What Small Farms Need to Compete With Corporate Food [View all]

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from YES! Magazine:



What Small Farms Need to Compete With Corporate Food
Most small farms have to follow the same rules as big corporate ones. In Maine, flexible food ordinances have increased the number of small farmers.

Kate Stringer posted Apr 27, 2016




When Heather Retberg started selling raw milk a few years ago, she ran up against an obstacle that she felt sure would ruin her family’s farm.

Retberg, of Penobscot, Maine, remembers the state quality assurance and regulations inspector walking up her driveway to deliver the news: Her farm of two goats and six cows didn’t have the proper facilities to bottle and sell raw milk. Nor could it continue to use the neighbor’s facility to slaughter its chickens.

The family had few options: Construct their own facilities, costing thousands of dollars they didn’t have; drive hours to an approved facility and risk exposing the food to pathogens; or stop farming.

“I had this feeling in my gut, ‘oh no we’re done,’” Retberg said. “This is how small farms disappear.”

But they didn’t disappear. In March 2011, the Retbergs attended a town meeting to discuss a proposed local law: the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance. It protected small farmers’ rights to produce their own food without licensure and inspection. The ordinance passed, prompting the Retbergs the very next day to affix a sign at the end of their driveway advertising raw milk, along with poultry and eggs.

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Achieving food sovereignty while ensuring food safety is a question that regulators, farmers, and lawmakers grapple with. Safety issues around raw milk produce a steady stream of headlines. According to data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, raw milk is roughly 150 times more likely than pasteurized to cause disease.

But small farmers say the size of their operations gives them greater control over safety. They also say they feel a financial pressure to keep their food safe: One mistake could put a small farmer out of business, while large-scale farms rebound more easily, as California-based Foster Farms did from its 2013 Salmonella outbreak that caused 634 illnesses in 29 states and Puerto Rico. ...............(more)

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/what-small-farms-need-to-compete-with-corporate-food-20160427