Food, Power, and Cooperatives

“To begin the global task to which we are called, we need some particular place to begin, some particular place to stand, some particular place in which to initiate the small, reformist changes that we can only hope some day will soon become radically transformative. We start with food.”

-Kloppenburg et al., 1996

Being a relatively new member of the Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative CSA team, I find myself regularly answering questions about local food and why it’s important when chatting with curious friends and family wanting to know about the organization I work for. While I’m always happy to give the rundown on LFFC (“We’re an organic farmer’s co-op consisting of 80 plus small farms. Community Supported Agriculture is a model of local agriculture that allows community members to subscribe to the season’s harvest...”), these answers barely tell the whole story of what we do as a Cooperative and why our model of agriculture is so important as a foil to the conventional industrial model that fills so many American grocery store shelves and bellies. There are real implications for our food choices, both when we choose to participate in the corporate, industrial chain of agriculture and consumption, and when we choose to support the alternative.

In Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy (a book that helped lead me on my journey to LFFC in no small way), he reports that Philip Morris and Nabisco collect nearly 10 cents of every dollar an American consumer spends on food, just one example of the consolidation of the American food chain. This consolidation of food spending to a handful of corporations means farmers participating in the industrial model have prices dictated by the powers that be, only to have their produce transported, processed, packaged, transported again, stored, shelved, and sold- each step resulting in an additional expense passed along to the consumer for a lesser quality product, while profit is siphoned away by the many hands that helped put the item on your grocery store shelf.

While many local food venues (farmers’ markets, farm stands/markets, and CSAs) allow for increased contact between producer and consumer, it can be a challenge for farmers based in rural locations reach out to a consumer base which is large enough to support family farms. By uniting into a cooperative and delivering to regions outside of the immediate area, our farmers are able to increase access to sustainably grown, organic produce for neighboring community members while finding direct markets for their goods, allowing them to continue farming in a sustainable way, preserving family tradition, and farmland as farmland. Organic, natural farmland at that.

Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative farmers have decided to take a different path than the conventional industry. By joining forces to share storage, transportation, marketing, and administrative tasks and costs, our farmers are able to do what they want to, which is devote their energy to farming with integrity, with concern for the environment and the health of their families, their customers, and their animals at the forefront of all that they do. By eliminating industry middlemen and reducing the miles between farm and fork, LFFC farmers ensure they receive a fair price for the crops they have grown, for the hard work that keeps them busy from dawn to dusk, in the heat of summer and the cold of winter. They ensure customers receive only the freshest, healthiest food possible, food that is produced not to withstand transport and storage for thousands of miles and many days, but to nourish the body and delight the taste buds.

 The industrial food network is only able to function when farmers are paid as little as possible and forced to make cost cutting measures often resulting in worst environmental, farm worker, and animal care practices becoming standard operating procedure to ensure some profit can be squeezed out of the convoluted production chain. By cooperating to market directly to the consumer, our farmers maintain power over the food they have worked tirelessly to produce while giving you, the consumer, increased power as well. By deciding to be a shareholder with Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative, our members assert their right to fresh food, their right to food not treated with chemicals, they signal their belief in and support of the right of animals to live a pleasant and peaceful life. Our members have a direct contact with the producers of their food and if they have questions or concerns, they have the power to directly address the issue.

After Obama’s “bad spilled milk joke,” which provoked groaned utterances and a few chuckles, I started thinking about milk. Milk was on my mind. Milk does my body good, or did when I drank it, or did it? Milk. Milk. Milky white milk. Did people at one time, you know, that time during which many of our hackneyed, clichéd, and otherwise overused-to-the-point-of-lost-meaning phrases were created, really cry because they spilled a glass of milk? Were the tears for Bessie’s moo juice produced out in yonder bucolic meadow—the place we (former or ashamed) mainstreamers can at times barely imagine? Gasp, milk doesn’t come from the dairy section of the national chain grocer, from the gloved hand behind the refrigerated racks next to the “free range” eggs?

Better question: why do so many of our shareholders also elect a milk share—be it skim, 2%, or whole? Our milk, like the $10,000 efforts of said Dairy farmers to contain spillage two score years ago, is worth crying over. Har. Har. Har. Seriously though seriously, the milk used for our milk shares is amazing, local, and certified organic. The dairy, Natural by Nature, is family-owned in nearby (just over an hour’s drive) West Grove, Pennsylvania.

