New Creative Solutions :: Underutilized Property

In 2010, before leaving San Francisco, I made an informal pitch to members of the mayors team at the department of planning. In the project outline, I made the case that, in lieu of letting lots under city ownership remain vacant until such a time as developers would invest in them, that the city reorganize the lots into public allotments, both to beautify neighborhoods, answer an increasing city interest for which there was little infrastructure (allotment gardens), and be able to accure a degree of income from their utility (in annual fees, and pending some of the lots tossed around, actual taxable revenue from wholesale businesses started in larger plots). The plan never saw the light of day -- this was during the first round of the budget woes in California, and the seed money would never materialize, though now the city is revamping and expanding the garden allotment program through now-Mayor David Chu's offices due to increased demand and long waiting lists.

This theme was met again today when I surveyed several properties with a team just outside New York City. The city in question has 13 sites that are underutilized -- and by that they mean they own the properties, but they are no being used in any official capacity, or in capacities where they are not being used to full capability. Whether a gas station, a house, or an old armory, the city is responsible for the property, gains no taxes on them, and typically has to appeal to outside capital to fund projects, especially in this era of budget tightening and lacking access to tax revenues. These properties can range from being in fully functional, well maintained states to falling apart and in need of immediate attention, which can increase the costs of development due to hightened environmental cleanup & construction costs. 

This increased cost plan oftentimes prices out smaller community groups, which in turn leaves the cost and the eventual ownership of the space firmly in the hands of firms with the capital to invest in these places. Short of some very benevolent groups or aggressive community benefit agreements, development of these previous public spaces tend to become highly commercialized, privatized spaces for those with the income to access them (and usually located in geographies that have populations with low income access -- see Emeryville, CA). These properties oftentimes come with multi-year tax abatements, rendering them free of property taxes, on average 10-15 years, nullifying their immediate effect on the communities they occupy; in turn, the jobs created on these sites tend to be part-time, minimum wage, with a tendency for lacking in upward mobility.

The urge for cities to develop properties is a necessary one, and indeed, seeking organizations that can do so is necessary in these times of government austerity. But it's folly to think that capital intensivity is the only way; in cities across the country, we've seen examples of community organizations and others taking part-time use of derelict properties and using them for a portion of proceeds. Little City Farms and Hayes Valley Farm serve as two good examples; so too does the organization 596 Acres in Brooklyn, which doesn't preclude uses other than agriculture for the intended greening of underutilized, city-owned land. All benefit their geographies visually (by clearing blights, potential infestation sites, and beautifying) as well as economically (producing businesses or utilizing local businesses as vendors) and socially (by providing a net community benefit of green spaces and, as Hayes Valley had proven to do, help buffer property values from price drops during the the an overall decline in SF during its tenure in that space). In terms of pure tax revenue, the measures of these organizations is less than might be brought in through larger-scale commercial or real estate development; but in terms of scalability, access, and the non-fungible returns (i.e. greened spaces, expansion of public spaces, community health, removal of blight etc) the attribution of underutilized sites by community-based organizations tend to make for better returns for the city, all while empowering citizens groups to be more engaged in their neighborhoods. Benefits are retained within a community, and indeed, income from the community is reinvested into its own development, rather than being expropriated and returned to a larger commericial mothership.

Make no mistake: I believe in the power of business to improve local communities. But defining business as scalable, effective, responding to community needs, and indeed, local in its ownership and orientation are necessary remedies to the notion that commercial development writ large is of innocuous harm to local communities or economic development. Municipalities need to be creative in the ways they choose to contend with property development, as the unintended consequences of private development have had, in many cases, a seriously deleterious effect on actual communities (and indeed, even the measures used to rectify those conditions, like community benefit agreements, have a questionable return in terms of being effective). It's time for policy to be disruptive in its orientation, looking for alternate solutions, creative solutions, for dealing with the materials and resources cities do have in their toolkits, to better solve and implement concerted, comprehensive policy plans that deal in scalable, real time returns for communities and taxpayers, not simply the perception of better returns for the city as an amorphous concept. 

