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Making
trust one of your food values
Oct. 19, 2006
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Ask
a local farmer and he or she will tell you they do more than
grow food. They cultivate trust.
Trust is a feature sometimes discovered missing in a food-supply
system characterized by mass production and gap-toothed regulatory
schemes.
Example: Officials still haven’t determined how spinach
from California’s Salinas Valley was contaminated by
E. coli bacteria that killed three people and sickened almost
200 others. Despite failing to find the source of the contamination,
regulators have allowed Salinas Valley spinach back onto grocery
store shelves.
Let’s call it what it is: a faith-based food safety
system.
It hasn’t always been this way. And I’m convinced
that much of the driving force behind the growing popularity
of organic and locally produced food is the desire for greater
trust in what we eat.
“'Know your farmer, know your food’ is my motto,”
says Fred Miller, owner of Hilltop Farms in the Wake County
town of Willow Springs. “It’s a short path back
to the source.”
Miller sells his certified organic produce wholesale and at
a farm stand. He also runs a CSA – or community supported
agriculture – arrangement in which more than 90 local
families subscribe to a share of his harvest each season.
“One of the reasons people join a CSA,” said Miller,
“is to have a close relationship with a farmer. You
put a face on the food.”
Large-production industrial farming has real virtues. Its
products are often less expensive and seasons of availability
are longer. That allows greater choice at your grocery store
produce section and greater access to that food by more people.
But many people are looking for something that can be hard
to find at the supermarket.
Donnie Cline, who runs New Beginning Farm in Lincoln County,
knows what appeals to his customers.
“Once they get to know you, they trust you,” Cline
told me. “They understand how you grow. If they want
to come out to the farm, they can come.”
Cline has been selling produce in Charlotte for nine years.
He was the first vendor at the Charlotte Regional Farmers
Market to be certified organic, but he let his certification
lapse in 2002 after tiring of the costs and administrative
hassles.
But he still produces his food using the same methods as when
he was certified organic. His customers understand. “There’s
a bond there. There’s trust,” he said.
Trudy Matheny, proprietor of Genesis Farms near Chapel Hill,
agrees.
“What they’re interested in is fresh, local, and
safe or healthy,” she said. “It’s not being
sprayed, and the lettuce isn’t being combined with lettuce
from other places,” she said.
Matheny calls her operation a “micro farm.” Her
CSA farm supplies fresh food to 15 subscriber families. She
also runs a farm school field trip destination for children
grades K-5.
“Kids bring their lunches from home, and I see a lot
of processed foods,” Matheny told me. Matheny likes
to show kids where their food comes from.
“They see the chickens and the eggs and a light bulb
goes off,” she said. “They didn’t even know
that.”
She uses beneficial insects in lieu of pesticides and herbicides.
“I won’t sell them anything I wouldn’t eat
myself,” she told me.
“What are the values we find important in our food supply?”
she asked.
It’s a question more of us should think about.
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