All posts by jgerber123

I teach sustainable food and farming at the University of Massachusetts and try to contribute to my local community without causing too much harm....
Food Policy and Advocacy

Few American food industry workers are treated well, report says…

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 A Los Angeles waiter prepares to deliver lunch. A new report found that such workers often go without sick pay, promotions or healthcare.

By Tiffany Hsu

Chicago Tribune reporter

6:09 a.m. CDT, June 6, 2012

The roughly 20 million workers involved up and down the American food chain make up a sixth of the country’s entire workforce — a fifth if you exclude public employees. But they’re not treated especially well, according to a new report.

The Food Chain Workers Alliance interviewed some 700 workers and employers in food production, processing, distribution, retail and service sectors for its study. That includes employees at farms, slaughterhouses, warehouses, grocery stores, restaurants and more.

Researchers found that food sector workers outnumber healthcare, education and manufacturing employees and are responsible for annually producing $1.8 trillion in goods and services, more than 13% of gross domestic product.

But just more than 1 in 10 of them earn a livable wage. The vast majority don’t get basic benefits from their employers and don’t have many opportunities for advancement. The food industry, according to the study’s authors, could be endangering its workers and customers by forcing employees to operate in conditions of high stress and little payback.

Here are some of the report’s more dramatic findings:

  • The median wage for a food industry worker is $9.65 an hour. Compared with the 8.3% of American workers on food stamps, 13.8% of food industry employees depend on the aid.
  • Eighty-three percent say their employers don’t offer health insurance. More than 3 in 10 use the emergency room for primary care.
  • Seventy-nine percent either don’t get paid sick days or don’t know if they do. Three in 10 don’t always get a lunch break.
  • Eighty-one percent have never received a promotion. Minorities and immigrants face especially high levels of discrimination and segregation and rarely advance beyond the lowest-paying positions.
  • Fifty-seven percent have suffered an injury or health problems on the job. More than half have picked, processed, sold, cooked or served food while sick — an average of three days a year.
  • Of the 47 small and mid-size food system employers interviewed, many told researchers that competition from corporate conglomerates has stressed their bottom line. Some have adapted by focusing on niche markets, offering local, sustainable and organic products. Most, however, have lowered labor costs and boosted productivity to survive.

This spring, the California Supreme Court ruled that while employers must make it possible for workers to take scheduled breaks, they can’t be held liable if employees decide to work instead of rest. The issue had caused tension for years in the restaurant industry.

Education

NYT article “Farming on the Campus Quad”

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Students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst planting tomatoes in a garden on campus.
Students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst planting tomatoes in a garden on campus

Picture the archetypal college campus: venerable Gothic stone buildings, maple leaves aflame in autumn colors and students lounging with books on a wide, open lawn.

Grassy quadrangles are staples on most college campuses. But maybe all that soil can be put to a different use: a handful of colleges and universities have planted small student-run farms on formerly grassy areas in recent years. This seems to raise the broader question of whether the quad, which gobbles water and fertilizer but produces very little, is outmoded in an era of sustainable thinking.

Luscious greenery doesn’t grow naturally where I went to school, the University of Colorado, Boulder, which sits on arid plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Yet that didn’t stop the wife of the university’s first president from resolving in 1876 to substitute a lawn for the wiry plains grasses surrounding Old Main, at the time the university’s only building.

A historical landscaping document tells how soil was distributed by the wagonful and grass seed was distributed across the campus. Students chased cows away and threw weed-pulling parties to keep the lawns manicured.

In recent years, the university has been focused as much on environmental sustainability as on beautification. The school has at least a dozen LEED-certified buildings and several installations of solar panels. It has yet to plant crops or pull up the grass from campus lawns, as some schools have, however.

Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt., for example, has just finished turning the front lawn of one campus building into a garden for its Lawn to Edible Garden project.

“We’re trying to bust open the notion of what a front lawn might look like,” said Philip Ackerman-Leist, an associate professor at the college who directs the project. He said the reason that Americans like grassy lawns so much is the country’s British roots. “The notion of the lawn is an import from the well-grazed areas of the British Isles,” he said, joking that a herd of sheep might be even better suited for a college quadrangle than a garden.

