Local Foods Memo - Farmers' Markets: Farmers' Market Season is Fast-Approaching

Customers line the vendor stalls at the popular farmers' market in the small city of Sonora in Northern California's Gold Country foothills region. It's a social market as well as a farmers' market. [Photo courtesy of ianandwendy.com.]

Farmers market season is fast approaching in the U.S., as well as elsewhere in North America and the world.

The end of March and first of April marks the opening (although some have already opened) of thousands of farmers markets throughout the U.S., where local farmers and other food purveyors sell their fresh produce and artisan foods directly to consumers.

The farmers' market season is part of spring, that time of renewal in all things lifestyle.

The farmers' market movement in the U.S. has been growing super-fast over the last decade, and even picking up more steam in just the last few years, as new open-air markets open in cities, suburbs and small towns throughout America. There are thousands of farmers markets operating in the U.S. today.

What makes farmers' markets a unique format for fresh produce and artisan-specialty-natural foods retailing are essentially five key elements:

>In most cases the vendors grow all of the produce they sell at the markets. In states like California and a number of others, "state certified" farmers' markets exist in which all of the sellers must also be the growers. Non-growers-sellers can sell at non-certified farmers' markets but consumers like the certified markets because it ensures they are buying directly from the farmer.

>Most of the fresh produce sold at farmers' markets in the U.S. is "locally grown," coming from a distance of generally no more than about 100 miles from the market location.

>Organic fruits and vegetables abound. Since many of the growers-sellers at farmers markets are on the cutting edge of farming, the fresh produce they offer is in many cases organically-grown. Much of it also is biodynamic. For many farmers who sell at the markets doing so is more about saving money by not buying chemical fertilizer, pesticides and fungicides than it is a marketing tool. It's also about being conservationists of their land.

>Price is generally good. The prices on both conventional and organic fresh produce at local farmers markets are generally as good or better than supermarket prices. Even in the cases when the prices are a bit higher, the value often is better because the produce tends to be fresher and of higher quality. There's also the added benefit of supporting local farmers.

>Farmers' markets are a social event. Farmers' markets allow consumers to get closer to the food they eat. As mentioned, most of the sellers at farmers' markets also are the growers. This allows for interaction between the farmers-vendors and consumers. Farmers' markets also provide a forum, centered around food, in which residents of a community can interact, visit and network. It's community at its best.

Since farmers' market season is fast-approaching, Natural~Specialty Foods Memo (NSFM) decided to search the web and choose a selection of stories and articles about farmers' markets in the U.S. (and one in the UK at the bottom of the list) for our readers. (We will have more about Canadian and UK farmers' markets in upcoming posts.)

Below are links to the articles we've selected. All of the stories are from March 17, 2009:

~Tampabay.com: Tampa farmers markets a boon for frugal food shoppers
~Seal Beach Daily: The beauty of buying local: fresh and fun at the new Seal Beach farmers market
~Valley Courier: Local flavor
~Vernon Morning star: Eating close to home
~California Farm Bureau magazine: Considering organics? Farmers offer advice on how to get started. And: Growth in organic food sales continues, at slower pace
~Boston Globe: Economy of scales
~Christian Science Monitor: Refugee job hopes wax and wane at farmers market
~Minneapolis City Pages: Great news from Chef Shack!
~Hobby Farms.com: Top 10 Ways to Support Agriculture
~WXII12.com: New Farmers Market To Open In Downtown Winston-Salem
~MPNNow.com: Farmers, families like veggie coupons
~Rural Northwest.com: Growing the Farmers' Market
~The Post-Standard: Farmers markets seminars coming up
~Richmond TimesFarmers market in western Henrico opens April 25
~United Kingdom: Liz Hurley to take up stall at Stroud Farmers' Market

Enjoy.

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo (NSFM) will be visiting a variety of farmers markets in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom in the upcoming spring and summer months, bringing first-person reports about local foods' selling and buying, along with photographs, to the Blog. Stay tuned.

Food Retailing Innovation Memo: Innovative Combination Retail Food Market and Urban Farm Set to Open in New Orleans LA USA Neighborhood

New Orleans' Hollygrove market and urban farm is set to open in January, 2009

Educational garden and market hope to regrow Hollygrove neighborhood
By Judy Walker

Food editor, The Times-Picayune - New Orleans
November 10, 2008

Once the site of Guillot's Nursery in New Orleans, LA USA, the Hollygrove Market and Farm is set to start selling local produce in January.

The site of the former Guillot's Nursery will become the Hollygrove Market & Farm, a self-sustaining nonprofit store selling local produce and an education center for urban farming, organizers announced last week.

The Carrollton-Hollygrove Community Development Corp. and New Orleans Food & Farm Network will develop and operate the market on the one-acre site at 8301 Olive St. It is expected to open in January; the first cover crop to build the soil in the teaching garden already is sprouting.

Hollygrove community member Michael Beauchamp lives nearby and is a volunteer who has been with the program about three months.

"I'm a first-time gardener, and I'm loving it," Beauchamp said. "It's a cost savings. There are lower transportation costs. I can eat healthy and probably add years to my life. And I can plant my garden and come here and sell the extra."

