2004 Glynwood Harvest Award Winners

The Glynwood Harvest Farmer Award

Awarded to a farmer who has developed a sustainable farming operation and built effective relationships within his or her home community and other communities where the food is consumed.

Bellvale Farms 

Bellvale Farms, a dairy farm located on 450 acres only 50 miles from New York City, has been producing milk for more than 150 years.  Judy and Al Buckbee have lived on the farm for nearly 40 years. Now, their son, Skip, and daughter, Amy, her husband Tim and their two children all live and work on the farm.  In the words of their Town Supervisor, the Buckbees “…are the epitome of the American farm family and all of the great values that these families have stood for over the years.” 

The Buckbees also exemplify the creativity and dedication required to remain in farming in an area with growing development pressure.  During the past decade, they have taken several steps to ensure its future.  They were among the first farmers to sell their development rights to the Town of Warwick’s farmland preservation program.  With the proceeds, they purchased additional acreage and made their operation more economically viable for current and future generations.  With the involvement and skill of that next generation, they have diversified their operation to include a Creamery, which produces homemade ice cream and caters to daily commuters and hikers from the Appalachian Trail, as well as local residents.  Eventually they plan to become a fully operational dairy-processing creamery and will produce and sell cheeses, milk, yogurts and other dairy products.

They were also among the first farmers in the area to adopt rotational grazing of their herd, which assures not only the high quality of their milk but the sustainability of the local environment.  Their stewardship, including careful manure management, is credited with protecting a rich underground aquifer that is relied upon by thousands of people, and ensuring that brook trout continue to spawn in the streams that run through their fields.  

The Buckbees know how important it is for children to learn that milk doesn’t come from a bottle.  It is not unusual for them to welcome hundreds of visitors to their farm each week through their Sunday Open House, school group trips and invitations extended to Creamery customers. 

 In the words of a neighboring farmer, “Bellvale Farms is a family farm that is connected to the fertile soil beneath them, connected to the community around them, and connected to the customers they serve.” 

Glynwood Harvest Good Neighbor Award

Awarded to an individual or organization that has supported regional agriculture in innovative ways, which might include but are not limited to public education, creating new connections between farmers and urban consumers, or developing financing techniques to support new farmers or farmers who transition to new products.

Berkshire Grown

The mission of Berkshire Grown, a nonprofit organization founded in 1985, is to “support local farmers who preserve and sustain the beauty and bounty of the Berkshire region.”  Berkshire Grown promotes local agriculture as a vital part of a healthy Berkshire economy and landscape through a variety of events, programs, and promotions that bring farmers and consumers together.

In the words of Berkshire-Taconic Community Foundation, Berkshire Grown “invents ways to incorporate a vibrant agricultural based economic sector with community enhancement projects.” 

Many of the farmers in Berkshire County are traditional dairy farmers who have faced the challenge of transitioning into new markets.  Berkshire Grown has helped these farmers reach new markets while simultaneously helping to expand those markets by educating chefs, food buyers, politicians and the public about the importance supporting regional farmers. 

Berkshire Grown’s many innovative programs include:

            Share the Bounty, through which donated funds are used to purchase shares in community supported agriculture programs which are then donated to food pantries or kitchens;

            Business to Business (B2) Program, which fosters the development of partnerships between farmers, food producers and professional food buyers, such as restaurants, specialty markets, caterers, and inns;

            Buy Local Campaign, which promotes local food during the growing season and educates the public on the importance of buying local through advertisements and the Buyer’s Guide to Locally Grown Food, Plants, and Flowers.  Farm Fresh Fax reports are used to alert supermarkets of what products are available and from which farms. 

As a result of this effective marketing of Berkshire products, one farmer has written, “all the farms in the area know that, within reason, there is a market for almost anything we can grow.”  The results of this work illustrate the multiple benefits of connecting local farms and communities.  For example, the Community Foundation refers to the Share the Bounty program as a “’two-fer’ for a donor…each dollar goes for two good projects:  supporting local growers and feeding people healthy food who wouldn’t have it otherwise.”  And the Berkshire Natural Resources Council, the County’s land conservation organization, has noted that “…in a very direct way, they support our work:  If farmers can make a living on the land, they will not be forced to sell out.  Berkshire Grown helps keep the county green.”

Glynwood Harvest Connecting Communities, Farmers and Food Award

Granted to recognize outstanding work that transcends these categories.

