Organic farmers are bringing the North Bay’s bounty to tables everywhere.
Last autumn’s spinach scare exposed the downside of large-scale farming. Natural Selection Foods (which had a large part in the problem) not only sells spinach to Dole, it also sells it to Trader Joe’s, Rave Spinach, Ready Pac, Green Harvest and Earthbound Farm among others. So when the E. coli outbreak that killed one person and sickened more than 100 others was traced back to Natural Selection Foods, the spinach wasn’t just pulled from one brand, but from all of them.
When this kind of national crisis occurs, organic food starts to get more mainstream attention. As consumers become aware of how food is produced, more people want fewer chemicals and more natural ingredients in their grocery baskets—even if that means paying a higher price at the cash register.
The North Bay is home to a growing number of organic food producers ranging from large-scale operations like Amy’s Kitchen in Santa Rosa to small farms, dairies and ranches.
Although these producers often choose to be organic to support the environment and produce a higher quality product, it’s a business decision as well. Being organic reaches a wider customer base and helps companies differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace.
Saving small farms
In a marketplace dominated by big farming, getting their product to customers can be difficult for small or family-owned farms.
“Big farms control the market,” says David Little, who owns Little Organic Farm in Tomales. “They control pricing, so they have a lot of power. It’s pushed small farmers into a corner, and they’re scratching and clawing for little markets and niches.”
Little Organic Farm grows potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, squash, strawberries and lettuce. The crops are dry-farmed, a tillage technique that causes the soil to hold water longer, resulting in more concentrated flavors. In addition to the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market in San Francisco, Little sells his crops to Whole Foods, restaurant distributors and restaurants like Range and Quince in San Francisco.
“Being organic is a way to reach more customers,” he says. “Because people who don’t care about organic still buy the products, but the people who do care won’t buy the product unless it’s organic.”
According to Marin Organic, an association of local organic farmers, the United States loses 400 family farms every week, or 56 farms a day. Becoming organic (and receiving a premium for your product) can be the difference between going out of business and thriving as a small provider.
Less than 20 years ago, Sebastopol had nine apple processing plants. Today, the only remaining plant is Manzana Products, which makes canned apple juice, applesauce and apple cider vinegar. The plant sells products as private labels to stores like Safeway, Trader Joe’s, and Henry’s Farmers Market in the Midwest.
Co-owner Suzanne Kaido’s grandfather first founded the plant in 1922, and it’s been in the family ever since. But the agricultural landscape of Sebastopol has changed over the years. Much of the apple farms have been replaced with vineyards—and the apple business has almost died out. There aren’t even enough local apples for Manzana’s products, so they have to truck them in from places like Washington and Southern California.
“We were very, very fortunate to be in on the ground floor of organics,” says Kaido. “We’re the last surviving apple processing plant in the area, and it’s because we got into organics that we’re still here. It’s such a booming industry, not only because people are concerned with health, but also because of the environment.”
Not only is the local organic movement helping food processors stay in business, it’s helping others to come back. Don Gilardi’s family has owned RedHill Farms in Petaluma since 1914. At one time, the ranch encompassed 800 acres, but by the time Gilardi’s mother inherited it 7 years ago, there were only 40 acres remaining.
After buying an additional 40 acres and fixing up the ranch, Gilardi began raising grass-fed sheep. Although he doesn’t sell certified organic meat, his lambs are grass-fed on certified organic pastures without hormones or antibiotics, and his meat has a growing reputation among locals and restaurants. He’s doing so well, in fact, that he’s talking about starting a dairy and eventually going into making cheese.
Like Kaido, he attributes his success to the organic community, which has helped him market his meat and connect to customers.
“Getting the pasture certified was the best thing I ever did,” he says. “It revived the family farm and helped me hugely in moving my product.”
Quality food, quality life
Many food producers say that going organic means a higher quality product. After all, if the food has less pesticides, hormones and preservatives, it must be more nutritious.
