| Feature No. 4 | Early Fall 2008
Green Cuisine: | |||
Seattle’s Tilth Restaurant is one of the country’s hottest new eateries. In the latest installment of Green Cuisine, Tilth owner and executive chef Maria Hines tells UCS how she has used the Pacific Northwest’s culinary bounty to create an organic menu that is turning heads. UCS also talks with local farmer Andrew Stout of Full Circle Farm, who is proving that a mid-size organic farm can be good business as well as good for the environment, wildlife, and the local community. Finally, Chef Hines shares a simple recipe that features the summer’s last hurrah of colorful organic peppers.
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“Chefs are often the best educators of consumers, but they also give me honest feedback in their constant striving for food perfection. They demand my A-game!”
-Andrew Stout | ||
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“Salmon-Safe” Farming and the Conservation Stewardship Program Farming can have a variety of consequences for the surrounding environment. Some are damaging, such as when pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and eroded soil from highly industrialized farm fields run off into streams and rivers, harming fish and other aquatic life. By contrast, the organic methods and other conservation techniques practiced in Washington on Andrew Stout's Full Circle Farm have largely beneficial environmental impacts. Now, thanks to changes in the 2008 federal Food and Farm Bill, more farmers across the country will be encouraged to adopt modern conservation practices like Stout's.  The Food and Farm Bill establishes a variety of conservation programs that are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Among them is the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), which provides financial and technical assistance to farmers who agree to undertake efforts to conserve and improve one or more important resources such as soil, water, air, energy, and plant and animal life on working land. Eligible practices might include reducing pesticide use, planting trees and restoring native vegetation to create wildlife habitat, using cover crops to improve soil drainage and prevent erosion, and adopting measures that conserve energy and improve the soil’s ability to sequester carbon.At Full Circle Farm (pictured above), Stout has long incorporated many of these practices into his operation to protect water quality and habitat for local salmon and other wildlife. For example, he has constructed irrigation pumps that will not harm fish in nearby Griffin Creek. And, Stout has expanded a buffer area of native plants between his cultivated fields and the creek to prevent erosion. He has taken these steps because he believes it's the right thing to do, though it has also proven to be good for business. Many of his customers are attracted to Full Circle Farm because of its organic and "Salmon-Safe" certifications, which offer him a market advantage. Still, many other farmers need help if they are to undertake conservation efforts on their land. But since 2002, the USDA's CSP (then called the Conservation Security Program) has been limited to just a handful of watersheds across the country each year. Furthermore, farmers in those eligible watersheds could only enroll at certain times, and the funding level for the program was capped at an average of $132 million per year. Stout is optimistic about these new policy changes, which he believes will encourage more farmers to adopt conservation measures on their land. He plans to apply to participate in the new CSP when he becomes eligible and hopes his neighbors will, too. "Federal policy is sometimes hard to change," he acknowledges, "but these are good steps." While the increased funding level for the CSP was mandated in the Food and Farm Bill, it may be at risk in future budget debates. UCS will be following those debates closely to ensure that money intended for CSP and other important farm conservation programs isn't cut. All images in this installment of Green Cuisine (except where noted in slideshow) courtesy of Claire Bloomberg/Bloomberg Photography | |||