Bert and Tish Paris, Tera Johnson and the Animal Welfare Institute

Bert and Trish Paris, who farm in Belleville, Wisconsin, Tera Johnson, former President of a Wisconsin dairy, and the Animal Welfare Institute, have been leaders of a project designed to help grazing dairy farmers produce a new, value-added product by raising veal in a humane manner.  This project stands as an inspiring example of what can be accomplished when farmers and others from across the public and private sectors come together to drive innovation that will improve the economic viability of family farms.

Bert and Tish Paris are visible, vocal and successful advocates of pasture-based dairy systems – or grazing - an important part of the movement toward humane, sustainable agriculture.  The Paris’ began as conventional dairy farmers, but once they had children, Bert wanted reduce his use of heavy machinery - the backloaders, feed mixers and other big equipment needed for conventional confinement dairies that can be noisy and dangerous. “I wanted farming to be something we could do together as a family.”  Bert said.  “I have some of my best conversations with my children when we are out here working with the cows.” 

Bert and Tish are active spokespersons for dairy grazing, welcoming visitors to their farm and generous in their sharing of what they have learned.  Bert has served as a mentor for numerous young farmers who are starting grazing dairies and is an active promoter of the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy Farmers and the Dane-Green Graziers, which provide support and instruction to other farmers.

Because grazing systems require much less investment in buildings and manure handling equipment, dairy grazing systems operate at lower cost than confinement operations.  So although their output may be less, their lower costs can result in a higher net income.  The lower costs make dairy grazing an important tool for revitalizing family farms, especially for new farmers, who may have less access to start-up capital. 

But like all farmers, Bert and Tish are also running a small business that has to work economically.  One challenge inherent in dairy grazing is the need for livestock that perform well under grazing conditions, which has encouraged many grazers to cross-breed their Holstein herds with other breeds or to use alternative and heirloom breeds, which are smaller than Holsteins.  One unfortunate consequence is the loss of a commercial market for the male calves, since the mixed breeds do not produce good beef cattle.  According to Bert Paris, in some years, the Graziers receive only about $20 for a young calf. 

Many diverse interests have come together to develop a way for the grazers to diversity their farm income by raising these male calves in a humane way, to create veal that will appeal to the segment of the meat-eating market that has objected to the tight confinement methods by which standard veal is produced.  If the new way of producing veal succeeds, farmers may receive as much as $600 per calf. 

With the leadership of Tera Johnson, then President of a Wisconsin dairy, and the support of a Value Added grant from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Bert and Trish Parish began to experiment with ways to raise the male calves that would meet protocols for “humane treatment” developed by the Animal Welfare Institute, while producing veal that would be attractive to chefs and, eventually, a broader market.

The Animal Welfare Institute, based in Washington, D.C., was founded in 1951 to reduce the pain and fear inflicted on animals by humans.  One of its core programs seeks to reform production systems for the rearing of farm animals and replace them with methods which are both humane and practical.  AWI sees this veal project as a way to develop and open new markets for products that improve farm profitability, through developing and implementing husbandry standards that improve the welfare of dairy cattle and calves.

Since milk and grass fed veal is a new product, no market currently exists for it.  Since the color and other properties of the meat are very sensitive to nutrition inputs, which will vary depending on temperature and weather conditions when the calves are being raised, the market for this product needs to be educated that variability is natural and desirable rather than problematic.  So another aspect of the project has been to develop a national network of opinion-leading chefs who are interested in purchasing the product.

This is a complex project involving many players, including other farmers, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, experts in veal calf nutrition, chefs, and potential purchasers and distributors. 

While challenges remain, this project stands as an inspiring example of how creativity and cooperation across many interests can help sustain family farms. 

Special Glynwood Harvest Award for Innovative Communications

Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE) and The Meatrix

The Meatrix is a three minute flash animation piece that has demonstrated the extraordinary potential reach and impact possible when innovative communications skills are brought to bear on agricultural issues.  The Meatrix is on the forefront of the expansion of activism online. 

The Meatrix was born of a collaboration between GRACE, which is dedicated to eliminating factory farming in favor of a sustainable food production system, and Free Range Graphics, which supported the project with its first Flash Activism Grant.

The concept was to parody The Matrix movie by presenting striking similarities between themes in the original movie and today’s corporate agriculture system in a way that would be marketable to consumers.  It has shown that a short, humorous and factual cartoon can alert millions of people to a serious, worthy cause.

Within the first week of the film’s debut, over one million people had viewed The Meatrix.  As of June 2004, that number exceeded 5 million people from around the world, with over 5,000 new viewers each day.

At the end of the movie, viewers are directed to an “action page” where they are encouraged to visit sites that help them access meat from sustainable family farms (such as www.eatwellguide.org) and learn more about viable solutions to factory farm operation (www. Sustainabletable.org). As a result, tens of thousands of people have visited these sites.

