Author: DW

Pirate ships, untie.

Some of you may have heard the news earlier this year that Slow Food USA’s  Executive Director Richard McCarthy was stepping down from his command after six years. Of course anyone who reads this blog knows he was the founding visionary and 18-year E.D. at Market Umbrella* which is the NGO that manages the Crescent City Farmers Markets in New Orleans, and where I was lucky enough to work as Deputy Director and then as Marketshare Director for a decade.  I had departed its solidity and dynamic programs in 2011, feeling as if I needed to use the skills and resources I had gained to build the field of markets across the US and to focus on Farmers Market Coalition’s development, an entity that Richard had raised the initial private funding for and had served as the first board president when it became its own 501 (c) organization. He very graciously allowed me to take most of the materials we had developed at MU to grow my consulting business (Helping Public Markets Grow) and to use it later on as the basis of my current work as part-time staff at Farmers Market Coalition.

Since his move to NYC in 2012, we have kept in regular contact. I had even attended both of the Slow Food Nations events in Denver that happened under his leadership, partly to see if there could be an alignment between the work I did with FMC and with SF, but also to experience some of the synthesis he was famous for orchestrating between NGO leaders and chefs, private foundations and practioners, savvy media types and farmers, and a slew of others who share the theory of change that put farmers and markets in the democratic center of food systems. He always introduced me with the description that I know he had carefully crafted for me: “Darlene is a market guru and my colleague from the New Orleans days of running markets…” Like much of his wordsmithing, it was carefully open-ended and charmingly odd.

Whenever we met up, it was very much as if we were back in the cramped offices of Market Umbrella, discussing both the minute details of the work to put on a market, and the systemic trends and changes we noted and those we hoped to see. I often told him that I wished he would STOP running non-profits, and start to write, speak, and work at a different level on behalf of the entire system of organizers in the food and civic systems.

Now he is happily unmoored from his tether, roaming the world looking for places to put his efforts in the coming years.  My goal is getting him visiting the port of farmers markets regularly, and so I am doing my best to get him to work on a farmers market anthology with me, with part of the proceeds benefiting FMC and other worthy orgs. Maybe that will happen, but in the meantime, he is beginning to use the blog format to share his thoughts and to raise his flag.

The blog is called think like pirates, and I can offer a tiny glimmer as to why it is called that, although Richard has developed this idea in new ways since its unveiling. But here is the beginning:

Some years back, I watched a Charlie Rose episode with  Tori Amos and found this resonant:

Charlie: Now, this tour with Alanis Morrissette, tell me about her. Do you like her? Do you admire her? Is she good?
Tori: She’s a lovely person, good heart. She’s good at what she does.
Charlie: That’s it?
Tori: That’s good!
Charlie: I mean… well, was there conflict, was there tension? Or was it just a lovefest?
Tori: No tension because… I think honestly, she approached me and she did it in a way that was like, “Hey, lets be creative and put two shows together, two separate shows and um… I had to bring my own production. I didn’t want to do anything where I couldn’t bring my own production because that’s not how I work. I have a pirate ship, I have a captain…
Charlie: Yes.
Tori: I’m the ship. (giggle)
Charlie: Yes.
Tori: I have loads of chefs.
Charlie: Yes.
Tori: And all sorts of people floating around. Thieves, fantastic. A few harlots.
Charlie: Yes.
Tori: All on my ship.
Charlie: Yes.
Tori: And we all had to come and be respected that, you know, no compromise on any level. and, she has her captain, she is her ship, and of course that’s how it had to be approached. And, because of that mutual respect it worked out really well.

I went to the MU office the next day and told Richard about this interview. He immediately connected to it to our work, and came up with his pirate ship anthology for markets. (It is my memory that he had long been obsessed with pirates and maybe that’s why I told him. I believe he already flew a pirate ship flag on the front of his house.)

He began to say in presentations that we have to work as pirate ships, with our own flag, shanties and crew, but mooring together when needed. One day we even came up with a button that said, “Sail Alone, Anchor Together”; I still have one and wear it to market events where it is universally understood.

So I am pleased to introduce my readers to my pal’s new blog. His writing is practical, literate and metaphorical, and will encourage you to ponder it later on that day or week. Maybe over grog on your yardarm…

 

  • Market Umbrella was previously organized as ECOnomics Institute, and was a project of the Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice at Loyola University from 1994-2008.
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SNAP data case heard by Supreme Court this week

The Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in a case that will decide whether or not the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will have to disclose retailers’ sales data from the federally-funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps). It will likely announce its decision later this summer.

If the court rules that the agency does have to release retailers’ SNAP sales information, the public will learn more about which grocery companies generate the most income from the program. The last—and most recent—public disclosure of that information happened by accident in 2013, when a Walmart executive let slip at a dinner party that the company made $13 billion from the program.