Mr. Ackerman-Leist said 25 students had built their college garden in five days as part of an Edible Landscaping class. They focused on aesthetics and on limiting costs. “It’s difficult to eat local and buy local and do it on a budget,” he said, so the project teaches students and others in the community how local food can be produced right on the lawn.

Similarly, students at Duke University started the Duke Campus Farm in 2010, and much of what the farmers produce is served in Duke’s own dining halls. That same year, students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, began a project that they call permaculture (permanent agriculture), turning a quarter-acre of campus lawn into a vegetable garden.

“We said, ‘Let’s take a look at these areas where we don’t need grass lawns, and let’s grow some food there,’” said Ryan Harb, the sustainability manager for dining services on the Amherst campus. The university now has two permaculture gardens and has begun building a third. Mr. Harb said the gardens had produced over 1,000 pounds of food under the stewardship of 1,200 to 1,300 volunteers. The food has gone to the university’s dining halls and a campus farmers’ market.

This month the university will play host to an international permaculture conference in the hope of introducing successful campus farming to other institutions. “I think we’re at the cusp of building a network of colleges and universities around the country” devoted to sustainable agriculture, Mr. Harb said.

Campus lawns do serve a purpose beyond sunbathing or reading. I remember students filling the quads of the University of Colorado, Boulder, with flags representing Holocaust victims, for instance, and protesting immigration legislation.

Maybe lots of college campuses will start converting their sprawls of grass into more environmentally productive places. Do you, and the college students you know, think they should?

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FROM:  http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/farming-on-the-campus-quad/

NOTE: UMass will offer a new Permaculture class this fall open to all students.  If you are interested, check out: PLSOILIN 197G – Intro to Permaculture.

Local Food

Roll up your sleeves and start changing your own home town!

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How “Small Change” Leads to Big Change: Social Capital and Healthy Places

By on Jun 6, 2012 

Families peruse stands offering a variety of fresh foods at a farmers market in downtown Milwaukee / Photo: Ethan Kent

According to Dr. Richard Jackson, a pioneering public health advocate and former CDC official now serving as the Chair of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA, the idea that buildings, streets, and public spaces play a key role in the serious public health issues that we face in the US “has undergone a profound sea change in the past few years. It’s gone from sort of a marginal, nutty thing to becoming something that’s common sense for a lot of people.”

That’s good news, but as a profile of Dr. Jackson in the Chronicle of Higher Education notes, today’s click-driven media climate means that the message of public health advocates like Jackson is “often pithily condensed to a variation of this eye-catching headline: ‘Suburbia Makes You Fat.’” And while these pithily-titled articles may do some good in alerting more people to the problems inherent in the way that we’ve been designing our cities and towns for the past half-century, they oversimplify the message and strip out one the most important factors in any effort to change the way that we shape the places where we live and work: social capital.

Highways, parking lots, cars, big box stores–these are merely symptoms of a larger problem: many people have become so used to their surroundings looking more like a suburban arterial road than a compact, multi-use destination that they’ve become completely disconnected from Place. Real life is lived amongst gas stations and golden arches; we have to visit Disneyland to see a thriving, compact Main Street. To question a condition that’s so pervasive, as individuals, seems futile.

That’s why, if we want to see people challenging the way that their places are made on a larger scale, we need to focus first on developing the loose social networks that are so vital to urban resilience. This is the stuff Jane Jacobs was talking about when she wrote, in the Death and Life of Great American Cities, that “lowly, unpurposeful, and random as they appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life must grow.” When people are connected enough to feel comfortable talking about what they want for their neighborhood with their neighbors, it’s much easier to muster political will to stop, say, a highway from cutting through Greenwich Village–or, in contemporary terms, to tear down a highway that was actually built.

In Dr. Jackson’s words: “The key thing is to get the social engagement. Community-building has to happen first; people need to articulate what’s broke, and then what they want.” Serendipitously, gathering to discuss a vision for a healthier future is an ideal way to build the social capital needed to turn the understanding that our built environment is hurting us into action to change the existing paradigm. At PPS, we have seen first-hand how the Placemaking process has brought people together in hundreds of cities around the world with the goal of improving shared public spaces; it’s a process that strengthens existing ties, creates new ones, and invigorates communities with the knowledge of how they can make things happen.

