Emily Fudakowski is a consultant for Grace.  Photos courtesy of Heather Heagney.

The season for eating outdoors is nearing an end in this neck of the woods. Folks living north of the 42^nd parallel are scrambling to soak up all the warmth, sunlight and outdoor gastronomical indulgences we can get to last through winter. Aside from the common corn roast barbecue, with friends, guitars and garden-fresh veggies galore, I can’t think of a better way to spend a waning summer evening or crisp fall day celebrating the harvest season than at the annual Feast of Fields.

With 25 teams of chefs and farmers from the Ottawa region, Canadian Organic Growers’ 5^th annual Feast of Fields hosted this tremendous gastronomical delight along the Rideau River in Vincent Massey Park.  In two quick hours of meeting farmer and chef teams from the region and sampling their creations, guests tasted some of the best the Ottawa Valley has to offer.

When the delectable temptations passing by became too much to endure, I left my post at the National Farmers Union and Food Secure Canada table and dashed across to The Piggy Market for a sausage. All by itself on my plate it looked delicious but lonely, so I waited in the fast-moving queue to get a grilled papadum filled with white bean mousse from the fantastic chefs from Ballygiblins in Carleton Place. My neighbors at the Whalesbone Oyster House and Catering table saved me a plate of organic chicken chowder that I paired with Mariposa Farms beet salad. For dessert I had a familiar treat: a chili-chocolate cookie, the best cookie known to cookie-lovers in Ottawa from the B Goods Mobile Bakery.  See some of the exquisite dishes and read about extraordinary chef/farmer teams at fellow foodie Heather’s blog After the Harvest.

Lucky foodies in Vancouver got their summer food on last Sunday at  Providence Farm on Vancouver Island’s 12th  annual Feast of Fields organized by Farm Folk/City Folk.  It may be too late to get to a Feast of Fields near you, but there are still harvest festivals aplenty yet to come. In the golden triangle of Southwestern Ontario, the Niagara Food Festival is not to be missed. A must for Maritimers is Prince Edward Island’s Fall Flavours festival. An equally scrumptious alternative is to get inspired with locally grown food and host your own outdoor feast this harvest season.

Every farmers’ market is different. The vendors and clientele vary, of course, but the setting–the unique backdrop to each event–also colors how it feels to be there, as well as the crowd that attends.

Can you find the farmers' market in this photo? Seattle's Madrona Market enjoys an unlikely synergy with its host, an area Grocery Outlet. Photo by Devra Gartenstein.

During the summer months, my business vends at a dozen farmers’ markets in the Seattle area. Four of them–Columbia City, Lake City, Magnolia, and Mercer Island–are adjacent to parks. This is generally a good thing for my business: I sell ready-to-eat food. On sunny days folks stick around and hang out in the parks, eating and drinking while they stay. These markets are community events where families go to spend a morning or an afternoon. But they can be especially slow when the weather doesn’t cooperate.

In contrast, the Madrona Market is located in the parking lot of a discount grocery outlet. You’d think that would be a strange place for a farmers’ market: fresh, local food juxtaposed against cheap, mass-produced products. But it somehow ends up being a lovely fit. The market is situated on the edge of a low income neighborhood, and the proximity of the discount store probably makes it less intimidating to folks who can’t afford to spend their entire food budget there. The employees at the grocery outlet are great hosts. (They even let us use their bathroom.) I suspect they feel that our presence helps to upgrade their image a bit.

The Bellevue Farmers’ Market moved this year to a new home right across from the mall. I’ve never been a big fan of malls, but in this particular neighborhood, the location seems to be a draw. As with all markets, its success depends on the good will of neighborhood businesses, who are quite willing to share their parking and help to promote the event.

The Queen Anne Farmers’ Market relocated this year from a schoolyard in a residential neighborhood to a street just off the main drag in that part of town. There was considerable controversy about the choice of location, in fact, the farmers’ market organization that had run the event for the past two years canceled their contract with the neighborhood group that hired them, convinced that the event couldn’t work in such a narrow space. The community came together in spite of the conflict, and did a great job of making the market happen on their own. It’s busier than it was last year and feels almost like a block party. I don’t know if that’s because it’s more centrally located or because there was such a strong neighborhood commitment to make it happen this year, but it feels good.

In the coming years I’m sure we’ll see an even wider range of market locations. Although some market managers believe that the field is growing saturated and new markets “cannibalize” existing ones, I think there could be plenty of room for everyone. If we keep spreading the word about why it’s important to eat local, sustainable food, if we can remove some of the obstacles that make it so hard for young farmers to get started, and if we can achieve moderate economies of scale that enable producers to keep their prices reasonable, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to have farmers’ markets at bus stations and libraries, and even schools, ballparks and museums.

Here is a video of the class we taped.  Only one of Mira’ s friends was able to attend that day but as you’ll see, the two of them were enough for a festive atmosphere.  Ben, Mira’s fellow culinary student, has aspirations to one day own a restaurant.

