Where Does Your Food Come From?
Update from the Small Farm Program

We will achieve some semblance of a workable local food system when we do the same type of inquiry into our food choices as we do with our choices for health care, legal or other professional advice.

Who is your Farmer?

Consider this: We eat three times a day. We spend far more time purchasing, preparing and eating food than with the various professionals we hire for one purpose or another. We patronize the local fast food purveyors with little thought. We relish the offerings at our favorite restaurant and load our shopping carts with the delicacies offered by the global market place. Do we ever stop to ask, "Who is my farmer? Where does she/he live and farm? How were these vegetables raised? What is the environmental impact of farming practices? What was this chicken fed? What additives are in this processed food and why?" You visit your family physician; have you ever visited your farmer?

Research at the Leopold Center at Iowa State University reveals that the average American meal travels about 1500 miles from the farm where it was raised to the table where it is eaten. Little wonder we don't know the farmers who raise our food!

Closer to home: where is the beef raised that you and your family eat? Beef is the number one agricultural commodity in Stevens County, representing over 40% of farm sales. Stevens County residents eat about 2.4 million pounds of beef a year, about one third of the beef raised here. However, virtually 100% of this beef leaves Stevens County as calves or slaughter cows, to be grown out, finished and processed some distance from here. Virtually all the beef sold in conventional channels and consumed in Stevens County comes from various states around the country and perhaps from another continent. If you actually buy Stevens County beef from your local market or restaurant it is purely coincidental. Our local economy is deprived of the value added through feeding, processing and wholesaling.

Local options

Consumers do have a few options for buying local meat. The Northeast Washington Small Farm Association (NEWSFA) publishes annually the Farm Fresh Buyers Guide. The 2003 Edition has 35 listings of local growers of a variety of farm products, including beef, lamb, pork and poultry. The 2004 Edition is being prepared now. The Guide is available at the WSU Extension office (985 S. Elm, Colville), at local Chambers of Commerce, branches of the Stevens County Rural Library District and Meyers Falls Market. These growers are committed to raising high a quality product in a humane and environmentally sensitive fashion. Folks seeking high quality food products are encouraged to call growers now and get acquainted. If you have serious questions about how animals are raised, what they are fed, etc., you can actually speak with the growers and perhaps arrange a farm visit and see for yourself. It is very helpful for growers to know consumers wishes well in advance of the coming growing season to insure ample supplies are available.

Local processing advances

The Community Agricultural Development Center (CADC) was started to develop our local agricultural economy by encouraging local processing and distribution of our agricultural produce. A primary concern is the lack of processing facilities. The CADC now has a mobile poultry processing unit that can be used in conjunction with licensed growers to provide poultry products from locally grown flocks. Our intention is to encourage development of poultry enterprises on local farms to improve farm income opportunities.

The State of Washington now has the nation's first USDA approved mobile large animal slaughter unit. The butcher can now go to the farm to harvest animals in familiar surroundings and avoid the stress of transport and handling typical at very large processing centers. The CADC is now in the planning stages of obtaining a mobile unit for Stevens County. This project will allow us to process and market locally grown meats and take advantage of the value added opportunities in our local economy.