 "Photo: Caleb Miller, Daily Texan Staff")
Eight miles from downtown Austin, Erin Flynn and her husband Skip Connett rent the two-and-a-half-acre Green Gate Farms where they grow produce and raise livestock.
The two have rented the farm for two and a half years and cater to Austin and San Antonio residents through farmers markets, direct orders and the Wheatsville Food Co-op. Altogether, the farm feeds about 500 people weekly.
Local farmers like Flynn and Connett will have a greater voice in future city initiatives and policies with the creation of the Sustainable Food Policy Board. The newly created board will advise City Council members and county government officials on initiatives promoting and improving the availability of locally grown foods.
The City Council approved the 13-member board Thursday but has yet to appoint any of the positions. Marla Camp, owner and publisher of Edible Austin magazine, said all positions should be filled by next week.
The movement for a board was launched a year ago by efforts from Camp and her magazine to represent and unify farmers around Austin. The board will help develop policies that include providing affordable water to farmers.
The board will not only serve local farmers but also ranchers who organically raise livestock with grass-fed diets rather than industrial meal, Camp said.
“What’s exciting is that it is for only sustainable foods,” Camp said.
Sustainable food is locally grown organic food from either gardens or farms capable of serving local populations.
Camp said the food policy board is a part of a national trend in which people are becoming more aware of their food and where it comes from. She said people are now more expressive of their concerns than in past decades.
“We are calling it a ‘food democracy,’” Camp said. “It’s a great thing.”
Camp hopes to start incorporating locally grown, sustainable foods into the city’s food distribution system and start organizing with other similar policy boards in Houston and elsewhere to develop a sustainable food distribution system encompassing the entire country.
Austin City Councilman Lee Leffingwell said the board will help Austin stray away from industrial food producers distributing foods that have traveled long distances. The lack of travel usually prompts people to consider organic food as better food, Leffingwell said.
Flynn said organic sustainable farms are good for the community because it reconnects people with what they are eating.
“Most people don’t know where their food comes from, because they don’t think about it,” Flynn said while collecting eggs from her chicken coop. “We are losing biodiversity because of factory food.”
The cost of irrigation should be one of the major issues addressed by the new policy board, Flynn said. Industrial farms have reduced agricultural rates, a perk local farms do not have.
Because of the cost of water, Green Gates Farms cannot expand. Instead, the couple tries to expand the concept of sustainable farming by welcoming guests onto the farm.
For the month of July, Flynn had to pay $2,000 in water costs.
The farm generates $2,275 from seasonal customers on top of weekend farmers markets.
“I hope it will help small farms flourish,” Flynn said referring to the board. “Imagine if Austin had a green corridor.”
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