Locavore and adventurer Rob Greenfield in front of a HyVee grocery store in Dubuque, Iowa
Are you a locavore? If so, how far would you go to ensure that you’re eating ONLY local food? How about 4500 miles, across the country, on a bicycle? Continue reading
Starting and maintaining a local, independent business that’s economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable is challenging because it goes against the stuff you learn in business school, such as “Grow or die,” “Don’t cooperate with your competitors,” and “Keep your costs down and maximize profits,” regardless of the impact on your workers, your community, and the environment.
Despite the challenges, many sustainable businesses are succeeding precisely because they’re ignoring conventional wisdom and cooperating. Throughout the day at the Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts’ Sustainability Leadership Summit on May 10 at UMass Boston, speakers, panelists, and participants shared strategies, experiences, and ideas about how to survive and thrive as a responsible business.
Entrepreneur and activist Judy Wicks, founder of Philadelphia’s legendary White Dog Café and author of a new memoir/business book called Good Morning, Beautiful Business, shared her philosophy and experiences in an inspiring keynote address. After White Dog Café grew from a coffee and muffin business into a 200-seat restaurant, Wickes decided to grow deeper into her community rather than franchise to other cities. Over the years, she’s sourced ingredients from local farms and breweries, built relationships with sister city restaurants in Cuba and Vietnam, started a mentoring program with local schools, and become the first business in Pennsylvania to buy 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources. In addition, White Dog Café pays its employees a “living wage” and benefits.
Wicks acknowledged that she wasn’t able to make these commitments from day one. She’s gradually implemented these sustainable business practices over time, aiming to add one more thing a year, as the business could handle it.
In addition to contributing to her community at the local level, Wicks has also been active in supporting social and economic justice at both the international—with the Zapatistas—and the national level. Wicks is a cofounder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a network of socially responsible entrepreneurs, business networks, and local economy funders.
In addition to BALLE, summit participants also heard about the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC), which works to advance public policies that foster a vibrant, just and sustainable economy through advocacy and public education. As ASBC co-founder and CEO, David Levine, pointed out, the US Chamber of Commerce spent over $136 million on lobbying in 2012 alone. When ASBC, a coalition of 70 socially responsible business networks, as well as some individual business and social enterprise members, shows up to meet with decision-makers or the media, people say, “We’ve never heard from you.” It’s about time our point of view got represented in the halls of power!
Massachusett-based cooperative businesses, including Equal Exchange, Harvest Co-op Markets, Valley Green Feast (a worker-owned local foods delivery service based in Northampton), and the Pioneer Valley Milk Marketing Cooperative (Our Family Farms) shared a panel. They agreed that supporting other coops (including each other) and sustainable businesses is both a key principle of how they do business and one way they’re able to hold their own in the face of much larger, corporate-owned, national (or multinational) businesses.
In over a dozen open space sessions, small groups convened to agree on specific actions that they’d take to advance sustainable business in Massachusetts over the coming year. The group I was in focused on how we can continue to expand the diversity of participants in the sustainable business networks. In addition to recruiting diverse business leaders to serve as keynote speakers at next year’s summit, we agreed to reach out to other local business networks, develop inclusive and welcoming messages and language, and look for best practices from other sustainable business networks.
Running a business can feel lonely and isolating at times. The can-do spirit of my small group, as well as the summit overall, left me feeling inspired and energized. Through cooperation, we can continue to build businesses that defy conventional wisdom to create a more sustainable world.
What do food trucks, a mobile healthy market, a pedal-powered tractor, a zero waste recycling and composting coop, and an oil, feed, and biodiesel company in Vermont have in common? They all presented their business plans at the sixth Slow Money Boston Entrepreneur Showcase on April 23. Continue reading
In the world I want to live in, we’d all have access to delicious, healthy, “culturally appropriate” food that is as fresh and locally grown or produced as possible.
