Join the Real Food Revival

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An increasing number of restaurants also are forming connections with local growers in efforts to get fresher, higher quality ingredients on their menus. The Chefs Collaborative, an organization that connects restaurants with local farmers, has partners in 36 states. And Local Harvest, a Web site originally designed to help people find farmers and farmer’s markets, now helps users locate restaurants that serve organic food and food from local farms (www.localharvest.org).

In Philadelphia, Judy Wicks’ White Dog Café is one restaurant leading the Real Food Revival. Her restaurant features local and organic foods and such fun food events as an annual “Dance of the Ripe Tomatoes” festival. Besides promoting local and organic food in her restaurant, Wicks also is helping to build local food networks through the Philadelphia Fair Food Project, an organization she founded that connects other restaurants to farmers and helps farmers find urban markets. To make this possible for more restaurants in Philadelphia, Fair Food recently awarded grants to area farmers who wanted to move their confinement hog operations outdoors or expand and improve their existing outdoor herds, which Wicks says is an exciting next step in encouraging the sustainable production of local meat. She donates 20 percent of her restaurant’s profits to these and other efforts to build a more just and sustainable economy.

Often, it’s necessary to take a stand on an issue to educate customers, Wicks says, which is why she would rather remove pork from her menu than buy it from a factory farm. Wicks says most meat eaters aren’t aware that so many hogs are raised in overcrowded pens without room to move or access to sunlight and fresh air, or that they are given large doses of antibiotics to stay healthy in these conditions. “We wanted to focus on humanely raised meat because we felt that people in this country didn’t know how the animals were raised,” she says.

Wicks also says there’s a lot of work still to be done to rebuild local food networks that have mostly been replaced by national and international distribution systems, but she is optimistic about the possibilities. “I’ve seen a big difference in our region,” she says. “More and more restaurants are buying from farmers, and I think there’s a rising consciousness on the part of consumers.”

Local, Organic and Beyond

Although organic food is a definite part of the Real Food Revival, many farmers ponder the value of organic certification, and whether it’s now necessary to go “beyond organic.” For those such as Eliot Coleman, who is not officially certified, the government’s regulations for “certified organic” farms don’t describe their own ideals of what a farm should be. “Organic as I grew up with it was trying to hit this peak of exceptionally nutritious food for everyone,” Coleman says.

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