Studies do seem to back up this claim. Last year, a study from Emory University in Atlanta found that children who eat organic food ingest fewer pesticides. Another study in England found that food grown with intensive, nonorganic techniques has fewer nutrients than food grown 60 years ago.
Whether you can taste the difference between nonorganic and organic depends on the kind of food. Nonorganic honey tastes just like organic honey, even though they’re not produced the same way. On the other hand, the difference between grass-fed and corn-fed meat is so noticeable, it even shows in the meat’s color.
“Most lamb meat you get in the store is dark red,” says Gilardi. “But my meat is a light, light, light pink color. That’s because there’s no stress on the sheep. The pasture is fertilized with chicken manure, which has made the grass grow very high so you don’t even see the sheep. All they do is walk around and eat, sleep and drop nitrogen pellets.”
The darker the red, the more stress the animal has experienced. In some cases, this can even spoil the meat. If an animal is terrified when it’s slaughtered, it can be a “dark cutter”—meat that turns dark red because of a flood of adrenaline in the system.
This never happens at Chileno Valley Ranch in Marin. In 1862, Carlo Martinoiya (he later changed his name to Charles Martin) bought the ranch from Henry Halleck, who later went on to become President Lincoln’s chief of staff during the Civil War. Today, Martinoiya’s great-great-granddaughter, Sally Gale, runs the 600-acre ranch with her husband, Mike. They sell grass-fed cattle, organic apples and tomatoes and eggs.
“One standard for grass-fed beef is that it includes no antibiotics and [the cows are] fed on certified organic pastures,” says Gale. “There are no hormones, no supplemental feeds. All they eat is grass.”
Although Gale has nothing against corporate cattle ranching, she was concerned with the quality of life of her own cows, which is why she chose to take the grass-fed route.
“We weren’t comfortable with the traditional route of raising them seven months, trucking them to a feed lot, letting them bulk out on non-grass products and be pumped full of antibiotics then slaughtered,” she says.
Gale sells the fruit and eggs at the Point Reyes Farmers Market; she also sells her produce and cows directly to customers, most of whom come back year after year. Some of these customers have health challenges and are looking for “pure food that’s unadulterated by chemicals,” she says.
“Often our customers are looking for locally grown food and want to support local producers. They love what we’re doing on the ranch [restoring creeks, providing habitat for native birds and fish] and are trying to provide wholesoome food for their families.”
Many organic food businesses started with the farmers providing food for their family. So even as the business grows, being organic is as much about family as it is about pleasing the customer. That’s how John Gipson, who owns Gipson’s Golden (Santa Rosa-based honey producers), got started. The business began 34 years ago as a hobby he started with his two sons. Gipson bought bees from another father and son and set up the hives in a field near his house.
As his sons grew up and became interested in other things, Gipson continued with his beekeeping hobby. He began selling his honey to the doctors and nurses whom he encountered as a medical surgical supply salesman. When he retired, he took on the honey business full time. Becoming organic was a natural step.
“I didn’t like adding anything to what nature creates,” says Gipson. “Honey is this nutritious substance that’s been around since Biblical times. It didn’t seem right. I started this because of children, and there’s a pride in bringing them something that’s as pure as possible.”
Gipson’s Golden has far outgrown Gipson’s backyard. He now runs a cooperative where families all over California have taken some of the bees. Today, he sells his honey to large chains like Raley’s and Whole Foods, as well as small stores like G&G Supermarket.
The exact size of his production depends on nature. On a good year, he’ll have 16 kinds of honey, each based on the nectar from a different kind of flower. This year, he’s seeing 10 different varieties because the low rain in March meant that some plants, like sage and manzanita, didn’t flower. But Gipson says he’s used to “Mother Nature’s hiccups.”
Gipson cooperates with other farmers as well. In early April, he was trucking his bees out to Lindsay, a town so full of orange blossoms you can smell their fragrance three miles out. The bees being brought to the groves could smell the flowers, too.
“The bees woke up in the truck,” says Gipson. “You could hear their excitement. When I got them out, they were bouncing off everything—bouncing off my chest—and when I let them go, they just went ballistic.”