Fresh Truck, a new Boston-based social business, is about to launch an initiative to bring healthy food to local neighborhoods that currently lack such access. Fresh Truck has retrofitted an eco-friendly school bus and will stock it daily with a selection of fresh produce, whole grains, and other healthy food options. Continue reading
Photo by Cheryl Greenfield.
After my father died last week, I found tremendous comfort in eating and sharing the foods that I grew up with and he loved. I realized that when a loved one dies, food is a universal currency that enables the human family to grieve together. That’s the true meaning of “comfort food,” as far as I’m concerned. Continue reading
Depiction of Jean Francois Millet’s painting, “The Sower,” at Mike’s Maze in Sunderland, Mass. Photo by Will Sillin.
Farming is a risky business, so most successful farmers have to do more than grow food in order to survive. At the biannual Harvest New England conference in Sturbridge, Mass. last week, I learned about some of the wonderful and wacky things farmers are doing to bring in income. Continue reading
These razor clams were dug just a few hours ago
Until recently, practically the only way to get local seafood in Boston was if you caught it yourself. Thanks to community supported fisheries like Cape Ann Fresh Catch, and now, an innovative company called Red’s Best Seafood, pescovegetarians like me can eat fresh, delicious, seasonal and sustainable seafood that’s just about as local as the lettuce in my backyard.
Red’s Best Seafood owner, Jared Auerbach
Red’s Best founder and owner Jared Auerbach didn’t grow up in a fishing family, but he spent a few years in the commercial fishing industry and is now devoted to helping small fishermen get the best possible price for their catch. “We want commercial fishermen to be part of the Massachusetts economy in 20 years,” Auerbach says.
The hardy men and women who venture out on small boats to catch our local haddock, scallops and cod are almost as endangered as the fish themselves. Catch restrictions, fish population shifts caused by climate change, and the uncertain economic returns are driving people out of the industry.
Auerbach developed proprietary software that enables Red’s Best to buy relatively small amounts of fish from a relatively large number of small boats in a cost-effective manner. Everyone along the supply chain enters data in real time that tracks how and where the fish are caught, the quantity, the dock where it comes in, and where it eventually gets sold. A QR code follows the fish from sea to table.
“Transparency is a byproduct of what we do,” Auerbach says. The traditional fishing industry is archaic and inefficient, he explains, with mounds of paperwork at every step, resulting in massive duplication of efforts. Streamlining the process enables the fish to get to restaurants, distributors, and consumers faster and also makes it traceable.
Photo by Asta Garmon
Auerbach runs his wholesale operation out of Boston Fish Pier and sells all over the country. He’s slowly building up a local market for local fish. Increasingly, Red’s Best is selling to local institutional buyers, like hospitals and universities, that are proving to be a source of support for the industry, as well as a steady source of income.
When Hurricane Sandy caused restaurants and shops in New York to shut down last fall, Massachusetts fisherman were caught with a large catch of high quality hake and pollock and nowhere to sell it. Red’s Best contacted their local distributor, FoodEx, and the Massachusetts Farm to School Project helped them reach dining service directors at local colleges, who purchased the fish, saving the fishermen from taking a bath.
Auerbach is also working with local K-12 school systems to get local fish into the schools. For example, Roslindale resident Asta Garmon, the Nutrition Analyst/Farm to School Coordinator at Weston Public Schools, has been purchasing from Red’s Best and serving fish chowder at the Weston High School cafeteria. Mass. Farm to School is working with other districts to encourage more schools to serve local fish.
Fileting fish at Red’s Best headquarters on Boston Fish Pier
During the past year, Red’s Best Seafood has started selling local fish at Boston area farmers markets, including the Egleston Farmers Market in Jamaica Plain. Although less than 1 percent of their product gets sold directly to consumers, Auerbach says that consumers at Egleston and other markets have a direct effect on the prices that fishermen get.
