Just before the Winter CSA season starts we invited Stefan Schwartz, Assistant Director at the Good Food Collective, to share why he's involved in the "Locavore" movement and how Community Shared Agriculture works.

While you might catch me, if you are lucky, burying myself face first into a wonderfully juicy Central American pineapple, I like to think of myself as someone who treats “eating locally and sustainably” as a serious pastime. I’ve worked around and within local food systems for the past several years, and feel that I’ve jumped on this “Locavore” wagon for all the right reasons. Most of all, I eat locally for the basic quality of the food. There is no comparing a peach picked only a couple hours ago to one that was picked two weeks early so that it could ship across the country without bruising. And it is a simple fact that the potato sprayed with formaldehyde to help it hold its appearance during its long journey to the marketplace can never hold a candle to one that was never sprayed, and still clings to the soil from the farm down the road. 

Fruits and vegetables that aren’t shipped around the world or sprayed with tons of chemicals are going to taste good. They come from strong, healthy plants and are simply bursting with life. They offer flavors and textures that are vibrant and absolutely unrivaled. People are starting to take that old expression, “You Are What You Eat,” to heart, and it’s working! When you eat “fresh” food that is really fresh, that hasn’t sat in a storage unit for weeks, and hasn’t been forced to ingest chemicals for its entire life, then you are putting Good Food into your body. 

By eating Good Food, we support ourselves, our local farmers and the health of the soil on which it was all grown, and the local economy, as we keep our dollars circulating within the community. Over at the Good Food Collective, a Rochester-based multi-farm CSA (community-supported agriculture), I like to think we are doing our part in supporting this growing movement. Through my work with the Good Food Collective, it has become apparent that many others in the community share the value I place on these local, sustainable foods. A great example of this shared love is the results of our most recently completed public art project. 

Our members were asked to hold up a small chalkboard sign completing their version of the sentence “Good Food is…” Our responses were wonderful, ranging from the classic; “...local and organic,” to the more romantic; “…the key to your love’s heart.” While the breadth of responses showed how personal the experience of food is to each of us, it quickly became clear how important Good Food was to all of us.

To give you an overview of the work we do at the Good Food Collective, we network with 8-10 local organic farms to bring fresh fruits and vegetables directly to our members. Our members pay at the beginning of the season, and then show up weekly for 18 weeks to pick up their share of the produce, usually two to three shopping bags full of fresh, local goodies. To increase our membership convenience, we focus on workplace distribution, setting our little “mobile market” up in several locations around the city of Rochester.

Last year we answered the prompt “Good Food is…” with a question: …”Year Round?” In response, we piloted our Winter CSA program in 2010, and are extremely excited about the beginning of our second winter season, starting in December. It is one more way that we have found to make good, local, organic produce available to the Rochester community. If you are interested in learning more about the Good Food Collective, click here.