Community Suppported Agriculture

So this year is the first time I have ever joined a community-supported agriculture (CSA) scheme. For those unfamiliar, CSA's are basically a pay-it-forward way of farmers and consumers coming together in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Members pay for the duration of a season up front (sometimes a few months, sometimes year round; in our case, it runs approximately 20 weeks, and we started early), and in return, they get a weekly collection of fruits, vegetables, and whatever other accoutrements the farm might specialize in (some CSA's offer wool shares from sheep, others feature bread-shares and coffee shares from local bakeries and roasters). This gives the farmer the advantage of having capital up-front that can be used throughout the season for improvements and other projects; it also acts as a form of insurance, in the event of crop loss. Customers get a good end insofar as the rate for CSA's tends to run lower than the price of buying a la carte from the farmers markets, and usually they share in bounty -- if it's a particularly good year, they can obtain more product, and in bad years, sometimes less. That is the trade of the CSA -- customers are paying it forward in the hopes of supporting a farmers work. But farmers cannot control nature, and if Mother Nature chooses not to cooperate, the farmer can get hurt -- even get put out of the game by a single bad season. CSA's work to reduce that harm by giving farmers a certain degree of financial security, and the ability to install improvements that can even prevent or reduce environmental damage to crops. 

This might leave one wondering what this means for customers, as they appear to be getting the raw end of what could be a very short stick. The key to remember is that a CSA is, at its core, an investment in community and in a series of practices. When you shop at a supermarket, your income goes towards reinforcing and paying for a series of agricultural and labor practices, processing and commercial practices you might not actually agree with. Your purchases pay companies whose profit motive, largely, takes income out of your state, your local economy, and puts it back into a series of investments that may support projects you do not agree with (remember our chat last week about multiplier effects). CSA's turn that on its head, the community supporting the farmer and acknowledging that they are investing in him to do what he does best -- ostensibly the very things that the community of consumers themselves want.

Sometimes the community becomes more than just consumers, but actual co-producers; some CSA's have volunteer days and hours, optional and required, as part of the membership. Sometimes value-added activities, like making jam with overstock fruit or participating in barn-raising parties, become part of the involvement. In this case, community supported agriculture becomes about more than just procuring produce or investments, it is actually a community-generating relationship, bringing together people around shared values, convivia, and perhaps even the organizing around shared issues that all parties might not have been aware of before. All this, plus the money kept in the community by placing their money in a nearby farm, all have positive consequences on and for the community, writ-large. 

We paid $390 for ~20 weeks of produce -- about 20/week, give or take, that also includes a weekly dozen eggs, and a weekly batch of fruit (not delivered in the first drop, sadly). One pound of lettuces, some kohlrabi, a half bound of chard, a bunch of radishes, a head of lettuce, a couple heads of garlic & stalks, and a pound of garlic scapes plus eggs came in the first batch. Not a bad sell for the season. I'll be updating periodically with the stories about this adventure, as well as raising questions about it to boot. Later this month, I'll be delivering a paper on CSA's for The Association for the Study of Food and Society conference, detailing some of the demographic points and reasons people participate in them.

If any readers are members of CSA's or curious about them, we'd actually be interested in hearing about it. Drop a line in the comment box if you have been, are in, dropped out of, or are curious about CSA's. We'd look forward to hearing about it (especially cases where you dropped out of one). For those interested in checking one out near their home, check out the Local Harvest website here. It's a bit late to start a season, but it shouldn't stop you from investigating a CSA, or other options for local foods in your community. 

The La Boulange Sale: Or, an End of Multiplier Effects

La Boulange Hayes Valley, photo courtesy of Inside Scoop

News broke yesterday that SF-based bakery-chain La Boulange had sold to Starbucks for a cool $100 million. While it appears that this deal may have been in the works it still comes as something of a surprise, and a disappointing one. 

See, while I never particularly appreciated La Boulange (their baked goods are only alright, and their coffee is about the same), I did enjoy the fact that they supplied jobs and reinvested in the SF Bay Area. Their coffee came from a respectable local roaster, and they were known for supporting any number of local nonprofits, institutions, and food pantries. Most important, though, is that in keeping their profits reinvested locally, they did a boon for multiplier effects in SF, assisting real economic growth, the tax base, and the like. 

