local resiliency shouldn’t be the goal

At the end of this second year of the COVID era, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the thousands of market leaders, tens of thousands of producers, and the hundreds of thousands of our neighbors who have continued to prioritize regional food in their lives even during this horrific pandemic.

I think we had hoped that we had passed the biggest test of the COVID crisis, but it is possible that we may have a bigger one: to find the fortitude to safely withstand the succession of its outbreaks over the next few months and possibly even years while still attempting to grow the number and diversity of those able to purchase healthy food for their families. And to do that even as other shocks (climate chaos, the pitched battle over white supremacy, crumbling infrastructure) hit our communities at the same time.

People often call this being resilient.

Resilience is the ability to adapt to difficult situations. That seems straightforward, but many communities have pointed out that very adaptation can become the only action or the status quo, allowing government to rely on that resiliency rather than attempting to solve the underlying issues. Depending on the crisis or series of crises, it can be depleted and once gone, can mean catastrophe for a community by allowing outside actors to become the only arbiters of what happens during recovery.

-from the site Edge Effects:

Resiliency-based planning, however, has been opposed by grassroots organizations and activists. In 2015 in response to the City of New Orleans’s resilience strategy, posters started appearing throughout New Orleans quoting Tracie Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute. “Stop calling me resilient,” the posters read, “Because every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re resilient,’ that means you can do something else to me. I am not resilient.” As (it) makes clear, instead of simply addressing the cause of environmental degradation such as land loss, Louisiana has apparently accepted the inevitability of this degradation–and is learning how to cope.

We should acknowledge and credit resiliency but insist on creating more participatory and dynamic solutions, focusing funding and efforts to those that are contextual to that place and its scope.

In terms of being contextual to that place, writer Jane Jacobs suggested that one of municipalities’ main activities be (I’m paraphrasing her here) actively replacing imported goods and ideas with local goods and home-grown creativity whenever possible. To do what Jacobs suggested requires participatory structures and illustrative pilots for government to draw from. That ability to test multiple solutions at the community level would be one strategy that food system leaders can use in outlining as to why our work is so important to municipalities’ plans.

And whenever we talk about scale in food systems, the discussion often settles into a set of camps including (a) those who think the goal is to scale up local food production to meet industrial food’s demands and (b) those who firmly believe that local food is itself an antidote to scaling up, and (c/d) those who want to keep industrial food functioning and participating in local food production even as they work on local food alternatives and so on. The development of 2 systems may be best explained in the 2 Loops Theory of the Berkana Institute which I have written about previously that describes those roles to be played.

Also, whenever scale comes up, I think of this from Wendell Berry:

It is a formidable paradox that in order to achieve the sort of limitlessness we have begun to call sustainability, whether in human life or the other life of the ecosphere, strict limits must be observed. Enduring structures of household and family life, or the life of the community or the life of the country, cannot be formed except within limits. We must not outdistance local knowledge and affection, or the capacities of local persons to pay attention to details, to the “minute particulars” only by which, William Blake thought, we can do good to one another.
Within limits, we can think of rightness of scale. When the scale is right, we can imagine completeness of form.”

In other words, scale itself needn’t be the enemy; rightness of scale allows us to still pay attention to details, to measure how we do good to one another.

How do we find that rightness of scale?

Writer Ihnji Jon outlined a scale of political action that can serve either ever-expanding (globalized) or ever-narrowing (localized) as long as they are:

1) “subject to territorial conditions”,

2)”posses a degree of intensity that allows it to be influential across different systems”,

3) “are large enough to retain complexity that allows them to have interaction effects”

So as we think about farmers markets and community food systems, the right scale would keep the food system leaders able to pressure government to deal with the underlying issues, would encourage funding for localized active, inclusive democratic networks, would support communities to rebuild as slowly or quickly as they need and use local leadership in doing so, and most importantly would democratize all of the resources needed to create the new adapted normal. That would mean resiliency would be properly supported by functioning systems and would measure its spread as an opportunity to make real changes in that place, rather than celebrating it as a solution.

That could mean radically changing the emergency food system to reduce the bureaucracy of getting support when needed and increasing actual mutual aid, it could mean working to become the true center of inclusive civic spaces, it could mean engaging with the educational system to link regional food to childhood health, it could mean that regional climate initiatives become focused on food production and in championing the stewardship of local people…

All of that is possible, even if it is not yet probable. I hope to begin to outline examples of systemic thinking and scaled planning among farmers markets and their regional food system efforts on this site in 2022. Please share those you know about in the comments.

and lastly, I hope each of you takes some time the rest of this year to replenish your own reserves. Please do consider how you can engage with your community in ways that reduce the need for the reservoir of your resiliency to be emptied in each crisis and that increase your joy in the lovely way each of you does good to others in farmers market spaces.

How festivals are doing it

This post below is from one of my favorite writers in New Orleans. He talks music and analyzes venues – especially festivals – like no one else in town. Obviously I am posting it here because I think this is helpful for market organizers, learning how others are communicating the changes that are necessary for managing event spaces during a pandemic. The links below lead directly to the communication put out by these two entities.

in the spring, I started tracking how festivals talk to their fans and people invested in their events. I thought BUKU Music + Art Project did a great job, talking to their audience as peers and fellow music lovers, communicating with enough candor to make fans feel connected to the event. Others – you can fill in the blanks – kept it remote, saying as little as possible, as if every extra syllable was a state secret.

Another model for doing it right just arrived from Fe stival International de Louisiane, who gave us a rundown of how 2020 went, the challenges they’re facing for 2021 – starting with the challenge of booking international acts – and called for input with a few basic ideas such as keeping downtown Lafayette involved as fixed points. Festivals live on the strength of their connection to their fans, and that kind of openness goes such a long way to keep it solid. Will anyone locally learn from it?

Hitching your market’s wagon to a star

“Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labour, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing”

Emerson wrote those words in his American Civilization anti-slavery essay in 1856 for The Atlantic exhorting his fellow citizens to see how they could link their own beliefs to the forces around them, thereby maximizing their own impact and also reducing their own load. By often stressing the idea that one is not free until all are free (“where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman”, “Let every man say then to himself—the cause of the Indian, it is mine; the cause of the slave, it is mine.”) he was illuminating how we can travel together through “the vehicle of ideas, “borrowing their “omnipotence.”

