Georgia Organics Launches Farmer Champion Campaign

Gunshow Chef de Cuisine Chris McCord puts his Farmer Champion decal in place.

By Jeff Romig

“Farm to table” should be a commitment, not a marketing gimmick.

That’s why Georgia Organics launched its Farmer Champion campaign to quantify “farm to table” through food purchasing percentages, to create transparency around the marketing of “farm to table” and to recognize Georgia restaurants that consistently invest in Georgia farmers as part of their purchasing culture.

“We all tend to follow trends in this industry like, ‘Oh man, I really want to do what they’re doing’ or ‘they do this great,’” said Bruce Logue, owner and chef of Boccalupo in Inman Park. “These decals let me see that maybe I need to do a little more or realize that I want to be higher up on that list. We’re all kind of competitive, and this is an opportunity to put your money where your mouth is. If nothing else, this campaign makes you think and look at what you’re doing, and that’s a good thing.”

The Farmer Champion decals are awarded to participating restaurants that meet a minimum baseline of 5 percent of their total food budget on locally sourced foods—that is, foods that are sourced from within the state of Georgia. Tiered decals that will be distributed starting in 2020 showcase restaurants that dedicate a separate percentage to Georgia products that are Certified Organic under the USDA.

“At the Wrecking Bar Brewpub, we have always tried to source locally and organically whenever possible. First and foremost, it’s nice to see what that commitment looks like on paper and when it’s quantified compared to our peers,” says Stevenson Rosslow, owner and general manager of Wrecking Bar Brewpub and member of the campaign’s Chef Advisory Board.

The tiered decals are given out once a year, and restaurants can receive the partner decal immediately once they begin participating in the program and hit 5 percent in local sourcing.

The tiers are:

•  Gold Tier:                       5% Certified Organic (purchased in-state) + 20% local

• Silver Tier:                       3% Certified Organic (purchased in-state) + 20% local

• Bronze Tier:                    1% Certified Organic (purchased in-state) + 10% local

• Partner Tier:                   5% Local

In December 2018, Georgia Organics hired Lauren Cox, the longtime farmer at Woodland Gardens in Athens, to create a program to provide farmers with tools to access the restaurant market in Atlanta, while engaging with chefs to build a metric that would recognize the chefs and restaurants that are committed to buying from local and organic farms. The Farmer Champion campaign and the Farm to Restaurant program grew from these goals.

Chris Edwards farms at Mayflor Farms in Stockbridge and is working to move more into restaurant sales through the Farm to Restaurant program.

“To be honest, there are real barriers to accessing the restaurant market,” Edwards said. “It’s understanding the root causes that will help us to overcome them.”

“The goal of the Farm to Restaurant program and the Farmer Champion campaign is to give farmers from around the state increased access to restaurants as a market and revenue stream,” Cox said. “Restaurants have been on the forefront of a return to local purchasing and seasonal eating. They have the power to influence how people eat, whether they are dining out or cooking at home. There is a group of committed chefs in Atlanta that have worked to increase awareness of this type of eating over the years, now is the time to highlight that work and grow the movement to support Georgia farmers.”

Twenty farmers were selected for the 2019 cohort, including produce farmers, goat and rabbit producers, the first certified organic beef producer in Georgia and a certified organic grain producer. Five of these farms are involved in cooperatives, seven are USDA certified organic and many currently sell to Atlanta-area farmers markets. 

For the duration of 2019, Georgia Organics will support them with business training, field management, pricing and communication strategies, as well as organic certification cost share. As part of the campaign, Georgia Organics hosted a speed-dating style mixer at Wrecking Bar Brewpub in Little Five Points, where members of the farmer cohort mingled with chefs who are already buying local and organic or are interested in doing so.

“There are such small margins for the success and failure of a restaurant,” Cox said. “In a world that pressures you to cut costs and do it the wrong way, these people are doing it right, so we should pay attention. We want to acknowledge people who are doing what they can within their business models, because every bit counts. We’ll also be featuring people who are going above and beyond, whether it’s the chef who participated in the most community events, worked with the most organic produce or had the highest overall percentage of local purchasing that year.”