First, where do other milks come from—the milks next to the “free range” eggs at my local, national, multinational conglomerate grocery chain store with clothes, shoes, music, garden (Round Up), automotive, and disappointing art/crafts sections come from? Conventional dairy farms and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). These types of places look very different to us and feel very different to the cows than Natural by Nature. The goals of these farms and factories, respectively, are many times to increase milk production while decreasing herd size. Conventional dairy cows have significantly shorter life spans of about three to four years due to the stress of lactating constantly as well as disease and other ailments like lameness and mastitis. Cows on factory farms give birth once a year after artificial insemination, and two to three months after calving, she is once again bred to continue her lactation.

After reading and reading and feeling repulsed, I wanted to know more about the milk we offer. Some shareholders have ordered up to six milk shares per season. That’s three gallons of milk per week, or in other words, a lot for a vegan mind to wrap around. Natural by Nature does just that: follows nature’s lead on managing the dairy herd.

Ned MacArthur had enough of the low—frustratingly so—milk prices and absence of a systemic way to sell organic milk. So he quit. For one year. By 1994, Ned and his father, Norman, started Natural Dairy Products Corporation (NDPC) which then started producing a line of milk and dairy products another year later called Natural by Nature.

Despite the four digestive compartments within their stomach region, which may seem to nod at a digestive system capable of digesting pretty much everything and the kitchen sink, Natural by Nature asserts, “Cows are meant to eat grass, not grain.” So cows eat grass, not grain. Is that why the happy cows on television commercials are always in a green meadow? Confirmation: “Pastured cows are healthier and less stressed. We strive to make fresh pasture the main diet for our cows.”

Of course, “Being grass fed is ideal. When the grass is lush and plentiful there is often no grain fed. In its best form, grass gives the cow her caloric and mineral needs. Periods of saturation or drought can compromise the feed value of the grass and necessitate the feeding for extra protein (alfalfa or clover hay) and energy (grain & haylage).”   Mind you, today’s high is 21 degrees. Farenheit. Thus, the drastic temperatures during the winter season pose a feeding challenge: “Most of our dairy herds are fed grain in the winter.” The dairy estimates that only about 10-15% of their herd’s dry matter intake (DMI) comes from winter grain rations to supplement the nutrient deficient created by winter pastures.

According to the USDA’s dairy animal organic certification standards, a minimum of 30% of a milking cow’s DMI must come from pasture turnout. Aside from hay, pasture, and supplemental grain, dairy cows at Natural by Nature are also fed haylage during the winter to feed their energy needs. Haylage is simply first-cutting hay that’s been fermented to increase its sugar content to provide energy.

Because we, humans and bovine friends alike, are what we eat, incorporating grass-fed dairy products—if you eat animal products, that is—into your diet means you’ll also be incorporating Beta Carotene, Vitamins A and E, and Conjugated Linoleic Acid into your diet as well. These nutrients are all naturally occurring in grass at higher levels than say the processed grain in the diets of dairy cows at conventional farms or worse yet, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

In addition to Natural by Nature’s commendable commitment to herd and human health and welfare, we are also proud to partner with them as friends of the environment always looking for ways to sustain best green practices. We don’t want to simply go green, we want to be, stay, live, and embody green.

Natural by Nature makes us proud when they report:

·       

     Our Avondale facility electricity is 100% wind power.  

·       We do as much as we can to help support our local organic farmers.

·       We recycle as much as possible. 

·       We are careful to run our truck routes as efficiently as possible. 

·       We’ve done away with the plastic bags in our retail store all together.  Our customers bring in their own and we recycle our used cardboard boxes by offering them to those who have forgotten to bring a bag.

·       We also have reusable cloth bags for purchase in our store. 

