Lexington, KY - It is highly unlikely that Nat Henton from Versailles and Sal Junda from Kenner, La., will ever meet, although they have a lot in common.
Food is their common denominator - more specifically, shrimp. Junda owns and operates Sal's Riverside Seafood, which sends Gulf shrimp all over the country. Henton, a chef and farmer, raises freshwater shrimp, referred to as prawns, and relies on the local food economy to quantify his business.
Junda knows how to get the freshest shrimp from the Gulf to restaurants and wholesalers across the United States. Henton's combination of occupations gives him an edge when it comes to knowing how beneficial local food is to his customers.
And customers ultimately dictate just how successful either will be. Both have seen their challenges in the food business. Junda has endured Hurricane Katrina five years ago and the recent Gulf oil spill that brought the fishing industry to a halt. Henton has endured the task of taking a relatively new way of farming and finding a market for his product.
"I have a pretty good understanding of how to raise prawns, what the industry is like that they are going into around here and how to get them into that," he said.
Knowing and doing are two different things, however. Henton has been in the business for more than a decade, and getting into existing markets has not gotten easier. He admitted that he doesn't know where his prawn business would be if not for local chef Ouita Michel and husband, Chris, who own the Holly Hill Inn and literally buy all of his prawns that don't get purchased from pond-side sales. They "get it," as Henton puts it, and that is what it takes to make buying local foods work.
The couple bases much of their menu around the use of local products when they can, but that idea is still taking a while to catch on for many others.
"If you are not sure where the food was grown or raised, you probably shouldn't be eating it," said Henton. "I like to have knowledge of where the food came from. It's important to me. I've been fortunate because my relationship with Ouita is very good, and she is willing to support local farmers as much as she can."
Unfortunately the cost of going local is often more expensive than popping into the supermarket. Henton added that you have to be willing to pay the extra price to get those home-grown commodities.
One thing sure to get the attention of consumers when it comes to their food origins is the occurrence of disasters such as the oil spill or the national egg scare. Over the past few years, it seems there have been countless food safety problems, affecting everything from spinach to salsa.
The problems aren't just from food raised here but in foods coming into the country from faraway places as well. And therein lies a dilemma, especially for seafood.
The competition
It would appear that Junda and Henton are competitors. After all, Junda works in large volumes, and therefore he most likely is able to sell at lower prices. And for him, he is dealing with local goods, too. It's just the pond he gets his shrimp from happens to be the Gulf of Mexico.
The real competitors of both are the exporters from all over the world that send 70 percent of all U.S.-consumed seafood here, and 90 percent of the shrimp, from places like Thailand and China.
For consumers, it's cheap, but is it safe? The real kick in the pants is the fact that almost none (less than two percent) of this seafood is inspected before it makes its way to the stores that sell it, according to Jim Tidwell, an aquaculture expert from Kentucky State University (KSU). Tidwell has spent his career researching aquaculture and teaching people like Henton how to raise commodities like freshwater prawns.
"We're working with these guys because we are a long way from the ocean, and this is an opportunity to raise shrimp in Kentucky," Tidwell said. "Shrimp is the number one seafood item in the U.S. It's what we want to buy and what we buy the most of. But most of it is imported, so this is an area we felt like we could try to make some contribution to push back the trade deficit."
Tidwell is familiar with both local growers and the Gulf producers. He grew up in the Gulf region of Alabama, knowing people like Junda and seeing what the growth of foreign imports has done to producers there, not to mention the damage disasters have created.
"It's just a shell of itself, of what it used to be," said Tidwell. "It hurts my soul to think about the places I love that are suffering down there."
It is probably fair to say that foreign imports have caused as much damage as hurricanes and oil spills, in an economic sense.
Tidwell added that the Gulf oil disaster is the kind of thing that will make consumers here think more about buying local goods, but they have to be willing to pay for it.
"The clientele that cares about those things is also willing to pay a little extra to know where that food they are going to put in their families' mouths was raised, and a lot of them want to know who raised it," he said. "That's the kind of customer base we want to tap into with this (local food campaign)."
Tidwell has done at least one market study at a local farmers' market to get a general idea of how local customers will take to the products.
"Our producers will be harvesting (soon), and we wanted to make people start thinking about these products. Part of what we were handing out were harvest schedules for the different shrimp producers around the state. Taste it, take some home and cook it, and if you like it, here's where you can buy it fresh off the farm," he said of the study.
Tidwell also said this was just one way to get more awareness to the fact that fresh shrimp and other seafood are grown right here, which could make consumers here more self-reliant.
Whether or not the troubles in the Gulf will equate to more sales of Kentucky prawns is yet to be determined, but memories are short and consumers often return to their old habits once a scare is over.
Junda said the incident brought the shrimp and fishing industries in that region to their knees, with initial worries that they might not rebound at all.
"The people down here were worried, and the people coming to visit were staying away from the seafood. Even the big stores down here were afraid to take it," he said. "Now it has turned around completely. The businesses are starting to pick up, and people are starting to forget it. I see nothing but a bright future, and I'm not just saying that."
If Junda's optimism is correct, that's good news for the Gulf seafood industry, and he is right about people starting to forget.
Henton agreed, in that once a problem is off the television news, it leaves their minds. If he is correct, it may take more than oil in the Gulf to get enough people interested in buying local.