For Food and Farm Day at the Capitol, the emphasis was on West Virginia farmers getting legislative help to better market their produce and products.
For Food and Farm Day at the Capitol, the emphasis was on West Virginia farmers getting legislative help to better market their produce and products.
Two annual regular session activities coincided in the Capitol rotunda Tuesday. Along with the farmers, the popular Preston County High School culinary class was flipping their spatulas. Their annual pancake breakfast saw Delegates, Senators and anyone else filling the plates and going for more syrup. The student chefs served until they ran out, which they always do quickly.
According to the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition, agriculture is actually growing in the mountain state. They say farmers are encountering more opportunities every day to help them stay in business. The coalition also helps food entrepreneurs reach new markets.
Coalition Executive Director Spencer Moss said she would like to see a legislative line item put into the budget. They are asking for money to permanently sustain and help draw down a million dollars of USDA money, to support the SNAP Stretch program.
“What we’re able to do is double and triple SNAP EBT dollars at farmer’s markets, mobile markets,and local grocery stores,” Moss said. “If you come in with your SNAP EBT cards and want to spend $10, you’re also going to get 10 SNAP Stretch dollars that can be spent on fruits and vegetables. Since the program’s inception in 2018, we’ve put $3 million into the local food economy for an economic impact of just shy of $5 million.”
Moss said the biggest challenge for West Virginia farmers is battling the geography and the topography of West Virginia to access markets and sell their goods.
On a recent Monday, students at James Monroe High School in Monroe County eat french bread pizza, corn, beans and mixed fruit. They also have three, locally sourced salad options to choose from: a spinach salad with bright red cherry tomatoes, a pre-made salad or a make-you-own salad bar.
“We hear that these foods look so much better, put together,” said Kimberly Gusler, the high school’s head cook. She said that since the school began using local salad greens and vegetables and fruits when available, students appear to be eating more of them.
“They love the way the salads look.”
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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WVPB
Spinach salad made with locally grown greens on the lunch line at James Monroe High School.
James Monroe is one of a handful of schools in West Virginia participating in the Farm to School program that helps get local food into schools and encourages schools to participate in agricultural activities.
A new bill passed by the West Virginia Legislature this year, will expand the use of local foods to all of the state’s schools and state-led institutions.HB 2396, also called the West Virginia Fresh Food Act, requires beginning July 1, 2019, all state-funded institutions to purchase a minimum of 5 percent of fresh produce, meat and poultry products from West Virginia producers.
The bill’s text states the idea behind the legislation is to support West Virginia farmers and allow them to expand, as well as boost access to healthy, fresh food.
By creating a built-in demand by state-led institutions and schools, which alone purchase $100 million worth of food from out-of-state sources according to the West Virginia Farm Bureau, the hope is the bill will stimulate the state’s agricultural economy, said Spencer Moss, executive director of the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition, which supported the bill. (In the interest of transparency, we should note that the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition is a financial supporter of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.)
“This bill’s a really great way to invest in West Virginia communities, but also West Virginia agriculture and farmers,” she said.
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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Tomatoes growing at Sprouting Farms in Talcott, West Virginia.
West Virginia has a rich farming culture and one of the highest concentrations of family-owned farms in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. However, the majority of farms aren’t very big. The average farm size in West Virginia is just 157 acres, and small farm sizes and low production present challenges to both farmers seeking to make a living as well as businesses, schools and agencies that want to use locally grown food.
“In West Virginia, we often talk about there being a chicken-and-an-egg issue with with regards to agriculture,” Moss said. “So we know, especially in fruits and vegetables and produce production, that we have a very low supply. And that’s geography related, it’s labor related, but it’s also market demand related. So, farmers need a market if they’re going to scale up their operation.”
By creating a 5 percent purchasing demand from schools and other state-led institutions, the state is effectively creating that demand, Moss said.
Economists that study local food and agriculture have found that investment in local food systems creates an outsized impact to the local economy. It’s called the “multiplier effect,” and the idea is that for every $1 spent with a local farmer, that investment will come back into the community worth $1.40 to $1.80, because when local farmers have more money to spend they will do so in their communities whether it be through investment in their operations or at the local store.
“Whereas, if I’m investing $1 in a company that’s not based in West Virginia, doesn’t use West Virginia product, that money is just gone,” Moss said. “It just leaves our communities.”
Logistics Challenge
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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WVPB
A refrigerated truck used to help transport locally grown produce.
But while the West Virginia Fresh Food Act creates a new market for locally-grown food, getting that food to state institutions — schools, colleges and prisons, etc. — poses a challenge.
“The prices are higher, logistics are tougher, it’s not what they’re used to,” said Fritz Boettner, the director of food systems for Turnrow Appalachian Food Collective. This food hub aggregates product from about 75 farmers across southern West Virginia and beyond, and helps get it into the hands of people, businesses and schools.
Boettner said, in his experience, everyone wants to use more locally grown food, however, sourcing can be a challenge. Most restaurants and institutions are used to using one distributor, like U.S. Foods, which provides a list of everything from apples to zucchini.
“And all we have are seasonal products,” he said.
Turnrow, and other food hubs across the state, coordinate with many farmers to fill orders. He said selling to state-institutions could be very beneficial, but the success of the effort will largely be dictated by how the West Virginia Department of Agriculture writes the rules for how the bill is carried out and enforced.
It also hinges on the flexibility of state-led institutions to pay more for locally-grown food, and that is not a given.
“Everyone has to work in budgets that are given to them,” Boettner adds.