The Argus Leader, a South Dakota-based newspaper, first sought the disclosure of this data through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 2010. Since 1966, FOIA has required the government to release previously undisclosed documents to the public unless they fall under one of nine exemptions. USDA denied the Leader’s request based on Exemption 4, which protects “trade secrets and commercial or financial information.”

https://newfoodeconomy.org/supreme-court-argus-leader-foia-snap-food-stamps-retailer-profit/

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Experts weigh in on latest Ag Census

According to the new data, US farmers continue to get older. The average age of all farmers (or “producers” in the Census) went up from 56.3 to 57.5 years, and the average age of “primary producers” increased from 58.3 to 59.4 years. Furthermore, most farmers are still overwhelmingly white (95.4 percent) and male (64 percent).

However, the number of female farmers reported increased by 27 percent since 2012, whereas the number of male farmers reported declined by 2 percent. Note that this result reflects the effectiveness of the USDA’s changes to demographic questions, which allowed farms to list more than one producer engaged in farm decision-making.

Thanks to new categories of data collection, we now know that 11 percent of farmers have a military background (i.e., currently or previously served on active duty in the US Armed Forces), and 17 percent of all farms include a farmer who has served in the military. We also now know more about farm decision-making than previous results were able to track. For example, female farmers are most involved with day-to-day decisions, record keeping, and financial management. Young farmers are more likely than older farmers to make decisions related to livestock.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/marcia-delonge/key-questions-answered-in-the-usdas-new-census-of-agriculture

 

According to the newly released 2017 Census of Agriculture from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), there were over 321,000 young farmers (under the age of 35) in the U.S. That count is up from 2012, when there were 208,000.

While that might sound like a sizable leap, the numbers are complicated by the fact that the USDA only recently began allowing farms to list more than one “operator”—meaning children of farm owners can now be listed along with their parents. Since over 100,000 of those young farmers—nearly the entire difference—are part-owners or tenants of the farm, the overall percentage is only up by 2 percent, from 7.6 to 9.4 percent of total farmers.

2017 Ag Census Reveals Some Bright Spots Despite Increased Farm Consolidation

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Notre Dame bees survived

Hunkered down in their hives and drunk on smoke, Notre Dame’s smallest official residents — some 180,000 bees — somehow managed to survive the inferno that consumed the cathedral’s ancient wooden roof.

Confounding officials who thought they had perished, the bees clung to life, protecting their queen.

“It’s a big day. I am so relieved. I saw satellite photos that showed the three hives didn’t burn,” Notre Dame beekeeper Nicolas Geant told The Associated Press on Friday.

Geant has overseen the bees since 2013, when three hives were installed on the roof of the stone sacristy that joins the south end of the monument. The move was part of a Paris-wide initiative to boost declining bee numbers. Hives were also introduced above Paris’ gilded Opera.

The cathedral’s hives were lower than Notre Dame’s main roof and the 19th-century spire that burned and collapsed during Monday evening’s fire.

Since bees don’t have lungs, they can’t die from smoke inhalation — but they can die from excessive heat. European bees, unlike some bee species elsewhere, don’t abandon their hives when facing danger.

The hives produce around 165 pounds of honey annually, which is sold to Notre Dame employees.

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The future? It can be.

What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple.

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Warren’s “Right To Repair” push

From Warren’s post:

For example, many farmers are forced to rely on authorized agents to repair their equipment. Companies have built diagnostic software into the equipment that prevents repairs without a code from an authorized agent. That leads to higher prices and costly delays.

That’s ridiculous. Farmers should be able to repair their own equipment or choose between multiple repair shops. That’s why I strongly support a national right-to-repair law that empowers farmers to repair their equipment without going to an authorized agent. The national right-to-repair law should require manufacturers of farm equipment to make diagnostic tools, manuals, and other repair-related resources available to any individual or business, not just their own dealerships and authorized agents. This will not only allow individuals to fix their own equipment — reducing delays — but it will also create competition among dealers and independent repair shops, bringing down prices overall.

 

I will tackle consolidation in the agriculture and farming sector head on and break the stranglehold a handful of companies have over the market.

 

Read the post here.

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Louisiana Food Policy- Pepper Bowen

I have been following Culinaria Center for Food, Law, Policy, and Culture work in my city for a while- I find it to be very impressive, inclusive, with systemic work being done.

This interviewer may seem a little too focused on fetishizing our culture including the odd choice of requesting a midday drinking resulting in featuring massive daiquiris from our walkup and drive-through drinking culture (which, as true as that is, could use more context in the description of it),  but still Pepper Bowen’s responses are excellent and thoughtful.

like this:

Bowen: What I find is that, especially for lawmakers, they really do want—as much as we give them crap—they really do want to do whatever it is that their constituents want for them to do. But the problem is that sometimes they are divorced from their actual constituents. They are also, sometimes, funded by folks whose desires and needs are at odds with their actually constituents. But by giving them the information they can make a more intelligent decision.

Still, if this gulp encourages you to check out the National Food and Beverage Museum, and Culinaria’s work, it is worth posting.