In many ways, Cate is part of a movement toward teaching children to eat well through hands-on experiences, and can count among her contemporaries first lady Michelle Obama, who points out that fresh, local food tastes better and that children are more likely to eat healthy food if they are involved in its production, whether in the garden or in the kitchen.

My own parents never cooked much, and I never really cooked with fresh herbs myself until I was in my 20s and set out to learn to cook on my own.  At 3 years old, Mira and Ben, thanks to Cate, are already light years ahead of where I was in my teens!

If you can manage to avoid getting completely overwhelmed by the adorableness of Mira and Ben as they sniff herbs and toss “hair,” note Cate’s amazing unflappability (I don’t know how she manages on the days when more students come) and the way that she takes every opportunity to impart precious knowledge about the ingredients.  For those yummy mummies out there who would like to recreate this experience at home, here is Cate’s recipe, complete with her brilliant advice on how to include your “yummy” in the process.

Herb Pasta with Meyer Lemon

*1 3/4-2 1/2 c. fresh herbs***
*1 large clove of garlic, peeled
*1/2 of a sweet or “salad” onion (shallots, scallions, green onions also work well)***
*1/2 c. Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
*1/4 c. good olive oil
*1/2 t. sea salt + more for the pasta water
*black pepper, to taste
* 1 lb. of fresh angel hair or fettuccine pasta
*the juice of 1/2 of a Meyer lemon (a regular lemon is very good but not quite as tasty)

With your mini-chef, fill a large stockpot with water.  Sprinkle in enough salt to make the water taste like “acqua di mare,” (sea water), and cover the pot.  Have your mini-chef stand well away from the stove as your light the flame and bring the salt water to a boil.

Now wash your herbs together and place them on a clean kitchen towel to dry off.  Next, show your Yummy how to strip the leaves of the herbs from the stems.  We like to have one bowl for the leaves and another discard bowl for all the stems and woody bits.  This will be a long process if you have a little chef.  No worries.  Just keep plugging along nicely and realize that you are teaching your Yummy a skill set, and that takes time.  You’ll most likely end up doing quite a lot of this yourself.

Once you have gathered your herbs, throw them into the bowl of an unplugged food processor along with the olive oil, parmesan, salt and pepper, garlic, and the onion.  Secure the top, plug the processor in, and have your mini-chef press the “on” button.  Talk about what is happening in there.  Are things getting bigger or smaller?  Are things getting darker or lighter?  When you have a paste, turn off the food processor, unplug it from the wall, and open it up.

Big Person: Meanwhile, with the water in the pasta pot boiling, add your pasta, stir once, and then boil for one minute.  Lift the pasta out of the water with tongs and place it into a large serving bowl.  Scrape the herb paste on top of the pasta for your mini-chef so that they don’t come near the blade of the food processor.

Together Again: Squeeze the lemon over the pasta and toss using tongs.  Serve warm or chilled.  This is an incredible leftover.

***We always use a lot of mint, basil, thyme, and flat leaf parsley and fill in other herbs around those central flavors: e.g., tarragon, oregano.

School food services are fighting a difficult battle to provide healthy food today, due to rising costs, tight budgets and competition from fast food chains. Major changes are crucial, and this is why farm to school (FTS) programs, supported by the National Farm to School network are a vital part of improving the current situation. Furthermore, they are sustainable.

FTS programs help schools procure seasonal produce and other food from local farmers. In addition to getting better quality food into schools, the programs help support local economies by supporting family farms across the country.

Currently children in over 2,000 school districts in 40 states are benefiting from farm to school programs, which have resulted in greater consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and numerous other positive outcomes outlined in the publication Nourishing the Nation One Tray at a Time. The National Farm to School Program was established in 2004 as part of the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization. Although the program was authorized, the funds for it were never appropriated and efforts to date have been privately funded. A reliable stream of public funding is essential to ensure the growth and success of FTS programs across the country.

New York City schools recently signed a $4 million contract to receive apples from upstate New York farms. In Colorado, local grass-fed beef is used in tacos in some school districts. A cost-analysis for Colorado’s Missoula County Public School District found that buying local seasonal produce was either less expensive or comparable in price to purchasing similar items from wholesale suppliers. Creative grassroots FTS programs are popping up all over, increasing the quality of school food while supporting the livelihood of farmers.

On May 15th, the National School to Farm Network and other school health and nutrition experts presented at a special hearing on the “Benefits of Farm to School Projects, Healthy Eating and Physical Activity for School Children,” convened by the United States Senate’s Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee in Atlanta, GA. Those in attendance included Senators Tom Harkin (D-Ia) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), and representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Department of Agriculture. Glyen Holmes, of the New North Florida Cooperative Association and the South Regional Lead Agency Coordinator for the National Farm to School Network testified, “Every child deserves the opportunity to eat food in school that ensures their health and well-being, and Farm to School programs are one solution to incorporating healthier foods into school meals.” He called funding farm to school programs a top priority in the efforts needed to improve child nutrition in the United States.

