It’s Mountain Trout. But From Which Mountain? — Brian Halweil
Constant Harvest • Volume 5 Number 1 • Planting 2006 Updated: 04/11/06
It pays to ask where your food is from. That’s what Arne Vinje, a farmer in southern Norway, learned on a recent camping trip to the remote mountains of Telemark. At the end of a long day’s hike, Mr. Vinje, who is also mayor of Vinje municipality and the former president of the Norwegian Farmers’ and Smallholders’ Union, stopped at a mountain lodge and ordered a traditional lodge specialty: trout and potatoes. Then he asked the chef where the fish was caught. To his surpriseÐnearby streams teamed with fishÐthe chef said that the trout was flown in frozen from a Chilean fish farm. “On the menu, the dish was presented as ‘mountain trout’,” Vinje said. “Being in a West Telemark café, I bet nobody would interpret ‘mountain’ as ‘the Andes’.”
Mr. Vinje told this story in 2003 at an unprecedented meeting of farmers, environmentalists, politicians, and chefs who had gathered in Oslo to discuss “kortreist mat,” Norwegian for “short-traveled food.” The 80 or so people in attendance–heads of political parties, farmer cooperatives, conservation groups, and chefs unions–collectively represented 800,000 constituents, in a nation whose total population is only 5 million.
The timing for such solidarity couldn’t have been better. Norway is home to 55,000 farmers. Roughly 4,000 leave the land each year. Norway produced most of its own food before World War II, but today imports half of it, in terms of calories. The nation’s harsh landscape and climate (snow often covers the fields for four to six months a year) means it is more expensive in Norway to produce most crops than it is elsewhere in Europe. This has set off a rash of highly publicized grocery trips by thrifty Norwegians across the borders to Denmark and Sweden. Farmers have strongly supported Norway’s decision to decline EU membership, which has allowed the nation to maintain high levels of government support for farmers, as well as a variety of laws to keep out imports when Norwegian fruits, vegetables, and other crops are in season.
Still, subsidies are declining and this has encouraged many farmers to market their wares directly to consumers or capitalize on the distinctiveness of their region. In more remote areas, the government is now promoting “agriculture plus,” a term that includes agricultural tourism, niche products, and appreciation of rural history. “This is the hope for the future of Norwegian agriculture,” Vinje said, “because we cannot compete on price.”
The first farmers market opened in Oslo in August 2003 and there were markets in nine cities by the end of the season. Just one year later, 19 cities around the country have marketsÐfrom Kristiansand on the southern coast to the northern Lappish city of Troms¿ more than 1,000 kilometers away. “Norway is a bit late at this,” admitted Aina Edelman, a former goat farmer from Tromso who coordinates the farmers markets at the national level. “It is still too early to say if it has come to stay.” She noted that while small-town politicians seem to be firmly in favor of lokalmat (local food), the ministers of agriculture and development, concerned about the Norwegian fish export market and poor farmers in the South, have called the movement “selfish.” “What is very obvious is that consumers want this type of market,” Edelman said. “And farmers are looking for more income sources.”
Kaupa, a new website, allows Norwegians to order wild mush-rooms, elk sausages, wild berry jams, fruit wines, and freshwater caviar from nearby farmers and fishers. The country’s largest environmental group for youth, Nature and Youth, has started sending volunteers to help short-staffed shepherds defend their flocks (mutton is a Norwegian dietary staple) against an explosion of wolves and other predators.
Norway’s first (and only) celebrity chef, Arne Brimi, who is known for his use of wild foods, noted that around the globe the best cuisine has always had a strong regional focus and relied on the freshest ingredients. But instead of this appreciation for what can be grown nearby, “Norwegians have the highest per capita consumption of frozen pizzas in the world,” Brimi said. “And we import all the ingredients.”
Brimi is working with the Touring Association (which represents hiking, camping, and other recreation in the Norwegian mountains, among the nation’s most popular pastimes) to develop a line of foods made exclusively from local ingredients and that will be available in the nation’s extensive network of camping huts. For instance, instead of the standard precooked meals that most hikers use, sojourners at Gjendesheim mountain cottage in Jotunheimen National Park sit down to a meal of cured reindeer heart, sour cream porridge, cakes made from locally produced grains, and a type of small potato grown only in the valleys of those mountain valleys.