articles

Fruits We’ ll Never Taste

My own original Slow Food chapter leader (and emerging radio personality) Poppy Tooker coined the phrase “Eat it To Save It” as a way to link human need for good food to awareness of environmental trends. There is no question that if Americans could see, smell and taste what we have lost just in the 20th century as far as foodstuffs, we would have farmers as senators, mayors and presidents once again.

the book, “Salmon Nation People, Fish, and Our Common Home” is a great example of one region’s attempt to clarify what needs to be saved. Put out by a great regional ngo, Ecotrust, Salmon Nation is worth having in your library.
This article is also a great way to think about “untasteable foods.”

Fruits We' ll Never Taste.

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Eat healthy — your kids are watching

Good market newsletter article and as markets that have begun to reach out to families know, you need to involve both parent and child in the market.

Eat healthy — your kids are watching.

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Jubilee lunches

Tens of thousands of community lunches in one weekend…

“Guests at the Big Jubilee Lunches were asked to bring food to share with their friends and neighbours, with the royal couple offering a cake that had the union flag colours.”

http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16240590

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Rehabilitating vacant lots improves urban health and safety

Details for grant proposals when you are greening a vacant lot with a new market :

Report.

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Another educational food production platform, if nothing else….

When I worked at marketumbrella.org, one of the many projects that I helped design and run was our White Boot Brigade, the roaming shrimper market for added seasonal seafood sales. Rouse’s Supermarkets was an early supporter of the WBB, and we genuinely enjoyed working with this Houma-based family company. Since they gamely took on being the main grocery store chain in our city (when Sav-A-Center decided that post-Katrina New Orleans wasn’t for them), I for one was very happy as I knew them and knew their stores. New Orleanians are VERY picky about their “markets” (as stores are often called) and yet, the Rouse family has mostly met their needs. As for buying locally, they do buy, they do support local entrepreneurs. Farmers have a harder time getting their produce in there, but value-added farmers market vendors seem to be doing well.
They just opened a store a few blocks from the flagship Saturday farmers market in downtown New Orleans, and I think it will help both the market and the store. That store is the subject of this excellent story on their new rooftop garden.

The only supermarket in downtown New Orleans is the first grocery in the country to develop an aeroponic urban farm on its roof.

What exactly is an aeroponic urban garden?

Think vertical instead of horizontal. The garden “towers” use water rather than soil, and allow plants to grow upward instead of outward. It was developed by a former Disney greenhouse manager, and is used at Disney properties, the Chicago O’Hare Airport Eco-Farm and on the Manhattan rooftop of Bell Book & Candle restaurant.

Rouse’s downtown

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The obesity problem as a mathematical question

“The (obesity) epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the United States.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html?_r=2

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3 Ways to Tap Into Your Customers’ Network | Inc.com

As we hear about more markets opening and more markets staying open longer past summer seasons, we need to figure out who will support us past the early adopters that the original markets found. Honestly, when I hear talk of “cannabilization” of existing markets, I know there is some truth to this although I find the language overly dramatic and needlessly provocative. When I work with a new or an expanding market, I often ask them to describe the type of anchor vendors and first tier of customers they hope to attract, but few are able to do it with any detail. If you don’t know who you’re focusing on with your outreach and marketing, then you won’t know how to reach them.
Especially for new or newer markets, it is imperative to use the existing group that you do attract to find others. As we all know, money is tight and marketing is expensive. Add to that, almost every analysis of good marketing tells you that word of mouth is the most important way to find long lasting customers, which, of course, is exactly what we are all about. This article offers sensible ways to build trust with customers and really your vendors if you choose to see your vendors as your internal customer, which I hope you do.