In addition to allocating necessary funding to FTS programs, the network recommends amendments to ensure that the benefits of FTS reach all children, including increasing reimbursement rates for all child nutrition programs, improving standards for school meals, encouraging procurement of local produce, and an educational component focused on agriculture and food.

So what is the first step in getting a program going in your community? “Passion and interest is all it takes to start a farm to school program,” explained Debra Eschmeyer, Program Media & Marketing Director of the Farm to School Network. Free tools and resources, including a communications guide, surveys, downloadable curricula and brochures, and valuable information about existing state and county school programs are readily available to get your own local program off the ground. The Farm to School Network, its eight regional offices, and partnering organizations are invaluable resources for both start-up and existing programs. The excitement of FTS lies in the grassroots approach, which involves a wide variety of community stakeholders in creating programs that meet the needs of students and schools, while tapping into the resources of local agriculture. It truly is a win-win relationship.

Okay, so the logic behind raising or eating beef as a means to reduce greenhouse gasses sounds flawed. Meat-eaters can get a lot of flack and finger-wagging for contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Grain-to-fork, the carbon footprint of a meat diet is quite staggering. The good news: eating pastured meat can make a big difference. 

Grass-fed livestock graze and perform natural behaviors while fertilizing the soil naturally. Farmers who raise them employ agricultural practices that maintain the health and integrity of the ecosystem. They make a livelihood feeding people by raising meat sustainably while fostering native habitat for birds, pollinators and natural grasslands. Check out the health benefits of grass-fed livestock at Eat Wild and meet some farmers leading the grass-fed movement at Manitoba Grass-Fed Association.

One Canadian rancher, Bryan Gilvesy, is busy keeping up with the demand for healthy, humanely raised, ecologically responsible beef. For over a decade, Gilvesy and his family have raised grass-fed Texas Longhorn cattle, pastured year round on 350 acres at their farm Y U Ranch in Norfolk County, Southwestern Ontario. Gilvesy saw the viability of his venture into farming from the business world when he noticed the shift in consumer interest towards leaner, sustainably-raised beef.

As a participant in an Alternative Land Use Serivce pilot project, Gilvesy receives recognition and financial credits for carbon sequestration and for using ecologically sustainable farming methods. Solar pumps provide fresh water for his herds and prevent the cattle from contaminating the watershed. One hundred acres of Carolinian woodlands and the watershed within are protected by fences. Atop posts are bird houses providing habitat for blue birds.

Grass-fed livestock are fundamental to supporting and protecting grassland ecosystems, and of great value to farmers wishing to offset carbon emissions. Fertilized and stimulated by grazers, native warm-season grasses (big blue-stem, Indian and switchgrass), with roots 12-16 feet in depth, are absorbing carbon and storing it in the soil. Gilvesy observes many species of birds and pollinators attracted to the hedgerows and grasses. They pick apart manure for grains and bugs.

Saskatchewan naturalist and author Trevor Herriot makes the argument for grass-fed beef farming as a means to protect and restore the ever vanishing prairie grasslands of Western Canada and the U.S. Midwest and the threatened and endangered song birds. In his highly acclaimed book Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the Land of Grassland Birds, Herriot discusses how the western prairies are the most human-altered landscape in Canada. These grasslands also have the ability to sequester carbon in the soil to a degree greater than forests.

“If we could convert even a small percentage of the animal protein we consume in North America from grain-fed to grass-fed, there would be a correspondent increase in grassed land. That in turn can provide better habitat for birds that use grass to nest and forage and it helps reduce the amount of carbon that agriculture releases into the atmosphere.”

The modern-day land-grab culprit here is mechanized, industrial mono-cropping for agribusiness. The irony is that all this would-be grassland now cultivates grain – the primary ingredient in livestock diets.

The wicked step-sister of North American grassland is the feedlot.  Factory farms (which, in Canada, are dubbed intensive livestock operations, or ILOs) rely on synthetic, fertilizer-intensive mono-cropping for grain, using methods that are heavily reliant on fossil fuels. These feedlots are a danger to the animals they confine, the ecosystems they toxify, and the people their chemicals, hormones and pathogens poison. Communities and small-scale, sustainable farming also suffer where ILOs are present. Visit Beyond Factory Farming’s website for information on how you can build alternatives.

Reducing or eliminating meat intake can make a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gases and mitigating climate change, but the choices we make when we do eat meat are even more significant. Supporting sustainably-raised, local grass-fed meats, dairy, and eggs make pastures greener for our health, livestock, ecosystem and communities they support.

Aside from Earth Day, today marks the Green Fork’s one-year anniversary. That we launched this blog one year ago today (with 20 Ways to Green Your Fork) is no coincidence — the team at Eat Well, along with a growing number of consumers, are  concerned about how our food choices impact the environment.  Social justice concerns, especially access to healthful foods, and labor rights, are at issue here too, as well as animal welfare and public health issues.  There is a lot to chew on, if you will, and we were excited to add our voices to the growing choir of sustainable food enthusiasts.