The Farmer Champion campaign recently added partner restaurants in Macon and Athens, and continues to engage potential partner restaurants across the state. To date, 14 restaurants in Georgia have joined the program as Farmer Champion partners.

The fast-growing list of Farmer Champion restaurants currently includes:

• BoccaLupo (Atlanta)

• Dovetail (Macon)

• Farm Burger (Multiple locations)

• Gunshow (Atlanta)

• Heirloom Café (Athens)

• JCT. Kitchen & Bar (Atlanta)

• Kimball House (Decatur)

• Eat Me, Speak Me (Atlanta)

• Miller Union (Atlanta)

• Murphy’s (Atlanta)

• No. 246 (Decatur)

• One Eared Stag (Atlanta)

• Root Baking Co. (Atlanta)

• Wrecking Bar Brewpub (Atlanta) 

Georgia diners and consumers interested in dining at restaurants that serve locally sourced and Certified Organic foods can follow Georgia Organics on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for updates on the Farmer Champion program, including new partners, success stories, and even recipes.

In case you missed it, Georgia Organics procurement coordinator Lauren Cox was featured on ATL Foodcast on Monday, Nov. 4, where she talked about all things Farmer Champion with BoccaLupo chef Bruce Logue. Click here to listen to the episode.

Jeff Romig is the Fundraising & Communications Director for Georgia Organics. He can be reached at jeff@georgiaorganics.org. 

Bridging the Gap Between Farms and Restaurants

By Caroline Croland

Lauren Cox’s passion for food started at home.

Growing up in a food-centric family, food was always a point of connection to culture and identity.

“There's a deep mutual respect between a chef that supports a farm and the farmer that sees what they grew transformed into something really beautiful and thoughtful on a plate,” said Lauren, Georgia Organics’ Organic Procurement Coordinator who is leading the new Farmer Champion campaign.

As an adult, Lauren has worked in restaurants and studied communications and food studies abroad, but what particularly influences her work is her seven years of working on farms.

“I think being part of a farm that sold predominantly to restaurants informs everything I do here,” she said. “And just being a farmer in general, thinking in the way of: what would help my bottom line if I were still farming? What do I want for my farm? What gives me inspiration to continue doing the hard work of growing food?”

For Lauren, that inspiration comes from the passionate, hardworking people that she encounters in both industries.

“It’s the relationships you have with people that are doing equally hard work,” she said. “I think of the work which happens in kitchens and restaurants where you're working 60-65 hour weeks. You're always standing, you're sweating. I mean there are so many physical similarities to farming and the work in a kitchen. There is a lot off common ground and respect there. And so I think that those types of relationships are really inspiring.”

Those deep connections to both industries and passion for good food are evident to those who work with Lauren.

Susan Shaw of Hickory Hill Farms in Athens enjoys the energy and experience that Lauren brings to her role.

“She is someone who always excited,” Susan said. “She believes wholeheartedly in the importance of organics. She has been in the industry a long time and those connections are evident in her work.”

Susan appreciates what those connections bring to her business.

“As an Athens based farm, the idea of working with Atlanta restaurants seemed out of reach for us, we would image having to do a four-hour round trip commute to set up meetings and develop those relationships,” she said. “Working with Lauren has allowed us to start sourcing to Atlanta restaurants. It’s been very beneficial.”

Caroline Croland is the Fundraising Coordinator at Georgia Organics. Contact her at carolinec@georgiaorganics.org.

Inspiration kept Erin Wilson in Athens

Story by Corinne Kocher

Photos by Bailey Garrot

Shared Plates

"Over the years, small change makers have done so much to make Athens a rich, southern small town," says Erin Wilson, gazing out the front window of The National, a well-established restaurant in the heart of downtown.

After coming to University of Georgia in 2007 to study Public Relations, Erin quickly fell in love with the vibrant Athens community. The city's energy pulled her to stay after graduation, where she found a home in the local restaurant scene.

"I was asking myself, 'how can this PR skill set be used for [something] that I felt good about?'" says Erin. "This town really inspires me, the people in it really inspire me, and working at The National brought it all together".

