Meet Our 25 Farms team! (part 1)

Greetings from your 25 Farms dietitian! I am so excited to be a part of the 25 Farms family and to travel this journey of wellness and sustainability with you. 

Let me take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Leah, and I am a native Texan, born and raised in Wichita Falls. Nutrition became an interest for me at an early age, and I knew I wanted to spend my career helping people improve their nutrition. I attended college at Abilene Christian University, where I studied Food, Nutrition and Dietetics. After graduating in 2003, I headed west to Denver to complete a dietetic internship with Tri-County Health Department. There I got my first true taste of what poor nutrition looks like. Upon completion of my internship, I went to work in a diabetes education center. My last 9 years have been spent practicing as a dietitian in the Denver area, specializing in diabetes and weight management. I currently work for the Department of Veterans Affairs MOVE program, a weight management program for veterans.

Why am I passionate about 25 Farms? Because I am passionate about vegetables and want to see Americans increase our consumption of vegetables. In 2009, only 26.5% of adults in the US ate 3 or more servings of vegetables per day. Why are vegetables so important? According to the CDC, they can reduce the risk of many leading causes of death and play an important role in weight management. With heart disease as the leading cause of death and adult obesity rates currently at 37.5% (1 out of every 3 adults) in the US, we need some serious changes, and increased vegetable consumption is one much needed change.

How does 25 Farms play a role in increasing vegetable consumption? We provide fresh, great-tasting produce delivered to your door for the same price (in many cases, even less) than you would pay to drive to the grocery store and purchase lesser-quality products. In addition, you are supporting a local farmer and utilizing a sustainable model of farming.

I am excited about this adventure and look forward to our journey together! Please do not hesitate to contact me with questions or ideas!

What makes 25 Farms so special? Part 3: Stale Kale is King in the Land of the Rotten

The average grocery store's produce is about a week old before it is available for sale in the store.

Let me rephrase that:  Those leafy greens which you're eating in the "Fresh Produce" section are at LEAST a week old, but could even be three weeks old at higher end grocery stores.  On average they've traveled 1,500 miles to reach your grocery store.  They've been touched and transported by dozens of people, and likely have been picked up by bunches (statistical term) of customers wondering if it's still "fresh". Do I need to bring up the gross things which customers accidentally can do to produce just sitting out in the air? You don't think the sneeze guard at a salad bar is there for decoration, do you? 

But let's get real and talk about the state of my produce.  In my home state of Colorado, leafy greens travel from countries like Mexico, Canada, Guatemala, Peru, Israel, Chile, and the Netherlands to reach me. In 2009 alone, the US imported over 115 million dollars worth of lettuce from these countries, with 95% of it being Iceberg Lettuce which has about the same amount of nutrients as a candy bar.  I'm left with a few questions, one of which is "Why?". Why go through all this hassle just to get something which is flavorless and lacks nutrition?  

When "fresh" produce takes a week on average to get to the grocery store, what does fresh really mean?  Am I really expected to believe that the "mister" on top of the produce keeps it fresh? I can put a saddle on a dead horse, but that isn't going to make it ridable, so am I expected to believe that just because my lettuce is wet, somehow its fresh and still growing weeks after it's been picked? Let's get real, what word do we use for fresh when it's actually fresh? We can't just keep putting the word "ultra" in front of words to mean what they should already mean. Ultra-local, ultra-fresh, ultra-valuable, ultra-sustainable--this is a getting ultra-out-of-control.  If organic has to be USDA approved as organic, when will be ask farmers to keep to the same standard of "Fresh". I've even seen fast food campaigns using the word now. That's almost as ridiculous as cigarette campaign using the word "healthy".

My rule for buying fresh produce is simple: It's fresh if I can buy it the same day it's picked at peak ripeness.  Simple.  This is how we historically have eaten over the years. Our ancestors all the way back to when we were hunters and gatherers ate this way: they saw fruit hanging on a tree, they picked it, and then ate it. Simple. They reached down to the ground and pulled up fresh lettuce, and didn't wait a week to eat it, but ate it within a few hours after being harvested. It's not rocket science; this is caveman behavior. So why is it nearly impossible for me to go to the store these days in the 21st century and get the same level of fresh produce that people enjoyed in 100,000 BC before they had doors and windows in their caves?

Are ancient standards of freshness too high for the 21st century? When did access to running water, electricity, flight, plumbing, and the internet prevent us from eating fresh leafy greens?  Shouldn't we have technology which makes it possible for us to grow healthy produce and distribute it to people while it's still fresh? 

The truth is, fresh produce is possible.  All we have to do is want it, and it almost magically appears at our front doors.

Here are some of my reasons for wanting fresh produce:

1) It tastes better. The fresher produce is, the tastier we think it is. Unlike good wine, produce doesn't get better with age.