This past year has  been huge for Eat Well.  We started producing videos, published the educational booklet Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement (of which we’ve distributed over 20,000 copies — you can download the digital version here) and launched the beta version of our interactive mapping feature, Eat Well Everywhere.  We also added hundreds of new listings to the Guide and yesterday, we were named “best local food  blog” in Treehugger’s “Best of Green” (you can help us win the Reader’s Choice Award by voting for us before midnight tonight) .

It’s also been a big year for the larger food movement.  To recap, we’ve tapped some of our favorite foodie writers, bloggers, activists and advocates to answer this question:

What is one of the most powerful things you’ve seen and/or learned over the last year? And what is one thing you’d like to see happen over the next year?

Be sure to read through to the end, where Annie Meyers shares some exciting news about New Amsterdam Market (spoiler: it’s happening!), and please, feel free to share your answers in the comments section.

For my part, even as author of the question, I’m finding it really hard to narrow it down one thing, so I would just say that the the idea of “good food for all” has gained tremendous momentum over the last year.  The New York Times prints a story about good food nearly everyday, and they are not alone — all across America, people are talking and writing and organizing for more farmers’ markets, more community gardens, more nutritious lunches and better food in general.  Today, I’m writing from the W.K. Kellogg Food & Society conference, where over 500 good food advocates have gathered to work on what last year, many were hesitating to call a “movement,” but these days, there hardly seems to be a question of whether or not what’s happening qualifies as one. Given all that has been achieved over the last year, I can’t wait to see what unfolds over the next one. If you have yet to join us, do yourself and your fellow global citizens a favor and get on the bus.

Marion Nestle, of Food Politics: One person really can make a difference, and a big one, as shown by what’s happening with community gardens, school food, and organic gardens at the White House.  Let’s have lots more people out there making a difference, each in their own way.

Michael Pollan, of MichaelPollan.com: We’ll look back at Michelle Obama’s work –planting an organic garden on the White House lawn and talking about the importance of real food, as the most important food-and-ag news of the past year. She has already changed the conversation, inspired a counter-attack, and raised people’s consciousness about food more than anyone else.

Joan Dye Gussow: After more than 30 years of playing Cassandra, of living in opposition to the dominant myths about our truly gross national product and our unhealthy food supply, I’ve been shocked into hopefulness by what simple truth from the top has managed to transform despite a continuing din of misinformation.

My hope is that we can revive the real economy-the one where people build, grow, feed and care for each other-without the need to resuscitate our still unsustainable “consumer society.”

Kerry Trueman of Eating Liberally: Oh, geez. I thought this was gonna be easy until I started to think of all the great things that happened over the past year: the resounding success of Roger Doiron’s Eat The View campaign to get a kitchen garden established at the White House; the MacArthur Foundation awarding Growing Power’s Will Allen a much-deserved “genius” grant; the support that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has received in their struggle to improve conditions for our farm workers; the passage of Proposition 2 in California thanks to the tireless efforts of our friends at the Humane Society; the extraordinary and ever-growing influence of Michael Pollan, who’s got Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer talking about food sheds and urban ag; and Slow Food USA’s shockingly savvy decision to make Josh Viertel its new president.

The most powerful thing may be that folks like Pollan and Viertel have actually been granted access to our new administration, giving us an opportunity, at long last, to loosen the stranglehold of Big Ag and Big Food on our agricultural policies.

According to Pollan and Viertel, President Obama is receptive to the sustainable ag agenda, but demanding evidence that we are, indeed, a real force to be reckoned with. “Show me the movement,” he’s reportedly saying.

We’re fighting “some of the most powerful and moneyed interests in the United States,” as Joan Gussow noted in a speech at Columbia a couple of weeks ago. We must be doing something right, ’cause Monsanto and the rest of the bio-tech brigade have stepped up their disinformation campaigns to confuse consumers who are rethinking our fossil-fueled food chain.

So, can we do away with Agribizness as usual? Yes, we can! Well, that’s my hope, anyway…

Sam Fromartz of Chews Wise: What I’m most encouraged by is the way people are thinking about food – understanding that how it’s produced effects people, health, animals, fish, the environment, oceans, the climate, everyday lives. That consciousness is even more important than making the right food choice according to a rigid guideline. My only hope is that this continues to spread, altering the marketplace in ways we can only imagine.

Anna Lappe of Take a Bite: One of the most powerful things I experienced last year was visiting communities on the outskirts of Seoul with farming activists from Southeast Asia who are part of the La Via Campesina movement. La Via Campesina, now hundreds of thousands strong, is a powerful reminder that small-scale farming is a viable way of life and can be a powerful tool for both helping us mitigate and adapt to global warming. As they say, small-scale farming can “feed the world and cool the planet.”