At The National, Erin is able to combine her passion for writing, community building, and food. Originally starting as a host and a PR intern, Erin is now General Manager and Partner, overseeing day-to-day operations as well as the long-term growth of the business.

The National is well-known in Athens and beyond for their commitment to quality food, built on farm-centric sourcing. The restaurant has helped grow the Athens good food movement through investing in local producers.

"The audience that we have from this restaurant, its reputation, its time in existence - it affords us the opportunity to uplift people," says Erin. "Why put your money out into the world, where you'll never see it back, when you can put it out into your community and see it grow people who you want to see grow?"

As for the role of restaurants in general, Erin adds, "I think restaurants being on board is essential for the good food movement to progress."

Because there is such a range of people dining out, she believes, restaurants can demonstrate to a wide audience how sourcing good ingredients makes for delicious food.

"Customers take these ideas from restaurants" Erin says, "to the farmers market, to a CSA, to the grocery store, to their homes. I think restaurants are a gateway - the more that access is grown, and the more that restaurants can facilitate that access, the more people adjust their thinking about food."

As for the 2020 Georgia Organics Conference in Athens, Erin is excited to share what The National does in the city. "I hope we can be as engaged with conference goers as possible," she says, adding that The National is open for a coffee in the morning, a midday break, or a cocktail after the conference.

"Come here and see how Athens is doing so much for the farming community in this town - and how the restaurants are buying into it.”

Corinne Kocher and Bailey Garrot are the writer-photographer team behind Shared Plates, a blog exploring food in the world and how it gets to the table. Read all of their work at www.shared-plates.com and follow them on Instagram @sharedplatesatl.

Remembering Andy Byrd, a Veggie Visionary

By Paul Shea

It’s an early fall morning a decade ago on Andy and Hilda Byrd’s Whippoorwill Hollow Farm near Walnut Grove, an hour east of Atlanta. Vendors and organizers for the annual Field of Greens fundraiser are beginning to arrive.

The 5 Seasons Brewing Co. food truck — a 1975 Mercedes fire engine tricked out to serve beer and food at the festival — pulls up to the farm’s entrance, and the driver asks Andy where he should park.

“Just follow me,” Byrd shouts, and he takes off across a large pasture in his own customized vehicle — a battered, all-wheel drive, thick-tired wheelchair built for the rough terrain of a 74-acre farm. The fire truck gets in gear and takes off after the farmer — a parade that would make you smile.

 “He just blasted ahead, as always,” said Suzanne Welander, who worked at Georgia Organics at the time and helped organize the early Field of Greens festivals on the Byrd farm. “He took any preconceived notions you might have and made them disappear. The wheelchair never seemed to slow him down. There was nothing stopping him.”

John Andrew (Andy) Byrd died March 27 at age 62.

Shelley Mitchell, an outpatient case manager at Shepherd Spinal Center in Atlanta, began working with Byrd in 2002, more than 20 years after a diving accident at a lake  caused a cervical injury that left Byrd a quadriplegic. 

“When you work with a patient at Shepherd, you don’t see the chair, you don’t see the disability. You see the heart of the person,” Mitchell said. “He was compassionate and funny and a deeply moral man. He was very thankful, and committed to helping other people.”

Welander, who now works at Riverview Farm in Ranger, called Byrd and his wife Hilda, who died in 2009, anchors of the organic food movement in Georgia.

“Organic farming was not popular when he started,” Welander said. “He had an indomitable spirit. He has hardships but never let that slow him down. He stood up for what he believed in. He led the way to bring healthy food to people.”

Andy and Hilda were childhood friends in Walnut Grove and married later in life, after Andy was injured in 1980.

Andy was a city councilman in Walnut Grove and ran several businesses over the years before he and Hilda decided to buy the land that would become Whippoorwill Hollow Farm in the late 90s. The farm was certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2002.

In a 2008 article for the Shepherd Center’s magazine, Hilda Byrd said they bought the land to build a house, “but we became organic farmers instead.”