The concept sprang from the Carrollton-Hollygrove Community Development Corp., a neighborhood organization formed to encourage rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. The group wanted to address the long-standing lack of access to fresh fruits and vegetables in the
Hollygrove-Gert Town-Fountainbleau area.

Paul Baricos, the group's executive director, said they saw the Guillot's property and realized it would be perfect., They partnered with NOFFN, which was looking for a place to train farmers in organic certification, to "grow the growers" to meet the huge demand for local food.

"We'll operate the store," Baricos said, providing community jobs, "and (NOFFN) will train four to six people at a time. We hope to .¤.¤. focus on locally grown foods. But there's not that much grown in New Orleans. We canvassed rural farms within 100 miles, and we will buy from farms in south Louisiana and southern Mississippi. So it will be seasonal."

The market also hopes to sell to chefs, schools and weekend markets, he added.

NOFFN executive director Kris Pottharst said the partnership "is looking at it as not only fresh food but economic development. One purpose is to highlight the neighborhood as a desirable place to live. This will provide one of the sought-after amenities that is mentioned by all neighborhood groups as to how they want to rebuild their neighborhood after the storm."
Pottharst said the lease on the property was effective in September, and includes the 5,000-square-foot main building that will house the market. The second floor will be used for offices, classrooms and neighborhood meeting space.

Demonstration plots will be placed along the outside fence, in direct sight lines of the Carrollton Boosters sports fields across the street. A salvaged hoop house will be used to grow seedlings. Donated fruit trees have been planted. Tulane City Center, the outreach program of the Tulane University architecture department, is creating an outdoor shade space and entrance arbor.

Among those attending Friday's announcement of the program was former NBA player Will Allen, who received a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant as founder of Growing Power Inc. in Milwaukee. Allen has become an international spokesperson for urban farming.

"I'm the son of a sharecropper," Allen said. "And I'm passing on what was passed on to me, in a different sort of way, with a community twist."

Retail Memo: Innovative Virginia Natural Grocer Ellwood Thompson's Local Market to Open New Store in Washington, DC USA in Fall 2009

Pictured above is an artist's rendering of the new Ellwood Thompson's Local Market natural grocery store to open next fall in Washington DC's Columbia Heights neighborhood. [Source: Elwood Thompson's Local market.]

Ellwood Thompson's Local Market, the largest independent natural grocery in Virginia, is expanding into the nearby Washington, DC market.

The currently single-store independent natural foods' retailer, which is now 20 years old, has signed a lease for a 15,000-square-foot store in the new DC USA development at 14th and Irving streets (the Columbia Heights neighborhood) in the U.S. capital city. The new store, the first in Washington, DC for the natural grocer, is scheduled to open next fall.

"We've been interested in the communities along (Washington D.C.'s) the 14th Street corridor as the home for our second store for quite some time," says Ryan Youngman of Ellwood Thompson's. "We walked the community and talked to the people. The overwhelming support we received from residents confirmed this is the perfect place to expand. Our commitment to environmental sustainability and conservation along with organics and clean local food is a perfect fit for these neighborhoods."

Putting an emphasis on locally-grown food and grocery products produced within a 100 miles of its current store in Richmond, Virginia has been a key point of competitive positioning and differentiation for the independent natural foods retailer. In fact Locavors, those consumers who try to purchase and eat only locally-produced foods, consider "local foods" those grown no more than 200 miles from where they live. Ellwood Thompson's does that official definition 100 miles better at its Richmond, Virginia store.

Natural and organic product offerings in the new Washington DC natural grocery store will include: naturopathic vitamins, supplements and personal care, products; local produce; bulk foods; fresh meats and seafood; wine; cheeses; and fresh baked goods, according to Ryan Youngman.

Prepared foods from "Ellwood's Kitchen" will be led by award-winning chef and vegan cookbook author, Jannequin Bennett, according to the retailer.

"The prepared foods offerings will cater to intentional eaters as well as provide a variety of natural, organic, and ethnically diverse dishes. Those who elect to eat vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and/or raw foods will find plenty of options in all departments," Ryan Youngman says. Additionally, the store will offer in-store and outdoor community seating with wireless Internet available so customers can use their laptop computers and other wireless devices while they sit at the indoor or outdoor tables having coffee or eating.

Ellwood Thompson's also plans to extend the "green" retailing practices it currently has at its Richmond, Virginia store to its second store in Washington, DC when it opens next fall.

Those pro-environmental practices include offering store employees and shoppers incentives for conservation and recycling in the form of monetary "envirocredits" for walking, biking and mass transit and for reusing shopping bags, water and food containers. The independent natural products' retailer isn't anti-automobile though. It will offer free parking in an underground parking deck located below the new store.

Ellwood Thompson's is an innovative, independent natural foods retailer. You can read about some of its innovations, as well as its prepared foods offerings and other merchandising and operational aspects, at its store Blog here.

Who says Whole Foods Market is a barrier to new retail entry?