Now that's no more. With the company being directly owned by Starbucks Corp, any profits derived by the company now head into the general reinvestment of all names and brands owned by the company. While it is still uncertain, local contracts for coffee or other services may be annulled to be given to in-house vendors, hitting companies and vendors they had been using particularly hard (due to their scope in the local market). It also will hit the neighborhoods -- Noe & Hayes Valley in particular -- because suddenly theres a very national presence in the neighborhood that didn't exist before, reducing novelty and perhaps undercutting other businesses (as landlords can project the ability of other corporate clients to pay higher rents in the area). 

Perhaps most importantly, this story is the telling one of any company seeking "growth". A number of recent investments, acquisitions and buy-outs of particular small-scale/growing companies is yielding uncertainty about how dedicated they will be to any number of factors -- their customer base, their suppliers, or in the cases I'm more familiar with, their coffee farmers and quality of roasting. And having investigated and seen a number of acquisitions over time, its very easy to be skeptical; unlike Silicon Valley tech acquisitions and mergers, food & beverage acquisition, especially where the organic / local / sustainable food movement is concerned, has attempted to grow and present alternatives to the supply chain and production models of mainstay agriculture; ingredients & supply chains, unlike code and programmers, are not simply one-sided inputs. And to see La Boulange move in that direction is another strike against this type of growth*.

*A note, again: Growth takes a lot of forms, and indeed, the difficulty of monetizing effectively to reach goals for growth are very difficult, especially in the agriculture and food markets of today. That said, creative growth has worked in a number of cases, and there are still regional & national brands who managed to do so while not sacrificing the values and very material benefits they provided when they were smaller. It behooves all small businesses and people planning sustainable-ag related projects to think in business terms; we need to grow and become more accessible so that we become the mainstream/the mainstream moves to us/whatever. But to simply let go or give leeway to investors for whom profit motive is the first and primary consideration does no help for anyone, least of all the people who got you there. 

Politics vs. "Good Food" :: On How Politics is Part of Slow Food, Better & Worse

Over the weekend, it was dropped that Josh Viertel, the leader of Slow Food USA, was stepping down after three-odd years in his leadership position. While the release from the organization lists an amicable split, those of us watching the organization the last several years have noted in recent months the very public contention between members of the organization who have been involved with SFUSA since its inception, and their public disagreement with Mr. Viertel's methods, focus on food justice issues, and accusations of mismanagement from the Brooklyn-based national office. Issues of mismanagement (and the oddball accusations about boastful twitter numbers) aside, what has been particularly noted is the notion that Slow Food USA, under Mr. Viertel's leadership, has become a political organization.

For a bit of historical background: Slow Food International, which began in Italy, was started by a group of Italian Communist Party members dissatisfied with the fact that the national party was not particularly keen on convivial and tasty eating (something that stood in the face of Italian culture, and by their minds, a little too close to institutionally minded capitalism for their liking). The group itself culminated when McDonald's attempted to open its first location right in front of the Spanish Steps in Rome; the group organized a protest out front, using traditional Roman and Tuscan foods & ingredients, prepared by people whose kitchens were around the Steps, supplying free food and conversation to hundreds of passers by and participants. The organization has ben a combination of advocacy organization, educator, and marketing board, doing everything from promoting specific foods and regional tastes (Ark of Taste), advocating against and educating citizens about GMO's and corporate consolidation of agriculture, and using its local chapters to organize around foodstuffs particular to their foodshed and bringing those together (Tierra Madre). Chapters now exist across the world, with the American version of the organization having come to fruition in 2000, now having over 250,000 members in the United States and 255 active chapters across the country. 

To be clear, there's always been a distinction between the US and the European chapters of Slow Food; Italy, France, Spain all have government bodies dedicated to local food manufacture and methodology regulation, as well as bodies within the European Union that also document, regulate, and promote specific regional and local food products (as imperfect as they might be). The AOC system, the DOCG system, and the European Protected Designation of Origin registries all interact and precipitate a food culture that promotes regional and local food products. In France especially, the notion of the paysan is still a strong cultural norm that, if not outright glorifying the work of farmers, pays respect to it. Slow Food in these countries can be simply a promoting agency because of the fact that political institutions support still-existing cultural foodways. 