The Healthy Places Program (HPP), which began last year as a collaboration between staff members working in PPS’s Public Markets and Transportation programs. “There are many different elements that make up a healthy community,” says Aurash Khawarzad, an Associate in PPS’s Transportation division, and a key player in getting HPP off the ground. “There are social factors, environmental factors, etc–and what we at PPS can do is take these people in our offices who are focusing on their own areas and bring them together.”

With that collaborative mission in mind, Khawarzad and Kelly Verel, a Senior Associate in PPS’s Public Markets division, set out on a trip across New York last fall to facilitate a series of day-long Healthy Places workshops with local, regional, and state public health officials and a host of community partners. In partnership with the New York Academy of Medicine’s DASH-NY, the PPS team visited a range of communities, from rural towns, to suburban stretches, to major and mid-sized cities. The workshops were designed to help participants understand how multi-modal transportation systems can be better designed to create a network that links a series of destinations, including healthy food hubs and markets, to create a built environment that promotes well-being by making healthy lifestyle choices (like walking, biking, and eating fresh food) more convenient and fun. They focused not just on what wasn’t working, but on brainstorming ways that participants’ communities could become truly healthy places.

Any expert worth their salt will tell you that maintaining good health is not just about exercise or diet, but both together. In much the same way, addressing the problem of bad community design and its impacts on Public Health requires that we not just promote better transportation or better food access alone, but that we focus on both simultaneously. “The reaction we got from the the Healthy Places training attendees was really good,” notes Verel. “I think people have been really siloed in their efforts. We would ask people what they were doing and they would say ‘access to food in schools,’ or ‘rails to trails,’ and that they focus exclusively on that area.”

Understanding public health within the context of Place is essential, because the problems created and reinforced by our built environment are so broad in scope. HPP takes that case directly to local decision-makers and creates a learning environment where they can build their understanding of how Place effects health together, in a cross-disciplinary setting. This “silo-busting” is absolutely critical; as Dr. Jackson writes in the introduction to his latest book, Designing Healthy Communities (a companion to the four-part PBS special of the same name):

“For too long we have had doctors talking only to doctors, and urban planners, architects, and builders talking only to themselves. The point is that all of us, including those in public health, have got to get out of the silos we have created, and we have got to connect—actually talk to each other before and while we do our work—because there is no other way we can create the environment we want. Public health in particular must be interdisciplinary, for no professional category owns public health or is legitimately excused from it.”

The emphasis, there, is added, as this phrase strike at the heart of the problem we face. To shift the default development model from “low-density, use-segregated, and auto-centric” to one that promotes healthy, active lifestyles and more vibrant communities will take strong leadership from people who aren’t afraid to work across departments, and “turn everything upside-down to get it right side up.” PPS is certainly not the only organization to recognize this, and we’re thrilled to be part of a growing movement. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has its own Healthy Community Design Initiative program. Internationally, Urban Age made designing for public health the subject of a major conference in Hong Kong held late last year (from which a full report is now available).

New bike lanes are just one part of Pro Walk / Pro Bike: “Pro Place” host city Long Beach, CA’s strategy to become “Biketown USA” / Photo: waltarrrrr via Flickr

Of course, individual citizens have hardly been waiting around and twiddling their thumbs. Active transportation, healthy food, and community gardening advocates have been working for decades on the ground, pushing for incremental changes to the way our cities and towns operate. Just through the robust conversations taking place online around issues like #completestreets, #biking, and #urbanag, it’s easy to see how well-organized and resonant these movements have become. Mounting public awareness is pushing more public officials toward programs like HPP, to learn about how focusing on Place can facilitate inter-agency collaboration around the common cause of improving public health.

Whether you’re looking at this issue from the top-down or the bottom-up, there will be several opportunities to gather with active transportation and public markets professionals, advocates, and enthusiasts from around the world this fall for debate, discussion, and more of that vital social capital development. As part of the Healthy Places Program, PPS is hosting two conferences, just one week apart: the 17th Pro Walk / Pro Bike: “Pro Place” conference in Long Beach, CA (Sept. 10-13); and the 8th International Public Markets Conference in Cleveland, OH (Sept. 21-23).