But perhaps the biggest consciousness shifting experience for me in this past year has been becoming pregnant. All the abstractions about toxins in our environment and on our foods, about the future of the planet and the species, feel very real to me as I sense my baby daughter swimming around inside me. At 29 weeks old, she already has all the eggs she will ever create, so that in me is literally the seeds of my grandchildren, as in my grandmother was the seed of me. The generational frame of sustainability is no longer an abstraction.

Paula Crossfield of Civil Eats: The most powerful thing I’ve come to know about the sustainable food movement this year is how eager young people are to farm (myself included). I would love to push Vilsack to start a young farmer corps program, recruiting interested new farmers and paying them as apprentices and continuing to support them as they seek out land and begin their new occupation.

Kim O’Donnel of A Mighty Appetite: A lot of yin yang this year — Increased awareness on a consumer level about the state of our food system, which is horrifying, yet inspiring to hear the very good work being done to re-establish the farm-to-table connection.  Seemingly unprecedented press coverage on food safety, the Farm Bill, immigrant worker rights and  global food shortages, all disheartening news, yet bright sparks of light and encouraging reports of vegetable gardens and from the White House south lawn to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. More hunger and demand on food banks yet communities pulling resources to feed one another.

Severine von Tscharner Fleming of the Irresistible Fleet of Bicycles: An incredible surge of young people making bold professional choices, entering agriculture, starting businesses, becoming engaged in the foodsytem.

From Jill Richardson of La Vida Locavore: The highlight of my year was the appointment of Kathleen Merrigan. And my top thing to change? The control of corporations over our food system. Yeah, I know… I dream big.

From Gwen Schantz, frequent contributor to the Green Fork and also to Alternet:Last summer I was living in an Alaskan fishing town when the US Supreme Court ruled that Exxon Mobil would pay an insultingly low $500 million in damages for its role in the worst oil spill in the history of our country. In 1989 the Exxon Valdez spill left much of coastal Alaska covered in crude oil, crippling aquatic ecosystems and obliterating the livelihood of thousands of fishermen. At the time, fishermen put their bodies and their boats to work scrubbing beaches and hauling supplies and volunteers to cleanup sites. Twenty years later, these men and women continue to act as stewards of the sea, working the most environmentally-sustainable fishery in the world. Even as the Supreme Court’s ruling last June illustrates the struggles and frustrations of the environmental movement, it gives me hope and pride to know that Alaskan fishermen carry on a tradition of stewardship through the act of putting good food on my table.

Annie Meyers of Thoughts on the Table:  One of the most powerful initiatives that I’ve noticed (and hope!) is gaining ground is the effort to bring fresh, local produce into hospital kitchens. The specific hospitals that have made this link (in Connecticut and California, for example) have had to do a lot of creative work with their food service providers or with individual distributors to connect with local farmers, but many hospitals are also starting to use common language to describe the type of foods they hope to source. Hospitals that have signed the Health Care Without Harm pledge have agreed to “create food systems which are ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible.” Of course we’ll see whether health care reform will place value in the preventative care of healthy food, but at least for now, some hospital representatives are taking the initiative to do this themselves!

One thing I look forward to in the next year is the establishment of a year-round wholesale regional market in New York City. The New Amsterdam Market project is the primary force building the foundation for this institution, and will be holding Monthly Markets starting on June 28th this year. The New Amsterdam Market will eventually provide a critical meeting point for the growing infrastructure of New York’s regional food system, so that institutions, supermarkets, bodegas, and ever more families will have physical and financial access to the fresh food of the Northeast!

A force for the sustainable food movement, she is able to lay out plainly the issues with industrial agriculture and unfair trade systems and the problems they’ve created around the world, but she also gives us hope through the example of her program, Navdanya, which is home to a wealth of incredible research on food sovereignty, biotech and more, as well as 46 seed banks throughout India and a 20-acre organic farm where workshops on sustainable agriculture are held throughout the year.  She also mentioned that she’s got a new book out called Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis.

Our friends at CLF will have a video of Dr. Shiva’s talk on the site soon, but in the meantime, check out their writeup on their new Livable Future blog.

vandana shiva, navdanya, johns hopkins, center for a livable future, livable future blog, local food, sustainable agriculture, monocrops, industrial agriculture, biotech food

Check out the video, and if you’re planning a trip to Maine, make sure to swing by the farm and say hi to Suzy – she’s sure to fix you up something good to eat!

gwen schantz, maine, north creek farm, local food, small farms

When you think about food, do you think about water? As more people question where their food comes from, how is it grown, fed, and handled, whether or not it was genetically engineered, and so on, it’s also time to think about how water factors into food production.

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Health food stores, food coops and grocery stores are stocked with an abundance of vegetables, meats and organic roasted vegetable pizzas, creating the impression that there must be water enough to produce this bounty. What we don’t see at the store, though, is what’s called “virtual water,” the vast amount of water that goes into goods and services we buy everyday, including every bit of food we buy.