3 Ways to Tap Into Your Customers’ Network | Inc.com.

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Food Among the Ruins / Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

I am quite suspicious of media that tries to decree our movement as the answer to a region’s entire set of problems, and as a food activist, I am on record as being uneasy with terms like “urban ag” as I believe in regional ag as the better term to describe entrepreneurial farming in both the urban and rural areas TOGETHER. I mean if a rural farmer came to me and told me to support rural farming, I’d argue for the urban by asking for him or her to consider their regional needs.
And I also like regional ag since it includes existing farmers and appreciates our hinterlands and waterways which we also need to supply food for our beloved cities. I believe in urban farming, let me say that- but as for agriculture, I think we’re best served when we just support family farming and farming as an honorable profession.. Add to that, the power shift that needs to happen to support new farmers should happen today by supporting those existing farmers, some of whom are still stuck deep in in the industrial food system. We can polarize them and point at them as “part of the problem” but it may be better to learn from them and to assist them in gaining knowledge and awareness about why they may want to join us over in the alternative food system.

However, I love these quotes from legendary Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs from the article linked below about Detroit’s agricultural movement:

“The food riots erupting around the world challenge us to rethink our whole approach to food,” she said, but as communities, not as bodies politic. “Today’s hunger crisis is rooted in the industrialized food system which destroys local food production and forces nations like Kenya, which only twenty-five years ago was food self-sufficient, to import 80 percent of its food because its productive land is being used by global corporations to grow flowers and luxury foods for export.” The same thing happened to Detroit, she says, which was once before a food self-sufficient community.

I asked her whether the city government would support large-scale urban agriculture. “City government is irrelevant,” she answered. “Positive change, leaps forward in the evolution of humankind do not start with governments. They start right here in our living rooms and kitchens. We are the leaders we are looking for.”

Detroit: Farming Paradise?

Food Among the Ruins / Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics.

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Gleaning is good.

I appreciate when markets can measure how many pounds of food are given to food banks each year by their farmers. Gleaning is another way to use the productivity of the farms in your area. In both cases, markets should assist their farmers in knowing how to record the amount of food their business donates and how they might invite gleaners to their farms without a major disruption to those businesses during harvest season. The markets should also thank those farmers in annual reports or marketing literature, both their own and any beneficiary like the food banks.
http://civileats.com/2012/04/06/gleaning-for-good-an-old-idea-is-new-again/

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Hollywood Farmers Market CEO is fired

Pompea Smith, founder and director of the Hollywood Farmers Market and 7 others, has been let go by her board of directors. Without detailed information, nothing can be inferred from this decision, but I will say, the commercial kitchen the organization had recently built worried me a great deal. It’s unfortunate that somehow open air markets suffer from the perception of being difficult (or for some) impossible to maintain funding for their operation, when often it is the ancillary projects and added staff for those other projects that reduce the markets’ financial health. To be clear, I am not saying what contributed to this particular change as I have no idea, but the economic future of markets is something I work on for many communities and assume that sooner or later every board is having this type of economic future conversation with its market leadership.

I know and admire Pompea, having worked with her on some research a few years ago. She deserves the thanks of her community and the entire market movement. I also support the need of this board and staff to move forward with new leadership. It’s time to welcome the next generation of leaders.

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-marketwatch-online-20120406,0,434699.story

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WIC’s Fresh Produce Program Cut 30 Percent – NYTimes.com

Education is part of almost every market’s mission. Explain to your vendors and shoppers that when food assistance programs include regionally sourced food and farmers, it benefits everyone. HOWEVER, do remember those of you that are 50(c)3 organizations, you must not use your organization’s resources to lobby for legislation.
From the IRS website:
… may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.

For those of you NOT 501(c) 3 organizations, a letter writing campaign might be in order!

WIC's Fresh Produce Program Cut 30 Percent – NYTimes.com.

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Study Links Honey Bee Deaths to Corn Insecticide

As evidence piles up on honeybee decline, I think it’s important for markets to share this with their shoppers and their farmers. In many cases, market managers are the only the link between emerging news, global research and their community.

Study Links Honey Bee Deaths to Corn Insecticide | Care2 Causes.

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