This has been on my mind a great deal lately. Partly because the exhaustion and stress in market managers’ voices are even more palpable this year than previous ones, and also because big issues are lighting up the sky all around our markets. On the first, know that I (and many others) worry about you and your vendors, and hope you find ways to de-stress after market day, and still find momentary joy in the work. My organization, Farmers Market Coalition is working daily to find ways to add support for operators and to amplify your work. Please do root around on the site and join us for our webinars and check out our new emerging Communities of Practice.

This post is attempting to respond to the second, meaning those big issues we are seeing around us. But keep that first in mind: people are pulling for you, do see you, do know the tension and self-doubt that come along with that market map and bell…

If you have read this blog, you know that I believe the best way to make the market operator position work over the long term is (a) by making the “invisible” work more visible to the market’s stakeholders and (b) by reducing as many of the operational silos that exist and that keep the one or two-person market operation in a constant state of crisis and burnout. I think the one thing we cannot do – assuming this pandemic has a complete endpoint – is to count on “fully normal” returning. It is what so many of us who managed markets through a disaster learned at some point: that some of the changes that seem temporary are in fact permanent, that more change is still coming and not all of it will be welcome.

“Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and promote,—justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.” – Emerson

In terms of the activities happening in North America in the last few years on our public streets and squares, market operators can happily accomplish so much more by following Emerson’s advice. Because by adding those outcomes to the market’s long term goals, we can hitch up with other fellow organizers and even lean on their skills and energy and leadership.

Black Lives Matter. Climate Change. Immigration Reform are some of the issues that can be easily brought into market work. And even though those issues can inflame some of your community members who have yet to consider how they can be an agent of positive change on them, those issues also inspire countless others. When markets embrace these ideas as their goals, it tells your community that this market is interested in the overall quality of life for its entire community, and plans to be around for a while, striving to do more and do it better. There is no better way to increase your stakeholders than by sending that type of message.

That has been the promise around the mechanism of markets from 1970 on: to be an engine for system change for our producers, for our visitors, and for our neighbors. The histories of the earliest back-to-land markets make it clear it was never about adding back the old-style public markets. Those had often stopped being useful for their local farmers long before, and the limitation of the daily sales metrics as the only measure meant those outlets were easily replaced by newer forms of the same type of extractive capitalism that championed the middleman and centralized distribution even more successfully than public markets in order to “reduce inefficiencies”. (Don’t get me started on “efficiency” as a b.s. measurement for food. Its come up lately and so this link is one I use often to urge my peers to read about one idea on how to move away from it. )

In contrast, the lofty goals of the more recent farmers market movement indicate that big outcomes are our promise, presented via different structures and values. If we agree that is so, then justice and equity for all have surely always been part of it. It just needs a wider set of stakeholders and the right set of specific system goals to make it happen.

We have moved the dial for some short-term outcomes, such as altering the narrative around local, building the lexicon around sustainable farming, encouraging sophisticated placemaking strategies, and even slightly increasing food access through our work. We are allowed to be proud of what we have done so far, especially if we also acknowledge that we have not yet met our systemic goals. That’s okay- no one expected us to do it all in one generation, or two, or even three.

I am reminded of the story an organizer told me about a small Asian country that had committed to becoming completely free of violence – but wait for it – in 1000 years. That deadline frees the activist from their ego, and also reminds them that each step to that goal is worthy. Or you can use the oft-repeated Chinese proverb: the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the second best? today.

Same idea: we do not have to DO EVERYTHING today; we just need to start.

When we become better allies by naming and challenging the racism built into every part of the dominant industrial food system, it is easier to explain why we feel the need to offer an alternative that rests on new power structures and why it will take a lot of concerted strategies and iterations to create this new version. Organizers today can start with piloting equitable market and land access, introducing educational materials that work for a diverse set of leaders, (made by a diverse set of leaders, centering those BIPOC voices still unheard in most food system work) about the potential in expanding civic engagement via direct relationships, and maybe also find some time to measure success, ie. wealth in new ways. And by listening.

Recently a colleague suggested to me that reparations could begin with some market organizers using their application system to allow in new BIPOC – led farms without fees, (or through offering in-kind marketing support, or through free or reduced costs for training as many NGOs like NOFA-VT are offering BIPOC farmers.) I was stunned at the elegance of that one idea, of how contextual and agile it is. It shows how a small group can engage with a huge issue and still get positive impacts that matter today.

Another example is that markets can easily begin to shift the power dynamic that exists in the market rules around land ownership to more strongly encourage cooperative farming.

In both cases not only does the market become better allies to the BIPOC movement that has embraced innovative farming practices and alternative collaborative ownership models, but they add vendors who have new skills, experience and resiliency.

Climate change is pretty easy to see as an issue for markets, but yet few embrace it at the system level (Got give a shout out to aptly-named Post-Oil Solutions in Brattleboro VT which manages the winter market). We are right ON IT when the fires come and farmers are forced to move their livestock hundreds of miles overnight, or entire bee colonies are burned out, or markets need to set up closer to the need to get the new disaster SNAP dollars flowing, but where are we when our cities and regions are negotiating climate agreements? What about energy policy? And clearly, this is one arena where young activists have taken center stage, so it might be time to invite that local teenaged climate change activist into the advisory group.

And immigration reform is a shockingly absent topic in the food sector, even though newly arrived residents are overwhelmingly the people who hold the dominant system together. And let’s be clear: our alternative food system often utilizes that same farmworker structure, sometimes with very little transparency or equity in terms of profit-sharing or benefits. Markets are the outlet that every resident arriving from other places recognizes and yet few have found their way into them as vendors, much less as shoppers or as organizers. We have to challenge ourselves to understand why that is so and linking to the work being done on this issue is a good first step. And by listening.

In any case, I expect a bunch of you are shouting at me from your nook, “yeah those are great ideas, but HOW CAN I DO THAT AND ALSO GET THE DOZEN YARD SIGNS UP AND CALL ALL OF MY VENDORS AND COUNT TOKENS…”

Well the answer is you can’t.