Even though Whole Foods Market, Inc. plans to increase its store count in Washington, DC (although no new stores are set to open in the district next year) from its current three units, as well as Maryland-based 5-store My Organic Market (MOM) getting set to open a store in Washington DC (its sixth store and first in the district), Ellwood Thompson's decision to put its second store in DC shows there's still room in such competitive markets for natural products' retailers who create points of differentiation like the independent natural grocer does with its local foods program and numerous other unique merchandising and operations practices.

It also shows, as we argue regularly in Natural~Specialty Foods Memo, that despite the continued folly of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)in claiming Whole Foods Market, Inc. is a monopolistic natural foods retailer (the FTC plans to hold a new hearing on the issue in February, 2009) post its acquisition of Wild Oats Markets, Inc. even though Whole Foods' stock took another beating last week and is now at least 55 -to- 60-% lower than it was when is acquired Wild Oats last year, reported a 40% drop in net income last quarter and laid off 42 headquarters employees last month, the marketplace says otherwise.

For example, Locally-based My Organic Market continues to expand in the market. Safeway Stores, Inc. plans to remodel its Georgetown neighborhood store, expanding it to about 60,000 square feet and adding thousands of new natural and organic products and numerous in-store prepared foods departments, using its expanded Lifestyle format which puts an emphasis on the natural, organic and specialty foods categories across all store departments. [One of Whole Foods' three DC stores is located in Georgetown.]

And of course innovative Ellwood Thompson's Local Market, which also offers specialty and gourmet food products along with natural and organic, now plans to build and open a brand new store in Washington DC. Rather than Whole Foods having a monopoly position in the Washington DC market, as well as is the case throughout the U.S., it's going to have to face even stiffer competition than it already has.

Washington DC is just one of the many examples of markets where independent multi-store natural products retailers such as Sprouts Farmers Market and Sunflower Farmers Market in the Western U.S., and other multi and single-store natural products retailers there and elsewhere, are challenging Whole Foods throughout the U.S. There's no Whole Foods Market, Inc. monopoly in the real world of main street.

Upscale supermarket chains are doing the same thing. Publix in Florida, Wegmans in New York, HEB and United Supermarkets' Market Street chain in Texas, Raley's in Northern California, Fresh Market in the South -- all of these supermarket chains and many more pose a competitive challenge to Whole Foods since their stores not only sell conventional groceries but put a major emphasis (and are designed similar to Whole Foods' stores) on natural, organic, specialty, gourmet and international food and grocery products, along with having a major focus on premium fresh, prepared foods.

Elwood Thompson's and DC's Columbia Heights

Ellwood Thompson's should find a warm reception when it opens its store in Washington DC's Columbia Heights neighborhood next fall. The neighborhood has lots of residents and the demographics are strong for natural and organic products retailing. [Whole Foods doesn't have a store in the neighborhood, nor is the DC My Organic Market store slated for the neighborhood.]

At 15,000 square feet the size and scale of the store also fits well into the neighborhood. It's big enough to be able to merchandise a strong multi-category offering but not so big so that it will look out of scale in the urban neighborhood.

The grocer's fresh, prepared foods offerings, along with the new store's indoor and outdoor seating with Wi-Fi, also should go over big in the neighborhood as it's residents like to spend time in neighborhood cafes and participate in urban street life.

Who knows, maybe even a U.S. Senator or two will stop by for some locally-produced fresh produce or one of Ellwood's ready-to-eat prepared foods dishes, along with offering a photo opportunity?

In fact, since it's true Michelle Obama likes buying natural and organic foods for her family, and has been known to shop at the Whole Foods Market store near where she and her husband, Democratic candidate for President Barack Obama, live in Chicago, Illinois, maybe if Senator Obama gets elected President in three weeks, he and the new first lady will do a little shopping at the new Washington DC Elwood Thompson's natural grocery store when it opens its doors next year in the capital city's Columbia Heights neighborhood?

The neighborhood isn't all that far from the White House -- especially if you have a car and driver at your disposal 24 hours a day and a secret service motorcade to speed up your trip to the store.

Retail Memo: Meet Waitrose's Two-Legged 'Hog Blogger'; He's An Integral Part of the UK Food Retailer's 'Save Our Bacon' Campaign

No, United Kingdom supermarket chain Waitrose's "Hog Blogger" isn't a real hog. But he is a real pig farmer, as well as being the upscale food retailer's chronicler of all things porcine on its website.

You might say Waitrose's "Hog Blogger" is the "whole hog." He's 33-year old Fergus Howie, a second generation pig farmer from the English countryside town of Essex.

About his recent debut as a blogger in February, 2008, second-generation pig farmer Howie says:

"I thoroughly enjoy pig farming, it's great fun. As a farmer, I take tremendous pride knowing my pigs have had a lovely life. Our Wicks Manor bacon is dry cured by hand and smoked over oak and beech - in my experience, people are happy to pay a little extra for good quality. I'm proud to be the Save Our Bacon hog blogger. Over the coming months I'll be sharing my tales of life on the farm and I look forward to hearing what you think." Waitrose stores feature the farmer's Wicks Manor bacon mentioned above.

