At Seward Co-op, we are enthusiastic about locally grown and made products that will delight customers. Seward Co-op’s Ends Statement, or mission, compels us to support economic development right here in our community, oftentimes yielding a higher quality of living. When money is kept recirculating within a cooperative community, as opposed to flowing out of our food shed, the local economy is strengthened. We prioritize locally made, organic, fair trade, and other products that meet the unique needs of co-op owners, as well as partnerships with businesses owned by historically underrepresented populations. However, before our staff can even consider bringing in a new product, it must be compliant with the Food and Drug Administration. What does it take to prepare a food or wellness item for selling at retail stores like Seward Co-op? Minnesota has many food production regulations that impact food producers, processors and distributors. These regulations are varied and can be difficult to navigate for folks trying to bring their product to the market. One of the primary rules in food production requires it to be produced in a commercial kitchen.

Some local entrepreneurs opt to use a community commercial kitchen, sharing space with other producers. Community kitchens are typically available for rent to the public and act as an incubation facility for smallscale product manufacturers and beginning food entrepreneurs, to perfect their work and learn from peers.

The power of community formed through producing food at a local food hub or community kitchen has ignited hope for local farmers and small-scale producers! Going the food production path alone is difficult, and it’s helpful to be surrounded by others who understand because they are experiencing a similar situation. Many community kitchens and food hubs rent space on a sliding scale or cover the cost of product liability insurance or food manager certification. When local farmers and producers come together to share common space and time, great things happen naturally—relationships and new partnerships form, and opportunities to collaborate and cross-pollinate become obvious!

Seward Co-op has begun the countdown to spring! Starting your garden from seed and then watching it mature from seedling to fruiting plant can be rewarding, economical, and fun. Considering Minnesota’s relatively short growing season, it can be beneficial to start seeds indoors in spring to give plants a head start before transplanting them in to your garden. Each plant has its own unique growing requirements and therefore its own timeline. Refer to Seward Co-op’s Seed Guide, as a resource for when to start seeds indoors and transplant outdoors.

Browsing Seward Co-op’s seed racks, surrounded by fresh-cut flowers and an abundance of fragrant citrus, can make the experience of picking out the seeds for your garden inviting—many of the potential options look so delicious and interesting! However, before you get whisked away by the idea of it all, learn more about Seward Co-op’s seed offerings to determine which brand aligns more with your values and is best for the vision of what you hope to accomplish with your garden—High Mowing Organic, Seed Savers Exchange, or a combination of the two. Is your primary concern the health of your family, or is it more broad to include environmental biodiversity or healthy habitats for pollinators? Learn more about our unique seed producers’ intentional cultivation practices to the right.

Now, the fun part—make a list of all the crops you desire to grow and plot them out to create a feasible plan for your space. We recommend marking a calendar with the dates to start and transplant different crops, using the chart provided on the back-side of our Seed Guide. Please note some root crops, such as carrots, beets and radishes do not tolerate transplanting. For more home gardening information and resources, please visit the University of Minnesota Extension website.

Join us at the Seward Co-op Creamery Café for a dinner featuring our April SEED recipient, Dream of Wild Health, a Native American-led, nonprofit farm and youth-leadership program. We’ll enjoy a three-course meal featuring Indigenous ingredients and hear stories about Dream of Wild Health’s work recovering knowledge of and access to healthy Indigenous foods, medicines and lifeways. Tickets are limited, so reserve your seat now.

Purchase tickets via Eventbrite.

Three-course dinner: $40
Nonalcoholic kombucha drink pairing: $9
Beer and wine also available for purchase.

Farmworkers are the food system’s most vital workers; their labor allows us to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. Despite farmworkers’ economic and cultural contributions to the communities in which they live and work, they continue to be among the lowest paid, least protected and unhealthiest workers in the United States. The international principles that guide Seward as a consumer cooperative, along with our Ends Statement, challenge us to provide goods and services in a socially responsible way. Despite the growing interest and demand for natural foods, this remains a difficult challenge as farmworkers are largely invisible to shoppers and diners.

Co-op shoppers have a strong interest in high-quality food. Awareness of farmworkers, who are often exploited, needs to be part of that equation. Eighty-five percent of fruits and vegetables harvested in this country is handpicked, and it is estimated that between 2 million and 3 million men, women and children work in the fields across America. Many farmworkers live in poor conditions, small spaces and have unpredictable work. Instead of valuing farmworkers in our society, we undercut their ability to live and work by denying them a living wage and benefits like healthcare. When compared to others, the people who plant and harvest our fruits and vegetables suffer from the highest rate of toxic-chemical injuries, as well as higher incidences of heat stress, dermatitis, urinary tract infections, parasitic infections and tuberculosis. In extreme cases, farmworkers can be beaten, sexually harassed or even enslaved—all within the borders of the United States.

Farmworkers remain unnoticed by many and continue to live and work in unacceptable conditions, in part because farmworkers are treated differently under the law. Federal law simply does not guarantee farmworkers unemployment insurance, protection when joining a union or overtime pay. The Fair Labor Standards Act was amended in 1978 to mandate minimum wage for farmworkers on large farms only, and it does not include provisions for overtime. Though an increasing number of consumers choose locally and organically grown food, farmworker justice is often not part of food conversations.

At Seward Co-op, we recognize that we exist within a large, often exploitative, industrial food system. That context presents challenges in operating two full-service grocery stores, a production kitchen and a café. However, we remain committed to honoring the critical economic and cultural contributions made by farmworkers. Every day, our staff demonstrates our commitment to social responsibility by seeking out truly sustainable local growers and producers, who acknowledge the abuse and inequities in agriculture and actively work against them. Over the past 45 years, we have built strong relationships with local farmers and have seen firsthand how they treat the land and farmworkers. The trust that comes with these relationships is something a label or certification simply cannot ensure. Unfortunately, until all farmworkers are wholly protected under federal law, there are national brands and products on our shelves that contribute to this nation’s dominant agricultural system and its inherent injustices. All grocers, including Seward and other food co-ops, meet the needs of their customers by offering national brands in seasons when local is unavailable.