Another story: a pal was telling me once about her partner who had no desire for children but, being from a large Italian family, seemed to miss the large group dynamic when they sat to make family decisions. My pal said to me humorously, “I feel like I need to get her a baseball team to come and sit in our household chats. She needs the give and take that I just cannot offer on my own!”

That is also what a market manager needs: a team. And I don’t want to hear how hard it is to manage that team either: if you want to manage a market well, get better at handing work off. It’s a non-negotiable of a successful market. Adding informal advisory groups so that your circle of leaders is wider and more inclusive is one way to do just that. As a market leader, I devised a handout postcard that invited people to join us at the next 2 monthly meetings for whatever project I was thinking that person in front of me could be helpful on. I had them in my market bag to scribble the name of the project and the time and date of the meeting on to hand over, and also had a few with stamps affixed to address and send out. Those informal advisory groups met as needed, offered unvarnished advice as they saw fit, and were not tied to any long term commitment. I was also under no formal mandate to take all of the advice I was given, but I got a lot of help that I did take. And for those of you in small places without a lot of people around, the modern world of connectivity being more available allows this to be done through online platforms.

In other words, not only will the work that you do be more fun and less taxing if you find the right star to hitch to, but it will reduce the sidelining of markets and alternative food systems as precious or as elitist. During COVID-19, the difficulty in getting markets deemed as essential or allowing all types of market vendors to vend in many states (even though other outlets were not held to the same constraints) shows how directly markets would be aided by having these system-level support systems.

I’ll leave you with Emerson’s conclusion that speaks directly to the excellent work each of your communities is engaged in:

“…when I see how much each virtuous and gifted person, whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of excellent people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with great reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue and in the symmetry and force of their qualities,—I see what cubic values America has, and in these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth.”

Update

This Food X Design podcast from @IDEO explains why the food system is inequitable by design, why language matters, and how agency is key to creating new food systems that work for BIPOC. #FoodByDesign was created by @scodraro and @sandiddy.
https://page.ideo.com/food-podcast-8

Systemic Change is our Shared Goal

In public actions that are as American as the Stamp Act Riots or the Boston Tea Party, organizers and citizens are taking to the streets to demand transparency and community control over their police, and an acknowledgement of the structural racism that is built into every system that governs modern life, a structure that restricts black Americans and other people of color from participation in the economy, in civic decisions, and severely limits access to assets required to live a full, happy life.

But by dint of the work we chose, we get to do much more than that. By choosing to expand the role of local communities through mechanisms such as farmers markets, our intention to be part of a new equitable, community-led and transparent system is in the right place, even if the outcomes are still not where we want them to be. Because of that, farmers market leaders must vociferously acknowledge the rights of Americans to use public space for achieving equity for black lives and to clarify to their communities that the goal of our work is about building new systems rather than just propping up the old.

The 2 loops theory below is one way to describe the type of sweeping changes we are working towards, and even shows some of the steps:

When structural changes are the goal, it is important to know how living systems begin as networks, shift to intentional communities of practice, and can evolve into powerful systems capable of global influence. And that we live with the “old” and the “new” as it happens and that the existence of both at one time is often a point of tension but also allows us to free ourselves from worrying about achieving it all at once.

The process outlined in this video can assist farmers market leaders in understanding how to keep their goals to what is truly transformative.

As food leader Leah Penniman has outlined, education, reparations, and amplification are the strategies necessary for anti-racism work and as allies, we can lead in our own communities to expand those. This start (via the networks and CoP steps outlined above) requires that we shift from the white-led organizations that populate our work to one with diverse leadership, valuing both lived and professional experience, with information flowing back and forth between communities of practices within a new system for our markets and community food outlets to operate. (Please look for upcoming posts around what I find to share what farmers market operators are doing or can do in the anti-racism work that Ms. Penniman has helpfully outlined.)

So I hope that actual structural change and plans for that change are the point of your organization’s (or work’s) theory of change. Start by acknowledging that most DTC leadership (such as my own employer Farmers Market Coalition) are still overwhelmingly white with little or no first-hand knowledge or personal experience in the daily reality of our black neighbors. That lack of experience and therefore of true understanding leads to many lost opportunities in our work including addressing the rapidly decreasing number of African-American farmers. Too often – far too often – the only way that DTC outlets address the racial inequities present in their spaces is by working on access for underserved and at-risk populations, by assuming that successful SNAP programs will accomplish what needs to be done. Don’t take that wrong- the work we have done in DTC outlets to increase access is tremendous work, but we have much more to do to attack the larger inequities that keep the old system purring right along.

I personally commit to full support of these goals by more actively working to eradicate the unacknowledged and unchallenged racism in our present system and to achieve my mid-term work goal to step down from holding leadership positions in order to become a better ally in the new system. And to openly share the knowledge and contacts I have collected over the years with the emerging diverse pool of leaders that represent the new wave of our work.

What are the organizational and the personal choices you will make to grow the networks and the new system? What uncomfortable truths will you commit to amplifying to your community to educate them to begin to shift power and assets to the black community?

I look forward to hearing more from many of you about your work in system change and how I can learn from it.

2020: The Scale of Cooperation

Dear colleagues,

It is time for my end of the year post that I hope will encourage, appreciate, and yet challenge us in our work to build farmers markets. Do know that my posts here are separate from my role at FMC, although I hope align with my work as Training and Technical Assistance Director. In that vein, the advice I give below is all predicated on the need for sustained capacity for market operators (the kind that FMC is poised to give, starting in 2020. To make it work, markets will need to consider issues like these.

This article is worth starting with:

View at Medium.com

I think it’s an important piece. Whether you think this writer has it all figured out, what is absolutely true is that most farmers – even market farmers – cannot continue as they have been, and market operators must understand and react accordingly. He is certainly saying an extraordinary thing for any small business owner: we have to cooperate with each other in order to survive. So how do producers do that within the framework of the DTC capitalist system and how do markets reinvent themselves to encourage this? Maybe we start by appreciating the boldness of this approach by our farmers.