In the United States, no such equivalent exists. While the EU is not immune to issues of agricultural consolidation or the push of globalized food procurement, cultural foodways and the types of producers who support them have never had a long lineage in the United States. Those that have, over the course of the last 100 years, have been steadily undermined by national-level agricultural policy, regulations that give nods to larger-scale production models, and food & nutrition strategies that favor the development of calories or completely nonsensical qualitative standards over biodiversity, ecological or nutritive benefit, or cultural affinity. The regulatory environment as well as the supply chain are rigged against the type of food systems that allow for regional and local production to occur in a sustainable matter, be that economically, socially, or ecologically. And in most cases, up until very recently, the American public neither cared, nor gave much concern for those issues. 

It is in this case that the argument about the "politics" of Slow Food become somewhat pernicious, because in order to do the work that makes "good food", there has to be an element of politics, at least in the present. The concept of "voting with your dollar" falls short, because due to the expectations of consumers, the lacking education in the market, and the behind-the-scenes sorts of structural and institutional shortfalls that greet "good food", simply buying it does little for those who have little money to begin with. And as with paysans, most food culture that exists doesn't come from people with money -- it's been borne out of and created by necessity, geographic context, and individual agency. Slow Food International, and specifically its European counterparts, has had the luxury of variously supportive organizations and institutions that have facilitated and assisted its mission of bringing "the pleasures of food with the commitment to the environment and community" together; the US has no such institutions or advantages, and over the last 60 years specifically, an aggressive degradation of the institutional memory of the food cultures it does possess. 

By simple virtue of history, SFUSA was inevitably going to be a different organization, and hopefully, in time, it can be simply an organization dedicated to "just good food". But until such a time as the structural and institutional issues that suppress everyone in the food chain -- from farmers to eaters, processors and everyone in-between -- are rectified, SFUSA is better for being an advocacy organization that promotes good food, for everyone, not just those with the ability to afford the access to it*.

*A note: some have claimed this issue of food justice isn't workable with the type of promotion SFUSA was doing before, re: Ark of Taste. I call foul on these points. The point is that there are a multiplicity of ways that SFUSA can be involved with projects of food justice, biodiversity, and promoting economic viability and sustainability in agriculture. I think farmers can be paid a fair wage for producing spectacular, culturally-specific crops; I also think that lower-income communities should have a connection with them, either through growing it themselves, or initiatives that link the two. These are not incongruous goals, and neither prevents the enjoyment of good food. SFUSA, pushing forward, I hope to be able to do this, and empowering local chapters to be able to pursue the routes best for their particular places and memberships. 

The Ever Elusive "Taste of Place".

A note from Terroir during it's Summer of Riesling celebrations. Photo courtesy of Brunello's Have More FunWhen I first named this blog, I was inspired by the use of term "terroir" upon the illustrious and often long-winded menus of Paul Grieco at Terroir Wine Bar. Paul establishes a sense of terroir through assembling wine lists that are not only comprehensive and speak to particular vintners, wine growers and brewers with a particular point of view, but also include delicious screeds about things like street fairs, the USDA, or Real Madrid football. In this sense, terroir is being built two ways -- there is a distinguishable quality to the space, the idea, and the format of what Terroir Wine Bar encapsulates, but also represents something with an undeniable sense of self.

This cuts to the core of the issue surrounding the definition of terroir -- a concept often misunderstood, misrepresnted, or largely ignored. Terroir is, largely, a recent term -- while the first sensations of the term begin as far back as Apicious and various Classical & Renaissance scholars and epicures, the word itself does not arrive until the late 1800's by the work of geographer Maurice Edmond Sailland, nee Curonsky, who utilized the notion of of various regionalized culinary traditions in his magnum opus Le tresor gastronomique du France. In the book, Curonsky lionizes the various foodways of Frances regions, and in conjunction with the nascent French auto industry (for its Bibendum publication, precursor to the Michelin guides) of its time, began to set aside day trips for Parisian and other urban middle classes to explore the culinary diversity of France, digging into the nostalgia of places from which those middle classes may have originated. Over time, this concept evolved as an economic development tool, leading to the creation of the Institute National des Appelations d'Origine in 1905, the organization that even today manages the regulation of the AOC system in France. 