The Byrds began selling their produce to restaurants and helped start Ѵwo farmer’s markets in the Atlanta area — the Morningside Market and the Decatur Market.They also worked for many years in Georgia Organics’ farmer-to-farmer mentoring program.

Celia Barss, who works at Woodland Gardens farm near Athens, came to Georgia in 2003 and met Andy at the Morningside Market.

“He was so welcoming right off the bat when I moved here,” she says now. “The sense of community he tried to build on the farm, he seemed to care about that as much as about his own growing. The farm really kept him going. I was blown away with what he was trying to accomplish.”

For the Byrds, organic farming was the only way to go, Karen Adler said in a 2009 article for Atlanta’s Finest Dining magazine.

“They uncovered fruit trees, cultivated the fields, and enhanced the vitality of the soil,” Adler wrote. “Along the way, they resurrected their connection with heritage plants such as the whippoorwill field pea that Hilda remembers her father growing, and the heritage black peanut that her brother carried forward from an aging farmer.”

Adler, who worked for Georgia Organics and Woodland Gardens and is now at the Organic Farms Research Foundation in California, said that growing high-quality produce wasn’t the most important yield of the farm. Whippoorwill’s primary mission was inspiring the next generation of stewards and farmers to take care of the Earth.

“Our future is our children,” Andy Byrd said in Adler’s article. “They’re the ones with the opportunity to change our environment and policies, and the way we look at farming from now on.”

As leaders in Georgia Organics’ mentoring program, the Byrds provide the invaluable hands-on experience and local knowledge base that new organic and sustainable farmers can’t learn from books, Adler wrote.

In 2010, the Byrds were awarded the Georgia Organics’ Land Stewardship Award.   

“They taught the tricks of the trade to many people,” Adler says now. “What inspired [Andy’s] life was his wellspring of desire to be independent and to succeed, but above all, to share whatever he had, and help others. It’s hard to find adequate words — they all seem understated — to express Andy’s incredibly inspiring, encouraging, and nurturing presence.”

Cynthia Head, Andy’s sister, said that after Hilda was diagnosed with cancer, Andy broadened his research on how organic foods could help people with illnesses.

“He wanted information for her and to give to other people — what to eat that might help,” she said. “He wanted to know how it could heal your body.”

These were Andy’s own words in the 2008 Shepherd Center magazine article by John Christensen: “If you look at things as how I can’t do it, it’s not possible. But if it’s, ‘How am I gonna do it?’ you don’t have any barriers there. That’s kind of the way I look at things. If there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Andy continued: “People come to me and say, ‘Andy, you’re such an inspiration’ to a cousin or a friend or someone. And they’re thinking, ‘If he can do it, I know I can do it.’ Up to this day, I still have people tell me that, so I feel that’s what God left me on this earth for.”

Paul Shea has been a member of Georgia Organics since 2004.

You can read more about Andy Byrd in this story from The Walton Tribune.

The Plate Sale

Story by Corinne Kocher

Photos by Bailey Garrot

Shared Plates

It's 10:30pm on a Monday, and there's a long line outside of Octopus Bar, a late-night restaurant on Atlanta's east side. A menu is winding its way slowly down the queue, passed from guest to guest, each pointing out something new.

"Sauce africaine." "Hot sausage po' boy." "Oh my gosh, hazelnut custard."

Suddenly, the front door swings open, and the line quickly files in. Within seconds, the main dining room is packed. Diners split between tables and the bar, and the room fills with conversation made all the louder with DJ Kountry Boy spinning tunes from the corner.

Behind the bar, Shyretha Sheats is using a shaker to pour out tall cocktails for the waiting crowd. Past a narrow hallway, food runners darting to and fro, Mike Sheats is grilling sliced okra over flames in the kitchen. Shyretha and Mike are the couple behind The Plate Sale, a multi-faceted food concept that, tonight, is a pop up.

Shyretha and Mike Sheats have returned to Octopus Bar, where they held their first pop up over three years ago. Tonight, The Plate Sale is also collaborating with Chicomecóatl and Supremo, two fellow well-known pop up concepts in Atlanta. While the three pop ups draw from different cuisines, all are focused on themes of preservation.

