how to move local food into public schools. I am on an Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force that is trying to figure out a way to give schools a financial incentive to purchase locally. In addition to the economic barrier, most schools are contracted to Sodexho or Aramark. This gives the school very little power to decide where food comes from.

You provide a wonderful service for local producers, local consumers, and the planet. Does the local government or do local producers (or someone else) pay you? It would be super if all communities had a person like you. -- Edelweiss D'Andrea, Ottawa, Ontario

Thanks. It is true; we need more local-food ambassadors. The number of salespeople from Kraft, General Mills, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Tyson, etc., who walk through the doors of school food-service offices is staggering. Every farming community needs someone to speak on their behalf.

I am paid part-time by Brown Dining Services and part-time by a grant from the Rhode Island Foundation. I am very fortunate.

I live in a farming community and support whole-heartedly the reasons one should buy local. But "local" here does not mean organic. Why shouldn't I buy the trucked-in-from-California organic produce in my grocery store rather than overload my son's system with pesticides? -- Melissa Pierson, Kingston, N.Y.

I love this debate -- mainly because I get torn up about it myself. The bottom line is the only true organic is locally grown. You are kidding yourself to think that Earthbound Farm carrots are not pumping thousands of pounds of carbon and particulate matter into the atmosphere to be transported to New York -- as well as concentrating authority over our food production into the hands of a few large agribusinesses.

With every farm that sells out in Rhode Island, I think: one less chance to look a human in the eyes and ask, "Is this carrot grown in a way that is safe for future generations?"

I have to drive about 20 miles to get to a farmers' market. Do you think that the benefit of buying local offsets the imbalance that I cause by driving (emissions, gas, etc.)? -- Ritesh M., St. Louis, Mo.

I vote for driving the 20 miles, shaking hands with the woman or man who grew your food, and then heading home with a car full of produce (which you can freeze or can).

I live in an agricultural area of northern Oregon, where it is easy to eat well locally in the summer. During the winter, however, it becomes more difficult to find sources of local foods. How do we best balance nutrition and bioregionalism? -- Jaimes Valdez, Hood River, Ore.

Adjust your diet to the season: Pickle! Freeze! Can those summer treasures! Enjoy that winter squash in winter. Crave the first crop of spring lettuce. There is nothing more beautiful to me than watching the seasons turn by watching my dinner plate change. My body agrees.

Other than freezing in-season, local produce, what other suggestions do you have for helping consumers obtain fresh, healthy produce when they are not locally in season? -- Todd Snider, Ellensburg, Wash.

Extend the growing season yourself with cold frames, greenhouses, root cellars, and grow lights. Why not turn that head of cabbage into some sauerkraut? Explore the vast varieties of sea vegetables in winter (dried makes them easy to ship). How about a food dehydrator? Last summer's nectarines never tasted so good. And what about sunflower, wheat berry, broccoli sprouts? Homegrown mushrooms?

In the winter months in Providence, a group I belong to called Urban Greens purchases bulk organic citrus and greens from the South. This is a great boost to get me through to spring.

What about places like Las Vegas where there is not much local production to speak of? What sort of agenda would you advocate to us? -- Nate Enos, Las Vegas, Nev.

Nevada. Eek. As a native Arizonan, I wonder whether we (those of us who shop at grocery stores) belong in the desert at all. Metropolises like Phoenix scare me.

Find an organization such as Native Seed Search, which is helping to preserve and regain an understanding of how people once survived (and maybe how one day they will again) in the arid regions of the U.S. I see cactus, corn, and reptile meat in your future.

What writers are doing the best job of spreading the word about the importance of buying food from local sources? -- Ken Peterson, Monterey, Calif.

There are such good writers out there: Michael Pollan (for The New York Times Magazine), Barbara Kingsolver, Andy Martin, Kamyar Enshayan, Wes Jackson, and Alice Waters, to name a few.

What can be done to encourage people to not depend on convenience so much and get companies to stop overpackaging and/or providing such small quantities? -- Jenny Neat, Chaptico, Md.

Put farm-fresh food directly into people's mouths. Tasting is understanding.

How is your web-based food production directory organized? I am working on a similar project on the Big Island of Hawaii. -- Tere Moody, Kamuela, Hawaii

We are cataloging every farmer and food producer in the region, their contact information, and what they grow; every farmers' market and who sells at it; every restaurant buying from a local farmer; and every farmer selling to a local institution. It is a lot of work. Luckily, Rhode Island isn't too big.

How do you reconcile the trade-off between environmental stewardship in the U.S. and economic development in poor countries that depend on agricultural exports for a sizable portion of their income? -- Marshall Burke, Palo Alto, Calif.

The shift toward a more localized food economy in the U.S. is happening gradually. The pace of this change will allow time for the economies of poor, food-exporting countries to respond. One of the most helpful things the U.S. government could do is to stop "dumping" surplus grains into third-world economies at below-market price. This makes these countries less food secure than ever.

I would much like to know the source of your statement, "The average item of food on the American dinner plate travels 1,600 miles between where it is grown and where it is eaten." -- Howard Wilshire, Sebastopol, Calif.

This fact comes from a white paper by Richard Pirog at Iowa State. He is doing incredible work.

We've launched a farm-to-school program in our community -- Food For Thought -- that, while embraced by the community, still suffers from sabotaging food-service staff. How do we overcome the bureaucracies, the lack of financial support, the apathy, and the lack of awareness among parents and school administrators to get farm-to-school programs going in every school? -- Marty Fujita, Ojai, Calif.

Focus on the positive. Change is slow. But change is happening.

Do you think deliberately purchasing local food is a political act? What kind of statement does it make? -- Leah Sprain, Seattle, Wash.

Food is the most powerful medium of social change.

Questions from Grist editors | Questions from readers

Near Ye, Near Ye!

Louella Hill, local-food ambassador, answers readers' questions