Powered By Produce

Last week, CNN reported on the growing local food movement, or Community Supported Agricurture (CSAs). From the article:

[The farmers] describe their farming technique as "beyond organic," saying they use no artificial fertilizers, growth hormones or antibiotics and don't keep their animals penned up.

Life on their property -- where cattle and sheep graze in open fields and chickens follow along to clean up after them -- looks much like the classic image of a family farm. [The Farmers] say they consider themselves healers to both their customers and, according to their Web site, a food system that "had become a machine with little regard for food safety, food taste and animal welfare."

"People are becoming very disconnected from the food system," Liz Young said. "Buying from a local CSA or just shopping at a local farm, you can see where it's coming from. You can talk to the farmers and figure out how the animals or the produce is raised.
...

Members of the nation's handful of meat CSAs, and the thousands of others, offer a list of reasons.

The food is healthier and tastes better, they say. They like supporting their local economy. Eliminating cross-country delivery is better for the environment, as are the sustainable farming techniques the farmers tend to use.

"Being part of a CSA means that I know the first names of the people who are raising the meat I eat," said Andrew Johnson of Kansas City, Missouri, a member of the Parker Farms meat CSA in Richmond, Missouri. "Whereas, with the meat I buy from the grocery store, I don't know where it came from or who raised it."

Others say they appreciate that animals from the usually small family farms don't spend their lives in processing plants, conditions that advocates call inhumane.

Because CSA members deal with the farmers directly, they are able to visit the farms and see exactly how their food is produced. The transparency, they say, creates an incentive for farmers to raise their animals as naturally as possible.
...

"Is it as cheap as the lowest-price chicken in the grocery store? Absolutely not," Tim Young said. "But with our prices and the prices of any sustainable farmer, you've got everything baked in: the cost to the environment, the cost to the health care system, the cost of producing that animal [in a humane way]."

"I don't think it is significant, but if it does end up costing a bit more, it is still important to us to make this a priority," he said. "There are other expenses I am willing to give up rather than give up a safe, trusted food source."
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Breakfast: Bagel with "better than cream cheese" (a non-dairy cream cheese subsitute)
Lunch: Veggie sub with avocado, lettuce, tomato, sprouts, shredded carrots, vinegar & oil
Diner: Burrito with beans, rice, zucchini, squash, peppers & salsa