So here is my TL:DR for 2020: Scale up Cooperation

My most well-traveled 2019 pocket quote from Wendell Berry may help too:

“it is a formidable paradox that in order to achieve the sort of limitless that we have begun to call sustainability…strict limits must be observed. Enduring structures of household and family life, or the life of the community, or the life of the country, cannot be formed except within limits. We must not outdistance local knowledge or local affection, or the capacities of local persons to pay attention to details, to the “minute particulars” only by which, William Blake thought, we can do good to one another. Within limits, we can think of rightness of scale. When the scale is right, we can imagine completeness of form.”

That quote covers farmers markets or even the future of small farms and aligns with Berry’s point about not outdistancing local knowledge or affection.

It is undeniable true that the emergence of the modern farmers market movement in the 1970s has been one of the few bright spots for farmers, including highlighting the role of the community farmer as leader, increasing cohesion between rural and urban populations, showing the success of civic engagement strategies for public health outcomes which now include regional farm items in their delivery, and actualizing the promise of regional economies to municipal leaders. However, these outcomes fall almost entirely under the first strategy, community support. So what about the other two: retail know-how, and market day analysis?

What do market operators know now about retail, specifically food retail, that can assist our small businesses, especially cooperatives? How does the current trend of fragmentation and the increased consolidation of food outlets help or hurt DTC channels and their producers? For example, this week I wrote on FB about the closure of a local specialty store in New Orleans that had dedicated itself to local growers; it has even received a NYT article about its work! So what went wrong then?

What do we know about market day analysis in terms of production and in light of growing concern around climate disruptions? What do we do about inauthentic claims by non-DTC operators of local or small? How will the emerging models for small-scaled agriculture help in the face of these pressures?

The future of market vending clearly relies on policy changes, encouraging meaningful innovation, and a diversity of approaches for DTC channels that can quickly respond to internal and external pressures. Some examples of what I mean:

•I hope we all agree that farmers market success cannot be based on solutions that live forever outside of the policy arena, as it then punishes farmers who want to expand their business into more DTC outlets, or want to bridge the emerging alternative food economy and the dominant industrial system by selling to both. I bring this up as GAP/GHP, expanding cottage food laws, and even more so, emerging “food-sovereign towns” or “food freedom” laws in some states are so new that most market operators are not aware of their impacts or how to interact with them at this point. The patchwork of laws surrounding production of food surely affects small farmers selling through any outlet and puts the onus on them to figure out where to go next, which means their decision is often based on the least bureaucratic path, rather than what is best for that business. The question is how can market operators help? What is their role in order to enact better policies for production and for more channels to succeed?

• Market farmer success cannot be based on a solution that requires profitable producers to have no short-term debt as that also reduces their innovation. Note that I said requires; I am not advocating for DTC farmers to add debt, but the lack of debt cannot also be entirely seen as the solution. As we rightly highlight the Census data indicates that DTC farmers stay in business longer and have less debt due to less need for large-scaled equipment and other inputs, market operators should be able to encourage DTC farmers to keep exploring appropriate technology. To do so, they need sustained profits to offset those investments and the space to test those innovations. What analysis, new partnerships or open-source technology would help?

• Market success cannot be only based on government voucher or SNAP programs as a conduit for new shoppers to enter the system. These systems are now being brilliantly piloted at many markets but can become political footballs with ebbs and flows of funding and support, and are still in testing mode only. Yet, the piloting of these efforts and the balance of currencies and users at markets are in itself a model for a type of inclusion; in a country that increasingly has two systems for rich and poor in almost every sector of society, the farmers market field is diligently working to bring a majority of socioeconomic strata to the same place each week, which increases shared experiences and outcomes. For all of these reasons, this work must be expanded so more at-risk populations get to their town squares to use their benefits and find long-term health strategies, but even so, higher program redemptions cannot be the single goal of any market.

• Food justice is an energy that is lifting all boats in our food work yet many established markets are still unaware of how to cooperate with these activists and communities. Even while we see increased use of markets by shoppers who are people of color, it is often only through benefit programs reach, therefore perpetuating a specific type of tokenism around institutional racism. Especially since it is rare to find sustained or network-level efforts in creating space for producers of color to these same markets. Cooperatives will certainly help land-challenged farmers get to market level.

If you accept that modern farmers markets goals are transparency and curating direct relationships in order to affect changes in land use, in defining the type and paths to economic stability, and in decreasing isolation, then the next step might be to see how this mechanism can do more to help producers beyond its current primary version with the family table shopper. For example, what is the solution to what some call “too many markets”? I gave it my best shot in a 4-part post for FMC, found here. In short, using the transparency and relationship building of farmers markets to build other type of curated transactions, such as intermediary shopper markets where the organization could curate relationships with specialty stores and restaurants and create the same type of purchasing transformation that has happened with family table shoppers at current markets. In many cases, these purchases are still pushing farmers back to an uneven and unfair relationship. Here is an anecdote that I shared in an earlier post:

An example of the type of information that could help a market manager is a discussion I once had with a vendor who had stopped selling to chefs after being a favorite for many years. When I came behind the table and sat down at a quiet moment to have him tell me what was up, this is what he said:

You see, what happens is at the Saturday market, Chef (from fancy restaurant & supportive guy) comes by and asks me if I can sell him some of my crop this week; he wants to do a big dinner and give me some publicity. So he tells me to call him first thing Monday morning. I go out to harvest, come in around 10 and call him. The kitchen answers and tell me he is running late, but to call back in an hour. In the meantime, the deadline for the Tuesday market is coming and so I call you and tell you I am not sure if I am coming tomorrow but will confirm before the afternoon. (As you know, that market has been a little slow lately as it is this time of year so if I can sell it all to one place quickly I’d prefer it this week.) I wait an hour and call the chef back; they tell me I just missed him and he is in a waiters meeting but told them to tell me he will call me immediately after. You call me back about coming to market but I have no answer so I don’t answer when you call. Finally, he calls me, still enthusiastic about the crop but tells me regretfully the numbers for the dinner are lower than expected so he can only buy 1/2 of what he thought. That means I have to drop off 1/2 and could bring a little to the market now. Or should I call another chef to sell the rest? I still haven’t called you to confirm one way or another, so I finally decide to call you to tell you I am not coming even though I’d have a little to sell; you are not pleased of course.

I finally decided the stress compared to the sales were not worth it.