The full-time hog farmer and part time Waitrose blogger is part of the supermarket chain's "origins of our food" policy and program. Under that policy, Waitrose has three principles regarding the foods--especially locally-produced food products--it sells in its 165 upscale food stores and supermarkets in the United Kingdom.

Those three principles are: knowing the provenance of the foods it sells in its stores; food traceability, not only knowing where it comes from but keeping track of its origins in a quantitative manner; and responsible sourcing, which the retailer says means buying locally-grown and produced products whenever possible, along with making sustainable and Fair Trade foods a priority in its procurement and merchandising practices.


When it comes to hogs and pork (bacon, sausage, chops), Waitrose has launched a local foods campaign called "Save Our Bacon," which is designed to save, protect and sustain the British hog farming industry, which has been challenged and threatened by a variety of factors like economics, urbanization, animal disease and the rise of cheaper imports of pork products to the UK.

The Waitrose "Save our Bacon" campaign and the retailer's policy of selling local pork products is where Waitrose's "Hog Blogger" comes in. The full-time hog farmer, part-time blogger, who's local hog farm supplies bacon and other pork products to Waitrose, posts once a week or so on his blog, depending we imagine on how busy he is on the hog farm. [Click here to read and learn all about the grocer's "Save our Bacon" local foods campaign.

Below is the "Hog Blogger's (who remember is a first-time blogger so be gentle) inaugural post when he kicked off the blog on February 20 of this year on the Waitrose website:

Life on the farm
Published: 20 February 2008 20:18:06

Hello this is my first ever blog so stick with me. I’m a pig farmer, Dad started the pig farm about 45 years ago, I was brought up with pigs and my brothers and I used to ride them as small children (Dad said it gave them exercise and would make them better mothers), it was a bit like bucking bronco, and you had to watch where you fell. Our pigs are all farm assured as you would expect, and live...

You can read the "Hog Blogger's" latest post titled, "Who's the Boss," along with all his others to date at the blog here.

Waitrose prides itself on personally knowing every British farmer who supplies local pork, beef, poultry, eggs and dairy products to the upscale supermarket chain.

In fact, all of the beef the grocer sells in its stores comes from British Farms, for example. All of the sausages sold in the stores also come from British farms. Waitrose's bacon comes primarily from UK farms but some comes from Denmark as well. You can read more about the grocer's meat procurement here.

Waitrose, which was founded as a single small grocery shop in west London in 1904 called Waite Rose & Taylor and has been owned by the John Lewis Partnership since 1937, also owns and operates its own farm, the 4,000 acre Leckford Estate,which supplies free-range hen eggs, honey, flour, apples, fresh mushrooms and much more to Waitrose stores.

This weekend, which is the back holiday in the UK, Waitrose is holding a food faire for local vendors and customers at its Leckford Estate. The grocer also conducts regular tours of the estate farm and has a shop on premises which sells fresh produce and other foods produced on the farm.

In terms of the "Save our Bacon" campaign, in addition to pig farmer and "Hog Blogger" Howie, Waitrose has built a strong coalition to move the campaign forward in the UK. The coalition includes celebrity chefs, foodies, farmers, politicians, food industry types and many others. [You can read a recent "Save the Bacon" campaign update from Waitrose here.]

The campaign's strategy is to build local consumer awareness around the issue of saving Britain's hog-raising industry, as well as to promote sales of local pork, and to create laws and policies which will sustain and grow local hog farming and related industries and businesses.

Waitrose regularly writes about the issue and campaign in its popular consumer magazine Waitrose Illustrated and even has a "Save our Bacon" pledge here online which consumers can sign. There's also a "piggy quiz" at the link, where you can test your "pig knowledge."

Meanwhile, pig farmer and "Hog Blogger" Fergus Howie's last blog post was May 14, which is nearly two weeks ago. In other words, the world's only full-time pig farmer/supermarket chain blogger of all things pig (or the whole hog) is due for a new post.

In fact, he's a little late, based on his normal schedule. However, we understand mid-to-late May is a busy time on the pig farm, so we understand.

But we do hope Fergus Howie can break away from his work with the real pigs, so that "Hog Blogger" fans like us, who miss "pigging out" on his posts about life on the pig farm, can get a fresh taste of his latest comings and goings about life on the farm.

To be honest though, we haven't eaten much pork since discovering and regularly reading the "Hog Blogger" blog in March.

Local Foods Retailing Memo: Sacramento, California-Based Raley's Supermarket Chain 'Doubling-Down' On its Local Foods Merchandising and Marketing

Sacramento, California-based family-owned regional supermarket retailing powerhouse Raley's is expanding it's already aggressive local foods merchandising and marketing programs in a number of ways, clearly visible in its stores and in it's multi-media advertising.

Among the increased local foods merchandising and marketing efforts the 129 store regional supermarket chain is making include:

>Labeling all foods grown or produced within a few hundred miles from its Sacramento, California base with eye-catching "locally-grown" and "locally-produced" shelf signs. This includes fresh produce, meats, perishables and dry grocery items, including natural, organic and specialty foods offerings.