“In the past, if a fisherman caught a small quantity of one kind of fish, it would get sent to the fish auction and he’d get a low price,” Auerbach explains. The fishermen can get a much better price when Red’s Best sells directly to consumers at the markets. “That’s real money that’s going into the local economy,” he notes.
This weekend will be a perfect time to experience fresh local seafood at the farmers markets. On Saturday, February 16 from 11am-2pm, Egleston Farmers Market is holding a Seafood Throwdown. Chef Irene Li from Mei Mei Street Kitchen food truck will battle Tres Gatos chef Marcos Sanchez to see who can make the most delicious dish from Red’s Best Seafood and produce purchased at the market. City Councilor Felix Arroyo will emcee the event, and the distinguished panel of judges include David Warner of City Feed, Representative Liz Malia, Justin Dunk from Ula Café, Harry Perez from Plaza Meat Market, one of the Egleston market’s “youth ambassadors,” and, of course, Jared Auerbach of Red’s Best. Get there early to register to taste free samples.
And if you can’t make it Saturday, the Dorchester Winter Farmers’ Market in Codman Square is holding their own seafood throwdown on Sunday, February 17 from 12-4pm.
As a dedicated pescovegetarian, I manage to find seafood wherever I go—even at a garden show!
Bell Aquaculture is an Indiana-based company that farms, fillets, and sells yellow perch. They use the leftovers from processing the fish to produce an organic liquid plant fertilizer, which they market as “Fish Rich Fertilizer” and sell nationally.
Since I like using fish-based fertilizer, I stopped to take a look at Fish Rich while trolling the aisles at New England Grows, the annual horticultural and green industry trade show, on February 7. New England Grows isn’t a consumer show, but I attended because Good Egg Marketing is promoting Plant Something MA on behalf of our new clients, the Massachusetts Flower Growers Association and the Massachusetts Nursery and Landscape Association.
Director of Sales Mike Hickerson
Mike Hickerson, Bell Aquaculture Director of Sales, told me that yellow perch is a Great Lakes fish and that “80 percent of the wild yellow perch is sold within 50 miles of the Great Lakes.” Even though I grew up in the Chicago area, I don’t recall ever eating yellow perch. He described it as a white, flaky fish with a mild, sweet taste. Bell Aquaculture wholesales the fish to distributors, like Sysco, and restaurants. Their fish is primarily available in the Midwest, but they’re planning to scale up and increase distribution.
Although I generally prefer to buy wild-caught fish whenever I can, the wild fish supply is dwindling and we need to supplement it with responsibly farmed fish. In addition to making excellent use of fish waste to create fertilizer, Bell Aquaculture uses very little wild fish or fish meal in its feed, which reduces its impact on the fish population.
One of the challenges of fish farming is cleaning the fish poop out of the water. A lot of fish farming takes place in coastal areas, and the waste and leftover food particles end up polluting streams and oceans. Bell Aquaculture uses an indoor recirculating system to raise the fish, which minimizes its water usage and keeps the farmed fish population isolated from the wild supply.
Hickerson also told me that the company is starting to grow vegetables using the effluent water as a nutrient. I’ve always loved the concept of aquaponics. I can’t understand why more farms don’t raise fish.
Hmm, fish and vegetables growing together – sounds like pescovegetarian paradise to me.
Signs outside Egleston Farmers Market in Jamaica Plain, Mas. Photo by Suzanne Hinton.
Doris chops an onion for the dressing.
Okay, I have to be honest. My mother-in-law, Doris, is not a pescovegetarian. She likes to put sage sausage in her oyster dressing, but when I’m around for dinner, she makes a pan of it without the meat, so that’s the version I’m sharing with you.
This is an old family recipe and Doris has made this stuffing so many times that she goes by eye and taste, not a recipe. I watched her make it on Thanksgiving morning and took notes, so I could share it with you. So use your judgment and adjust the recipe as you see fit. Personally, I’m planning to go heavier with the spices, especially the cayenne, but to each her own.