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What is the #GreenNewDeal? (answer: a fulcrum to pivot to a just & healthy future)

From the Organic Consumers Association post:

The GND, still a work in progress, is a set of ambitious goals aimed at addressing global warming and income inequality, in part by rapidly transitioning to a fossil fuel-free economy while at the same time guaranteeing everyone who wants one a job and a living wage.

The latest version of the GND was launched by the Sunrise Movement. The organization’s co-founder, Varshini Prakash describes it as “an umbrella term for a set of policies and programs that will rapidly decarbonize our economy, get all of us off of fossil fuels and work to stop the climate crisis in the next 10 to 12 years.”

Prakash told Rolling Stone that the initiative has three pillars: 100-percent clean energy by 2030; investment in communities “on the frontlines of poverty & pollution;” and the guarantee of a quality job for “anyone ready to make this happen.”

Eric Holt-Giménez, agroecologist, political economist and editor of Food First, echoes the Sunrise Movement’s position that “to create a policy sea-change, we’ll need both strong, broad-based movements and responsive, elected leadership.”

Many food activists seem to operate under the assumption that we can somehow change the food system in isolation from the larger political-economic system in which it is embedded. Changing everything in order to change our food system seems like an impossibly big task. But the food system can also be a lever for whole systems change. The Green New Deal just might be the fulcrum upon which the farm, food and climate movements can pivot our society towards the just transition we all urgently need and desire.

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Deserts, swamps, or apartheid? the language of food organizing

Brilliant interview with Karen Washington as she breaks down the institutions and words that deflate the potential of our food work. I agree whole-heartedly with her assessment that the term food desert does not describe the actual problem that communities face. I remember when a local academic dismissed it some years back but only substituted the term food swamp because as he said, it is not a lack of food that is the issue, but a swamp of bad food choices. I thought then well maybe that’s slightly better but it still doesn’t define the issue.

In contrast, the term food apartheid is properly defiant and active. Apartheid is the system of segregation, most often based on race, and as such does describe the structural issues with food, in consumption and production, in rural, urban, and suburban places. The solution includes food sovereignty (and health to be understood as the most important type of wealth), but of course in the US, the structure of sovereignty and self-care has been entirely warped by our corporate food structure and our statist political structure.

It is hard for many, but it is vital that all people see the food apartheid that has always been present in the US for people of color and now stretches to every  community. How to see? Look down and note the chronic illnesses among family and neighbors; look around and see the lack of actual food growing in your public spaces and neighbors’ yards; look to City Hall and your state capital: see the policies that discourage or criminalize the production and sale of good food by neighbors. Once made, these observations can lead to action and unity and should become the core of our messages as farmers market leaders.

From the Karen Washington Guardian interview.

The conversation around actual food value is a conversation that we don’t have in low-income neighborhoods, regardless if they’re black or white, rural or urban. But things are changing. People are talking more than ever about food. It’s such a major shift, so you’re seeing major corporations offering different options, like fast-food chains offering salads. The consumer is starting to understand the relationship between food and health. It’s also happening in low-income communities. The rise in school gardens impacts children and they shift their parents’ perspectives. In my neighborhood, every year, we have a block party and they don’t serve soda anymore. The kids are asking for water! Education is working.

I think that food activists who see the work they do as truly measurable in terms of justice or of successful resistance to the dominant system are most likely to achieve actual change and will find themselves less frustrated by small disappointments and failures in their daily work. I also think that those food activists who see their work as organizing -and who see organizing as leadership development at the grassroots level – are also more likely to find allies and to be good allies, which to me is the primary goal of creating public entities like farmers markets or non-profit organizations.

I’ll leave the last words for agricultural leader LaDonna Redmond who eloquently said in the foreword to Professor Monica White’s Freedom Farmers:Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement:

While the white movement describes my community through a deficit model, Monica’s work describes agriculture as a site of resistance…The book is a conduit of those stories and memories that restore our dignity. I hope it will forever remind us that we are people of this land.

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Stackt market

 

Spearheaded by area locals Matt Rubinoff and Tyler Keenan, Stackt Market will transform the lot of a former smelting plant that has stood vacant since 2014 into a multipurpose public space, with the majority of the expected 130 containers devoted to pop-up retail space. The rest of the stacked volumes will be open to cultural, arts and events programming. It’s a temporary endeavor – Rubinoff and Keenan have a two-and-a-half-year lease to use the 9,290-square-metre plot of land before future plans of turning it into a park get started – but one that promises to breathe new life into a neglected area of the city.

They’re offering companies and organizations flexible lease lengths and adjustable spaces, such that “anchor tenants” who have agreed to stay for the whole two-and-a-half year period will exist alongside a constantly evolving ecosystem of pop-up shops, service providers, and brands.

Market 707 at Dundas and Bathurst Sts. is already using shipping containers to house small businesses just south of Toronto Western Hospital.

 

http://lga-ap.com/projects/commercial/

 

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