Oser Communications Group

GOURMET NEWS AUGUST 2015 www.gourmetnews.com FROM THE PUBLISHER 4 Eating is an agricultural act, as Wendell Berry fa- mously has said, and there is no better way to understand what that means than to visit north- ern California, where the market created by San Francisco and Silicon Valley consumers who demand high-quality food produced in alignment with their social and nutri- tional values is rescuing family farms from the boom and bust cycles of monocrop farming. As we go to print this month, we've been doing just that – visiting with family farmers to find out how they're working to supply the food chain that has its other end on our family tables. They'd like you to know that growing and making high-quality food isn't easy. They work very hard at it, both to produce our food supplies and to navigate the reg- ulatory structure that we all rely on to en- sure its safety. They take food safety very seriously, and they're hearing what the mar- ket has to say about how we want our food to be grown, how we want it to look and how we want it to taste, and they're doing their best to produce great food that meets our highest standards. And here's some- thing else that they'd like you to know: they'd like us to own up to our responsibil- ity in this market and to recognize that we must be willing to pay them properly for care they put into our food. When we see a product on our grocer's shelves or in the refrigerator cases, it's fine to look at the price tag, but we should look beyond the price to the value. If we want food that tastes wonderful, looks beautiful on the plate and nourishes our spirits as well as our bodies – and we do – we're going to have to abandon our national fix- ation on the cheapest possible food supply. Over the past few decades we've seen where that idea has led – to the near de- struction of our tradition of family farm- ing, to a generation of farmers who are growing to retirement age without anyone to replace them on the farm, to widespread environmental damage from monocrop farming and to all the other evils of an in- dustrial food system. It's certainly true that the food system we have created has been astonishingly successful at providing Americans with more calories than many of us should have been eating, but when you look at our health statistics, it's also easy to see that it hasn't necessarily been the unalloyed success that our country has taken for granted for decades. If we want to make that better, it's time to support our family farmers who are working to take us along a different path – and that means ac- cepting that we have to pay them what they're worth. GN — Lee M. Oser Publisher WWW.GOURMETNEWS.COM PUBLISHER Lee M. Oser ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Kim Forrester Jules Denton jules_d@oser.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Lorrie Baumann lorrie_b@oser.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Richard Thompson ASSISTANT EDITOR Micah Cheek CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Amber Gallegos GRAPHIC DESIGNER Yasmine Brown ACCOUNT MANAGER Lynn Hilton Cathy Newman CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Caitlyn Roach caitlyn_r@oser.com CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Product Wrap-up & Classified Sales Tara Neal tara_n@oser.com CIRCULATION MANAGER Jamie Green jamie_g@oser.com PUBLISHING OFFICE 1877 N. Kolb Road P.O. Box 1056 Tucson, AZ 85715 520.721.1300 Fax 520.721.6300 SUBSCRIBER SERVICES Gourmet News P.O. Box 30520 Tucson, AZ 85751 520.721.1300 G OURMET N EWS ® OSER COMMUNICATIONS GROUP PRESIDENT Lee M. Oser MEMBER OF: Periodicals postage paid at Tucson, AZ, and additional mailing office. Gourmet News (ISSN 1052-4630) is published monthly by Oser Communications Group, 1877 North Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85715; 520.721.1300. Publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material or prices quoted in newspaper. Contributors are responsible for proper release of pro- prietary classified information. ©2015 by Oser Communications Group. All rights re- served. Reproduction, in whole or in part, without writ- ten permission of the publisher, is expressly prohibited. Back issues, when available, cost $7 each within the past 12 months, $12 each prior to the past 12 months. Back orders must be paid in advance either by check or charged to American Express, Visa, or Master Card. Gourmet News is distributed without charge in North America to qualified professionals in the retail and dis- tribution channels of the specialty foods and hardgoods trade; paid subscriptions cost $65 annually to the U.S. and Canada. All foreign subscriptions cost $150 annu- ally to cover air delivery. All payments must be made in U.S. funds and drawn on a U.S. bank. For subscriber services, including subscription information, call 520.721.1300. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Gourmet News, 1877 North Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85715. FROM THE PUBLISHER

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