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GOURMET NEWS NOVEMBER 2017 www.gourmetnews.com Naturally Healthy NATURALLY HEALTHY 1 2 sofi Award Celebrates Good Food from Good Farmers BY LORRIE BAUMANN This year's sofi Award for yogurt-type dairy products went to Five Acre Farms' Local Honey Kefir, which comes from a producer founded on the idea that when people know their farmers, good food happens. Dan Horan, CEO and Founder of Five Acre Farms, started the company seven years ago with the intention of finding outstand- ing dairy, egg and apple farmers using sus- tainable practices, paying them fairly and telling their stories. Over those years, the company's product offering has expanded from fluid milk to include buttermilk, yogurt and kefir as well as apple juice and seasonal apple cider. Horan is scaling the company's business outside the New York-based region where it currently operates, and says that, because every region has local farms, that's all pos- sible without weakening the local connec- tions between consumer and farmer that are at the core of the business. "Five Acre Farms finds outstanding dairy, egg and apple farmers using sustainable practices, pays them fairly and tells their stories," Horan said. "We put the farmer on each package so consumers know exactly where their food is coming from and that restores the connection between the farmer and the consumer. We start with simple ingredients and don't complicate it." Horan's commitment to local and re- gional food goes back 30 years, when he founded an organic produce farm, which is still run by his brothers, and he worked on an early concept for Five Acre Farms while he was still in business school. When he started his com- pany in 2010, he decided to focus on milk and eggs be- cause those commodities are produced on farms all across the U.S. "It's our thesis that there's a lot of very high-quality milk out there, produced by farmers who are good stewards of the land, and the government price does not meet their cost of produc- tion," Horan said. In selecting the farmers Five Acre Farms wants to work with, Horan looks at issues like water protec- tion, land management, and manure han- dling as well as how the animals are treated on the farm and the quality of the milk it- self. "I think there are quite a lot of farms that do a very good job on these issues, but they just get mixed up in the whole blend of the market," he said. Five Acre Farms pays its farmers directly for their milk at a price that's somewhere between what they'd get on the commodity market and the premium price for organic milk. Before they go to the retailer, the products are labeled to identify the specific farmers who produced them. "An impor- tant part of our mission is connecting peo- ple with their farmers because that link has been broken. We give people an opportu- nity to establish a connection to their food. On every jug of Five Acre Farms milk, there's a red tag that identifies the farmer behind the product and highlights some detail about the farm itself. Our egg cartons offer the same type of information, along with a picture of the farmers. We want the customer to know some of what goes into farming. We also don't want things to be so unapproachable and sterile that it's just about numbers. Farming is about people and the land." Five Acre Farms' approach is a response to dairy farmers' difficulties navigating a market in which the sale price for their milk is unrelated to the cost of producing it and the reality that some of the efficien- cies that have made it possible to produce some field crops more cheaply over the years just don't apply when the actual source of the product in question is a live animal. One result of that is that New York is among 22 states with net farm decreases between 2002 and 2012, which is the date of the last national agricultural census, a federal government count of the state of the nation's agriculture that's conducted every five years. Census results from 2012 show that 24 percent of New York's land area – or about 7.2 million acres – is in farms. That figure hasn't changed much since the early 1990s, but the number of New York farms has de- clined from 36,352 in 2007, the date of the census just prior to the last one, to 35,537 in 2012. That means that, while the amount of land that's being farmed hasn't changed much, the number of farmers has — and they're not just getting thinner on the ground; they're also getting older. Be- tween 1997 and 2012, the average age of New York's farmers went from 52.9 to 57.1 years old, and of those 35,537 farms counted in 2012, 40 percent had sales of $5,000 or less — echoing trends that are happening all across the U.S. (For a similar approach to this problem, read "Saving Wisconsin Family Dairy Farms, One Pre- mium Cheese at a Time" in the fall Cheese Guide you received with your August issue of Gourmet News or online at www.wp.me/p7yziE-2eW.) For New York's dairy farms in particular, 5,427 farms owned dairy cows in 2012, compared with 5,683 just five years earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agri- culture's figures. Those New York dairy farms reported total dairy product sales of $2.4 billion in 2012, about 45 percent of the state's total agricultural sales, according to a 2015 report by Nelson L. Bills and Bernard F. Stanton, agricultural economists with Cornell University. "When I started farming, there were seven dairies in our town in Connecticut. Now there are none," said Horan. "We're not going to save the whole planet, but we certainly want to be part of restoring agri- culture in the region." He says that when consumers get the chance to read his Five Acre Farms products' la- bels and learn something about the farmers who produced them, that often persuades them to pay a little more for a local product that comes from a farmer that they can identify as a neighbor. "People are discovering, particularly when it comes to good, know- your-source food, that there's actually more to it than price. If you want clean water in your watershed and good animal hus- bandry, low price is not the only factor driving your decision about what to buy. There are many people who can pay only the lowest price, but a good portion of the market can pay a little more, and they're shifting their priorities," he said. "We're trying to help the retailers develop a con- versation with their customers. Local is a trend that's not going away. We are in 250 to 300 outlets now and growing. Local is getting bigger; it's getting stronger." GN Flow Water Inc. has received its announced its official designation as a Certified B Cor- poration. Certified by global movement B Lab, Flow Water, which produces a natu- rally alkaline spring water, is being recog- nized as meeting the highest standards of verified social and environmental perform- ance, public transparency, and legal ac- countability. Flow originates in a company-owned artesian spring in Bruce County, Ontario, where it naturally collects healthy, essential minerals that give the water electrolytes for optimal hydration and an alkaline pH of 8.1 to keep acid levels in check. With no industrial processing and thus all-natural filtering, Flow's water source goes straight from the earth into the pack. Packaged in an eco-friendly, non-PET and BPA-free, pa- perboard Tetra Pak carton, Flow has one of the lowest carbon footprint containers in the industry – 100 percent recyclable and up to 70 percent renewable. "Receiving B Corp Certification further solidifies Flow Water as the environmental leader in the premium water category," says Flow CEO and Founder Nicholas Reichen- bach. "We're extremely proud to receive this ethical seal of approval from B Lab, and to be recognized for Flow's eco-innovation and practices." B Lab reviews all parts of a company's business practices, including sustainability, labour practices, and philanthropy. Only 2,297 corporations worldwide have re- ceived B Corp certification to date, with Flow Water Inc. being the first Canadian company in the water industry, and one of only a few globally. Flow is sold at retailers across North America, Including at Whole Foods across the USA, Gelson's, Harmon's, Natural Gro- cers by Vitamin Cottage, Earth Fare, Cen- tral Market, Jewel Osco, Safeway, Kowalski's, Bristol Farms, and direct to consumer through Ama- zon. Flow is also available at strategic boutique fit- ness studios across North America and by milkman- style delivery in an eco-friendly electric vehicle through its direct service in select cities. Consumers can order and find more information about Flow Water at www.flowwater.com. GN Flow Water Inc. Receives B Corp Certification