If you’re approaching Healthy Places from the transportation world, Pro Walk / Pro Bike (#prowalkprobike) will explore how efforts to advocate for safer and better infrastructure for active transportation modes are being greatly enhanced as more and more people learn about the benefits of getting around on their own two feet (with or without pedals). If you’re more of a “foodie,” the Public Markets conference (#marketsconf8) will highlight the burgeoning local food scene in Cleveland and throughout Northeastern Ohio, and will spotlight the iconic West Side Market, arguably the most architecturally significant market building in the US. Both events will focus on how supporters of active transportation and public markets, respectively, can grow their movements by busting down silos and thinking h0listically about how their chosen cause can be part of the effort to create Healthy Places.

If you can’t make it to Long Beach or Cleveland, there are plenty of Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper steps that you can take to get your neighbors together and talking, out in public space, building local connections. “Something like a playstreet or a summer street shows people that, not only do they like this kind of varied activity and flexibility and want more of it in their community’s streets, but that they can actually make it happen,” Verel explains. “It takes more basic manpower–putting up tents, handing out flyers–than actual lobbying or money to get the DOT to shut down a street for one day and focus on social interaction and healthy activity.”

And you can start even smaller than that. PPS mentor Holly Whyte once wrote that “We are not hapless beings caught in the grip of forces we can do little about, and wholesale damnations of our society only lend a further mystique to organization. Organization has been made by man; it can be changed by man.” If our problem is that we have become siloed and isolated, at work and in our neighborhoods, then the most immediate way for us to start re-organizing is to reach out to the people around us, with something as simple as a friendly “hello” on the street. An interaction like this might seem ‘lowly, unpurposeful, and random’–but at the very least, it will make you feel happier and more connected to your community. And guess what? That’s good for you, too.

So, here’s to your health!

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A Playstreet-style fundraiser for cicLAvia in Los Angeles / Photo: waltarrrrr via Flickr

Related posts

  1. Early Bird Registration for Pro Walk / Pro Bike 2012: “Pro Place” is Now Open
  2. New ‘Healthy Places’ Training in New York State
  3. Cleveland Chosen to Host PPS’ 8th International Public Markets Conference
  4. A Place-Based Approach to Food Access: Creating a Healthier Future for Birmingham, AL

FROM:  How Small Change Leads to Big Change

Farming

UMass in the city – training new gardeners

UMass Stockbridge School of Agriculture professor Dr. Frank Mangan and graduate student, Zoraia Barros, conducted a gardening clinic at the East Boston Wellness Community Garden on May 31.

There were about 40 gardeners, including “future gardeners” (kids).  Two were native Portuguese speakers, two native English speakers, and the rest were native Spanish speakers.  Frank did a presentation on soil fertility and pest management in Spanish and then they both worked with the gardeners on specific questions related to their garden plots.

Frank speaking on plant care in Spanish

The UMass Stockbridge School of Agriculture donated about 400 transplants of vegetables popular in Latino and Brazilian cuisine to the gardeners.  Fact sheets for five of the crops were developed by Dr. Mangan’s students considering language, culture and horticultural levels/skills of the target audience.

 

Some of the factors considered were:

  • they wanted to put together fact sheets that would be appropriate for multiple audiences, including staff who work for the gardeners
  •  the use of color pictures, in particular since there are many names in multiple languages for these crops
  • the literacy levels of the gardeners, which in the case of the gardeners at this community garden ranges dramatically
Zoraia working with the gardeners

The gardeners were extremely attentive and appreciative of the efforts of the UMass Stockbridge School of Agriculture to bring gardening expertise to the city.

See more information on Dr. Mangan, and please check out this short video on Raising Ethnic Vegetables in Massachusetts.

 

 

Local Food

North Amherst Community Farm offers self-guided cellphone tour

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Visitors to the Simple Gifts Farm in North Amherst, MA can now use their cellphones to take self-guided tours that explain what’s happening at 15 stops around the 32-acre farm.  Stops include information on the organic vegetable, livestock including chickens, cattle, pigs, and sheep, as well as farm history and ecology.

Instructions are available at the Simple Gifts Farm parking lot at 1089 North Pleasant St., across from Puffton Village and just south of the traffic light in North Amherst.

