Ethnic food and small farms

Monday, March 31, 2008

A draft of this entry has been sitting on my hard drive for...oh, at least a month.  I apologize that I didn’t post it in a more timely fashion after the PASA conference, but I still find myself thinking about this workshop session and referencing it in conversation, so I hope you’ll all still find this entry interesting.

So, in the middle of February I attended the PASA conference (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture).  It was my first visit to the conference, and—besides suffering from work-induced exhaustion and cold-induced aches—I was overwhelmed by all the organizations’ tables and circulating farmers and activists.  Despite being intimidated, I still managed to learn a little about various subjects, but I won’t attempt to summarize everything.  For now, I’d just like to talk about the workshop/lecture I enjoyed the most!  It was the last one I attended, given by Sandra Miller of Painted Hand Farm near Carlisle, called ‘Feeding the World in Your Community: Capturing Ethnic Markets’.  The Powerpoint presentation for this workshop (as well as other articles) is actually on her farm’s website, for further explanation.

She started by explaining why ethnic groups are an excellent customer-match for small farms.  Recent immigrants understand seasonality, spend a higher percentage of their income on food than the average American, and are accustomed to shopping frequently for fresh food.  Through modern shipping routes and the internet, these immigrants can maintain some of their identity through their food, but they want a local source for some ingredients.  When they find a source, they are frequent and loyal customers who spread the word about a farm within their own community, which may rely heavily on word-of-mouth for places to source particular food varieties.

The presentation included various steps that farmers can take to research and prepare for these markets, which I won’t reiterate here.  I just enjoyed hearing her entrepeneurial but respectful attitude!  For instance, many of her customers have specific halal butchering requirements and want to slaughter the animal themselves.  Instead of being intimidated or annoyed by this, she thought to herself, ‘I don’t need to pay for a device to de-horn the goat (and run the risk of occasionally killing one during the process), or a device to castrate the goat (and again, might occasionally lose an animal)—and hey, I don’t even need to pay anything to a butcher, so I come out ahead!’ She also emphasized the value of talking about the food with the customers, to discover how the meat or vegetables are going to be prepared; she gave an example of some squash seeds given to her by a Sicilian who wanted to prepare the squash when it was young and tender, but once she brought to market an example of the squash when it was hard and fully grown (a huge tan squash shaped like a ram’s horn!) and someone from a *different* part of Italy came up and asked if the squash could be allowed to grow even more hard!

Sandra Miller primarily raises meat goats, and the primary group of customers she mentioned were recent immigrants or visitors from Southeast Asia and Africa, many of them Muslims looking for goats for holiday meals—or just ethnic groups for whom goat meat is a staple part of their diet.  One of the reasons to explore ethnic markets, that she mentioned repeatedly and that I found most exciting, is that these are people who may be relocating to or visiting in the States (e.g., families of academics teaching/studying at various educational institutions, like the American War College near her in Carlisle) who for *months* haven’t been able to find food (like goat meat) that they’re accustomed to consuming all the time—and they’re *so* happy to find a source for this food; she said interactions with these customers, overjoyed to find these staples, are very satisfying.  She said she’s had adult Muslim men come to her farm and weep with joy that they can now enjoy a goat at a celebration, like the birth of a child or whatever.  It made me want to have a goat farm! 

One other perspective of ethnic groups that I found especially compelling was the truly sustainable approach to consuming food.  Between the variety of ethnic groups that buy food from her, everything is used—right down to the turkey feet a Chinese co-worker wanted from her during one year when she was sourcing Thanksgiving turkeys for coworkers.  This co-worker wanted the feet for soup broth, a fundamental part of the holiday celebration in the co-worker’s family, and paid her $50 for a part of the animal that would’ve otherwise gone to waste.  That’s so cool!