>Labeling foods grown and produced in California, but farther than a few hundred miles away from its Sacramento base, with "Grown in California" shelf signage.

>Increasing the number of exclusive deals it signs with local farmers, buying the local growers' entire fresh produce crops, and touting the locally-grown fresh fruits and vegetables by building massive displays in store produce departments, running large front page ads for the local items in the retailer's weekly newspaper advertising circular, and often running full-page color ads in the major daily newspapers in the grocer's market regions featuring such local produce such as corn on the cob, strawberries, melons and other fruits and vegetables grown by local farmers.

Raley's contracts for the entire crop of a given grower (which can be expensive), which are grown by top-quality farmers, because locally-grown produce is now so popular in California that it gives the retailer a major competitive advantage to do so. It touts not only the local aspect of the fresh produce items, but the exclusivity to Raley's as well.

>Working closer with local natural, organic and specialty foods' producers and vendors by authorizing their local food and grocery products in the stores, promoting the local items more extensively, and partnering with the local producers at special events like community food fairs and charitable events designed to increase awareness and sales of locally-grown and produced food products.

>Creating more "local foods" in-store displays and cross merchandising the local items both by meal complementary merchandising techniques and by local region.

Offering locally-grown fresh produce at reasonable prices rather than doing what some food retailers do and selling them for a premium.

Conducting more frequent in-store local foods sampling events, often having numerous local foods producers, including farmers, do the tastings in the stores at the same time.

Raley's, which is the food and grocery sales market share leader in the Sacramento region market, and has stores under the Raley's, Bel-Air Markets, Nob Hill Foods and Food Source banners elsewhere in Central and San Joaquin Valley, north of Sacramento, in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Nevada, has long positioned itself--and is--as the local grocer, even though the chain has grown to 129 stores and nearly $4 billion in annual sales.

Along with its extensive--and increased--local foods merchandising and marketing commitment, the supermarket chain has a charitable foundation that gives millions of dollars to charities in Sacramento and the other Northern California regions where it operates stores.

In addition to the foundation, the corporation itself donates millions of dollars in cash and in-kind food donations to non-profit groups, charitable organizations and food banks and pantries throughout Northern California and Nevada.

The grocer also has a program in which customers can select a card in either $5, $10, or $20 amounts at each checkout lane as a way to make a donation to local food banks. Shoppers select the card while waiting to get checked out, give it to the store clerk as she rings up their purchases, the clerk scans the card, and the amount goes into a special account, 100% of which is donated to programs to feed the hungry. Raley's matches a portion of the total funds donated by customers each year.

Raley's also funded Sacramento's fairly new state-of-the-art baseball stadium for the city's super-popular Sacramento Rivercats minor league baseball team. The baseball stadium, called Raley Field, is packed every night during the season with families who as far as they are concerned believe the local minor league team is every bit as enjoyable to watch as a major league baseball team is.

Raley's runs all sorts of promotions in conjunction with the team and stadium. The grocer also gives out hundreds of tickets during the season to lower income families and children. To say the River Cats are a hot ticket is the understatement of baseball season. They draw more fans on many nights than a lot of major league baseball teams in parts of the U.S. do.

Raley's was a first-mover in California and national food retailing in terms of getting into local foods merchandising and marketing in a serious and major way. The added efforts and programs started by the grocer a few months ago and increasing even more recently are positioning the chain as one of the foremost local foods food retailers in the U.S.

It's paying dividends for the supermarket chain as well; that's why Raley's continues to add more elements and aspects to its local foods program.

Others like Safeway Stores, Inc. Whole Foods Market, and numerous regional chains, multi-store independents, single-store independent grocers and natural foods retailers also are into local foods merchandising in a big way in California.

In fact, those few food retailers who aren't "going local" are really at a big disadvantage, as most grocers and California market observers will tell you the local foods movement is growing much faster than the organic foods movement is in the Golden State.

In part that's because the organic foods movement is more mature, and still is growing considerably. But that's really only a small part of the equation. the major reasons the "buy local" is growing faster than the organic consumer movement right now in California is because it hits on so many hot buttons important to the state's consumers. These include freshness of product, price, environmental concerns, food safety concerns, desire to support local agriculture, and many more.

Raley's own research identified this growing movement some time ago, and that along with the best indicator, sales of locally-grown and produced food products in the grocers stores, is encouraging the family-owned supermarket chain to grow its local foods merchandising and marketing programs even more.

Supply-Side Memo: Food Industry Giant Campbell's is Making a Big 'Locally-Grown' Push as Part of a Tomato Processing Plant Expansion in California

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo learned at the recently concluded FMI (Food Marketing Institute) annual convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, that food industry giant Campbell Co., marketers of both conventional and organic food brands like Campbell's Soup, Prego pasta sauce (both conventional and organic), V-8 vegetable juice and V-8 juice drinks (conventional and organic), Pace Salsa (also conventional and organic) and numerous other brands, plans to increase its use of locally-grown California produce as part of a $23 million expansion and upgrading to its tomato processing plant in Dixon, California USA, near Sacramento.

