John J. Jeffries at the Arts Hotel! Accepted by Chef Sean Cavenaugh!

Gursha! Accepted by Etayehu Zenebe!

Expressly Local Food--accepted by Kharran Cattell and Cheryl Young!

Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative--accepted by Casey Spacht!

GUIDE TO LOCAL FOOD, 2010 – 2011

LAUNCH PARTY!

Friday June 25th

5 – 6pm

on the patio of John J. Jeffries @ the Arts Hotel

300 Harrisburg Ave.

Lancaster PA  17603

It’s time to celebrate with local food, cash bar (happy hour prices), music!  At 5:30 we will be announcing our 4 BFBL Visionary Partners–businesses that have set the pace for buying or using Lancaster County-grown foods as part of their business practice. And you can pick up your copy of the 2010-2011 Guide to Local Foods!

For more information, or to rsvp, call 717-380-7280.

THE GARDEN

Thursday, May 6

7pm

Stahr Auditorium in Stager Hall at Franklin & Marshall College

The 14-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles was the largest of its kind in the United States.  Started after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods, growing their own food, feeding their families, and creating a community.

But what happens when urban farmers meets hardball politics? Follow their gripping story in this award-winning documentary by Scott Hamilton Smith, filmed as the drama unfolded.

The movie will be followed by a discussion led by Jeffrey Montez de Oca (Prof. of Sociology F&M College)

Free and open to the public (donations are welcome!)
For the location of Stager Hall, go to http://www.fandm.edu/map

Co-sponsored by Lancaster BFBL, the Wohlsen Center for the Sustainable Environment and the Local Economy Center, Franklin & Marshall College.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117903728223942&ref=mf

Join Lancaster BFBL and the Wohlsen Center for a Sustainable Environment (F&M College) this season for a series of thought-provoking movies and discussion looking at the ways we grow, process, and buy our food.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MONSANTO

Thursday, April 1

7pm

Stahr Auditorium/Stager Hall at Franklin & Marshall College

Monsanto supplies 90% of the genetically-modified seeds used by the US market, and owns the exclusive patents that define them as “intellectual property”. Over the last decade, Monsanto aggressively bought up over 50 seed companies around the globe–now 90% of all GE seeds planted in the world are patented by Monsanto and hence controlled by this corporation.

This chilling French documentary directed by independent filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin has been widely acclaimed as “one of the most powerful, must see films for anyone interested in the behind the scenes world of the food industry, and how just one world dominating corporation holds the keys and patents to much of the world’s food supply.”

Free and open to the public (though donations are appreciated!)

Visit our Facebook page for more info:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=395054306012&index=1

Lancaster Buy Fresh Buy Local® is enrolling community members for its 2010 Volunteer Class.  We’re having an information session on

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

from 7pm – 8pm

at 214 W. Grant Street  in downtown Lancaster.

Bring a chair to sit in and join us at the LBFBL table!  Find out what we’re up to next year, and get involved! There are lots of opportunities to help the Lancaster BFBL campaign and our mission to get the word out on behalf of local foods and local farms.

For more information email amy@lancasterfarmfresh.com

You can also call our Outreach Coordinator at (717) 380-7280, or Amy at (717) 306-8672.

Click on image above to download RSVP Card

Saturday September 26

6-10 pm

Hopeland Farm,   253 Elser Hill Road,   Lititz PA 17543

Celebrate the abundance of Lancaster County with a memorable evening on beautiful Hopeland Farm.

Join Lancaster BFBL for live music by The Modern Pharoahs, a farm tour, beer, wine, cheese tasting, dinner and dessert–all locally grown and prepared by local chefs.

Spaces are limited, you must reserve by September 19.

To make a reservation, download the rsvp card (above) and send it with a check (payable to “FoCM/Lancaster BFBL”) to

Lancaster BFBL, PO Box 1623, Lancaster 17608-1623.

Carmen and David’s Creamery is only one of a growing number of entrepreneurial enterprises that are building their businesses around local foods.  Another great example is Expressly Local, founded by Cheryl Young and Kharran Cattell. Expressly Local began as a local food-sourcing and direct-delivery business, built on relationships with Lancaster farmers, dairymen, cheese producers, bakers and more.  In-season, Expressly Local is based at the Eastern Market; this year they are opening an all-local grocery business on West King Street.  This little powerhouse of a business is working with 22+ local producers, many of them Amish women,  who now are doing custom-growing for Expressly Local customers.

And Austin is right–it’s not just produce! McGeary Organics has revived Daisy Organic Flours. Daisy Flour was first milled in Lancaster County in 1890, when 4 local grocers went together to provide flour from local grain for their customers. Today Daisy Organic Flours are milled in the historic Annville Flouring Mill, in operation continuously since 1740, using grain grown on regional farms.

And Bluecoat American Dry Gin (distilled in nearby Philadelphia!) uses Lancaster County grains.

These are only a couple of examples of blossoming of locavore entrepreneurial businesses who are thinking outside the global box. Like David says–this kind of business nourishes our community and our souls! (Now go grab that cone!)

By Linda Aleci

Declare your independence!

“Do you know where your food comes from?” That’s the question, isn’t it?

One the one hand, well, no, we mostly don’t know where our food comes from. But if you stop and think for a minute, maybe even dig a little into those mind-numbing reports put out by the USDA, we actually do know pretty much where our food is—and isn’t—coming from.  Think about this:

The share of food imported to the U.S. from other countries has been growing steadily from the early 1980s to 2000; for fresh produce, U.S. imports expanded from 15.4% to 21% in 1996. In 2001, 78% of our fish was imported, 40% of our beef, 39% of our fruits and 12% of our vegetables.

The principal importers of fresh produce are Mexico (67% of total vegetable imports and 22% of total fruit imports), South America—Chile is a powerhouse exporter of fresh fruits to the U.S. consumer—and the Caribbean. And did you know that China is the world’s leading apple-growing county (eat your heart out, Washington State), increasing its share of the U.S. apple juice concentrate trade from 1% in 1992 to 20% in 1998?

That’s a lot of globe-trotting “goodness” that piles onto our dinner table— in fact, the average American meal now likely contains food from at least 5 countries.

If we’re talking straight numbers, the news isn’t all bad. The 2007 Census of Agriculture shows that food sold by farmers directly to household consumers rose 30% between 2002 and 2007 (adjusted for inflation)—although it’s still only 0.4% of total farm sales. The number of farms selling direct to consumers also increased by 17% nationally; Lancaster also saw a small uptick of farms in that category—small, that is, against the 40% decline that occurred here between 1997 and 2002. A big 2% of consumers now say that farmers markets are their primary shopping venue.

But all the numbers—good, bad, and indifferent—disguise something pretty basic. If you don’t know where your food comes from, what do you lose? Do we really want to rely on food chains a gazillion miles long? Food chains that are affected by global economies, that have no environmental or health standards, or can be disrupted by embargos, tariff wars—not to mention military wars (no joke)? Do we really want to lose the ability to make decisions about what we will or will not support, economically, environmentally, AND ethically?

If we don’t know where our food comes from, we have lost our independence as consumers and the ability to make discerning choices about what kind of world we create with our food purchases.

So declare your independence! This 4^th of July my husband and I, and about 25 friends and neighbors declared our food independence with a shared feast of Lancaster County foods. Let’s not be beholden to a food system that exploits us in the name of convenience and efficiency. Let’s not subsidize community or environmental degradation. Let’s be nervous at the thought of being dependent on food sources far-flung from home. Let’s all lift our forks to the power of eating local–it can be a great and empowering thing.