Natural by Nature’s mission,

"To promote and support organic farming and the sustainable use of our natural resources. To produce foods that benefit consumers and farmers alike. To use the principles of grass based dairy production as a means to improve the quality of our products, maximize the health of our cows and protect our watersheds. To make a living for our families based on these strongly held principles."

is an honorable one and strongly upheld in both theory and practice. Cows are grazers and should do so. Milk is touted as good for us and should be. Natural by Nature makes these things happen. 
Don’t feel ashamed when you cry if you spill this milk. It’s worth it. 
Photo Credit: Natural by Nature website

Today is Monday, January 21. Already(?/!). This is a small piece of great big news because today marks the first day of the 2013 Winter CSA season! We're baaaaack! Our Leola location is again alive with the hub bub of CSA harvest and delivery. Warehouse packing staff are jamming to various soundtracks as usual (Star Wars and The Last of the Mohicans to name a few), lunch smells waft up to our second floor CSA office from the break room below, and the interruptive garage door slowly opens and rushes closed as our drivers deliver organic goodness from our farmers for Tuesday pick up locations tomorrow. Despite the sky looking like the underside of a comforter and being the color of a recycled egg carton, today is a good day. Tomorrow and the days after will be even better. Go for organic veggies--even in the winter!

Photo Credit: CSA Files

If you take a gander at the full vegetable share box--overflowing with marvelous produce grown in certified organic dirt--you'll see that, 1. yes, this is a representative share of the Spring-Summer season, and 2. this is also representative of the glory of the CSA experience. Or, shall we say, C-S-Yay! While we are busy mourning the vacancy our veggie shares have left during the fall-to-winter break, we quickly brainstormed some of our favorite (CSA) things, or why having an LFFC CSA share is the best. Please read carefully:
1. With a CSA share, one no longer has to hunt for and miserly gather good produce. Instead, rest assured, the produce one receives weekly from a share, is in fact the best tasting and most nutrient-dense.
2. Experiencing the seasonality of our community's hardiness zone on a foodie level by eating what is currently growing and being harvested.
3. Making only what you have ingredients for is a luxury.
4. Minimal grocery store trips. Need I type more? I think maybe I do: no more (or significantly fewer, or only choice-based trips that include the following) florescent lights, squeaky-wheeled carts that turn like a 1948 Mercury Tudor, mile-high aisles of processed foods packed with preservatives, additives, and low-quality, nutrient-empty ingredients proclaiming to be "natural" or "from nature." Granted, this could be true if that actually means a factory, assembly line, or clean lab.
5. Up front payment. Once and done. Or, if you'd rather--a workable payment plan. Easy budgeting.
6. When we participate in any given CSA season, buying a share--whether it be full, half, fruit, flower, cheese, egg, meat, pork-free, milk--helps to support a number of small, family-owned, certified organic farms in our area--Lancaster and Chester counties. Without CSA support, maintaining family-ownership of these farms is liable to become increasingly difficult with rising costs of farming and threats of agribusiness.
7. When we participate in any given CSA season, buying any CSA share is growing local and regional positivity and awareness for the environment and ecosystem.
8. With our CSA, organic is affordable.
9. Saying, "no," to big box shopping--at least for food stuffs which is enough to inspire changes in other purchasing as well.
10. LFFC CSA means learning more about vegetables that grow in our community--beyond sweet corn, potatoes, and tomatoes--and this is always exciting!
11. Participating in our CSA program produces contagions of forward-moving, open thinking and a more mindful existence.

Photo Credit: CSA Files 

Despite the drippy, droppy, rain-dreary January weather, the CSA office is heating up! We are moving, shaking, and getting ready for the Winter season to begin next week! If you haven't yet signed up, please do! We are only accepting applications for our full, 12-week season through January 17th. Thereafter, the season will be prorated. More organic goodies means more organic goodness! Check out the photos of our renown sauerkraut at our member farm, Oak View Acres, prior to labeling. Oak View Acres also bottles our delicious Bowman Mountain applesauce. Yum! These are just a couple of items that will be included in the Pantry add-on share.

Photo Credit: CSA Files

Dearest CSA enthusiast, supporter, researcher, voyeur, critic, lover, shareholder, [enter role here],

Welcome! Hello! We hope you were and are well and will be from now on, too! Come one, come all to the new location of Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative's CSA blog! I am happy to introduce you to it/us. Here, you will find tidbits about us as a coop, as a CSA program, as a local food supplier, as food and agricultural theorists, as your shareholder support group, as CSA participants ourselves, as local food and organic learners, and even little (maybe not-so-little?) bits of our personalities.We wanted to create this space to reach out to you with our best words forward. Please do feel free to respond and engage in the discourse. We love to hear from you and want to! Please also feel free to reach out to us to let us know what you'd like to see here!

Photo credit: JDHansen