The company's Dixon, California tomato processing plant is located in an agricultural and tomato processing-rich valley about 15 miles from Sacramento and about 50 miles from the San Francisco Bay Area.

The plant processes tomatoes and vegetables for Campbell's flagship soups, its sauces, salsa varieties and V-8 vegetable juice, V-8 V-Fusion and V-8 Splash vegetable drinks.

The $23 million expansion and remodeling of the plant will increase its size, add new, state of the art equipment, and boost overall plant production by about 15%.

The Dixon plant in Solano County in California's Sacramento Valley agricultural region is Campbell's largest tomato processing plant in the U.S. The plant was built in 1975, according to the company, and currently employees close to 200 people.

Campbell's has become an increasingly bigger player in the organic foods sector, with introductions of its organic versions of its Campbell's tomato juice, V-8 vegetable juice, Prego pasta sauce and Pace salsa, along with a few other brands and products.

As part of the plant's expansion, Campbell's Anthony Sanzio says the company will be buying more organic vegetables to process at the facility for these organic food and beverage product brands and lines.

Campbell's has plans to line-extend its current organic product offerings and to create new products, according to Sanzio.

The locally-grown angle

Because the Dixon plant is located in a tomato and vegetable-growing region, as well as being very close to the heartland of California agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley, along with near the central coastal region where numerous vegetables also are grown, Campbell's sees an opportunity to add the "local" angle in a big way to both the conventional and organic produce it buys to process at the facility for its soup, juice, beverage, pasta sauce and salsa brands and products.

The food company correctly sees numerous similarities between the organic foods and local foods consumer, and wants to play that fact up at least in California by increasing the capacity of the Dixon plant so that it can process, and thus allow Campbell's to buy, more locally-grown conventional and organic produce. IT also says it wants to further support local farmers.

As part of its plant expansion plan and locally-grown foods procurement emphasis, Campbell's Sazio says the company will increase agricultural production with farmers it contracts with in Solano County, as well as in neighboring Yolo and Sacramento counties, along with those in nearby Colusa, San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Sutter and Monterey counties.

This expansion of vegetable production includes organic as well as conventionally-grown produce.

Local agricultural industry officials and observers say the Campbell's Dixon plant expansion will be good for both local conventional and organic farmers.

For example, even though Solano County has urbanized considerably over the last two decades, agriculture, including tomato growing and processing, remains a significant industry in the area. Last year's tomato crop value in the county for example was about $23 million. Other double digit (in millions) crops in the county include walnuts and almonds and alfalfa, along with a few others. Numerous other fruit and vegetable crops are grown throughout the region as well, including an increasing amount and variety of organic crops.

Michael Amman, who heads up the Solano County Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit entity, says Campbell's Dixon plant expansion will be a big boost for local agricultural, locally-grown foods and local farmers, many of whom are smaller family farmers.

He says a major benefit will be that the local farmers will be able to get longer-term contracts with Campbell's because of the plant's increased capacity and emphasis on organic and locally-produced produce. In other words, Campbell's will put its emphasis on vegetables grown by local farmers even if they can buy produce for less money from farther away. As a result, the food company will need to sign longer contracts with the local farmers so it can ensure enough supply of the local produce to meet its needs. This is particularly true in the case of organic produce.

Campbell's says it may flag (on the labels) some of its conventional and organic food products produced at the Dixon plant with all locally-grown produce as "local" or "Made with California Produce," or something similar. However, the food giant isn't sure of that since what's local in California isn't local in Chicago or New York. In order to flag the products as local on the labels, the plant would have to produce certain runs just for California, after all.

However, Campbell's marketing and sales teams will be able to conduct "local foods" promotions with supermarkets in the region, including the Bay Area, with those products produced at the Dixon plant. (Shelf talkers identifying the "locally-grown" aspect of the products would be a simple and cheap way to promote the local angle of the products in-store.)

The important local foods aspect of Campbell's Dixon, California plant expansion and emphasis on using produce produced by local farmers though is the huge boost it could give to the region specifically and to local foods procurement in general. After all, many food processing plants, even in California, truck-in produce from a long way away rather than use that produced locally because they can obtain it for a cheaper cost.

As we've suggested numerous times on Natural~Specialty Foods Memo, we see the "local foods" movement growing in size and popularity to equal that of the organic foods movement.

Local is a bit harder to define than organic? Is it the strict locavore definition of food from no farther than 100 miles from where a person lives.? If so, why not 200 miles? That's still local to many, and it makes a bit difference in terms of increasing the variety and amount of "local foods." "Local" does have some wiggle room, in other words.

But, when it comes to locally-produced, most of us basically know it when we see it. If you live in Los Angeles, even though the city is about 400 miles from Sacramento, produce or food products bought in LA and produced completely in Sacramento are pretty "local," even though it doesn't meet the 100-mile locavore definition.

In the case of produce used for processing like at the Campbell's plant in Dixon, the important fact is that local farmers, ranging from those just down the street from the facility, to others as far as 150 -to- 200 miles away (Monterey County), are providing the vegetables.

