Is the farm-to-table movement over?

Of all the labels people look for when it comes to food, locally grown is number one, surveys find. But more than a decade after the county launched the San Diego Grown 365 label, few of its 6565 small farms are using it.

Once again, farmers are being encouraged to use the logo that is expected to give them an edge anywhere the food is sold, from food trucks to hospitals. To assist the Farm Bureau, Community Health Improvement Partners, the nonprofit that enabled the county’s Farm to School Taskforce, is reaching out to growers. It began with questions about the label on last summer’s 2015-2016 crop availability survey, which helps large buyers like schools plan ahead.

“We conducted fairly extensive outreach to growers,” says Colin Cureton, the food-systems director and lead researcher for Community Health Improvement Partners.

Of those who responded last summer, only 18, about one-third, are using the label.

“We surveyed a pretty specific subset of growers already engaged in the local food movement, so that number is much higher than in the broader population of growers,” Cureton says. “I think there are only about 90 to 100 registered users of San Diego Grown 365.”

And so the bid to relaunch the languishing label continues.

Why participation has been so low is “an open question,” according to a report on the survey’s findings. What’s needed, Cureton says, “is an investment in actually marketing the brand.”

Promoting use of the label — in order to promote the purchase of local food — has been an ongoing revival campaign. The label was developed by Farm Bureau members in 2004, when local food sales were rising everywhere. Also that year, the National Farm to School Program was established under the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act and 22 states had already linked local farms to school cafeterias. Supporters envisioned thousands of farmers using it.

However, in 2010, a report on the San Diego County food system noted that “despite the introduction of the 365 label in 2004, the first and only local labeling initiative in the county, it was never fully adopted by producers and is currently not in use.”

The challenge for the Farm Bureau, Cureton says, is that they are a small nonprofit with limited staff. He said the recent outreach indicated that most growers who aren’t using the label would like to do so.

Has the cost deterred them? Although the Farm Bureau–owned trademark has always been free to growers who sign a simple agreement, it can be expensive to revise existing product labels. The initial estimate of the cost to participate was from $50 to $500, depending on the size of the operation. But one farm reportedly paid $5000 to add the logo on their labels. Another farm that was involved in the development of the 365 label years ago isn’t even using it.

“I just haven’t spent the money on changing my label,” says Noel Stehly, the co-owner of Stehly Farms Organics in Valley Center.

Cureton says that one grower did cite the cost, “but it was not a strong trend that came up in our research.” He notes how inexpensive it would be to use the logo on websites, product availability sheets, or at farmers’ market stands.

Products advertised with the Farm Bureau logo must be 85 percent grown or harvested in the county or its surface or coastal waters. To be certified under the program, growers, retailers or meal-serving institutions enter into a license agreement with the Farm Bureau. The license implies that the seal will only be used on food that is truly San Diego grown.