By December 2003, more than 27,000 websites had linked to The Meatrix.  The organizations that linked their websites have experienced increased traffic to their sites as a result.  In response to requests generated by the film, GRACE has sent tens of thousands of educational packets all over the country and has included information from other related organizations. 

MarketingProfs.com, a site for marketing professionals, labeled The Meatrix the “New Marketing Order” for its ability to influence the consumer through the media.  It has won the “Film for Thought” award from the Media That Matters Film Festival and was an official selection at the Telluride Mountain Film Festival.

Special Glynwood Harvest Recognition to The Wave of the Future

By ensuring that the importance of fresh, nutritious food is shared across generations and creating connections between urban consumers and farmers, these organizations are helping to create the wave of the future.

The Lower East Side Girls Club and b-Healthy!

If we are to be successful in sustaining regional agriculture, we must ensure that theunderstanding of the importance of fresh, nutritious food is shared across generations and that strong connections are created between urban consumers and regional farmers.  These two New York City organizations share a commitment to making this happen.  We trust that they are helping to create The Wave of the Future. 

The Lower East Side Girls Club is dedicated to providing a place where girls and young women ages 8 to 21 can develop confidence in themselves and their ability to make a difference in the world.  The Lower Eastside Girls Club programs expose more than 500 economically disadvantaged girls and young women per year to an innovative and comprehensive mix of enriching programs and world of work experiences.  Many of the projects undertaken by the Girls Club explore the connections among food, health, community supported agriculture and sustainable cuisine.  It believes that the food choices adolescents make lay the foundation for the health and wellness, and in turn shape the choices they make for their future families. 

For the past several summers, the Girls Club has run a high school level leadership development week at a farm in the Hudson Valley where the girls learn about food production and its relationship to environmental issues.  Girls also intern with the farm’s stands in the NYC Greenmarket system, gaining a window into the economics of farming and marketing and the logistics of food security and feeding cities. 

The Girls Club has also developed a twelve week entrepreneurial training curriculum in local high schools which results in student run after school juice/smoothie and muffin bars.  The program is facilitated by “Sweet Things” – a mother-daughter baking company which operates the Girls Club commercial kitchen and its baking/entrepreneurial training program.  This fall the Girls Club collaborated with PS 188 to pilot the @ Good Foods Cafe, where girls serve smoothies and nutritious treats with a dollop of sustainability education to 120 milddle school students at the start of their school day.  

In June 2003, the Girls Club opened its own Farmers Market. Farmers from Long Island and the Hudson Valley were assisted by high school girls from the leadership program who visited the farms that supply the market, interviewed the farmers and created photodocumentary stories.  The girls also run workshops at the market to educate the community on agricultural and environmental issues;  produced a video public service announcement entitled “Fat or Phat?” extolling the virtues of eating fruits and vegetables; and wrote a special issue of their newspaper “Girls Out Loud” dedicated to agriculture and the environment.   

b-healthy! (Building Healthy Eating and Lifestyles to Help Youth) is a New York City-based organization founded in 2001 through which adult and youth food activists, chefs and others work to strengthen the food justice movement in the United States.  b-healthy!’s mission is to educate low-income urban youth ages 14-21 about cooking, nutrition and the relationship between food and health; to encourage them to connect personal health to community health; and to help them empower themselves to organize around issues related to health and well-being.

b-healthy! was founded in response to the dramatic increase in obesity and chronic diseases among low-income youth, with the understanding that these diet-related diseases result from of lack of education about proper diet and nutrition and lack of access to healthy, affordable food in most low-income communities. 

b-healthy!’s approach combines education about healthy cooking and nutrition with education around the globalization of agriculture, the corporatization of food, and social activism aimed at creating more access to healthy and sustainable foods in low-income communities. 

b’healthy!’s programs include:

            CHOP (Creating Healthy Organic Power) Project, a skills-building training project that teaches basic cooking techniques, nutrition, the relationship between food and health, the influence of our diet on the environment, and contemporary politics surrounding food.

            CHOP Project II, a training program in youth organizing for graduates of CHOP.

            SEEDS:  Training and Technical Assistance for Non-Profit Organizations and Community Based Organization, which helps other organizations learn how to educate young people about diet and health and helps their staff envision ways to support youth in making dietary changes.  

b-healthy! is working in both New York City and the Bay Area in California.  It is actively partnering with other nonprofits in both areas, including Just Food in New York City and the People’s Grocery in Oakland.