Next Steps
West Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt acknowledges local food may cost more upfront, but in an interview he said local produce is fresher, more appealing and should last longer.
Credit Martin Valent / West Virginia Legislative Photography
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West Virginia Legislative Photography
West Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt.
“There should be less waste, they should be able to have a little bit more carryover,” he said. “So in the end, it may even save money to the institutions.”
He also expects it to have a postive effect on the health of West Virginians.
This month, ahead of the July 1 effective date, the Agriculture Department is expected to reach out to stakeholders affected by the bill including farmers, groups like the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition and state-led institutions to talk about what each party needs to make the bill’s mandate a reality.
Leonhardt said he hopes the agency can create a master list of sorts that could help state-led institutions more easily begin purchasing local food. The Department of Agriculture is also in charge of creating enforcement policies, all without any new funding, Leonhardt said.
“This is another unfunded mandate, that we’re going to gladly pick up the mantle and do it, but it’s going to strain our resources a little bit,” he said, adding regardless, he is excited by the possibilities. “I believe once we get all the rules in place, I think that the economic development and the return to the state through that economic development will help more than offset the cost.”
Credit Brittany Patterson / WVPB
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WVPB
The salad bar at James Monroe High School.
Back at James Monroe High School, lunch is winding down. The self-serve salad bar looks like a tornado blew through it.
That makes head cook Kimberly Gusler smile. She said she’d love to see more schools offer locally sourced foods.
“I think it would be a great thing for them, I really do,” she said. “For kids to get more nutrition through their meals because the fresh food is the best food.”
Members of the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition hosted their second annual food policy forum in Summersville Tuesday. The grassroots group is working to expand access to locally grown foods in the state while also improving the business climate for small farmers. While the discussions were preliminary, the group is beginning to identify its Legislative agenda for the 2016 session.
“We never know from day one to the sixtieth day what it’s going to be,” Senator Ron Miller warned the group as they began identifying their issues. He urged them to be flexible as they work with lawmakers through the legislative process.
A Democrat from GreenbrierCounty, the senator served for years as the chair of the Senate’s Agriculture Committee, but now that the chamber is under Republican control, Miller no holds the position. Still, he said agricultural policies aren’t as politically divisive as many of the other issues in the statehouse.
“Where it becomes political is if we emphasize agricultural issues,” he said. “A lot of time people in leadership don’t believe it’s important in West Virginia and it’s extremely important.”
Important, Miller said, because it can provide the economic diversification some regions of the state are desperate for.
“As a lot of our more historic industries have started declining, we can see food and farm businesses start as a small niche of economic development, West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition Program Director Megan Smith said.
So, Smith and the coalition are working on a grassroots level to aid those niche industries and zero in on policy changes that will help them thrive in West Virginia communities. The coalition’s gathering in Summerville was the first step in their annual process of choosing policy initiatives to back and turning them into actual pieces of legislation they can present at the statehouse.
Tuesday’s day long session included a workshop led by Ona Balkus with the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. The clinic works with state-level groups across the country to increase access to healthy foods, prevent diet-related diseases and create new market opportunities for small farmers. They both research and write policy while promoting effective ways to share those messages with lawmakers, like community organizing.
“Because especially I think on the state and local level, if you have an organized coalition pushing for something, you can get a lot done,” Balkus said after the workshop. “Legislators are listening. They’re not deaf to those kinds of efforts.”
The Food and Farm Coalition has seen recent success, getting lawmakers’ approval during the 2015 session for a bill that set up a better business structure for agricultural and recycling co-ops.
Still, Miller said the politics—and the money—will play a part in the agricultural issues the coalition tries to push during the 2016 session. For the sake of the coalfields, he said, he hopes agriculture doesn’t get overshadowed.
“We sometimes look for the power or the money in the state. Right now it’s gas, it was coal. Those still are two powerful areas,” Miller said, but agriculture is part of our state seal. It’s part of our history, but it’s also a part of our future and that’s what you have to do, you have to continue to emphasize the part that it can play in revitalizing southern West Virginia.”
The coalition plans to identify its top legislative priorities by the end of the summer, turn them into legislation and start shopping those bills to lawmakers for their support by interim meetings in September.
So far, possible initiatives include funding for mobile markets to increase access to fresh foods and legislation that would allow the sale of cottage foods, or foods like jams and baked goods produced in people’s homes.
The phrase “food-desert” might sound like a landscape of sagebrush and armadillos, but it’s really a place where SlimJims, chicken nuggets and Slurpies count as dinner. A food desert can happen anywhere- we’ve all seen them. People who live in a food desert may be surrounded by food—fast food or convenient store hotdogs, instead of fresh, healthy food.
Even in rural West Virginia, where small farms still dot the roadside, fresh food isn’t available to all people. In some places it can take over an hour just to reach the next grocery store. Reawakening some of the old, small farm traditions– and bringing a new local food movement to West Virginia– is the work of five non-profits that were highlighted by the James Beard Foundation. Groups were chosen based on their work to bring healthy, local food to more people.
“We focus on helping people connect with each other so they can educate each other and be stronger together,” said Spellman.
The coalition trains farmers and advocates for statewide policies that help nurture small farmers.
Spellman says that because West Virginia has the highest number of small farms per capita in the country, there is a unique opportunity here to help transform the local food economy.
Credit Roxy TOdd
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Children with a YMCA camp helping find harlequin beetles in the West Side Community Garden Project in Charleston
“Yeah, and we’re uniquely positioned to show what a small farm state can do because we don’t really have that many large farms. We’re mostly small farms. And people relying on each other and working together.”
