The Dirty Deed of Greenwashing

These days, going green can be as much about turning a profit as being environmentally aware. And sometimes the truth of what is really eco-friendly is stretched as high as Jack’s beanstalk.

“There is a lot of greenwashing going on,” Annie Farrell, a farmer at Millstone Farm in Wilton, said referring to chefs and restaurants that claim they serve organic food or grow foods according to USDA guidelines.

Greenwashing, or deceptive marketing to make products sound more eco-friendly, has been around since the early 1980s.  There’s even a greenwashing index for the curious to weed the posers from the pure.

According to the national Restaurant Association, 62 percent of Americans prefer to eat at eco-friendly restaurants. And words such as ‘organic’ and ‘farm-fresh’ adorn many a menu in efforts to lure customers.

In 2008 Americans spent nearly $28 billion on organic edibles, up from $1 billion in 1990, according to The Organic Trade Association.  Businesses have therefore been quick to paint themselves as environmentally conscious, and restaurants are no exception. So for those dedicated to growing and serving local, sustainable food, breaking through can be a challenge.

“I spend so much time doing what I do, I don’t have a lot of time to go and talk about it,” said Tim LaBant, chef of The Schoolhouse Restaurant in Cannondale.  The restaurant has earned a reputation for serving local, organically grown and raised food the right way.

But eating more organically grown foods isn’t just about personal health; it’s a philosophy, Farrell said.

“There is a shifting from the old way of thinking where we have what we want when we want to thinking about what’s possible using only the resources that we have,” Farrell said.

To do that, farmers like those at Millstone shun pesticides, employ crop rotation, and even rely on a herd of sheep to keep the lawn clipped using a system of portable fences.

When the harvest from the farm feeds diners at local restaurants, the cycle of sustainability continues. 

Upon entering the chocolate brown and pale blue dining room of The Schoolhouse Restaurant, customers might notice a chalkboard hanging on one wall.  A nod to the room’s history, the slate serves a practical use today.  It lists the season’s key ingredients. 

“If you’re going to stick to your guns you have to stick to your guns.  I can’t write a menu for the next six months,” LaBant said. “Sure I could’ve written a summer menu highlighting tomatoes, but there was blight.  When there were red tomatoes on restaurant menus around here you had to wonder where they came from.”

Each week LaBant drives to the 75-acre Millstone Farm.  There Tamworth pigs– he recently turned 237 pounds of the meat into scores of dishes– heritage chickens, and Devon cattle share the land.  LaBant collects his harvest of vegetables.  In just a few hours customers will eat a meal prepared from the same freshly plucked greens.

Although it’s early autumn, frost has already coated the ground.  Still, kale and collard greens manage to push through the ground.  When the soil freezes, lettuces will grow in the greenhouse.  Everything is organically grown and processed without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.

“We need to challenge ourselves in how we think about food,” Farrell said, standing in one of the farm’s many gardens on a recent fall day. “Eating locally is the way we’re going and the way we hope the world is going.”

Farrell, who joined Betsy and Jesse Fink at Millstone in 2006, has pursued sustainable agriculture for decades. In the late 1970s Farrell and her family headed to upstate New York where she built a farmhouse, tilled the land, and, as she said, learned how to “survive the winter.”

She has earned her “street creds as a farmer. She does what the land wants her to do.  She organizes things they way Mother Nature would want it.” LaBant said pointing to a pumpkin patch clinging to a stonewall.

The wall, rather than store-bought stakes, supports the green tendrils.  The boardwalk that winds through 35-acres of wetlands was hewn from local lumber harvested according to best practices.

Make no mistake, Millstone Farm is a for-profit working farm and The Schoolhouse is a for-profit eatery.  But neither will compromise in order to turn more tables or grow more carrots.  They aren’t interested in narrowing the perceived "green" advantage.

“There are guys who freak out that we’re not Willy Wonka’s Lettuce factory, where you press a button and ten pounds of lettuce come out,” Farrell said.

Instead the farm favors sustainable relationships. For example, when greens get scarce, Wilton’s Village Market, which was one of the farm’s first customers, gets first dibs on the greenhouse lettuce. Even if a chef with deeper pockets came and offered double the price, the Millstone farmers would say no, said Emma Kirwan, another farmer at Millstone.

“We try to respect and maintain relationships with the town.  There are a lot of ethics and responsibility involved in what we do,” said Kirwan.

That’s precisely why LaBant frequents Millstone.

Aside from supplying several local restaurants and grocery stores, the farm strives to educate the public.  It has the Millstone Farm Charitable Fund, which promotes community gardens and healthy food initiatives. 

Those who visit the grounds will also note the sheep and llama, gardens and wild turkeys.  These aren’t Purdue oven stuffers, but rather similar to the kind that Ben Franklin would have been proud to call the national bird.

“I like to keep it as real as possible so that people are eating close to what they ate 200 years ago.” LaBant said.