Congresspeople To Eat School Lunch

USDA to offer members of Congress a taste of school lunches

By Jane Black
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 11, 2009; A07

Chicken fajita strips, sliced ham and canned green beans: That's what's for lunch one day next week for some lawmakers and congressional staffers, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The menu offers the same products, known as commodity foods, that the agency provides every day to public schools across the nation.

The goal of next week's tasting is to show lawmakers the improvements the department has made in the nutritional quality -- and taste -- of the $1.2 billion in school commodity foods and to win support to fund further improvements. With one-third of American children overweight or obese, the USDA has been working to cut salt and fat and provide more fruits and vegetables.

"These guys are moving in the right direction," said Tony Geraci, food service director for Baltimore City public schools and a pioneer for healthful foods in schools. "Is it fixed? Hell, no. But at least now we're having conversations about this. Before, it was straight-up stonewalling."

The tasting is also an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the commodity foods program, which provides 15 to 20 percent of the food served in U.S. school cafeterias. Officially called USDA Foods, the program has long been perceived as a conflict of interest in the department's mission: to support American farmers and ranchers while overseeing nutrition programs for low-income families and schoolchildren.

Is the program a way to distribute meats, cheeses and other commodities that couldn't find a buyer on the open market? Or is the department really making choices based on public health?

Improving the quality of food provided free to schools is important at a time when school budgets are being squeezed. President Obama has proposed an additional $1 billion for child nutrition programs, including school lunch, in his 2010 budget.

But in the face of a projected federal deficit of $1.3 trillion , even the strongest supporters of school-lunch reform say that Congress is unlikely to approve a substantial funding increase when it takes up the issue next year.

To prepare for the Capitol Hill debut next week, the USDA offered samples to Secretary Tom Vilsack, who tried more than a dozen products, including canned green beans, apple slices and hamburger patties.

On paper, anyway, the green beans looked good. They are formulated to meet USDA specifications and have 64 percent less sodium than commercially available canned beans. For the 2010 school year, the agency has mandated that canned vegetables have no more than 140 milligrams of sodium per serving, 71 percent fewer than in the Food and Drug Administration's "healthy" standard.

The hamburger patties, developed for a pilot program last year to help fight childhood obesity, were 95 percent lean. The most similar commercial beef patty available is 92 percent lean.

The USDA offers more than 180 fresh and processed foods to schools, up from 54 in 1981. The products are provided to schools free, based on the number of students eligible for government assistance. Schools buy the rest of their ingredients from commercial suppliers.

School food directors say the quality of available commodities is excellent -- if schools choose wisely. The USDA offers high-quality dried fruits, nuts, brown rice, legumes and unprocessed meat, among other things.

Last month, the USDA announced that as part of the bonus commodity program, which is part of the commodity foods program and allows the agency to buy surplus food to help support prices for farmers, it would make available $33 million worth of apples, tart cherries and dried plums to schools and other programs. Some of the cherries will be processed into cherry-apple juice, with no artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners, for schools.

At least one challenge remains: persuading schools to embrace the more healthful options. Many schools lack kitchens and are at most capable of reheating prepared items. And many school food service directors do not have nutrition or culinary training.

They also know that they can sell more trays of greasy pizza and french fries to students than fruits and vegetables, a tactic that helps keep tight budgets in line. As food service director Geraci said: "If you have 20,000 lunch ladies that just want to open up a box of chicken nuggets, they're going to keep making them."

To encourage more healthful choices, the USDA is awaiting help from Congress when it takes up the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act next year. As part of the legislation, lawmakers are considering a measure that would allow the department to set strict standards for all food sold in schools, including vending machine fare. They are also considering how much new money to allocate to the $12 billion annual program.

Vilsack said he hopes Congress will make more money available.

"The nutritional value of these foods is going to be a little bit more expensive," said Vilsack, who said that he expects costs will rise as more students are granted access to free or reduced-price meals. "We've been making progress on the food safety side and on the nutrition side. But to take the next steps, it's going to require more resources."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121001956.html

Fowl Occurances - Chickens in the City

From Washington, DC, channel 5,

DC Family wants to Raise Chickens

• BY BOB BARNARD/myfoxdc
• September 8, 2009
  

CAPITOL HILL - Big cities across the country are re-writing laws regulating the ownership of chickens. Many people want to produce their own food again. But Washington, DC is not one of those cities. Caryn Ernst, her husband Josh Silverman and their young daughters Leah and Ada want to change that.