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Shyretha explains, "The menu is things we grew up eating, inspiration from family recipes, paying tribute to someone in our communities".

Their menu isn't just paying tribute to "the south" - the Sheats are paying homage to their home base: Athens. Mike, originally from Athens, and Shyretha, from Oglethorpe County (about 20 miles east of Athens), are making food and cocktails that pull from what they've shared with their families.

But for The Plate Sale, it doesn't just stop at preservation - their work is about rediscovery as well. While they draw inspiration from their experiences, the Sheats also do extensive research into older foodways and recipes. "The Plate Sale is also about things we've realized we don't even see or taste anymore," says Shyretha.

"The Plate Sale is a whole entity, focused on projects that are related to southern history and southern foodways," Shryetha expands. This includes their pop ups, but it also encompasses their farm restoration project, restoring Shyretha's grandmother's farm northeast of Athens, and someday, a brick and mortar restaurant in Athens that sources from that farm.

Until then, The Plate Sale keeps a homebase in Athens, hosting events, pop ups, and working in the city's food scene. Shyretha and Mike are planning on attending the 2020 Georgia Organics Conference in Athens - and with talk of a potential pre-conference dinner, as well as a possible pop up held during the conference, The Plate Sale is sure to be cooking up something good.

Stay up-to-date with The Plate Sale by following them on Instagram @theplatesale.

Corinne Kocher and Bailey Garrot are the writer-photographer team behind Shared Plates, a blog exploring food in the world and how it gets to the table. Read all of their work at www.shared-plates.com and follow them on Instagram @sharedplatesatl.

Athens Farmers Market

Story by Corinne Kocher

Photos by Bailey Garrot

Shared Plates

When Sarah Thurman's mom visited her at the Athens Farmers Market, she shook her daughter on the shoulder and told her, "those are your people. Do not leave them."

Sarah laughs at the story, but agrees: "I flower in that environment. The people are so stinking good." 

Moving from California to Athens, Georgia, Sarah first started working at Full Moon Farm. After selling at the Athens Farmers Market (AFM) for a few seasons, Sarah "fell in love with the market", eventually becoming Market Manager in 2017.

Abigail Darwin, Community Coordinator for AFM, thinks Sarah's impact on the market has helped grow its reach. "Sarah has this willingness to meet people where they are... it helps people feel comfortable with their local farmer and their local market," she says.

As Market Manager, Sarah oversees FARM Rx, an Athens-run program that provides supplemental assistance for community members experiencing food insecurity, long considered an urgent need in the Athens community.

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FARMRx provides participants with a weekly stipend to spend on fruits and vegetables at the Athens Farmers Market ($1 per person in their family per day, and a minimum of $14 per week for an individual). FARM Rx also provides support for transportation to the market, and participants meet once a week for cooking demonstrations or general food education programs taught by SNAP-ed.

Each program cohort lasts for six months, but the effects extend long after graduation. Sarah explains, "while they are in the program, we're working on connecting them into the wider net of support within our community that exists to provide them with long-term food security."

Abigail adds that Sarah's work with the Athens Farmers Market helps make "food that is for everybody.” "[FARM Rx] is not only increasing the accessibility of food, but also supporting our local farmers," says Abigail.

In 2019, Farm Rx serves anticipates serving 45 individuals and their families, which will total around 110 community members.

"It's a vibrant, lovely program that stands to do great with proper support," Sarah says. "If I've learned anything from this program, it's that when affordability is taken off the table, people overwhelmingly choose fruits and vegetables".

At the Georgia Organics 2020 Conference in Athens, Sarah will be speaking about FARM Rx and about identifying resources within your community for program funding. Her talk will focus on helping smaller communities who are interested in developing similar community programming. And if you stop by the Athens Farmers Market during the conference, you'll most likely see Sarah's beaming face there as well, surrounded by the people she calls “so stinking good.”

Corinne Kocher and Bailey Garrot are the writer-photographer team behind Shared Plates, a blog exploring food in the world and how it gets to the table. Read all of their work at www.shared-plates.com and follow them on Instagram @sharedplatesatl.