Featured speeches given by County Executive, Ron Sims

Farmer-Chef Connection talking points
Feb. 5, 2007
The Mountaineers
9:45 – 10:00 AM

• I want to welcome you all to King County – thanks for choosing our community as the site for this Farmer/Chef connection gathering.
• I also want to express my support for strengthening the relationship between farmers and buyers – whether those buyers are individuals through the growing network of farmers markets, or companies, like some of the many fine restaurants that we all enjoy in King County.
• We all benefit from thriving rural lands, whether we are the farmer who grows crops, the chef who buys the farmer’s products, or the customer who enjoys a great meal made with locally grown ingredients.
• Our rural lands are our heritage. They play a vital role in our economic, cultural, and physical landscape. The importance of rural lands will greatly increase as we develop strategies to deal with our changing climate.
• The importance of local food being served in local restaurants goes far beyond quality and freshness values.
• When a chef supports a local farmer, farmland is saved. The grower makes money and is less likely to convert the farm for other uses. The farmer-chef connection is a critical link in farmland preservation.
• Purchasing local food promotes our food security. The more reliable the market, the more abundant the food supply from local sources, the less likely we are to rely on food from far away places.
• Local restaurants that purchase local foods can help us in the in our efforts to combat climate change by reducing energy consumption and our dependence on oil. It takes less fuel for a local farmer to deliver their products locally. Since the product is fresher, there is less waste, which reduces the amount of garbage to haul away.
• In 1940 the average farm in the US produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy used. Today 10 calories of fossil energy is used for every one calorie of food produced. In other words, it takes 20,000 calories of energy to produce the average 2,000 calories food the average American eats every day.
• We can reduce this high energy use and its contribution to climate change by encouraging the consumption of foods grown locally, within a couple of hundred miles from where we live, instead of the current average of 1,500 miles.
• In a recent presentation by Tim Crosby, the Farm to Cafeteria Director for 21 Acres in Woodinville, he noted that buying locally can reduce the distance food travels by over 80 percent.
• If half of the 2 million households in Washington State purchased 10 percent of their food locally, the reduction in “food miles” could save 93 million gallons of fuel per year. Put another way, just a small change toward local purchases could eliminate 930,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.
• There are many innovative ways restaurants and farmers can make connections. King County’s Puget Sound Fresh Web site is a valuable resource where chefs can find more than 200 farmers who raise a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, meats and flowers right here at home.
• We launched Puget Sound Fresh back in 1998 to encourage consumers, wholesalers, retailers and restaurants to seek out and purchase locally grown products.
• King County staff are available to assist with questions related to finding products and farmers that are willing to partner with your business.
• King County, in partnership with the Cascade Harvest Coalition, helps support the Puget Sound Fresh Partner Program, where restaurants and other businesses can be recognized for their support of local farms.
• There is a great reason for optimism when I think about the future of family farming – and the future of rural economies here in King County.
• We have been working to strengthen the economic underpinnings of our rural areas by removing unnecessary obstacles to farmers and home-bases businesses.
• Through a series of public workshops and meetings, we developed several significant recommendations into something that we call the Rural Economic Strategies. We can ensure the survival of rural areas by strengthening rural economies.
• We were successful in changing the county code to make it easier to have a home-based business in rural areas. And now we’re working on new code changes so that farmers can have more opportunities to process their products more easily for sale directly to the public.
• We have preserved more than 13,000 acres of farmland under our Farmland Preservation Program, which was the first of its kind in the nation.
• These farmlands are literally right next door to the largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest – a metropolitan area with a well-earned reputation for its excellent restaurants.
• The farmer-chef connection is a natural fit for strengthening both our farming community and our restaurant community.
• I want to thank you again for coming to our community for this event.
• At this time it is my pleasure to introduce Bill Bradbury
• Bill Bradbury grew up in Chicago, and moved to Bandon, Oregon in 1971. In Bandon, he owned and operated a small business before beginning his career in government.
• He served in the Oregon legislature for 14 years, representing portions of Oregon's south coast as a State Representative from 1981 to 1985, and as a State Senator from 1985 to 1995. He was Senate Majority Leader from 1986 to 1993 and Senate President from 1993 to 1995.
• As Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury is Oregon’s second-highest-ranking constitutional officer.
• He is the auditor of public accounts, the chief elections officer, and the manager of the state's official legislative and executive records.
• Along with the Governor and Treasurer, he sits on the State Land Board, and he was appointed by Governor Kulongoski to chair the Oregon Sustainability Board. Elected Secretary of State in 2000, and again in 2004, he currently lives in Salem with his wife, Katy.
• Please join me in welcoming Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury.
  

Related information

• Sims encourages local farmers, chefs to work together for better health, environment, economy
• Puget Sound Fresh
• Agriculture in King County

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