Visitors can point their smartphones at a QR code or dial a phone number that will activate the tour.

You may begin the tour at any of the stops, which are indicated by signs on green posts. However the best place to begin is at the head of the Simple Gifts parking lot on North Pleasant where you will find instructions and maps. You can access the tour from your phone by calling    1-413-242-9070  or on the web, and simply follow the directions.

Please bring a friend, kids or a dog (on a leash) and leisurely walk the farm to see the Children’s Garden, the greenhouses, vegetable fields, an explanation of the wildlife and geology, and of course the chickens, cows, sheep and pigs. Feel free to take pictures and please share these with us on our Facebook page.

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This project is sponsored by the North Amherst Community Farm, a non-profit dedicated to promoting sustainable agriculture and to creating more equitable access to local, organic food. NACF and SGF also work together to educate the community about farming and food and to help preserve the agriculture heritage of North Amherst.

The laying hens will come to greet you when you stop by with the kids!
Local Food

Relocalize your money

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05/29/2012

Some activists claim the “American Spring” has begun with the resurgence of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I hope so. But for those of us who are not likely to march in the streets, there is something we can do – relocalize our money – now!

Wall Street has rebounded quite nicely from the economic crisis it helped to create. Its recovery was achieved with assistance from a federal government that continues to support a “big corporation” economic policy. Want proof? Just follow the money.

According to Neil Barofsky, inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the financial assistance provided to corporations exceeded $3 trillion.

The U.S. federal government Small Business Jobs Acts created a fund to spur local bank lending to small businesses, releasing just 10 percent of the amount provided to the big banks through TARP.

According to Amy Cortese’s new book, “Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit From It,” there are fundamental flaws in how the federal government (both Republicans and Democrats) have dealt with the financial recovery. The feds continue to underwrite big investment banks that play roulette with our money.

They have bailed out financial institutions and corporations deemed “too big to fail” and then allowed them to get even bigger. And they subsidize multinational corporations that continue to move jobs offshore.

Federal deregulation has made our financial system a casino for the rich, and they are playing with our money. When Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, the relatively conservative banking culture changed radically and became a free-for-all of risky speculation culminating in the collapse of 2008.

According to Cortese, the financial system supports “a massive misallocation of capital away from its most productive uses and toward unproductive, even harmful, ones, such as speculative trading, subprime mortgages, and the latest bubble du jour.”

Our trade, tax and bank policies create a business environment in which exploitative and speculative practices are the norm. Given the financial power of Wall Street, efforts to regulate this dangerous behavior have proven difficult. Politicians that try are labeled “socialist” and marginalized by the electorate.

What can the ordinary person do? Occupy Wall Street is one response. Another is to keep your money close to home. We need to relocalize our money.

Here are some ways to do it:

  1. Move your savings to a local bank or credit union (for help see the Move Your Money Project).
  2. Invest 5 to 20 percent of your funds in a Community Development Finance Institution or the Common Good Bank.
  3. Invest in and buy from local co-cooperatively managed businesses (see the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives for information).
  4. And of course buy local.

Our corrupt financial system must be reformed, but we can’t wait for the federal government to make the changes necessary. Federal politicians run for election full time and depend on corporate money to stay in office. Wall Street has too much money and power to be reformed by government.

We must take action ourselves and reclaim the power to make the economy work for people, rather than allowing the 1 percent to manipulate the financial system to serve short-term greed.

Impossible, you say?  I say believe it.

Begin with small actions like those listed above. Small actions taken by enough people will create a reinforcing feedback loop that can develop into a tidal wave of change. If we start a parade, eventually politicians will want to jump up front and carry our flag. One of the major barriers to change is that too many people just don’t believe it is possible to create real change. I say believe it.

To quote a classic….

“‘I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” the White Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again. Draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Believe it. And then relocalize your money – today.

John M. Gerber is a professor in the University of Massachusetts Stockbridge School of Agriculture and teaches courses in sustainable agriculture and sustainable living. His writings may be found at www.johnmgerber.com and www.justfoodnow.org.  He is also program coordinator of the UMass Stockbridge School of Agriculture major in Sustainable Food and Farming which offers a 15- credit certificate, a 2- year Associates Degree, a  4-year Bachelor of Sciences degree, and several online classes in Sustainable Food and Farming.

Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2011 All rights reserved

Local Food

Don’t miss the Wednesday Farmers Market in Amherst

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Fresh vegetables and friendly vendors…

I finally got over to the Wednesday Farmers Market in Amherst at Kendrick Park today.  What a nice little, easily accessible and friendly market.  Fresh vegetables, locally made bread, grass-fed meat products, music and coffee too!

Western Woods coffee is brewed with intention…

Click here for a map to Kendrick Park

The prepared foods from Harvest Market are to die for…

Be sure and stop by next Wednesday between 2:00-6:00pm!

SNAP/EBT friendly!
Business

Valley Green Feast delivers fresh food to low-income people

By Scott Merzbach
Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette; May 22, 2012

HADLEY – Inside a small barn at the Kitchen Garden Farm on Rocky Hill Road four women have formed an assembly line to pack cardboard boxes and plastic containers with groceries, everything from potatoes and salad greens to breads and meats, all purchased from area farms and bakeries.

Every Friday morning, throughout the cold of winter and the heat of summer, they prepare orders of locally grown, organic food that they will load in four vehicles for delivery to 300 households in the Pioneer Valley and northern Connecticut.

This worker-owned cooperative, known as Valley Green Feast [1], has been around for five years. But its current owners and employees, Rebekah Hanlon, Molly Merrett, Maggie Shar and Bekki Szlosek, are widening its reach, trying to get fresh food to low-income people and city dwellers, too. They are doing that by giving discounts to qualified people and tapping into the Holyoke YMCA for new customers.

“Our mission is to get the produce out to the people,” said Hanlon, the cooperative’s marketing manager. “We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for people to access the food systems around here.”

The number of weekly farmers markets has grown exponentially in this area, along with Community Supported Agriculture operations where members can purchase shares and make weekly pickups.

But there is still a need to improve nutrition among low-income families and promote the vitality of local farms, Hanlon said.

To make access to their food easier for people of limited means, Valley Green Feast began accepting EBT/SNAP – the federal food assistance program – this year. Those who are eligible receive a 20 percent discount on their fruits and vegetables.

Unlike many of the farmers markets that accept EBT/SNAP payments, though, Valley Green Feast is not depending on federal or state grants to reimburse it for the discount. Instead, it is reducing its own profits.

 

“It already feels right. It doesn’t feel like we’re stretching ourselves doing this,” Hanlon said.

“We’re making available things that are not necessarily available to them,” said Shar.

John Gerber, a professor at the Stockbridge School at UMass who teaches a course in sustainable living, praised the women’s willingness to focus on low-income customers without relying on government subsidies. “They are truly committed to helping limited-income families have access to fresh, healthy and local food,” he said. “This is truly a unique business and these are truly remarkable young women.”

A cooperative forms

Valley Green Feast was started in 2007 by Jessica Harwood as a one-woman farm food delivery service in Northampton, and it was based there until it moved to Hadley last year. The service had about 25 customers in Hampshire and Franklin counties.

When Harwood decided to move on, she found Merrett, 30, a co-owner and employee of the Pedal People Cooperative hauling service in Northampton, and Shar, 30, program coordinator for Fertile Ground, a Williamsburg-based teaching garden project for area schools. Both women were interested in continuing the business as a worker-owned cooperative, and by January 2010 they had worked out a transition plan. That summer they hired Hanlon, 24, the youth and family coordinator for the Greater Holyoke YMCA. Szlosek, 29, a personal chef, was the last to come on board, joining the group in January.

Their headquarters is the barn that owners of the Kitchen Garden Farm, Caroline Pam and Tim Wilcox, allow them to use on Fridays.

The women do most of the Valley Green Feast work themselves, though volunteers periodically help out. All four use their second jobs to promote Valley Green Feast through word-of-mouth. In addition, Merrett’s Pedal People Cooperative makes deliveries for Valley Green Feast in Northampton using its cargo bicycles.

“We consider ourselves a mobile farmers market,” Szlosek said.