Now this is only one vendor’s story and there are differing situations of every hue to uncover about each market. The point is to know exactly how each of your small businesses are doing, with which shoppers and with which outlets. And to know the demographics of your area to know how you can add shoppers to that group. That takes time and support from your board and vendors.

Or, another example of how for market operators to be paid to train and support other channels more directly. Something along these lines is already happening with the FINI work where market operators are in (passive) partnership with small grocery stores to expand incentivizing SNAP for healthy food purchasing; let’s hope the learning on both types of outlets will be shared equally. Or market operators could be paid by investors to assist farmers with aggregation hubs or in designing specialty store purchasing programs. Or market operators could be offered funding to manage databases of all direct marketing farmers so that in times of disaster, they become the point people for recovery. The likely answer relies on markets showing they are willing to cooperate an d to understand production issues.

The outcomes Newman lists in his article also would benefit markets:

- - Costs of production would decrease significantly. Orders of seed, feed, equipment, and supplies would no longer just be in bulk, they’d be at regional scale. Labor hours would be reduced as dozens of farmers are no longer replicating the same tasks (e.g. purchasing, bookkeeping, inventory, etc.)
  - Marketshare would swell. Owing to lower prices, larger quantities, and more accessible markets (B&M and delivery), we’d be able to service a much larger segment of the market. Increases in volume would reduce overhead costs, more than offsetting the reduction in each unit’s top-line*
  - Wages and quality of life for farmers would rise in real terms. The confluence of reduced production costs, cooperative labor, and increased marketshare will mean individual farmers are working less and getting paid more. We’d actually be able to enjoy creature comforts of other industries like evenings and weekends off, PTO, group health insurance, even retirement.
  - The barriers to entry for new farmers would be much lower. New farmers would not have to learn to be entrepreneurs, marketers, agritourism experts, and social media mavens in order to make it work. A farmer could actually make a living as a trade journeymxn, just like any other trade, and brand new farmers could be trained by the co-op itself. On a related note…
  - Sustainable farming could be de-gentrified, since it would no longer be a “labor of love” only available to people that can afford to work for free or next to nothing (i.e. afford to be exploited, which is a bad thing even if they don’t seem to mind very much). Everyone — people of color in particular — would be able to look at farming as a viable career choice.
  - Farmers could follow their passions instead of diversifying. The co-op has producers of livestock, produce, fruit, mushrooms, grain, dairy, flowers, etc. Ecological diversity is managed at the co-op/landscape level rather than the level of the individual producer, so the latter can focus on what they do best, still make a living, and still operate within an ecologically-restorative framework.
  - Farmers could operate at the scale they choose. If someone just wants to grow microgreens in their basement and sell them into the co-op’s single payer market, so be it. If they want to range a cattle herd followed by sheep and chickens across a few hundred acres leased or owned by the co-op, go for it. The only constraint is that the producer must follow the co-op’s production standards.

so for 2020, I agree with Newman and many others that the idea of a cooperative future for small farmers seems key to expanding the reach of the markets and in achieving better support for those vital to each and every market: farmers. Yet many markets have rules that restrict this activity, and many states and municipalities do not understand the role of cooperatives. The author said it very well:

The point is, these farmers would no longer be alone. We’d present a united farmer-owned (this is key) interface to the rest of the world — suppliers, customers, landlords, regulators, media, etc. — that, at present, each farmer is left alone to handle. It’s that isolation that makes us weak and ineffective against incredibly well-resourced competition.

We have to evolve if we’re going to survive.

So let’s cooperate.

“Between and within”

The link below is to a post from Richard Florida on examining rural-urban tropes that are used ad nauseum often in lieu of updated facts. It is my opinion that with this type of analysis (often done for the excellent CityLab), Florida has mostly made up for what many believe was his famous yet flawed theory of an emerging creative class as the main driver of economic success. Many of his critics believed he included too many non-creative careers in his accounting, or that he cherry-picked cities where his theory fit best, or they pointed out its lack of info on the structural inequities that allow some (read young white people) to have unequal access to resources and to opportunities. (I’d also add that the very mobile/online nature of many of the careers and the age of those who hold them means any effect will need a longer span of years to truly analyze its effect.)*
Unfortunately, that original theory has been misused over and over again by municipalities, allowing developers to profit from shiny “open space” monuments to unchecked consumerism for technology-addled people to sit in silence, more divided than ever, rather than insisting on meaningful public spaces serving a diverse group of people. I know many farmers market leaders that read this blog know exactly what I mean by that rush to capitalize on it.

Since the election of 2016, the rural/urban discussion has become a juggernaut of its own, and yet in most analysis, it still lacks regional context and nuance. I am sure that is not surprising to anyone, as that is the norm in American election campaigning. In terms of our work in farmers markets however, this issue is something we must understand and own and we cannot allow easy reads of it to stand. The good news is that our work illuminates what Florida and others have already found, and our data can help even more good analysis to follow – that is, when we collect and share data and when we challenge our own assumptions.

For example, I always question food system activists when they use the term “urban agriculture” because I don’t think it means anything. Or rather, I don’t think it means what they think it does. It seems to me that term does disservice to both urban producers and to their rural sistren and brethren, as well as confusing the visitors that we want to attract. I also challenge rural activists when they refuse to share their lessons learned with their urban colleagues. Cannot tell you how many times people have rolled their eyes at me when I suggest they publish something about their small town triumph, or when I suggest they go to regional conferences that include urban topics. And our just-as-dedicated suburban food system leaders almost always get scornful dismissals from rural and urban colleagues and funders even while they are seeing a huge influx of immigrant diversity in their midst, as cities becomes too expensive for many newly arrived residents.
This is important because as I have written on this blog previously, I believe one major impediment to more resilient food systems is this lack of regional thinking, and the unwillingness of many food activists to explore the effect of their work across planning or political boundaries or to think critically beyond the short-term outcomes of their project.
When farmers markets are thriving, I find they are challenging assumptions and boldly expanding who depends on that market community. So understanding your own regional rural-suburban-urban challenge seems like a good first step to your farmers markets becoming place-based regional hubs of innovation, inclusion, and import-replacement. (that alliteration just happened, I swear.) I hope Florida’s piece helps.

Not all of rural America is in decline. Far from it. Significant parts of it are thriving, while others have economies that are in transition. The same is true of urban and metro areas of all sizes. Some are succeeding, others are failing, and still others are standing still.