Surprisingly, the virtual water in our food makes up the overwhelming majority of our “water footprint,” (the aquatic equivalent of our carbon footprint, or our carbon “foodprint.”

Consider just a few examples of water footprints for common foods. For instance, a study by agronomist Herb Schulbach shows that it takes 23 gallons of water to produce one pound of lettuce and another 23 gallons for one pound of tomatoes. That’s a soggy salad. Carrots require 33 gallons of water per pound, and apples 49 gallons. As for your morning cup of coffee, that takes nearly 37 gallons to make, on average, and each slice of toast takes about 10 gallons of water to produce. The reason why each of these products’ water footprint is so big is because the calculation includes the water necessary to grow the crop through rain and irrigation, what’s needed to wash the produce, the water used to cool machinery in electricity generation, as well as the water it takes to produce the fuel to transport them.

It’s not all about the veggies though. Some of the foods with the biggest water footprints are animal products like milk, cheese, and meat. To bring a 7 ounce glass of milk to your table takes about 50 gallons of water. A quarter pound of cheese takes 330 gallons to produce. But the real water hog – excuse me, water cow – is beef: a pound of ground hamburger meat can take more than 5,000 gallons to produce, mostly due to the tremendous amount of grain factory-farmed cows eat, which is grown with huge amounts of water pumped from rapidly depleting aquifers.

Processed foods have a huge water footprint, too. While it is currently difficult to measure all the water that goes into making processed foods, water-conscious groups are developing ways to track and assess their water footprint. When you think about it, however, it’s obvious that processed foods use gobs of water to produce, including growing, washing and transporting the ingredients, followed by processing in factories that use vast amounts of water to cool power machinery and generate electricity to do that processing. Then, there’s the packaging, which often involve petroleum-based plastics, which use even more water to manufacture, and shipping the food worldwide using even more water-processed petroleum. In fact, it takes between two and three gallons of water to process one gallon of gas. All of this means that eating more locally grown, minimally-processed food is a good way to reduce our water footprint, as is eating less meat, and opting for products from pastured animals when you do.

No matter what we do, no matter what we eat, we will always have a water footprint. The point here is that being conscientious about sustainable food also means being conscious about the important part water plays in the cycle of sustainability. Reducing your water footprint can mean just continuing along the already sensible sustainable food path by eating more fresh local vegetables and whole foods, avoiding processed foods, cutting back on animal protein, eating leaner, pasture-raised meat instead of factory farmed meat, and generally not wasting food.

So next time you’re at the market, just ask yourself, “How wet is my food?”

water, conservation, sustainability, food, local food, sustainable food, virtual water, h20 conserve, kai olson-sawyer

Fast food is the ultimate American invention–quick, cheap meals for people on the go. But we pay a heavy price for our national addiction–an epidemic of obesity, the destruction of our fragile environment, and the loss of community ties that could be maintained by taking the time to prepare and eat food together.

Despite these negatives, the need for quick, affordable food is undeniable in today’s world. But why on earth are McDonalds and its competitors our only options? Every single time I get hungry on the road, in an airport, or at a shopping mall I wish that someone would hurry up and open a healthy fast food restaurant!

Turns out the wait is finally over–Amanda’s Feel Good Fresh Food restaurant opened it’s doors for business in Berkeley at the end of July 2008.

The restaurant happens to be located right downstairs from my office so I was among the first to check it out (you may remember seeing my review this summer.) I’m happy to report that Amanda’s is pretty much exactly what I’d been wishing for–the food is healthy (they have the nutrition guidelines to prove it, too), tasty, and affordable (a cheeseburger made with naturally raised beef and organic cheese is $4.50, baked sweet potato fries are $1.50, and a freshly made agave-sweetened soda is $1.75.)

Amanda’s also goes out of its way to reduce its impact on the environment. For example, they don’t sell bottled water since it creates too much landfill waste and takes a lot of petroleum to transport. Everything served in the restaurant is also fully compostable so any “trash” left over at the end of your meal can be deposited in one of the restaurant’s green bins that feed directly into Berkeley’s city composting program where it will become rich soil for local farms and city landscaping projects in a matter of months. The restaurant also tries to foster a sense of community with a series of events in the restaurant and around the neighborhood. The future of fast food has never looked so green, nor so healthy!

Amanda is often behind the counter in the restaurant, filling orders alongside her team (the handwritten “Amanda” on her wooden nametag was the only thing that tipped me off.) I was curious to know more about how she’d gone about making her idea a reality and what her plans were for the future of the restaurant, so I introduced myself. She was kind enough to meet with me and answer my questions late last week.

How did you come up with the idea for Amanda’s?

I’d wanted to someday run a business that had a social and environmental mission ever since college when I was inspired by a book I read by Tom Chapel, the founder of Tom’s of Maine. So I always had that in the back of my mind. I went into technology when I graduated from college because that’s where there was great opportunity to learn business — I figured I needed to learn about business first and then I could figure out how to bring in the social mission.

