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How You Can Help Support Local Farmers:

 
by Holly Van Houten

Buy Locally and Seasonally
Spring through early winter many local farms sell their produce at certified farmers’ markets. We partnered with the Coastside Certified Farmers’ Market at Cetrella in Half Moon Bay to highlight the local farmers who participate in that market. “This is a critical avenue for our local farmers for getting their prod-uct to consumers,” said Erin Tormey, founder of this market. Choosing to consume only local produce that is in season also reduces the transportation costs associated with shipping produce in from the southern hemisphere, for example.

Support businesses that support local farming
In planning for the Farm Tour, we partnered with the Coastside Certified Farmers’ Market at Cetrella to identify local restaurants in the Half Moon Bay area that use local produce. What we discovered is that virtually every family-run restaurant on the coast has direct relationships with local farms, in part because so much produce is grown there, but also because the coastside is somewhat isolated from distributors and the transportation costs to import produce make deliveries rather expensive. We identified local restaurants that regularly include the farm names on their menus and highlighted where the produce is grown (see below). On the Bayside, this kind of relationship is much less established. The San Mateo Farm Bureau has partnered with the County Convention and Visitors Bureau to promote a campaign called As Fresh as it Gets to promote restaurants that use local produce. You can pick up a copy of the San Mateo County Farm Bureau’s Harvest Guide at http://sanmateo.cfbf.com and share it with your favorite restaurant.

Encourage grocery stores to feature local produce
Committee for Green Foothills and the Coastside Farmers’ Market at Cetrella teamed up to pilot the Where’s the (local) Beets? postcard campaign. The concept of this campaign is to mail a postcard to the local grocery store you frequent and encourage the produce manager to stock locally grown produce. When Bayside grocery stores and restaurants recognize there is a solid market clamoring for locally grown produce, they will be more inclined to develop relationships with local farmers. To help you get started, we included a postcard in this newsletter. If you want more postcards, please send us an email at beets@greenfoothills.org and we’ll send more out to you.

Support Reforms in Food Labeling!
Some Committee for Green Foothills staff and board members recently met with Congressman Tom Lantos. Among other responsibilities in Washington, D.C., Tom is the ranking minority member on the House International Relations Committee and could become the chair of that committee depending on the November elections. We talked with him about the importance of labeling produce grown outside of this country, in particular to include in the labels whether or not pesticides or other chemi-cals were used on the produce. Tom expressed interest in introducing such legislation come January. If you also want to know where and how your produce was grown, let him know!

Restaurants on the coast featuring
locally grown produce on their menus:

• Cetrella
• Rogue Chefs
• Café Gibraltar
• Mezza Luna
• Pasta Moon
• Half Moon Bay Brewing Company
• Navio

Farms on the coast supplying locally
grown produce to these restaurants:

• Daylight Farms — greens, herbs and vegetables
• Harley Farms — goat’s milk cheeses
• Giusti Farms — artichokes, vegetables
• Iacopi Farms — peas, favas, potatoes
• T&E Pastorino — heirloom tomatoes
• G Berta — vegetables
• Amen Acre — greens, heirloom tomatoes
• Swanton/Coastways — artichokes, greens, berries
• Cabrillo Farms — greens, peas, artichokes

Published October 2006 in Green Footnotes.

Page last updated October 30, 2006.