The reality is that economic growth is not only uneven and unequal between urban and rural places; it is also uneven within them. Some cities and large metros are growing like gangbusters, while others are declining; some suburban areas are booming, while others are beset by economic dislocation and poverty. So it is with rural places.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/09/the-divides-within-and-between-urban-and-rural-america/569749/

*To his credit, Florida has written a lot about the lopsided nature of technology and economic drivers since then.

Green City Blue Lake

A story that I wrote about Cleveland’s attempt to consider its post-industrial future on the Wallace Center’s Food System Leadership Network* site. The main point to consider is how farmers market leaders choose to interact with municipalities working on green solutions. If DTC organizers are not at the table, how will their needs be known?

*I strongly recommend that anyone involved in food system work joins the FSLN site.

Join me in the Food System Leadership Network

I am honored to have been invited to be a community moderator of the FSLN site for the first half of 2019. If you haven’t yet joined the this online network, I certainly urge you to do so; you can join a half dozen discussion groups (soon to increase), check or add event listings, read thoughtful posts by a network of people that are doing the same work. All of this is available by just creating a profile and checking in once in a while.

You might say that there are so many online listserves that you don’t want another but because this site is archived and organized, you can search topics, find speakers for your events, or hear details of someone’s experience. Most importantly, it is about freely sharing information and support among practioners, and that is what our work is really about. You can also use FSLN to:

Apply for Organizational Capacity Building Mini-Grants and Professional Development Scholarships
Sharpen your non-profit management and business skills in the Non-Profit Boot Camp E-Learning Series
Apply to attend regional Food Systems Leadership Retreats
Connect with Community Food Systems Mentors for individual coaching and support

I remember when I first joined Market Umbrella in 2000 and the E.D. gave me a list of names and phone numbers and said, “if you need help, call these folks. They are our network and will help you just as they helped me. And whenever a market calls us, return that call right away; in this work, everyone shares.”

Let’s keep that going.

Canada gets a national food policy

Canada’s long-awaited national food policy is getting $134.4 million over five years, on a cash basis, starting next year.

The plan will also see Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) oversee a new $50 million Local Food Infrastructure Fund, to be distributed over five years. The money will help fund and support “infrastructure for local food projects,” including at food banks, farmers’ markets and other community-driven projects.

ipolitics.ca/2019/03/19/budget-2019-canada-gets-a-national-food-policy/

Q&A with Monica White: Black farmers’ role in the struggle for civil rights | Food and Environment Reporting Network

I think Dr. White’s book is one of the most important on community organizing around food in some time. Not only because credit is given to the civil rights activists who founded and push our movement forward, but also because she focuses on the innovative structures of those efforts, including cooperatives. And because she uses the South and the work here to build a new system in the face of the constant, persistent institutional racism (and linked to that) the commodity system of agriculture that still have a stronghold on our policies and structure. Those systems are present across the US but they are more overt in the South, which allows us to see the struggle daily and also for white allies to understand what role they can play in dismantling those larger systems that also create the inequities that we see in our shared food system.

Q&A with Monica White: Black farmers’ role in the struggle for civil rights | Food and Environment Reporting Network
— Read on thefern.org/ag_insider/qa-with-monica-white-black-farmers-role-in-the-struggle-for-civil-rights/amp/

Bright orange hope

One of the glorious things about living in the American South is the constant profusion of green and growing things. For most of the U.S., January begins a dreary time with few respites from the daily work and life tasks. For those of us in New Orleans, it begins the most fruitful and joyous season of the year.

I’ve written about the joyous part in these pages previously so I’ll send you there to learn about our Carnival, but here is an excerpt from one post that links markets to Carnival:

The farmers markets have the same joyous Carnival attitude all winter here. Productivity does that. Satisfaction and anticipation can be seen in the faces of those behind their tables, with actual oohs and aahs from those in front spying those deep red Ponchatoula strawberries, or from a senior walking to their car dwarfed by a bag of greens. Very similar to those presenting carnival tableaux from atop a float or those catching “throws” from below. Having a sunny mild winter at the same time as a beautiful and convivial public celebration that lasts for weeks always strikes me as the best of luck that landed at my feet.
And it also reminds me how the work we do in farmers markets IS joyous and as good of a measure of the civic health of our places as public events like Carnival.

I want to talk about the fruitful part in this. One activity I am lucky to participate in here is to help harvest a 50-year old calamondin (calamansi) tree that sits in the garden of a historic house museum. I called them up some years back after noticing much of the fruit remained on it, and they gratefully invited me to harvest when I wanted. This is one of more than a few of this type of activity that my friends and neighbors in the city will invite me to participate in, but it is my favorite because it is in my neighborhood and because it is the first one that I do each year.

So around this time of year if you happen to be in the Quarter, you might notice a little group (or sometime just me) at Chartres and Ursulines with ladder, tools, and bags. We chat animatedly with each other and with passers-by. Everyone asks what the fruit is; locals assume it is a kumquat (we have a ton of those around town), but usually only people who have lived in the Philippines know the calamondin. It is a gorgeous fruit, slightly larger than a kumquat and sour in juice, but the skin is sweet. Because the skin is easily torn, it requires cutting it from the tree. When you get back home, more careful cutting happens. Once you have separated the greenery from the fruit, it’s time to wash it, and then begin to peel and then to slice the skins into ribbons. Once that is done, the marmalade is made. Most of you know the many steps and decisions that come in that process so I’ll spare you the rest. Or maybe the fruit will be used to make some sort of tonic or maybe to enhance the seafood that comes from the local farmers market.

Calamansi

Each of these steps means musing time, time to think about a problem or an upcoming task. For me, as it always coincides with the start of my market and farmer conference season, I am usually preparing for at least three, but maybe two or three times that number of workshops or keynotes. The mild weather, the lovely tree offering its bounty next to this graceful historic building, friends assisting, the decision on which recipe to use, the careful preparation of the jars, the buzz around me due to the season of frivolity, result in a very pleasant time thinking through what I want to say at these conferences.

