ShareThisBy JIM DOWNING
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
On a 450-acre farm along Interstate 80 southwest of Davis, Calif., Rich Collins is planning a $5 million showcase for Yolo-area agriculture.
In Bridgeway Farms _ "a new-age Nut Tree," he says, referring to the well-known former highway attraction _ Collins envisions fruit and nut orchards, a cheese-making operation drawing from local goats and cows, and cold storage and warehousing for local small farmers. Visitors could see how food is produced and, he hopes, develop a taste for the region's specialties.
For Collins, the new project, set to open in early 2008, marks a turn. Over the past 25 years, he's built his Rio Vista-based company, California Vegetable Specialties, into a worldwide business by specializing in a single gourmet crop _ Belgian endive. He now ships 4.5 million pounds a year of the pale, bitter vegetable to places as far away as Buenos Aires and Tokyo.
Collins isn't giving up on that global operation. But he says that he has found the next generation of agricultural opportunity: small-scale, locally grown foods.
"More and more people are wanting to know about where their food comes from," he said. "Something's resonating with people."
His project plugs into a gathering movement in the region _ and nationwide _ to tie food to where it's grown, and to resurrect local food production and distribution systems. Advocates of local food contend the food is fresher, and growing it is easier on the environment. They also say that it helps keep small farmers in business. But whether consumers are willing to pay a premium for the food is open for debate.
The movement has been spurred on this year by several factors:
_ The growing realization that "organic" food in a grocery store probably wasn't grown on a small, local farm.
_ By the publication of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," a best-selling book by journalist Michael Pollan of the University of California, Berkeley, that examines industrial agriculture and its influence on American eating habits.
_ By the nationwide outbreak of E. coli in spinach, which showed how contamination at a single vegetable processor can send deadly bacteria to kitchens in every corner of the country.
The project also dovetails with efforts in several regions and counties to sell locally grown foods as brands that consumers will look for _ and pay for. From Napa Valley wine and Apple Hill apples to Capay Valley heirloom tomatoes and Placer County mandarins, the campaigns play up the distinct qualities of a region's food and help small growers earn bigger margins for their crop.
The nationwide boom in farmers markets _ they've more than doubled in number in the last 12 years _ is one sign of the effectiveness of those efforts. More strikingly, supermarkets and food service providers have started to pay attention to the demand for local food.
Each Whole Foods Market, for example, now buys direct from at least four local growers. Some Kaiser Permanente hospitals fill meal trays with produce from small farms. And food service giant Sodexho USA is experimenting with local menus for college cafeterias.
Still, local food has a long row to hoe. National surveys show that while mainstream consumers favor local produce over generic, they're not willing to pay a substantial premium for it. Competition and economies of scale have driven dramatic consolidation and price-cutting in agriculture. And major food retailers have purchasing policies that favor large growers and distributors over small.
In Yolo County, community leaders are looking for ways around those obstacles. The county plans to spend $360,000 over three years to study how to build a distinct market identity and develop local food processing and distribution. The U.S. Department of Agriculture last month added $155,000 through a grant to the Davis-based Community Alliance with Family Farmers to develop a nonprofit distribution system for small farmers.
That's where Collins' project comes in.
The cold-storage and distribution center he plans would provide space for small farmers to consolidate their harvest for shipment to large buyers like hospitals, and university or office cafeterias, a critical missing marketing link for many small growers.
At large distribution centers, food from growers spread over a wide geographic area is consolidated. That practice often makes it impossible to trace a fruit or vegetable back to the region where it was grown.
By contrast, Collins, working with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, is planning a distribution center that would draw only from small farmers within a 50-mile radius.
"The trick is not to lose the link, so that people know the food came from these local farmers," said Gail Feenstra, a food systems analyst at the University of California, Davis. "If it gets put into the general pipeline, you lose that information."
Creating a self-sustaining local food economy, though, takes more than just setting up a few new distribution nodes. It also relies heavily on marketing. That means figuring out what's unique about the region's produce, whether the soil gives the tomatoes a certain aroma, or the climate makes the apples extra crisp. Advertising and agriculture experts say it's crucial that a "story" be built around the food, constructed both on the history of farming in the area, and the people who work the land today.
"The public is somewhat disconnected with agriculture now," said Rick Landon, Yolo County's agricultural commissioner. "We think that we can do a lot by making growers real to people, so that they don't think of them just as corporate agriculture."
Landon said that, in Yolo County's diverse agriculture community, there's not yet a consensus on how to sell the region. To help develop one, the county has hired two local-food veterans: Ann Evans, a former mayor of Davis who co-founded the city's farmers market 30 years ago, and Winters farmer Georgeanne Brennan, author of 33 books on food, farming and cooking.
Their starting point: the tomato, the county's top crop, valued at $68 million last year.
The two hope to collaborate with experts in the chemistry of flavor and aroma at UC Davis to determine whether the area's soil and climate combine to produce distinctive tomatoes.
In fresh produce, such micro-geographic distinctions of quality and price are rare. But in other sectors of the food business _ most notably wine _ they're commonplace. Bulk cabernet sauvignon grapes grown in the Napa Valley sold for an average of $3,797 a ton last year; those from the Lodi region went for just $365.
As a rule, food marketing experts say, consumers are ready to believe that local food is special.
"It's romancing your food," said Nancy Childs, a professor of food marketing at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