Their eight hens were recently confiscated by animal control officers and sent back to the northern Virginia farm where the family got a dozen fertilized eggs earlier this year.

The Silverman's built a hen house and chicken coop in their backyard on Capitol Hill. But the law requires any hen house be at least 250 feet from the nearest property line and 50 feet from the nearest dwelling - including the owner of the chickens. On Capitol Hill and in most Washington neighborhoods meeting those requirements would be next to impossible.

That's why the Silverman's say they're working with the office of DC Councilmember Tommy Wells to try to get the law changed.

New Ventures Truck Farms' Online Orders to Town

Ahhh... convenience...... The Haul That Helps the Small New Ventures Truck Farms' Online Orders to Town By Emma Brown Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 22, 2009 Twice a month, Laurie Smith and Mark Reinhardt load their refrigerated cargo van with stew beef and steaks, chickens and eggs, honey and salsa. All of it is produced by their Rappahannock and Culpeper County neighbors, and on this particular day all of it is headed to Northern Virginia, where customers who have placed online orders await the van's arrival at one of six scheduled drop-off points. "I don't have to go to the farmers market or the farm anymore," said Mary Malina, whose home on a leafy Annandale lane doubles as a drop-off location. "The food comes to me." Smith and Reinhardt's year-old business, the Local Flavor, is one in a wave of online enterprises cropping up across the country to connect eaters such as Malina, who want local, farm-fresh food without farmers markets' lines and limited hours, with farmers who would rather spend time working their fields than hawking their wares. "Most farmers don't know much and certainly don't care much about marketing," said Cliff Miller, owner of Mount Vernon Farm, whose pastured pork and grass-fed beef and lamb account for the bulk of the Local Flavor's sales. "If somebody can communicate with the customers in urban areas and ideally even come and pick up at the farm and take it to the urban areas, that's a big deal." Locally grown food accounts for less than 1 percent of total U.S. food sales, according to the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, which hosted its first conference on local food systems on June 26. But demand is growing. The market research firm Packaged Facts predicts local food sales will rise from $4 billion in 2002 to $7 billion in 2011. According to the USDA, there are 70 percent more farmers markets than there were a decade ago. About 12,500 farms offer community-supported agriculture (CSA) memberships, in which customers buy shares in the farm, assuming some of the farmer's risk and receiving weekly or monthly boxes of produce in return. Demand for local food is growing so fast, in fact, that it exceeds supply, said University of Maryland agricultural economist Jim Hanson. That, he said, is encouraging producers and eaters to seek new channels -- including virtual farmers markets such as the Local Flavor and On the Gourmet, a Vienna business that launched last year -- for getting food from farm to fork. The Local Flavor was born in April 2008 when Miller, who had been taking online orders for four years, handed over his customer list to Smith and Reinhardt, who have so far kept their day jobs as a freelance marketer and Web site developer. They recruited eight other farmers to sell their products, which vary according to the season, through a common Web site. For farmers, filling Web orders is less risky than traveling to a market where they never know what's going to sell, said Joel Salatin of Virginia's storied Polyface Farm, who earns half of his revenue delivering orders made online to the D.C. area. "This way it is nonspeculative," he said. "Everything is presold before we go." Smith and Reinhardt deliver to Warrenton and Fredericksburg in addition to making the Northern Virginia run, which includes stops in Reston, Sterling, Alexandria, Arlington, Annandale and -- as of June -- Fairfax City. More than 1,200 families are on their e-mail list. There is no restriction on how often or how much they buy, and about 100 place orders in any given month, Smith said. Orders average $100, she said, but range from $9 for two dozen eggs to $500 for weeks' worth of beef, chicken and lamb. Meat is by far the biggest draw, and Mount Vernon's thick-cut, uncured bacon -- more sweet than smoky -- is difficult to keep in stock. The Remington Pepper Co.'s salsa has also earned a following; the chipotle variety is made from home-smoked local peppers, the "gourmet" variety from a blend of herbs and spices, including ginger. "I just kind of fell in love," said Vicky Reiner, an Arlington court reporter who buys a half-dozen jars each month. Sarah Fox, who hosts the new Fairfax City drop-off spot, said she spends several hours a day procuring and preparing seasonal, local meals, sometimes wrestling with how to use unusual foods