Pure Poultry Premise #2: Shorten the Food Chain
WE’VE ALL HEARD A GREAT DEAL RECENTLY ABOUT “eating locally”; that is, trying to be more aware of exactly where our food is coming from and choosing to buy locally produced ingredients for our meals whenever possible. More and more restaurants, such as the Alder Wood Bistro here in Sequim, have enthusiastically embraced this idea as well. More consumers are also realizing the benefits of locally grown produce and meat, even visiting farms and farmers markets and buying directly from the producer whenever possible.
What are these benefits? Well, obviously when you can buy directly from a farmer, the food is sure to be fresh and in season. Also, locally grown food, especially produce, is usually bought when it is seasonally available, which translates not only into better quality and flavor, but also lower prices. Fruits and vegetables bought out of season most often come from another state or even another country, and you can be sure the cost of all that transportation and cold storage is being passed on to you. In addition, if you’ve ever visited a local farm and bought directly from a farmer, you will have realized the difference it makes in the way you relate to what you eat. So much of our culture of eating involves relationships, and buying locally produced food promotes beneficial relationships, not just with an individual producer, but with the community at large. Which brings up yet another benefit: keeping our money in the local economy.
What’s happening here is we are shortening the food chain, the often lengthy and convoluted path our food travels to become part of our next meal. Between the lines of the benefits outlined above are the less obvious costs, to us as consumers and to our environment (and even our society) as well. A few statistics: On average, seven to ten calories of fossil fuel energy are used in the process of delivering every single calorie of food energy to your plate. Twenty percent of the total energy used in food production is consumed on the farm; the rest is spent processing the food and moving it around. (Growing organically uses about one-third less fossil fuel than growing conventionally, but that savings quickly disappears if compost used on the farm is not produced either onsite or nearby.)
By contrast, buying even part of our food from local sources can make a big difference in the true cost of feeding ourselves. For example, if you buy a holiday turkey from us, the food chain is very short: We grow the turkey and slaughter it, and you pick it up within a day or so of slaughter. It isn’t even frozen. Some customers have come up to help on slaughtering days, adding another level to their participation in their personal food chain.
Restaurant owners like Gabriel and Jessica Schuenemann of the Alder Wood Bistro are also helping to set a new standard in our community. They are committed to sourcing locally as much as possible of the food they serve, which is great for small farms like ours. They have been buying organic chicken and duck eggs from us since 2008, delivered several times a week, so the chain, once again, is short: From farm to restaurant to consumer’s plate, the eggs have traveled less than eight miles. By way of contrast, recent studies estimate that any given ingredient in a typical American meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles by the time it arrives, no doubt exhausted and disillusioned, on your plate.
Our farm is small. We don’t have the room to sustainably produce more pork or poultry than we do now, since we are unwilling to compromise our standards of allowing the birds to range freely during the day. It has occurred to us that, for a production level like ours, our relationship with the Alder Wood Bistro actually is a model for how small farms can be successful. So much of our national food production (and yes, even organic food production) is done on a huge scale, at a huge cost on a number of levels, many of which are hidden. What if more small producers sought out relationships with local restaurants, or even small community grocery stores, to help supply the growing number of consumers enthusiastically seeking to connect with these producers?
After all, for consumers to buy locally produced food, someone has to produce and sell it. Removing a number of links in the typical American food chain by selling either directly to the consumer from the farm or through a forward-thinking restaurant just down the hill has become a crucial piece of the big picture for us. It is also an important part of our concept of sustainable living.