This kind of cooperation is common among organic farmers, since with the use of fewer chemicals, there’s more of a need to use nature to get things done. Last year, Gilardi did a similar thing when he took his sheep over to graze on a neighboring ranch while he refertilized his own pastures.
“There’s no pollution, no fire damage and the sheep fertilize the field as well,” says Gilardi. “I lease off the sheep, and while they graze on the other pastures, I’m loading my own pasture with chicken manure so the grass gets long. I’ll have grass into next spring this way.”
The trouble with certifying
Although there are many benefits to going organic, it can also be more expensive to get up and running. But according to organic producers, the most difficult—or at least the most annoying—part of going organic isn’t the cost. It’s retaining organic certification from the government.
Without certification, food cannot be labeled as organic. In the past, being organic has meant registering with the government and declaring the farm organic. These days, the farmer has to track every piece of food he or she grows from the seed to the final sale of the product.
Little, who’s always farmed organically, has seen regulations become more stringent over time, meaning a lot of paperwork that’s “sometimes ridiculous.”
“In the past, it was more on a trust basis,” he says. “Farmers stated they were organic and it was up to customers to prove they weren’t. Now, the burden of proof is on the farmers. We still have to register with the stae as organic, but now we also have to be certified by an independent third party.”
It’s easier for some products to be sold as organic than others, according to Marin Organic. For example, while vegetables have an eager market, dairy can be difficult to sell as organic.
“Converting dairy to organic can be tricky,” says Helge Hellberg, executive director of Marin Organic. “They do get a premium for the product, but right now we’re experiencing a surplus. Dairy is a commodity market, and we need to create more local markets. We need to make sure, for example, a southern Marin dairyman gets identified as having a higher quality product. If we can do that, we can generate a higher demand and ensure that farmer a better return.
“When vegetables go organic, they sell quickly. Restaurants love that stuff, and there’s a huge comsumer demand. But when dairy goes organic, fewer people are looking for it.”
However, organic milk is now in most grocery stores. In addition, organic dairy is often sold to other organic food producers. Wallaby Yogurt Company in Napa produces Australian-style organic yogurt that sells across the country. The company is in the North Bay specifically because it’s near organic dairies.
“Our location in the Napa Valley lets us be close to small family farms, where cows are grass-fed throughout the year,” says spokesperson Ellie Wells. “Getting a fresh, local source of organic milk is a big benefit for us.”
Local and organic
As organic food becomes mainstream, there’s more incentive for large farms to grow organic food as well. Some environmentalists and farmers are calling this “industrial organic.” They argue large corporations may follow official organic guidelines, but they still invite blight by planting large fields of single crops, and they also take food production from the hands of local people. Therefore, they say, people who are truly concerned about the quality of food should only buy from small local farmers.
Others argue that nonorganic, locally grown food can mean people are spraying pesticides and using chemicals to produce food. Also, if all farming were local, we wouldn’t have the variety we have in the supermarkets today—luxuries like tomatoes in the dead of winter or access to exotic fruits that don’t grow here. This local versus organic debate rages among the very customers who buy the most organic food.
“That argument is so silly from our perspective,” says Hellberg. “It should be local and organic. Our intention is to create a truthful dialogue between how to exist in balance with nature. So it’s not local versus organic, it’s that the connection has been lost between the food we eat and how it’s grown, and we need to reestablish that connection.”
North Bay groups such as Marin Organic are combining the aspects of local and organic food. And the effort seems to be paying off. In 2005, Prince Charles visited the Point Reyes Farmers’ Market to learn more about the organic farming that’s happening here. With that kind of international attention, the North Bay may be becoming a leader in organic food, not only in the United States, but in the world.
And this type of approach will benefit the entire community, says Hellberg.
“Every dollar spent locally circulates six to seven times in a community,” he says. “Every dollar you spend buys $7 of value for the community. However you look at it, it’s a wise purchase.
