The New York Times: Forging a Hot Link to the Farmer Who Grows the Food
Forging a Hot Link to the Farmer Who Grows the Food
Saturday, March 28, 2009
By: Brad Stone and Matt Richtel
America, meet your farmer.
The maker of Stone-Buhr flour, a popular brand in the western UnitedStates, is encouraging its customers to reconnect with their lostagrarian past, from the comfort of their computer screens. Its Find theFarmer Web site and special labels on the packages let buyers learnabout and even contact the farmers who produced the wheat that wentinto their bag of flour.
Forging a Hot Link to the Farmer Who Grows the FoodSaturday, March 28, 2009
By: Brad Stone and Matt Richtel
America, meet your farmer.
Themaker of Stone-Buhr flour, a popular brand in the western UnitedStates, is encouraging its customers to reconnect with their lostagrarian past, from the comfort of their computer screens. Its Find theFarmer Web site and special labels on the packages let buyers learnabout and even contact the farmers who produced the wheat that wentinto their bag of flour.
Theunderlying idea, broadly called traceability, is in fashion in manyfood circles these days. Makers of bananas, chocolates and other foodsare also using the Internet to create relationships between consumersand farmers, mimicking the once-close ties that were broken long ago byindustrialized food manufacturing.
Traceabilitycan be good for more than just soothing the culinary consciences offoodies. Congress is also studying the possibility of some kind oftraceability measure as a way to minimize the impact of food scareslike the recent peanut salmonella crisis.
Thetheory: if food producers know they're being watched, they'll be morecareful. The Stone-Buhr flour company, a 100-year-old brand based inSan Francisco, is giving the buy-local food movement its latest upgrade.
Beginningthis month, customers who buy its all-purpose whole wheat flour in someWal-Mart, Safeway and other grocery chains can go to findthefarmer.com,enter the lot code printed on the side of the bag, and visit with thecompany's farmers and even ask them questions.
"Theperson who puts that scone in their mouth can now say, ‘Oh my God,there's a real person behind this,' " said Read Smith, 61, who runsCherry Creek Ranch, a 10,000-acre farm and cattle ranch in EasternWashington. "They are going to bite into that bread or pastry and knowwhose hands were on the product."
TheFindtheFarmer site is the brainchild of Josh Dorf, 39, a disaffecteddot.com entrepreneur who got into the food business six years ago bybuying the Stone-Buhr brand from Unilever, the multinational consumerbrands company.
Mr.Dorf gathers wheat from 32 farmers in the Pacific Northwest whosemethods have been certified by an environmental organization. Thatwheat is kept segregated from uncertified farmers' wheat while it ismilled at a Spokane, Wash., factory, even though a single flour sackcould contain wheat from as many as four farmers.
"Isit gimmicky? Sure, but it has value. Consumers have an interest indealing directly with and supporting the American farmer," said Mr.Dorf, who said he was inspired to create the site by "The Omnivore'sDilemma" a book about the damaging effects of a hyperindustrializedfood system.
Theauthor of that best seller, Michael Pollan, a professor at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, said FindtheFarmer was one part ofa bigger effort to reintroduce trust into the food system.
Ifthe peanut processing company that was the source of the recentsalmonella outbreak had live webcams in the production facility, "wouldit have allowed things to get so filthy?" Mr. Pollan asked. "The moretransparent a food chain is, the more accountable it is."
Somein Congress agree and have proposed a traceability measure as part ofthe proposed F.D.A. Globalization Act of 2009, which would give theFood and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture theauthority to require food makers to trace individual products back tothe farms that produced them if necessary.
RepresentativeDiana DeGette, a vocal advocate for the provision, said food makersinitially resisted the concept but also wanted to avoid more expensivenational recalls, which can occur when the specific source of anoutbreak is not known.
"Whatmany food producers are now realizing is the cost of upgrading to atraceability system is far less than the financial losses than theyhave to take if there is some kind of a recall," said Ms. DeGette, aColorado Democrat.
Mr. Dorfsays the separate manufacturing process adds only a "marginal cost" toeach bag, which is priced around $3, similar to other brands of flour.
Severalfood companies in the United States and Europe are also experimentingwith using the Internet to connect customers with the growers. Buyersof Dole organic bananas in the United States can now enter a bar codenumber on the banana's sticker on the Doleorganic.com Web site and seephotos and details about farms in Central and South America. Thecompany said it plans to expand the effort this year in Europe with avariety of other fruits.
AskinosieChocolate, a specialty chocolate maker in Springfield, Mo., alsoencourages its customers to enter codes on its Web site and virtuallyvisit its cocoa bean farms in Mexico, Ecuador and the Philippines — andeven read diary entries from farmers.
Britishsupermarkets jumped on the traceability wagon early. The Waitrosesupermarket chain lets buyers see information and videos on the farmersof potatoes, sugarloaf pineapples, papaya and coconut. Customers atTesco, one of Europe's largest retailers, can trace the source ofproducts like watercress.
The wheat farmers, for their part, appear to be enjoying meeting people at the other end of the food chain.
"Wenever knew where our wheat went to. The story always ended at the grainbin and the big commodity operations," said Fred Fleming, 59, whooperates Lazy YJ Farms in Reardan, Wash., which is part ofFindtheFarmer.
"Now we can actually have a conversation with our city customers. We can get back to the old days," he said.