From this place, we get the start of what defined official designations of terroir; soil, ecology, environment, and process. By wine standards, and even as far as food from the regions, the Appelation system concerns itself largely from the environmental & biological, looking at longstanding traditions (do communities have a history of making this wine or cheese), generally widespread utility of crop or foodstuff (is it grown widely or consumed widely by the community), shared process (are wines or cheeses made the same way using the same name). The matrix is quite simple: the minerals and content of the soil, going back millenia, interact with the rootstock of particular varieties of wine grapes, or grow the grass that become the fodder for cattle. The weather of a specific year the general ecology of these places interplay, and the handling of the products in processing, along with those two variables, produce the vintage. This collection -- soil, plant varietal, weather, ecology, and processing -- forms the basis of what the INAO would call "terroir"

In some regions, communities will oftentimes define terroir by an additional aspect, the social character of the geography. This has been best characterized by l'affair Mondavi, where the California winemaker Robert Mondavi was prevented from setting up a winery in Southern France, mostly on the contention by the local community that the property he was seeking to develop was essential to the "terroir" of the village itself. The property Mondavi was seeking to purchase was used as both a hiking, hunting, and foraging preserve as well as a waterway & a windbreak for the village for many generations, and was held in trust by the city. Many in the village made the case that development of the land would remove an essential character of the region, its people, and indeed its ecology & environment. 

While not commonly held, this last note of the social nature of terroir perhaps best captures what many organizations determine as "the taste of place". Outside of the wine world, especially where groups like Tierra Madre or The Ark of Taste are concerned, "cultural appropriateness" plays a part in what constitutes the terroir of a product. Simply because McDonald's has become traditional in certain environments does not make it part of what is culturally, ecologically, or otherwise attuned to a space; there's a context to be considered. To groups like this, which also have a strong connectivity to locavores, bioregionalists, and foodshed developers, talk about the ecological knowledge, the know-how to grow, prepare, and execute certain dishes, and stlyes of eating. These types of assessments of terroir come from the same people who'll tell you why you can't find Pekin-style duck in Sichuan, or why most Scandiavian breads are ryes instead of white flour (or perhaps, why it's inappropriate to think of making Italian-style loaves in Scandinavia). 

What's best to walk away with from this synopsis are a few key things. One, terroir is not an exact science. Two, it is highly regulated by both social norms (in unofficial capacities) or by regulatory agencies (in institutional capacities). Three, it is recent, though it must be noted that the idea certainly is part of what makes things "traditional" or "authentic" to a place; indeed, it's this last point that should be readily considered when we talk about "the taste of place". And lastly, it is more about knowledge than about taste or flavor. The idea behind anything terroir-based is on its face a notion of preserving, encouraging, and promoting longstanding traditions and ways of making things; it is about not cutting corners, and more explicitly about why one shouldn't cut corners.

Perhaps famous in this regard are the Canauliers of Bordeaux, the bakers of the canale, specifically the AOC-protected Canale de Bordeaux. For these gentlemen (as yes, it is only men who can be Canauliers), the creation of these little cakes is a tradition spanning back at least 300 years. Made in copper molds coated with beeswax, the cakelets have an indeliable crispness of texture on the exterior, with a custardy interior just barely cooked through, these cakelets are a symbol of the region. The molds they are made from replciate the shape of Roman guard towers, and the types of ingredients called for in canele de Bordeaux -- rum, vanilla, and butter/milk -- mark its connectivity to older trade routes (it was Frances port for West Indies imports), the dairy known on the Atlantic seaboards, and lingering Anglo influences in the Aquitaine. Only cakes made from those conditions can be called Canale de Bordeaux, which is why you have so many impersonators, mostly made in silicone molds and discounting the rum, which are soft, chewy but not toothsome, and without the characteristic flavors of dark sweetness made from the caramelization on copper. Its a different thing. Sure you can have the item in question, but does it speak the same language?

Which brings us back, oddly, to Paul Grieco. See, Paul continues to serve wines, in his idiosyncratic style, from equally precocious and idiosyncratic producers of some of the best places around. His bars, like the wines he's selected, reflect the place of their mooring -- his East Village bar is a far cry from the Murray Hill shop, one speaking to the intimate, enclosed & raucus spaces of the Village, the other designed for a more genteel, timid crew. He builds his menus to suit both his spaces and his crowds and his wine selection. All of these lead to a place that has its own terroir, at least in my definition -- it's a place that shows thoughtfulness, a point of view, and an ecology of design with the intention of promoting one thing: the wines. And if the wines Paul serves are indicator, you're getting Terroir from the minute you walk in the door to the last sip in your glass.