I went back to business school because I wanted to focus on businesses with a social mission and Stanford has a really great social responsibility/public management program. After my first year, I ended up doing my summer internship at Niman Ranch, a natural meats company located in Oakland. That was the same summer that the movie Supersize Me came out and that I read Eric Schlosser’s book, Fast Food Nation.

I got to do some ride-alongs on the Niman Ranch delivery trucks that summer. We came up to Berkeley and went to Chez Panisse and Whole Foods and some other really nice grocery stores and I realized that that quality of food was not reaching many people, and definitely not reaching the people Schlosser writes about in Fast Food Nation. So that’s when I started really thinking about this need. Then I spent my second year of business school focusing on building a business plan for the restaurant, researching the market, and talking to everyone in the restaurant industry. When I graduated from business school, I decided to actually start implementing the plan.

Once you’d had the idea for the restaurant, what was the path to making it a reality?

I think almost everyone who saw the movie Supersize Me had the same idea – that was the clear reaction. But the restaurant industry is really challenging and a lot of people who had the same idea probably didn’t pursue it because it’s so tough – there’s a lot of competition and profit margins are slim –that’s what I found out after studying it more in business school. But I also knew that I had the passion to do it anyway.

There are just hundreds of people who’ve helped build this. The restaurant has my name on it but it’s definitely a community effort. In business school there were probably half a dozen classmates of mine and also people in other graduate programs helped put the business plan together. It was very well-researched which I think gave me confidence in it as well as giving a lot of other quality people the confidence to invest in the business both financially and with their time as advisors or as the consultants that helped design the menu and helped design the space.

How much of that designing and visioning did you do while you were at Stanford and how much did you do after?

Most of it was after. We had the vision of “Whole Foods meets In-N-Out Burger” as what we wanted to create but in terms of making that more tangible, it all happened after I graduated.

Was it difficult to find funding; did you find that process painful?

I actually found the process fun. I like meeting new people and talking to them. There were definitely a lot of people that I talked to that were not interested and that had a lot of fears about investing in a restaurant. Although everyone thinks that restaurants have a really high failure rate, they actually have a similar failure rate to other start-up businesses. The difference is that the failures are so much more public, more visible–people see the restaurant open up and then they see it close its doors. But ten little start-up software companies could fail and you’d never know they existed in the first place! That preconception made the fundraising a little more difficult. So the people that invested had to be really passionate about the concept and about the team.

How long did it take between when you had the idea and when Amanda’s actually opened?

Four years. I was in business school for a year researching and putting the business plan together and then it took two years to find the location, several months to negotiate the lease and get the permitting and then some time to construct it.

How big is your team?

There are hundreds of people who made it happen though mostly they don’t play an active role at this point. We have some advisors who I talk to every month or so. But on a day-to-day basis it’s me and the team in the restaurant — about 20 people. I have an amazing assistant manager named Peter and he and I did all the hiring and training for our team.

What was the most surprising thing about the process of creating this type of restaurant?

I really think the surprising thing is that everything went as smoothly as it did. Our operations and our team are really amazing.

What has been the hardest part?

Well, before we opened the biggest challenge was finding the location. We knew that it had to be in the right location with great accessibility and walking traffic to supply the masses of people we need to be successful. We knew that what we were creating was not going to be a destination in and of itself – people are just not going to spend half an hour looking for a parking spot to buy a hamburger! At the time, competition for commercial real estate was really stiff. We looked at lots of spots where the landlord chose Starbucks or Peet’s Coffee over us.

The hardest thing now is that my team and I have put so much of our hearts and effort into this that it’s hard when people are not happy, when we’re not satisfying people. There are so many different things–for example, some people like crunchy fries, some people like not-crunchy fries. That surprised me because I had never managed a restaurant before. That’s definitely the hardest thing for me; I probably take things a little more personally than I should. I’m trying not to do that as much. But it’s also balanced by the customers who are so supportive of what we’re doing and so excited about it.

What are your plans for the future of Amanda’s? Do you envision it becoming either a chain or a franchise?

That is the intention. We want to be able to grow this and, honestly, we need to get to scale to be able to offer affordable prices. We want to bring this food and this sort of feel-good environment to lots more people. Franchising is probably a no, at least not early on. We really want to focus on quality and build the brand and I think that’s harder to do as a franchise. But we are considering next locations now.

May I ask where you’re considering opening the next Amanda’s?

Definitely in the Bay Area. Ideally, something that is somewhat close to where we are now – that’s important from a management perspective and for delivery and that sort of thing. So somewhere either in the East Bay or San Francisco would be great.

Berkeley can be a hard place to open new businesses because a lot of people are pretty anti-development. What has your reception from the community been like?

I have felt nothing but support from the City of Berkeley and from the majority of people here. The mayor comes in to the restaurant and so does the head of economic development. We actually got honorable mention at the Berkeley Sustainability Summit for modeling sustainability so I’ve felt very supported.

