Sustainable food supply will be good for planet

By: Michael Hastings | JOURNAL FOOD EDITOR
Published: April 22, 2009

After attending a conference of the International Association of Culinary Professionals in Denver earlier this month, I have been thinking a lot about food and the environment.

The theme was "Pioneering a Sustainable World." So today, Earth Day, it is appropriate to share a few of their ideas.

Fred Kirschenmann, the president of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Westchester County, N.Y., said that sustainability means producing food that is healthy, fresh and clean -- and as good for the farmer as it is for the planet.

Stone Barns is a nonprofit center that educates children through hands-on farming. But it is also a working, sustainable farm that supplies the adjacent Blue Hill restaurant.

More than just a thing

Stone Barns works to find better methods for self-sufficient, natural farming -- so that four-season farms can produce and recycle all they need without outside input for such things as soil and fertilizer.

"Sustainability is about maintaining something, in keeping something going," Kirschenmann said.

He said that we need to stop thinking of a food as a thing. Instead, we need to consider food as a relationship with our bodies and its health, with the planet, with our fellow men (that is, farmers and other producers).

Learn more at www.stonebarnscenter.org.

Michel Nischan is the chef and owner of the Dressing Room: A Homegrown Restaurant in Westport, Conn. He is also the president and chief executive of Wholesome Wave Foundation. Wholesome Wave works to promote local food, through management of two farmers markets and the creation of greater access to local foods for low-income families.

Reaching children

The Dressing Room is a nonprofit restaurant started with the late Paul Newman. Wholesome Wave has received donations to provide double-value food stamps to families who shop at farmers markets. It also has run programs to teach sustainability concepts to children.

"If you can reach children," Nischan said, "you can help solve the problem going into the future."

Learn more at www.dressingroomhomegrown.com and www.wholesomewave.org

Kim Jordan, a co-founder and the chief executive of New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, Colo., has instituted green design in its brewery and promotes bike riding and other environmentally friendly activities. The company spent $12 million on wastewater-treatment equipment. Since learning that 60 percent of its beer's carbon footprint comes from refrigeration at retail stores, the company is working to develop a natural beer that doesn't require refrigeration.

Jordan said that the goal of companies should be a "triple bottom line: people, profits, planet."

Learn more at www.newbelgium.com.

Andoni Lius Aduriz, the chef of Mugaritz Restaurant in San Sebastian, Spain, is known as much for his genius in the kitchen as his devotion to local, seasonal foods. "Shipping food 5,000 miles negates the term sustainable," he said. "Asparagus (sent to the United States) from Europe is not really organic, not ethically organic, after it travels 5,000 miles."

Learn more at www.mugaritz.com.

I am encouraged that so many companies, large and small, are looking at renewable energy, water conservation, organic agriculture and other ecofriendly practices. But in almost all cases, the ecofriendly food purchases cost more.

Public policy is a crucial component in the sustainability movement. Just as subsidies for corn and other farmers helped produce the food system in this country over the last 50 years, government policies will be needed to push everyone toward sustainable practices.

Here are my food wishes:

□ I wish for the time when a locally grown, organic, succulent and vine-ripened tomato costs the same as a conventionally grown, green-picked, virtually tasteless supermarket tomato.

□ I wish for a time when rich and poor have access to farm-fresh food as readily as junk food.

□ I wish for a time when everyone knows and cares where their food comes from, where they vote with their wallets for food that's safe, healthy and delicious; that provides a decent living to the farmer; and that no longer ravages the planet.

■ Michael Hastings, the Journal's Food editor, can be contacted by phone at 727-7394, e-mail at mhastings@wsjournal.com, or mail at c/o Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. His most recent columns can be read on our Web site at www.journalnow.com.