2) Fresh produce encourages local farms. You can't provide fresh leafy greens from around the world. If it's going to be fresh, it's going to have to be local.

3) Fresh produce decreases emissions. Grocery store refrigerators and freezers which slow down the process of food decomposing are the largest single cause of a store's greenhouse gas emissions and their biggest source of energy expenditures. Not to mention the emissions caused by the various vehicles that bring produce from far away.

4) Nutritionally, leafy greens begin to lose vitamins and nutrients as soon as they are picked.

5) Inexpensive fresh produce changes the food system. It provides people with a reasonable alternative from unhealthy processed food which is a major cause of obesity.

It's the 21st century, it's time we wake back up to eating fresh local food. 

What makes 25 Farms so special? Part 2: Living La Vida Local

There are lots of interesting marketing campaigns out there, but the one I get a real kick out of is the local produce campaign from Walmart. Over the last few years, produce prices have increased with diesel prices because the average item of produce travels 1,500 miles to arrive at your local grocery store. In an effort to save money by reducing miles, Walmart is now selling what it's marketing as local produce to customers. But according to a recent New York Times article, Walmart defines local produce as something grown in the same state. When did “anywhere in the state” come to mean local?

My state of Colorado is the 8th largest state in America at about 100,000 square miles. It’s bigger than Ireland and 178 other countries. And yet Walmart's standard of anywhere-in-the-state lets them market local produce to any town in Colorado (imagine how ridiculous this is in Texas, Alaska, and California.) That means…if you live in Ft Collins and buy something grown in Durango 400 miles away, it’s local, but if it’s grown over the border in Cheyenne, Wyoming, almost 50 miles away, it’s not local. I wouldn't call something made in Boston local when I'm selling it 400 miles away in Baltimore. Baltimore residents don't cheer for the New England Patriots, and Bostonians don't cheer for the Baltimore Ravens. Likewise, I don't see the point of cheering for Walmart's local farm when it is not actually local.

If state lines define "local," then what word do we use when produce really is local? That is, when I can quickly drop by the farm before or after work, when I hang out with the farmers on the weekends, when it produces local jobs in my neighborhood, when it pays local taxes, when it provides learning events for my kids to attend?

Produce is exempt from sales tax, and Colorado farms are exempt from the estate tax, so when a head of lettuce is grown across the state in some distant county, it has very little impact on my neighborhood. Most of the taxes it generates are spent in the county where it was produced, so its impact on my community is equivalent to that of a head of lettuce grown in California or Arizona. When you include the wear and tear on my town’s roads that result from large trucks hauling in produce, and the pollution that comes with these trucks, the net impact is probably negative. Farmers who grow produce 400 miles away aren't local job creators, local taxpayers, local residents, or giving members of the local community. So would someone tell me why Walmart considers them and their products local?

Local is not just a marketing gimmick or a way to save gas money; instead it is the only way to make fresh produce possible. 25 Farms will prove it.

What makes 25 Farms so special? Part 1

If we're pressed, we have to admit that 25 Farms isn't special. What it does, anyone could choose to do. All of its food is produced locally, grown sustainably, sold inexpensively, is available to all sorts of people, and is profitable. And yet, 25 Farms is the only one of its kind in America. We are the only produce provider in the country whose produce is gourmet, grown ultra­-locally, harvested and delivered in the same day to customers' homes, with 100% of net profits funding a nonprofit organization which helps feed hungry children, ALL for the same price of lower­-quality grocery store produce.

"Special" isn't the right word to describe 25 Farms. The best word to describe 25 Farms is "ridonculous". The word implies that something is so special, it appears as ridiculous and beyond belief, and is only capable of being expressed in a word which speaks of its paradox of being real and also too much for the imagination. It is the word for that moment when you just­-can't­-make­-that­-stuff-up; when you see a bear on a unicycle pedaling down the interstate; when the shot-­at­-the­-buzzer is made from beyond half­court­­; well, you get the idea.

25 Farms would already be special if it only provided some of the things which it does, but it gives customers more than they could have ever hoped for. Gourmet produce by itself is an incredible feat, but to provide it at the same cost as lower-quality produce is unheard of. Growing locally is admirable, but growing lettuce in the middle of a Colorado winter is seemingly impossible. Eating fresh produce is awesome, but eating it within hours of its being harvested sounds crazy when most grocery stores still call things "fresh" after they sit there for weeks at a time. Delivering this gourmet experience for $25 to someone's home is just plain nuts. $25 doesn't even cover the pizza and tip for the pizza delivery guy for one's nights meal, the meal that took longer to arrive than it would take to make something mind-blowing from scratch with produce from a 25 Farms Delivery.

At some point 25 Farms goes from being special to being ridonculous. This a blog series for people to decide for themselves at what point 25 Farms becomes ridonculous to them. In a broken global food system, businesses like 25 Farms shouldn't exist, and yet, it. is. here.