What I like about being in Berkeley is that it is activist central and people really care about our social and environmental mission and they push us on it. I know that it’s hard for people who aren’t in business on a day-to-day basis to understand the trade-offs that have to be made but that’s okay because it’s good to have people who care and who ask the questions. You can get wrapped up in the business and then it’s easy to be tempted to give up some of your values in trying to be successful. But being in a community like this means that people take the trouble to ask things like why we’re using compostable plastic containers “for here”? As a result, we’ve just changed from using the compostable plastic containers for the “for here” salads to serving them in cardboard boats. The cardboard will reduce our compost waste and will also be more efficient from an environmental perspective than the PLA (compostable plastic) stuff is. So I think it’s great.

There are actually a lot of start-up restaurant concepts have come out of Berkeley from Peet’s Coffee to Naia, the gelato place. And, of course, Chez Panisse.

Amanda’s seems to be a melting pot of sorts. I see a pretty diverse mix of customers — Berkeley high kids, UC students, local professionals, young parents, hippies, security guards, and people who look like they’d be equally at home in the McDonalds up the street. Is that what you expected?

It’s what I hoped! It’s interesting because we thought that women would be our core customer (and I think they still are though I haven’t spent enough time analyzing our customer base and actually counting customers) because women tend to care more about their health and make a lot of the restaurant decisions for their families and co-workers but it has been even more diverse than I expected. That’s one of the things I like about being in Berkeley–we’re not only bringing healthy food to people who already eat healthfully, there are also so many different people here that we can start actually making a change in the way some people are eating.

How is business?

It’s good. It’s been great this year. It was really great when we first opened. But just like all the restaurants around here, we have felt the impact of the economy. The seasonality of the students is also a big thing for us–the winter months are going to be a bit more challenging for us. But our price point is pretty low, it’s a hamburger economy like everyone talks about, so we’re really well-positioned. We’re trying to cut costs and be as efficient as we can now. The good part about that is that it’s setting us up to run the business even more efficiently in the future as we grow.

It seems as though the big fast food chains are constantly offering some new thing – salads, yogurts, chalupas, some new regionally-inspired take on a hamburger or chicken sandwich, etc. Do you have plans to expand Amanda’s menu?

We have some ideas of thing we could do and, in fact, we’re about to add coffee and tea. But at the same time, we are really trying to keep thing simple from an operational perspective. Those big companies are trying to eke out the next 1% of sales but we have so much growth to do just in what we’re offering now. We do have our seasonal salad which changes. But I don’t think we’re going to make any drastic changes any time soon.

Have you considered listing where you source your different ingredients from on your menu or your web site?

It’s a balance, we try to talk about it on our web site but also not everyone wants to know. I’d rather source things locally (and it’s cheaper to do that!) but you can’t get organic tomatoes locally all year round or local organic apples so sometimes they have to come from New Zealand because we offer our apple fries all year long.

It’s interesting — everyone is so enamored of Niman ranch. If you say you buy your beef from Niman Ranch, people automatically assume that it was raised up in Marin County but in reality their meats come from ranches all around the country. We source our meat with a local family-owned distributor that sources its meats similarly to the way Niman Ranch does. So if people ask, we tell them our beef is from the Midwest and raised all-naturally. The veggies are as local as we can get them – they’re sourced through a local produce company. But we don’t go to the farmers market. I know that Bobby G (of Bobby G’s Pizzeria around the corner) does, though and I am amazed! I don’t know how he finds the time to do that – I am very impressed. I would like to learn more about it. We want to continuously improve – there are always things we can do better.

Have you put a lot of effort into marketing?

Not too much yet other than our signs in front of our location and the great reviews we’ve received thus far. This is going to be the year of marketing. Early on, we had more sales than we expected and we wanted to focus on making sure that we were doing everything right and pleasing our customers and keeping costs under control. But now my team does not need me in the restaurant – I’m actually in the way when I’m there. So I’m going to be spending less time there – for their sake and also so that I can get more involved in the community and do more marketing and start looking at more growth.

We did get a lot of great PR early on. We’re going to be on View From the Bay in February – that will be neat. That plus word of mouth… That is why I really wanted to focus on our service because that’s what keeps people coming back. If we can provide a great product and great service then hopefully, we should not have to market ourselves too much. But at the same time there are people right in this area who don’t know we’re here so we do have some work to do.

Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?

Well, one thing that I didn’t mention is that everything we do, all the decisions we make in the restaurant are based on our goal of creating a healthy community. For example, when we’re deciding whether to buy local or to buy organic, that is what we use as our decision-making metric. This goal of a healthy community is something that we’re trying to foster with our own customers and with our employees – we got all our staff trial memberships to the YMCA and Funky Door Yoga to encourage them to exercise. And they’re really inspiring – most of them find more time to exercise than I do! Our team really makes us what we are – we’d be nowhere without them.

amanda west, eve fox, garden of eatin, amanda’s feel good fresh food, local food, sustainable food, organic fast food