Veggies to beef

By each Tuesday, customers have placed their orders via Valley Green Feast’s website, www.valleygreenfeast.com [2], ordering seasonal fruits and vegetables in containers that range from a mini box for $18 to a gathering box for $55. Customers pay a $4 delivery charge for standing orders and a $7 delivery charge for one-time orders.

The women collect the information in a database overseen by Shar. Merrett then places the orders at farms and other outlets which she has identified as using healthy food production methods, such as growing fruit without pesticides.

“We try and do local and seasonal as much as possible,” Hanlon said.

Customers can also request items like beef and pork from King Creek in Ware, beef from River Rock in Brimfield, poultry from Diemand Farm in Wendell and fish from Port Clyde, a Maine seafood cooperative. The women keep supplies of these foods in a freezer in the barn.

This month selections include salad mix from Red Fire Farm in Granby and Montague; cherry tomatoes from Enterprise Farm, which runs a regional food shed in Whately; cupcakes and breads from Woodstar Bakery in Northampton; corn meal from Four Star Farm in Northfield; yogurt from Side Hill Farm in Ashfield; and fresh bake-at-home pizza from Hillside Pizza in Hadley.

Merrett also includes recipes in a weekly newsletter she distributes to encourage people to use all of the produce in their orders.

Once the vehicles are loaded, the women head out. Merrett takes off for Northampton, where she coordinates the Pedal People deliveries, and the other three women divide up the remaining routes. One car goes north into Franklin County, another to Hilltowns and the third to the southern region. One of the newest drop-off points is the YMCA in Holyoke.

Hanlon has worked with YMCA associate executive director Jennifer Gilburg to establish the Valley Green Feast drop-off point at the Y building. As part of the arrangement, customers don’t have to pay the usual delivery fee.

The Y, which serves Holyoke, Granby and South Hadley, has promoted the effort through its healthy living initiative. “This really fits in with our goals at the Y,” Gilburg said.

So far, about 15 families have received deliveries there.

“The reaction has been very positive,” said Gilburg, who also has her own standing order.

Valley Green Feast has become part of the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives, an organization that focuses on building partnerships between cooperatives. VAWC members include the Pedal People, Collective Copies, Pioneer Valley Photovoltaics, which promotes solar and hydropower, and website design firm Gaia Host Collective.

Adam Trott, staff developer for VAWC, is one of Valley Green Feast’s subscribers.

“I feel as a customer that you have a set of experts doing your shopping for you,” he said.

Valley Green Feast is beginning to work with traditional farmers markets as well. It was recently asked to bring a selection of meats and cheeses to the Holyoke Farmers Market each week.

“It’s an honor to be asked to be part of it,” Szlosek said.

“Our work is empowering, inspiring and nourishing, just like the food that we deliver,” Merrett said.

Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2011 All rights reserved

And for a follow-up Editorial in the Amherst Bulletin, see: Mission Possible – Produce to the People

Farming

A young farmer from Columbia in the Pioneer Valley

This is my friend Juan Mendez from Enterprise Farms in Whately Massachusetts.  Juan was born in Columbia in a farming village.  He made his way to America to continue farming here and pursue education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Juan is a friend of mine, and a wonderful person.  He LOVES farming.  Always coming home with a bag of freshly grown vegetables for all of us to enjoy.  Juan has a background in permaculture and soil building, and he applies his knowledge every day at Enterprise Farm.

It’s awesome to hear someone who’s traveled far to take up farming in the Pioneer Valley which he thinks is the best place for farming in America.  Special thanks to Juan for letting me interview him.

Gregory Connor gregular77@gmail.com

Business

The Meadow Street Farm and Craft Market (at the big blue barn)

In North Amherst Massachusetts there is a small, community market where people come together to buy local food and crafts, and meet their friends and neighbors.  Please be sure to stop by the Meadow Street Market on:

  • Saturday 9:00am – 2:00pm
  • Tuesday 3:30pm – 7:30pm
  • Friday 3:00pm – 7:30pm

This is a fun market to visit and a safe place to bring the kids!

Bread delivered by bicycle!
Buy your local milk and eggs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clothing and crafts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the video introducing some of the vendors:

 

Please help us spread the word about this wonderful market by “liking” the market on Facebook.  Thanks…..