This practice will be using locally-produced crops, which supports local communities, and offers those consumers who live nearby an opportunity to buy packaged food and beverage products at the supermarket which in turn will benefit their local economies if they do so.

Doing so, in a widespread way, is essentially a major aspect of the local foods' movement philosophy, it just pertains to processed food products rather than fresh ones. We think Campbell's is on to something in Dixon.

Local Foods Retailing Memo: Tesco is Making Stronger Commitment to Local Foods Sourcing, Marketing and Merchandising in the United Kingdom

Tesco, the world's number three retailer and the number one food and grocery sales market share leader in its home country of the United Kingdom with about 32% of the nation's total retail food sales, is launching what appears to be the biggest local foods sourcing and merchandising program in the UK.

Last year, Tesco opened five new local foods' regional buying and marketing offices in the UK cities of York, Leicester, Plymouth, Peterborough and Horsham, making it the first supermarket chain in the UK to develop such an extensive regionally-based structure designed to procure and market locally-based food and grocery products.

Each of the five local offices has a buyer and marketing person who's jobs are to find and procure high-quality, locally-produced products to sell in Tesco's UK stores.

As part of its local foods procurement and marketing program, Tesco also has started holding "Meet the Farmer" local foods events in its UK supermarkets.

Since Tesco launched the program, called "Local Sourcing", last year, the retailer says it's five regional UK offices have thus far launched over 1,00 new, local food and grocery product lines in its stores, bringing the total number of locally-produced products the retailers sells currently to about 3,000. Tesco also says it's added 90 new local suppliers to its vendor list.

Tesco UK also has an executive in charge of the local sourcing program, Emily Shamma. Ms. Shamma says UK consumers want to buy quality local food and to support local producers by doing so.

Tesco customers also want to buy more local foods to cut down on food miles and the resulting carbon emissions, Shamma recently told Natural~Specialty Foods Memo.

Further, UK consumers see locally-produced foods as having overall superior quality to food products imported from elsewhere, as well as liking the idea they can know more about how the local products are produced (because the goods are local) compared to imported food and grocery products.

Tesco plans to further grow its local foods' sourcing and marketing program, according to Ms. Shamma. She says the retailer's goal is to sell more locally-produced food and grocery product lines than any other UK food retailer.

To further this aim, Tesco also has set up a fund designed to help small, local farmers expand their businesses. This is similar to what U.S.-based natural foods' retailer Whole Foods Market, Inc. is doing for small farmers in the United States as a way to promote small-scale agriculture and local food production. Tesco has put ~1 million-p ($1.95 billion U.S.) in the fund to use to help give local farmers and producers a leg up in expanding their operations.

The British retailer also has created a local technical team in each of the five regional offices. The team offers and provides free help to the local producers in the areas of manufacturing, packaging, quality assurance and marketing. part of the reason for creating these dedicated technical teams is so Tesco can make sure the local producers have the means available to meet the retailer's overall product quality control standards for the goods it sells in its UK stores.

Samma also says Tesco doesn't just want to make local foods available in its stores to wealthy consumers. Rather, the goal is to make local fresh produce for example more affordable so that it's available for UK consumers of all income levels, she says.

Tesco's current goal is to sell ~400 million-p ($780 million U.S.) worth of locally-produced food and grocery products in its stores this year, with a longer-term goal of selling ~1 billion-p ($1.95 billion U.S.) worth of the locally-produced bounty by 2011.

Tesco PLC had gross sales internationally of about $84 billion U.S. in 2007.

The locally-produced products Tesco has introduced in its stores just since last year when it opened the five new regional buying offices range from fresh produce like Yorkshire cucumbers and locally-raised fresh meat, pork and poultry products, to locally-produced ice cream and beer. The local foods initiative is across all store product categories, from fresh and frozen, to refrigerated and shelf-stable.

Tesco's main competitors in the UK--Wal-Mart-owned Asda, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Waitrose, the Co-op and a couple others--also are to various degrees involved in local foods sourcing and marketing programs. Besides Tesco, probably Waitrose and Sainsbury's, followed by the Co-op, are the second, third and fourth most aggressive in local foods procurement and selling in their respective stores in the UK.

None of these competitors however has created as aggressive and as comprehensive local foods program as Tesco has with its five fully-staffed regional offices. And perhaps they don't need to. There are many ways to procure and sell locally-produced foods in their stores.

However, based on the fact Tesco has added 1,000 new locally-produced products in its stores, and 90 new local vendors to its roster in less than a year, it seems the regional buying office concept complete with the in-house technical teams is working well for the retailer--and for the local farmers and food producers who thus far have been able to get their goods into Tesco's UK supermarkets, which exist in nearly every city and town in the nation.

Sainsbury's and Waitrose both are increasing their local foods procurement and merchandising efforts in the UK, particularly upscale Waitrose. In per-capita size, Waitrose, which is much smaller than Tesco, is arguably the leader in local foods selling in the UK.

Wal-Mart-owned Asda recently announced it would be putting much more emphasis on local foods procuring and merchandising in its UK stores than it has up to now.

