The kind of food system that supports your ability to “eat local” used to be commonplace in generations past. Your grandparents and great grandparents ate meat, poultry, and eggs from local farms and vegetables from their own garden or a neighbor’s. The local creamery supplied butter, milk and cheese. Flour and salt were sold a the local “dry goods store” along with nonfood items. There was no such thing as a supermarket where one could wander the aisles and choose their own products from an array of choices shipped from anywhere a railroad or truck could go.
Take meat, for example. This area’s abundant deer and wild meat fed everyone for centuries. European settler/colonists brought beef and pork and, when farms no longer needed to raise work animals (the McCormick reaper was invented in 1831), many turned to these “meat animals.” And sold meat to friends and family. The first meat packing plant in the U.S. opened in Cincinnati in 1818 and sides of beef were shipped by rail on ice cut from frozen lakes. The USDA was founded in 1862 but the first meat inspection act wasn’t passed until 1906. The first refrigerated meat delivery trucks did not make their debut until 1924. And the “boxed beef” that stores rely on today wasn’t a “thing” until 1967. Most poultry came from local farms and backyard flocks. The “broiler” meat bird was not developed until 1920 and it was not until 1952 that specially bred broilers surpassed farm chickens as the number one source of chicken meat in the U.S.
Or vegetables---what we call produce today. The native fruits and vegetables of our area were foraged to feed humans well. Later, European settlers planted seeds they had brought with them, edibles, and medicinal herbs, in home gardens right outside the front door. These evolved into “kitchen gardens” and eventually by 1800 moved to the back of the house. In the mid-1800’s, ornamental gardens took over and folks found their edibles elsewhere. “Lawns” became the thing after the turn of the century, and it was not until World War II that folks had to garden again out of necessity. “By 1943, 20 million “victory gardens” supplied more than 40 percent of all American produce grown that year, but interest in vegetable gardens and orchards waned with the war.” (“An American Timeline: Home Gardening in the U.S.” by Jolene Hansen)
Or apples. Minnesota has always had crabapples, but in 1868, the “wealthy” apple was discovered and the University of Minnesota along with the state’s orchard owners has been breeding apples to withstand Minnesota’s winters ever since. The 1897 book Apples was just published online, and it catalogs the hundreds of varieties of apples that were being grown in Minnesota at the time. (https://open.lib.umn.edu/apples/ Today, the U.S. imports two-thirds of our fruits and one-third of our vegetables, mostly from Mexico and Canada. And three U.S. states provide most of the rest: California, Washington and Oregon.
Minnesota was also known for wheat. Wheat fields started in southeast Minnesota but by the 1870’s had expanded to the Red River Valley. By 1890 Minnesota had become the national leader in wheat production with Duluth and Minneapolis the sites of major wheat markets.
Butter, milk and cheese? In 1898 there were five hundred fifty cooperative creameries in Minnesota. The Floodwood Creamer, Windom Creamery, and the Arrowhead Creamery in Esko were among the early creameries. Today, there are one hundred eighteen licensed dairy operations in the state and hardly any up here. Most of the milk from the few dairy farms left on the Range goes to Burnett Dairy in Wisconsin. But Johnston’s Riverview Farm in Floodwood is continuing to expand their bottling plant to serve the area. I’ll be profiling them in my next column.
We learned during the first year of the Covid epidemic that long supply chains cannot always be trusted, and many folks started trying to source their food from closer to home. That’s been a challenge particularly for meat since the number of meat processors has been hard pressed to meet the demand. In response, two Minnesota community colleges have initiated meat processing programs and the NERCC facility in Saginaw recently opened a new processing center to help ease the backlog. In Minnesota, for a local farmer to sell meat, they need to have the animals processed according to state law.
There are three types of processing plants in Minnesota: custom-exempt plants are inspected by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture four times per year, but there is no routine inspection of animals at the point of slaughter. Packages of meat processed at these facilities are marked “Not for Sale.” The customer must buy the animal, or a portion thereof, directly from the farmer and, ideally, pick it up from the processor. The second kind of processing plant is called “Minnesota Equal-To” and has daily inspection by a Minnesota Department of Agriculture inspection. Animals are inspected before and after slaughter. This meat can be sold wholesale or retail but ONLY in Minnesota. Its label says, “Minnesota Inspected and Passed.” The third kind of processor is USDA inspected on a continuous basis. This meat can be sold across state lines.
Poultry is a slightly different story. Small-scale producers can slaughter their own poultry (and rabbits) and sell directly to customers for personal or household use. If a producer wants to sell at a farmers market, their on-farm facilities must be enclosed and meet sanitation requirements. This is an area where mobile processing operations have been helpful. To sell poultry to grocery stores or restaurants, the farmer must use an Equal-To or USDA processor. In order to sell fish caught in Minnesota, one needs a commercial fishing license and a fish processing operation permit from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.
This meander through bits and pieces of the food infrastructure is not a definitive guide. But it sketches out a bit of where we have been with “eating local,” and how we might move toward it again. Community gardens and home gardens are on the increase. Farmers markets are offering local options. Farm to School programs are introducing students to local foods. Meat processing options are increasing. And our number of farms is growing. It’s up to us to choose to support our local food system. I hope this helps.