This year, maybe because of the recent polar vortex up north and the government shutdown, I want to make sure these audiences feel that hope and joy that I absorb from these activities. (I am sure it also has to do with the recent passing of a great leader and friend.) I was thinking about that as I snipped away this week, and was also thinking how the big projects in organizing around food should be as planned and intentional as those long-ago gardeners who set that tree precisely in the southwestern corner of that plot, with its main truck protected behind a 2-foot thick wall, with that 2-story building directly behind it to support it during wind events. And that even though it was planted behind those walls, it was meant to be a visible demonstration of food and life in the neighborhood and meant to drop its fruit on the sidewalk side to those who have always participated in the art of gleaning.

It’s also important to remember that the harvesting and preparing of the fruit from that long-ago planning allows me the time and inspiration to purchase more of the greens and root vegetables that were planted by market farmers only a matter of weeks ago. And that type of short-term strategic thinking and intuitive work is as important as the long-term big projects that we do as organizers.

When I am picking or purchasing food from those who grow it at any time of the year I often remember that all of those plantings were based on the hope from the planner that someone (whether animal or earth) would use the harvest. Additionally for tree planters, they also have to hope that there will be future gardeners to care for the tree. Interestingly, this garden was a 20th c replanting of an earlier 18th c garden that had been torn down to build a macaroni factory during the time when our Sicilian immigrants were using the old houses in this area (known then as “Little Palermo”) for homes and for food production. The beloved author Frances Parkinson Keyes purchased the house in the 1940s and made it her home until her death in the 1970s. Under her care, the garden was rebuilt, using the extraordinary 19th c plan book city archives still maintained at the New Orleans Notarial Archives. (I wrote about those archives in a review I did on a book on these gardens and on civic spaces.)

So even in these troubled, wintry beginning days of the 19th year of the 3rd millennium and the beginning of the 19th year of the 21st century, I cannot forget or allow my fellow market organizers to forget that we all harvest food and community from others’ hopes and their careful planning some of it only weeks before and others from the time of the long gone. I get to experience that old tree up in its branches and to share the bright orange smell, taste, and sight of those calamondins in that old garden, which reminds me that this work is not always meant to offer fruit this year or even the next. And that it should be personally nourishing, and bring joy and camaraderie.

I hope I can share that properly.

The link to support this old house and its garden if you are so inspired.

View from the tree looking at the old Ursuline Convent

Pals of mine harvesting this year. V is holding on to her eager harvesting husband.

Calamansi

Farmers and Culinarians: You Got This

Anyone who reads this blog knows that for the past 20 years I have been especially passionate about two subjects: my neighbors on the Gulf Coast and the people and work of organizing around healthy and just food systems. Since becoming a national consultant and a staff person for Farmers Market Coalition, I have continually sought ways to combine the regional and national work I am involved in with my support of local initiatives, both in food and other civic projects.

One opportunity has presented itself through a visionary neighbor of mine, Bethany Bultman. Bethany and her husband Johann are activists who founded the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic in 1998 and subsequently the New Orleans Musicians’ Assistance Foundation in 2005. Bethany is always enthusiastic about connecting people and ideas and expanding the good in New Orleans.

Recently, Bethany introduced me to their You Got This program, “a compassionate, inclusive performing arts mental health outreach program designed expressly for our creative community, including music, dance and art students, to help calm suicidal thoughts, feelings and plans by promoting optimal mental health self-care. The community at large is also encouraged to help through support and intervention.

As Bethany says so eloquently, “people who move through life with a calling often blame themselves for any failure in that calling and isolate even further.” When she strongly suggested that this program be extended to local farmers and other food community leaders, I was thrilled that she had brought this to me.

Prioritizing self-care and community intervention through engaging events and resources fits so perfectly with the work that we do in farmers markets that I was on board immediately. There is no question that the issue of wellness, both physical and mental, needs to be our top priority. The numbers for all Americans in all walks of life in terms of their wellness are frightening. Added to that, farmers and harvesters and their workers are at the top of the list of the most dangerous jobs in U.S. Farm Aid has a great many resources and papers on the issues that reflect the often harsh reality of the farming life. Since 1985, they have also had a toll-free line 1-800-FARM-AID, to provide a listening ear and resources to farmers in crisis. And at the SSAWG conference happening this week, workshops like this are being offered:

Self Care Practices for Farmers — The truth is, being a farmer means you are constantly giving your energy with little time to recharge and recenter. It’s hard to find time for yourself, which can lead to a downward spiral of burnout, depression and even death. The more responsibilities you have, the more essential it is that you take care of yourself. Learn how three farmers implement self-care in their work, how to identify your emotional needs and communication style, and walk away with a few key tools that you can implement into your daily farm routine in just 10 minutes a day. Marlena Nip, Edible Schoolyard New Orleans (LA), Felicia Bell, RD & S Farm (MS), and Mark Cain, Dripping Springs Garden

Watching the very real and lovely way that You Got This offers places for the local creative community to seek help or even for the larger community to receive training to see the signs of depression or addiction among their culture bearers, I can easily see how we can add food producers to this.

So look for the beta version of Farmers and Culinarians: You Got This to begin in New Orleans. The good news is that we already have happy and well places to engage with our producers to offer an ear, resources and support: farmers markets, and the local farm delivery hubs popping up around town. In addition, many of the chefs and store owners who truly value local artistry and who care for these producers and see them regularly are also interested in being a place for this to begin.

Within Farmers and Culinarians: You Got This, I fully expect to revive one special activity from our fair trade/handmade holiday market (Festivus) that ran from 2003-2007 next to our Crescent City Farmers Market: our “Office of Homeland Serenity” which was designed to offer some respite and care, offered even before the regional horror show that began in August 2005. After the levee breaks, the OHS was even more special and useful at Festivus. I still get comments from locals about it and how they loved the set of activities and fun we added to each day.

I’ll keep you updated and please let me know about your local initiatives that are designed to build support for your producers and to extend the health and wellness offerings at farmers markets to even more neighbors.