Local foods selling is becoming an international trend for Wal-Mart. The mega retailer has focused strongly since last year on procuring and selling local Canadian foods, especially fresh produce and meats and poultry in its Supercenters in that nation.

Wal-Mart also is stepping up its local foods merchandising in the U.S., the retailer's top market. It's stocking more fresh, local produce, meats and poultry, as well as more grocery products of all kinds produced locally throughout its U.S. market regions.

Local Foods Memo: Tesco's 1,000 Mile 'Local' Scottish Chickens

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get into the truck for its 1,000-mile round trip of course.

Retail giant Tesco, the world's number three retailer and the UK's largest supermarket chain, is coming under fire from environmentalists and shoppers today in the United Kingdom (UK) for labeling chickens sold in it's stores as "local" despite the fact the birds' actually have taken a 1,000-mile round trip to be slaughtered, packaged and then transported to the grocer's stores in Scotland.

The thrust of the matter regarding the "local" labeled but well-traveled birds is that the grocery retailer is currently selling chickens in its Scotland stores that have been raised at a chicken farm in North-East Scotland, then sent 499 miles to Essex to be processed, before then being shipped back to the Scotland stores to be sold. Perhaps Tesco should change the label to "locally raised for now. Or, use another local packaging plant.

But, that seems to be the crux of the problem. According to the UK industry trade publication Meat Trades Journal, the chickens killed at the Grampian Country Foods slaughterhouse in Perthshire, Scotland (local so far) are being shipped (at least until today perhaps) to Witham in South-East Essex (499 miles away) for packaging because the regular packaging plant in Banff, Abberdeenshire (which is close to Perthshire) shut down last year. So much for outsourcing locally and then not finding another local packaging plant right away.

UK environmental groups such as Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, are accusing Tesco of a lack of full-disclosure by still labeling the birds as "local." The "green" groups' also are saying the chickens' 1,000-mile round trip--from near the Scotland stores to 499 miles away and back again--is creating unneeded extra food miles and adding to the country's already growing carbon emissions. Sounds logical to us.

Another UK environmental group, Friends of the Earth, also issued a statement today about the non-local, "local chickens." Vicki Hird (rhymes with bird), a Friends of the Earth spokesperson, said: "Consumers thinking they are buying 'greener,' local and Scottish are actually buying pretty travel-sick chicken." In all fairness (at least to the birds) chickens travel much farther than 1,000 to get to the grocery store and are still tasty. But we do get Ms. Hird's point.

Tesco, the world's third-largest retailer, defended its travel itinerary plan for the birds in a statement saying basically it didn't have any option because the local packaging plant closed and they needed to get the chickens packaged for sale at the stores. A Tesco spokesperson didn't comment on how many chickens are being sent on the 1,000-mile round trip journey However, the retailer said it hopes to have the situation solved very soon

The local Grampian Country Foods' packaging plant closed last year (about six months ago), according to Max Tooley, Tesco's technical meat manager for poultry. Tooley added that although the situation has been going on for about six months (then why still label the birds as local we wonder?) it should "hopefully be solved in about two weeks," with the pending approval of a new packaging plant at a new site nearby where the chickens are slaughtered. We're glad it will be solved in two weeks. But that could be a long two weeks if Tesco doesn't take the local label off the chickens' packaging or the shelf.

Tesco shoppers weren't very happy today upon hearing the news that the "local" birds aren't really all that local because of their travels. Consumers buy "local" foods not just because they are raised locally, but also because they are processed and packaged locally as well. In other words, one of the keys to "locally grown" is that the products don't have to travel excessive food miles to get to the stores where shoppers buy them. Local equals a lower carbon footprint.

The locavore (local foods) movement defines a locally-produced food product as one that generally comes from no more than 100 miles from where it is sold at retail and purchased at the grocery store, or elsewhere, by a consumer. This local definition includes the food product being grown, processed, packaged and distributed within that 100-mile distance. Obviously, in the case of the 1,000 mile chickens, they don't quality under that definition.

Meanwhile, the revelation about the well-traveled "local" chickens is a serious hit for Tesco. It's CEO, Sir Terry Leahy, has been arguably the most outspoken of all UK retailers on the need for the supermarket industry to reduce its carbon footprint. In fact, under a plan of Leahy's, Tesco plans to eventually label all of the food and grocery products it sells in its stores with a "carbon footprint" label.

The label, similar to nutritional labels on packaged foods, will inform the consumer where the product was produced, processed and warehoused, and how many food miles it traveled to get to the Tesco store.

Tesco in the UK also has been a major proponent among UK food retailers of buying and selling locally-grown foods in its stores, including beef, pork, poultry and other food and grocery products. Local foods is a major issue among UK consumers, not only as part of the nation's popular and fast-growing green movement, but also as a way of preserving it's shrinking farming industry.

To the latter point, the Tesco chickens are raised locally. However, to the former point, the 1,000- mile journey--to the packaging plant and back again--violates the "green" aspects of the "buy local" movement.

It seems even without their wings, these particular Scottish Tesco chickens are still well-traveled birds.