Off the beat: Thyme & Dough and The Leaning Pear are truly local

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GroACT, Growers Alliance of Central Texas, a group of local, sustainable and organic farmers and ranchers, surveyed its members to help citizens identify restaurants that buy regularly from area farms and Dripping's own Rolling in Thyme & Dough makes the group's list of "who's truly local" along with big and nationally acclaimed Austin restaurants. Hooray Fabienne! Also, cheers to two other restaurants just down the road, Jack Allen's Kitchen in Oak Hill and The Leaning Pear in Wimberley!

For more on how the restaurants were ranked and who made the list, visit the Growers Alliance website.

And this related story published in the Austin Chronicle . . .

Local Is as Local Does – Why area farmers want you to beware of faux local

By Virginia B. Wood | Fri., Feb. 18, 2011

Austin certainly has the reputation as a city that values keeping it weird and supporting local businesses, but a group of area farmers is very concerned about what it sees as the fluctuating definition of "local" when it comes to fresh produce.

The buying local trend is hot all around the country just now, prompting restaurants, grocery stores, and produce distributors to use the "We Buy Local" banner as an effective but sometimes misleading marketing tool.

So, how does Austin define local? Does it have to mean produce grown in our home county, or could the parameters expand to include the entire big state of Texas? Area farmers adhere to a definition that includes produce and food products grown within a 150-mile radius of Austin. This is the same standard used by most of our farmers' markets, with a few seasonal exceptions for items such as citrus, bison, seafood, and apples not regularly produced in Central Texas.

Why is the definition of what constitutes local so critical? A newly formed coalition of area farmers and ranchers called Growers Alliance of Central Texas, or GroACT, maintains that diluting the definition of local to include produce from anywhere in the state deceives consumers while threatening area farmers' livelihoods.

If so many people are really buying local, they ask, why aren't their farmstands and farmers' market stalls selling out? Why is it now necessary for many of them to sell at two or three farmers' markets in order to make the same (or less) income they used to generate with one stall? While several factors are surely involved here – the soft economy, the number of overall farmers' market shoppers being diluted by the proliferation of markets, and even the resurgence of backyard gardens and chicken coops – GroACT members remain convinced that defining local is a serious economic issue for them.

Austin's modern local food movement began in the early Nineties with a small, dedicated group of organic farmers who sold produce from the back of pick-up trucks and off folding tables at small neighborhood markets. When Whole Foods Market built a flagship store at Sixth and Lamar in 1996, the same farmers offered a weekly market in the parking lot there for some time. The movement grew slowly over the next 10 years, as it did around the country, until it blossomed fully in the national consciousness about four years ago.

Read the complete story at this link: http://www.austinchronicle.com/food/2011-02-18/local-is-as-local-does/