About Earth to Plate

E2P is my charitable work, stemming from a business concept that I developed years ago in an effort with a local farmer who wanted to plant crops on a neighbor's land. E2P brings farmers and land owners together, and for people to work together successfully, contracts are required. That's where the lawyering comes in. E2P benefits participating farmers, landowners, state and local governments, and members of the food service industry in familiar business relationships covering the whole supply chain... from earth to plate, while lowering food costs, taxes, overhead, and carbon footprint all around.

Farmers can expand operations onto more land without having to buy that land, without having to pay for compost to nurture the soil, and without typical fuel costs for deliveries. Landowners can share part of their property while lowering their tax burden as a result. These costs so overburden small suburban farms that they do not survive. In this effort and in learning more about local agriculture and the food industry, I have developed a network of resources, farmers, food industry professionals, landowners and fantastic organizations and publications like Produce Business Magazine (www.producebusiness.com) Westchester County’s Muscoot Farm (www.muscootfarm.org), the Westchester Land Trust (www.westchesterlandtrust.org), and Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems (www.greasecar.com).

And while farmers and landowners benefit by working together, clients in food service lower their food cost and other overhead, too. Typically, farmers grow and give produce to clients in exchange for one thing - cash. With E2P, farmers take three things in exchange for their produce. First, money. Second, when delivering produce, the farmer takes vegetable waste from its clients, to use in vermi-composting (composting using worms to expedite the transition from vegetable waste to compost usable for growing greens). And third, spent fry-o-lator oil to use in fueling adapted diesel delivery engines (straight veg oil, not messy bio-diesel) for delivery vans, farm and heating equipment. By shaving these typical overhead items down, farmers run a more profitable and sustainable enterprise, chefs lower food and sanitation expenses, and land owners can pay less in taxes.

For more information or for help working with the Earth to Plate concept, please contact me.