During National Farmworker Awareness Week (NFAW), March 24–31, Seward Co-op honors the contributions of farmworkers. Please join us on Friday, March 30, at the Friendship store for an evening screening of Food Chains, a documentary film about agricultural labor in the United States. As conscious consumers throughout the year, stay attuned to opportunities to positively impact our food system. Please consider rounding-up your grocery or café purchase for SEED, especially when the funds raised are directed at local, socially responsible farms like the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA) and Dream of Wild Health.

Seward Co-op is a member of two advocacy organizations—Domestic Fair Trade Association and National Co+op Grocers—that support actions and advocacy for just living and working conditions for farmworkers, and an end to unfair treatment under the law. Please follow our social media posts March 24–31 in recognition of National Farmworker Awareness Week, sponsored by Student Action with Farmworkers in North Carolina.

Midwest Food Connection (MFC) is a local education nonprofit founded by local food co-ops, including Seward Co-op. MFC provides lessons in cooking, gardening, and eating healthy food to elementary school students. Since 1993, they have reached more than 60,000 children.

MFC receives many thoughtful and caring letters from students. Through drawings of fruits and veggies, colorful hearts, and earnest writing, they show their appreciation for the food that we shared together and their newfound interest in cooking and gardening.

Every kid deserves this kind of education, but MFC receives requests to teach in schools that cannont pay for lessons. Show area students some love by supporting food education. By investing in students, as the co-op does with sponsoring MFC, we support the next generation of conscientious eaters, farmers, and food workers! The money you give directly enables more access to food education in underserved schools.

Give online at: givemn.org/organization/Midwest-Food-Connection

Send a check to:
Midwest Food Connection
P.O. Box 18749
Minneapolis, MN 55428

As many co-op shoppers know, soil is a valuable natural resource essential to agriculture. Healthy soil helps plants soak up essential nutrients, capture carbon from the atmosphere, and resist drought and disease. Many in the organic and natural foods industry are increasingly focused on practices that enrich, rather than degrade, the Earth’s soil. A conversation has begun around agriculture moving beyond sustainable, and towards true improvement or regeneration of the resources it uses. (See links at right for further reading on a proposed regenerative organic certification.)

From Feb. 14-27 at the Franklin and Friendship stores, 3% of all Cascadian Farm purchases will be donated to The Land Institute, supporting healthy soil. The Land Institute is focused on introducing perennial grains and transforming agriculture with regenerative, more sustainable production. Some of the grains used in intercropping systems include Kernza ®, sorghum, silphium, perennial wheat and legumes.

The Land Institute and their partners are not working to tweak the current predominant industrial, disruptive system of agriculture. They are working to displace it.

Due to agricultural processes including higher volume tillage and the use of pesticides and fertilizers—the health of our soil is decreasing at an alarming rate, and without healthy soil, we face more pollution and less cultivation. For over 10,000 years humans have depended on soil. Today, soil depends on us.

It is possible to provide staple foods without destroying or compromising the cultural and ecological systems upon which our society depends, but only if we understand and work with the constraints and capacities of the natural systems.

At Seward Co-op, we love being able to help local vendors and farmers distribute local honey throughout the year. While Minnesota honey is definitely sweet, there are so many different types of honey throughout the world, each one unique to the region it’s produced in.

Patagonia Bee Products is one such company working hard to bring in some of the tastiest honey out there. This small-scale business is based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. They specialize in importing honey straight from cooperative farms in the Chilean region of Patagonia. They bring us mostly Ulmo honey and a few other monofloral honeys. Monofloral means that the majority of the pollen in the flower comes from a single flower species. Ulmo is a tree located throughout the Patagonia region with the flowers blooming between February and March. Ulmo honey particularly is prized in South America for its medicinal value, having anti-bacterial properties comparable to the legendary Manuka honey. Lab tests have been shown to reduce the bacterial activity in both MRSA and E. coli.

Aside from the medicinal value, Ulmo honey has a very unique flavor, with hints of lavender and mint shining through the butter-like consistency of this 100% raw honey. You don’t get that sort of subtlety from typical clover honey. This honey is so delicious because they do a direct “Hive-to-Hand” operation. Patagonia Bee Products works directly with farmers from the Cooperativa Agricola Apicultores Del Sur in southern Chile, where each individual jar of honey is produced by a single beekeeper with the utmost concern for the bees and their environment.

There is no homogenizing in this honey at all which helps protect the delicious nutrition locked inside, including active digestive enzymes and aromatic pollen. Each batch is then tested by a third party in a laboratory to ensure the legitimacy of the pollen and that it is, in fact, monofloral honey. Most of the honey you find in a conventional supermarket has been heat-treated, destroying almost all of the nutritious enzymes, and then strained or filtered to remove any traces of pollen, and then blended with other honeys from all over the world. This means you can’t even test the pollen to determine where the honey possibly came from. What you’re usually left with is more of a honey-syrup with no nutritional value that has a flavor that barely tastes like honey at all.

Patagonia Bee Products’ commitment to the beekeepers and their community is a step above the rest, ensuring you get the rawest, most nutritious, most delicious, humanely and ethically produced honey around. Check out more about them at http://patagoniabeeproducts.com/.

Content adapted from Ozark Natural Foods Co-op original post: http://onf.coop/patagonia-bee-products/.