This picture is for anyone that believes that we have effectively gotten our message of how farmers markets stand for local and direct across to the other 97% of America. Clearly, we need to keep on defining our message so as not to be co-opted completely. This, by the way, is the Charlotte, NC airport.
I believe this is a necessary layer of food sovereignty organizing.
“As Lavey writes in a post on the Community Builders website, the map raises all sorts of questions about the way we have developed our population centers:
If states were organized around watershed and the idea that water should be used efficiently, then that conservation ethic could also have taken root in the way places were built. Recognizing that it is both fiscally unwise and squandering of agricultural/open space, towns may have grown up with a more compact, mixed use form because of their performance relative to those two benchmarks.”
http://nextcity.org/watermark/entry/what-if-states-had-developed-around-watersheds
Although this article was ostensibly about the different secession movements afoot, it is also uses the rural/urban context for the argument that the red/blue divide has to be bridged more often before it gets worse. One place that has happened is in farmers markets and on farms where both groups often interact to access what they deem as healthy or culturally accurate foods. This means that it is crucial for market organizers to think of their pop up town square as a “no politics” zone where libertarians can meet anarchists and yellow dog Democrats and Tea Partying Republicans can hold spaces in line for each other and ultimately, find some common ground on Saturday morning. It is just as important that market organizers balance the needs of their urban or peri-urban shoppers/farmers with those of their rural farmers and vice versa and as important that rural farmers markets find ways to link with their urban peers to change policy or to add benefits to gain new shoppers. Why Urban States Need Their Rural Counties – Emily Badger – The Atlantic Cities.
By Eliza Strickland, East Bay Express
Do you know where you’ll be at 6:59 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, as the sun rises over the eastern hills and paints the bay pink? Sure, you could be in bed, visions of turkey and stuffing dancing through your head. But if you crave spiritual nourishment to start the day, join like-minded folks for the Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island, organized by the International Indian Treaty Council. It’s both a rallying point for Indians of the Bay Area and beyond, and a moment when others can express their solidarity with native people. “It’s a gathering to offer thanks, in our way, for the survival of our indigenous nations on this hemisphere in the face of genocide,” says Andrea Carmen, the treaty council’s executive director. The morning’s events include dances by both California Pomo Indians and Aztecs, and a prayer to the rising sun as the first rays hit the island.
Brave souls have been congregating at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco for the early morning boat trip for over thirty years now. In its earlier years, the event was called Unthanksgiving Day and had a more confrontational tenor. It was an explicit rebuttal, Carmen says, to the grade-school construction-paper picture of Pilgrims and Indians sitting down together and happily swapping maize recipes. “That’s not what happened, and we know it,” she says. Over time, the organizers have adopted a more positive tone. “The message of Unthanksgiving doesn’t convey the true feeling of indigenous people,” Carmen says, “which is to give thanks every day for our survival, and the survival of the natural world, and the courage of our ancestors who fought and struggled and resisted to keep our culture alive for us.
Use the link below to donate today or to gift a membership to your favorite market. FMC membership offers your market’s organizers and farmers access to tools, programs, and support networks that will help your market thrive, and give it a voice in the national food dialogue.
YES.
I think this “less waste and more uses” of local food is exactly what it will take for a small store to re-imagine itself as a source of healthy food. To simply move itself into local sourcing through distributors is not going to be enough. Stores like the Saxapahaw grocery outside of Raleigh Durham are also taking the closed loop seriously and combining gourmet takeout and diverse food stuffs with nearby local sourcing so that even the scraps go back to the animals and compost heaps that supply their store.
I’m still not sure the business plan is completely figured out, but it will certainly help these stores bottom lines to be more waste conscious and to build nearby farms and cottage industries to supply their shelves.
A Grocery Store That Takes 'Local Food' to Its Logical Extreme – Bonnie Tsui – The Atlantic Cities.
Since Richard McCarthy left in January to take over as Slow Food USA director, the board has been diligently searching for a new executive director for the New Orleans-based farmers market organization. They have found a new director who has long worked in the public health sector in the city on food access, pedestrian and bicycling issues, among many other healthy living projects.
It’s always interesting when a market moves from its founder to the next generation; the market community will certainly be working for a smooth transition and I am sure the new leadership will be very attuned to that fact.
Let the new day begin!
http://www.nola.com/food/index.ssf/2013/11/new_executive_director_is_name.html
Even if you missed the webinar, there are still many ways to learn more about this excellent organization and this opportunity.
