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A “Special Period” in the Mid-Hudson Valley Feeds the New York Local Food Renaissance (USA)


Local squash, like the ones pictured here, are frozen and consumed
through the winter by Farm to Table Co-Packers.

The families in my bioregion, the mid-Hudson Valley of New York (90 miles north of New York city), have been coping well with increasing food prices and sourcing food supplies as we face peak oil. This runs counter to the popular image circulating online showing families and the food they consume each week from all over the world, with US and other western families spending exorbitant amounts on packaged, processed and junk food. These communities are likely the most vulnerable as we face peak oil and rising prices as a result of sourcing foods over long distances. But the image of Americans eating junk, processed and packaged food is beginning to grow outdated. Since 2009, in response to the recession and climate change, my bioregion is undergoing a transition similar to the "Special Period" that Cuba had when they lost their fossil fuel dealer with the fall of the Soviet Union and everyone had to grow food.

Local food has risen in popularity in the past few years in NYC and the Mid-Hudson Valley has been spearheading the way. For example, I remember when the first Winter Sun Farms CSA program served just Kingston, New Paltz and Highland. I bought a share in 2010 and once a month I picked up frozen produce from local farms. It was delicious. Now, they serve all over New York City with dozens of drop off points, bringing frozen produce from local farms to urban people who care about climate change and organic food. Check out the list here.

And they have started operations in Philadelphia, and North Carolina, a state to the south. They partner with local sustainable farms to freeze their produce so it can be locally distributed during the winter time, rather than relying on Mexican tomatoes or California produce shipped from afar. It is unbelievable to me that in just four years, their operation is going nationwide.

Also, this happened in conjunction with the advent of other businesses such as Farm to Table Co-Packers, in Kingston, NY, a facility which packs and freezes local produce and food products.

They also provide support to the farming community to bring their food to the local market. Since they have been in business, I now see frozen kale packed in their simple clear plastic bags with labels such as "Farmed at XYZ Farm in New Paltz, NY 15 miles from Kingston, NY." So the consumer knows exactly how far their food has come, that it was grown last summer, and frozen for their use in the winter. It’s pretty inspiring.

And, further, in the USA, more and more people have begun gardening by necessity. They also want to eat organic without having to pay so much for it. I recently read that half of all homeowners now garden their own food, and gardening on the whole in the US has been on the rise.

There are also more and more farmers’ markets around the country offering local fresh food. Since 1994, the number of farmers’ markets has risen from roughly 1700 to 8100. (And this is likely a lower number than actually exists, because the USDA tallied this.)

I saw this begin in 2008, shortly after the recession, in my town of Kingston, NY with the revitalization of the Victory Gardens movement, harkening back to WWII when people grew their own food as part of the war effort. Soon enough, we had a gardening school program, with community gardens at about 15 of the schools, and now two urban farms, one at South Pine Street, and one at the YMCA as a project of the Kingston Land Trust.


End-of-season green tomatoes are harvested at the YMCA garden and were
used in nutrition lessons for low-income families.

We even had a demonstration garden at City Hall, and I started a community garden with disadvantaged kids at the Ulster County Family Courthouse. (The little blonde haired girl in the just-linked video, holding the green tomato, continues to garden each year since at eight years old!)

Politically, the City of Kingston, with the help of the Conservation Advisory Council (on which I served) and other community members, has passed resolutions supporting community gardens and is currently in the process to update their Comprehensive Planning Code to allow for more local personal food production such as backyard chickens and rooftop gardens.

Neighboring Saugerties, NY also passed a right-to-farm law.

Finally, and more recently, the first local food hub will be at the Gill Farm, just outside Kingston, NY in Ulster, NY. This will allow local food to be shipped to NYC and the bioregion, with support for new farmers and the burgeoning local food movement. This old family farm was purchased by NYC’s A New World Foundation, to be an organic farm hub.

So, even though the U.S. in those images, seems to spend so much money on processed food, we here in the Hudson Valley Region are going through a local food renaissance and shifting how and what we eat in response to climate change and peak oil. I myself started a mega-garden with three other lady friends where I live in Woodstock, NY, which we called the Highland Creek Co-op Farm.


This is one of the beds of our Co-op farm in Woodstock, NY.

Like Cuba, many people in the US are quickly getting their hands in the dirt, farming, and transforming the way we eat. I have faith that we are heading in the right direction, and are averting the food sourcing crisis and increased food prices in the face of peak oil. Just as quickly as Cubans responded to transform their society by necessity to grow food on their own, and allowed greater public access to farmland through a usufruct system, so many of us in New York are doing the same — with businesses, non-profits, cities and counties providing access to gardening space for community gardens and urban farms. I think there is much hope nowadays because a brighter world is arriving much faster than we think as we dig in and get to work on the ground here in the U.S.

~~~~~

Valeria A. Gheorghiu is a landowner in Saugerties, NY applying permaculture to create a forest garden. She has previously worked as a farmworkers’ rights attorney. In 2011, she founded the Sojourner Truth Community Garden at the Ulster County Family Courthouse with the Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Ulster County Bar Association. She also served as Commissioner of the Conservation Advisory Council of the City of Kingston, and is a Master Gardener volunteer. A member of the National Lawyers Guild, she represented Occupy New Paltz, obtaining a dismissal of their charges in the interests of justice. She has spoken and led workshops at the U.S. Social Forum, the Left Forum, Folk Seeds, and for the Chatham Peace Initiative. She is published in the Fourth World Journal on farmer’s rights as a Fellow for the Center for World Indigenous Studies with Gene Campaign in India. During law school she also interned for the campaign to save Rosia Montana, Romania from a proposed cyanide leachate gold mine. She graduated from Vermont Law School and Evergreen State College with concentrations in environmental law, environmental studies and anthropology.

2 Comments

  1. beaut, always lovely to see good news stories. while the mainstream “market” continues to self destruct, this peaceful revolution seems to be gaining momentum all over

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