that her husband has a habit of ordering. ("Stew meat, in summer?" she asks.) Echoing arguments articulated by Michael Pollan in his best-selling book "The Omnivore's Dilemma," she said she goes to such lengths because the food is more healthful, is more environmentally friendly and tastes better than food from the grocery store. "Supporting local farmers is an idea that's important to me," said Fox, who grew up on a Virginia farm. There is no agreed-upon definition for "local," but Smith and Reinhardt aim to serve farmers and buyers who live within 100 miles of one another. The two either collect a commission from the participating farmers or buy the products outright and resell them at a markup. Customers pay a flat $4.95 delivery fee, plus a premium for food that's produced with high quality rather than low price in mind, Smith said. A grass-fed porterhouse steak, for example, costs $18 a pound, nearly twice as much as the grain-fed supermarket variety. "It's really worth it," said Cherry Gaffney of Old Town, picking up filet mignon on a quiet residential street in Alexandria to celebrate her husband's return home after a year-long tour of duty in Iraq. "What price," she asked, "do you put on good health?" Similar businesses are taking hold here in the Washington area and across the country, offering fewer choices, perhaps, than traditional food-comes-to-you services such as Peapod and Washington's Green Grocers but a stronger allegiance to local farmers. On the Gourmet, a mobile local- and fine-foods business housed in a 24-foot truck, was started last year by a trio who met while working together at the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts. Sara Guerre said she and Libby Rector Snipe shared a love of food and were considering starting a catering business when they were inspired by the scads of food trucks popping up across the country, from Austin's mobile creperie to a dessert truck in Manhattan. They bought a 1989 Utilimaster, and Chris Guerre, Sara's husband, joined them in outfitting it with hardwood floors, custom shelves, a refrigerator and a freezer. "We thought we could have everything that the farmers market has, and more, in one truck," said Rector Snipe. A main draw is meat, said Chris Guerre, including Loudoun County lamb and grass-fed bison and beef from Culpeper County's Buffalo Ridge Farm. Ice cream and milk come from a Pennsylvania creamery, and bloody mary mix hails from West Virginia. They sell a little bit of produce: salad greens, okra and peppers from the Guerres' 800-square-foot backyard garden in Vienna. Not all of On the Gourmet's products are local; customers can pick up foie gras and white fig jam from France along with other high-end imports. But the three have found that local food is what customers want, said Rector Snipe, and they have jettisoned foreign products when they found closer-to-home alternatives. Truffle oil from Italy, for example, has been replaced with a North Carolina variety. It has been a successful strategy so far: The trio opened for business in May 2008 at farmers markets in Great Falls and Alexandria, then started offering online ordering and biweekly home delivery to a dozen customers when the markets closed for winter. In August, they plan to make deliveries weekly, hoping to tap customers who are too busy for farmers markets, and to open a storefront in downtown Vienna. In Richmond last November, restaurateur Molly Harris launched Fall Line Farms, a for-profit virtual farmers market. She started with 25 customers, but by December, that had quintupled to 125 families. Now, more than 300 families order food from 40 local producers, who deliver weekly to drop-off spots around town. Michele Credle of Chesapeake, Va., enlisted about 200 customers for her nonprofit buyers' club, Essentially Organic, which took its first orders in May. Georgia entrepreneur Eric Wagoner has licensed Locallygrown.net, the software he wrote for a virtual farmers market in Athens, to about 100 other markets, most in the Southeast and Midwest. Eleven food-buying clubs have launched using open-source software developed by the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, which started in 2003 and now boasts between $70,000 and $90,000 in monthly sales. And in the past year, clubs have started in Cleveland; Des Moines; Lehigh, Pa.; central Massachusetts; and Niagara Falls, Ontario, each with a slightly different business model. The Local Flavor is still young and is not, as Smith put it, "a one-stop shop." So far this year, the selection of produce has been thin because of the unusually rainy spring. In June, the only vegetable for sale was an heirloom variety of cucumber from Whipple Farms in Rixeyville, Va. But July's warm days and clear skies have nudged the growing season along, said Smith, and on their next trip to Northern Virginia, the pair expect to offer locally grown peaches, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and potatoes. "This is a seedling," Reinhardt said of the business. "We're cultivating it."