BALLE Local Economy Fellowship Info Session
Tuesday, November 12, 2013 | 10am PDT/1pm EST
The search for the 2014-2015 BALLE Local Economy Fellows has officially begun! Join Christine Ageton and Leanne Krueger-Braneky, BALLE Directors of Fellowship and Alumni, to learn about the only Fellowship program dedicated solely to advancing the local economy movement and how YOU can become the next BALLE Local Economy Fellow. Deadline for applications is December 15, 2013. Read More
Where other programs focus on individual social entrepreneurs trying to scale single enterprises, the BALLE Fellowship focuses on local economy connectors – people who each represent, convene, and influence communities of hundreds of community entrepreneurs. This is an incredible opportunity for top innovators to connect with their peers, strengthen their capacity for transformative personal and community change, and help reshape local economies across North America.
To get the most of out this webinar, please review information on the Fellowship, watch this brief video, and download your application prior to the session.
Topics covered include:
- Why the BALLE Local Economy Fellowship is so unique;
- Common criteria for applicants and the application process;
- Stories of community impact from our Alumni and existing Fellows;
- Time for Q&A
Colorful Texan Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower said it best:
“For me, however, the true measure of a town’s vitality comes down to whether it has three non-corporate essentials: a vibrant farmer’s market, a good local pub (or a coffeehouse), and an independent community-based bookstore.”
When I heard that more than a few years back, I thought how true that was and back then, how rare. These days, it seems more likely to find this combination in my travels. Of course, my travels are most often to those places with emerging community food systems, especially farmers markets. But still, it is the combination of these local places that is really important in his assessment and that combination may actually point to indicators of success for those farmers markets.
For example last week, I was sitting in Durham, North Carolina at an excellent coffeehouse, having walked passed a small locally owned/locally sourcing restaurant a few doors down that my airbnb.com host spoke of proudly. While there, my Carrboro pals Sarah and Ben took me to many meals with artisanal specials also locally sourced and then for the same for after dinner cocktails. They debated a number of choices for both quality and level of seasonality in the food and drink and although Durham is still emerging as successful walkable downtown/ neighborhood destinations, there were clearly options. And if you asked people in any of these places if there is a regular farmers market, my experience tells me that most would be able to tell me where and when the Durham Farmers Market happens.
What begets what? Does the market reach a point in its history where its stability and its steady curation of local joie de vivre and talents gives other entrepreneurs the courage to chance riskier ideas and to plant their fair own trade or worker owned or other flag firmly in their ground?
Or is it the market itself that is the main beneficiary of an increase of artisans and localvores in more places around its town and to give its vendors and shoppers the additional comfort and approval to keep on with their work?
I wish more markets were ready to measure their own success and that once ready, would add this indicator: counting the ancillary businesses and fellow artisans whose values align with their local farmers market and asking them to detail how they and their shoppers depend on each other and support each other. To me that success measure data might be best illustrated with those folks as honeybees pollinating their ecosystem, building its diversity and resilience.
This book, coupled with Tanya Denckla Cobb’s excellent book on urban agriculture organizing,Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement is Changing What We Eat seem like a good pair to have in any local non-profit’s library.
The Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA) is a farmer-driven, membership-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that helps people in the Carolinas grow and eat local, organic foods by advocating for fair farm and food policies, building the systems family farms need to thrive, and educating communities about local, organic agriculture.
Our key program areas are:
Education
Advocacy
Food Systems
Farm Services
Founded in 1979, we are the oldest and largest sustainable agriculture organization in the Southeast. For over three decades, we have successfully united farmers, consumers and businesses to build a just, healthy food and farming future.
The link at the bottom of this post is to an extraordinary book excerpt about the physical and emotional effects of a hailstorm by the owners of one of the first certified organic farms in the Midwest. As a market organizer that has been through my share of disaster and recovery spells, I can tell you that concern and awareness quickly fades among those not immediately affected long before the producers actually completely recover. You can see that in the annoyance on shoppers faces two or more seasons later when they inquire about their favorite products and are told that the farm is not ready to return. You can see the lack of empathy on legislators faces when they are asked what is to be done for small family farms or boats to help them rebuild. Truly, the aftermath of any disaster on any community food production needs to be shared more widely and for longer periods than it is usually.
In this passage from her book, the farmer explains beautifully what happens both to the people and the plants of her farm; the depth of emotion is naked and exposed:
This is just wrong. June is supposed to be bursting green and lush, the bounty of the universe in full evidence. This is squalor and violence. Instead of spring-fresh, the air is a stench of decay and rot. I can intellectualize. No one is hurt. We won’t starve, go broke, or lose the farm. Many plants will recover. But when I stop distracting myself and notice how I feel, I am vulnerable and exposed, like I have been beaten by a merciless sky and left to survive on my own wits. I know this is just emotion, but I feel completely isolated despite so much support. I look for reality. I know it’s out there somewhere. I can’t see it. I don’t understand the purpose. Maybe there is none. Maybe hail just exists.
Read more: http://www.utne.com/food/organic-living-gardens-eagan-ze0z1311zjhar.aspx#ixzz2jydgjt00
Organic Living at the Gardens of Eagan – Food – Utne Reader.
Helping Farmers Markets Grow 