2019 for farmers markets

As usual, I’d like to offer my thoughts as to what may be in store for farmers market organizers and producers in the coming year (as I did in past years: 2018, 2017…)

With the end of year passage of the Farm Bill (coming as a welcome surprise after watching the summer-long legislative shenanigans in the House), the organizing for direct marketing for 2019 is now slightly altered -as soon as the government opens up again that is! The inclusion of LAMP in the farm bill offers markets some stability for grant funding over the next 5 years and also means a better-to-great chance of FMLFPP funding being included in future farm bills. Two other changes may be significant for farmers markets: the requirement of a 25% match for FMPP proposals (it had only been required for LFPP proposals previously), and the language to “support partnerships to plan or develop regional food systems” which is funded at 5 million per year. The FMPP match requirement seems to indicate that the grants will be prioritized for those who build deep partnerships into their proposals, and seems to be born out by the added 5 million for partnership work. Getting this funding could put market organizations in leadership roles in regional policy work, especially in terms of vendor needs (more in a minute on this), disaster response planning, and climate change initiatives with municipalities- that is if the grant language (when written by AMS) directs this funding to individual markets. If it turns out that the funding is really directed more to your state and network associations, I would expect them to use it to build capacity for their markets, especially in the area of increased data collection capabilities and dynamic data-driven analysis. That would align with my 2017 mantras for markets:

Don’t Hide the Hard Work
Function like a Network Whenever Possible

Two other areas that I expect to be active among markets in the coming year and beyond is in verification of local claims and in product development initiatives. The first has been climbing the ladder of priorities since the explosion of meal kit box programs, grocery store fragmentation, and the use of “local” in marketing language by every kind of player in intermediate channels (i.e. specialty stores, restaurants.) Farmers Market Coalition has even begun to discuss this regularly in house and included this topic in the farmers market track of 2018’s inaugural Direct Marketing Ag Summit. It was ably covered in a presentation by Washington State Farmers Market Association’s Colleen Donovan whose work on market integrity is well known, and by Boulder County Farmers Market CEO Brian Coppom who is fast becoming a great national spokesperson for farmers markets on the subject. FMC also added to the conversation around brand integrity in 2018 by taking over the management of the Buy Fresh Buy Local brand.

There is much to do on local verification and protection of the brand, but my sense is the best way for markets and other local food authorities like BFBL leaders to own it is (1) going through a process to find out the community definition of local/regional that works best there, and (2) transparent verification systems that explain/illustrate geographic proximity and proper stewardship of land and water. Once those are accomplished, state legislative language protecting it may be helpful.

The product development work is a little less visible, but is happening among some innovators. I’ve had recent conversations about this work with Grow NYC and a few others and expect to hear more, especially with the increased use of Metrics by markets to collect data. That data collection has been a game changer for market organizations as the necessity of collecting data from their vendors has sometimes turned out to be a point of contention. That tension is usually because those markets have never systematically collected market day data or used longitudinal data as the basis for market day decisions, relying entirely on management levels or outside funding priorities to decide when to add vendors or market days or even when doing event planning!

In the past few years of pilots with markets, the Metrics team (which includes me of course!) has advocated that the best way to make the need for collection understandable to ones vendors is to openly and simply share market level data which can then be compared privately with their own business and product- level data, allowing for more complete business intelligence for those entrepreneurs. Building this type of partnership with vendors also levels the field, as data becomes the lingua franca of market day decision-making rather than those decisions being (or seeming to be) made willy-nilly or behind closed doors without vendors input. The more market leaders think about, research, and support development and marketing of biodiverse items at their markets, the more they will understand their vendors businesses and consumer preferences and will be able to build partnerships and find funding to add products that data shows will do well at that market. All of that will quell much of the pushback on data collection-over time.

Throughout this post, the one word I have used again and again is the one that I hope sticks with markets: partnerships. These need to be more foundational (meaning include those partners in how the market itself is managed not just about the shared program), more dynamic (check in regularly to see if they are working and why), and be more diverse (hopefully self-explanatory). These partnerships, if designed well, will absolutely reduce the wear and tear on market staff and minimize turnover and burnout.

If every market reading this post set a goal to add two more (*non-traditional) partners to their program development planning, and started to consider their vendors as partners, I think 2019 would be a banner year in farmers market development.

*non-traditional: meaning partnerships beyond those who have shared outcomes in terms of direct marketing agriculture or increasing use of federal benefit programs for healthy food (although the latter were non-traditional partners not so long ago). This could include immigration services agencies who could help with vendor and shopper development, agencies working on public transportation amenities who could help with adding walking, biking, bus-riding people to markets, social justice organizations working on civic engagement, real-estate professionals who are in contact with new residents and could direct them to their local market, and so on.

Let’s raise the profile of regional food in climate change work

Having been in Northeast Ohio and Western PA over the last few months (and the rest of my time in my home of SE Louisiana), I have spent a lot of time recently pondering the role of community food work in the larger work of addressing the effects of climate change. Many governments have committed to mitigating the effects of our unstable climate with a reduction in the burning of fossil fuels, putting their public works on a “road diet,” investing in energy efficient methods and resources and in other smart technologies and collaborations.

For example, the cities of Cleveland and Pittsburgh- two once smelly, burny cities- are at the forefront of those efforts in the Midwest. Cleveland has the added responsibility of overseeing their portion of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie. The Great Lakes are key because they hold 20% of the world’s freshwater. Yes that’s right. 20%.

Cleveland’s Sustainability 2019 project has been impressive in its scope and in its collaborative efforts to link nine areas of work:

Energy Efficiency
Local Foods
Renewable Energy
Zero Waste
Clean Water
Sustainable Transportation
Vibrant Green Space
Vital Neighborhood
Engaged People

For its part, the City of Pittsburgh was an early signatory on the Milan Food Pact and a strong city leader in the Paris Agreement with private corporations also exploring their part in sustainability.

And back home in New Orleans, Mayor Cantrell and the City Council have indicated their support for sustainable infrastructure, including the over 100 new miles of bicycle lanes and LEED-certified schools and libraries, all built in the aftermath of the 2005 levee breaks.

One such area that seems wobbly in many of those efforts is the connection to the small-scaled food production arena, which remains largely outside of the resources and support in the climate change efforts in the US. Not only in including these food system leaders in that planning, ensuring that good stewards of land and water are part of new policies for the use of that land and water, but also in including them in the decisions in disaster recovery efforts and rebuilding.
Its time for us to demand that local farmers and regional food system be a large part of the solution. To do that, let’s find ways to share information like this more often:

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