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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Help the “Tiny but Mighty” Ten

I was able to hear an update from FMC’s Policy Director Ben Feldman today and would like to give a quick overview and call to action for all of my readers:

Hidden in all of the activity on Capitol Hill this month is Congress’ inability to pass a new farm bill. As many of you hopefully know, a new farm bill is passed every five years. The House and the Senate had each worked on their own version, but were unable to get anything out of shared committee to vote on. (One main difference between the two bills was work requirements for SNAP recipients, and the inclusion of LAMP* in the Senate version which would help the Tiny but Mighty programs, but the story now is that there are many other stumbling blocks to a final bill coming out of committee.)

What that means is that in a few days (September 30th) the current Farm Bill expires. The session is likely to end without an extension of 2014’s Farm Bill either. This leaves it to the lame duck session in 2019 to either get a new bill passed or an extension of the 2014 bill, and since that short session means some members are on their way home, and others may be waiting for new jobs on committees there is little hope a new Farm Bill will come from that session. However, it is quite possible that the lame duck session will pass an extension to the 2014 Farm Bill.

The biggest problem with only getting an extension of 2014’s FB as the achievement of the lame duck session will be the lack of funding included for what is called the “Tiny and Mighty” programs which do not have baseline funding. Baseline funding is essentially a funding threshold where programs are assumed to continue either in a new Farm Bill or in an extension of an old one. Without baseline funding, the Tiny but Mighty programs need to be named and inserted in any extension which is unlikely without pressure.

These are programs that have large impacts but small funding. Here is NSAC’s list of programs that will sunset on the 30th:

Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program
Conservation Reserve Program – Transition Incentives Program
Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program (FMLFPP)
Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentives Program (FINI)
National Organic Certification Cost Share Program (NOCCP)
Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI)
Organic Production and Market Data Initiative *
Outreach and Assistance to Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers *
Rural Micro entrepreneur Assistance Program (RMAP)
Value-Added Producer Grants Program (VAPG)

This does not mean that grants funded by these programs before September 30 are in danger; if your project received funding in 2017 or 2018 with these programs, that money is already appropriated and will be available to you for the life of your grant.

From NSAC:

The ten tiny but mighty programs of this series have made a nearly half billion-dollar investment in American food and farm systems over the course of the current farm bill cycle. These programs have represented 100 percent of the farm bill funding for beginning and socially disadvantaged farmer programs, organic programs, and rural economic development spending.

Needless to say, spending for these critical programs is minuscule relative to the cost of the full farm bill, weighing in at just a fraction of one percent of total farm bill funding. Under a three-month extension scenario, for example, Congress would need to invest only $35 million to keep these critical programs active at their current 2014 Farm Bill funding levels.

So the message here is: write to your reps and senators and remind them of the work and impact that your farmers markets, CSAs, food hubs, farmer training programs and so on have in your community, and how these funds have helped your work in the past. Ask them to get an extension passed in the short term with the 10 Tiny but Mighty programs included. And then to get busy on the new Farm Bill.

They need to hear from you. Again and again. And as Hoosier Farmers Market Association pointed out on today’s call, those of you who work at the state level or on policy councils can help by amassing data on what DTC outlets and farmers in your state or area of work have received from those 10 programs and the impacts of those awards to send along to your elected officials.

*The Senate’s 2018 Farm Bill includes language to establish the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP), which would provide permanent funding for local food by consolidating existing programs into a single program.

LAMP would:

Consolidate Value Added Producer Grants, Farmers Market/Local Food Promotion Program, Value Chain Coordinators, and planning partnerships into a new program administered by the Agricultural Marketing Service in coordination with Rural Business-Cooperative Service;
Maintain purpose and eligible entities for each program;
Identify Cooperative Extension Service as the lead for outreach and technical assistance;
Provide $60 million in mandatory funding and $20 million in appropriated funding;
Reserve 35% of funding for farmer or rancher grants; and
Reserve 10% of funding for projects supporting beginning, veteran, and socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers.

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2018: Capacity, scale, and form.

As we head into the new year, my region begins its most productive and celebratory season. Now the height of citrus season, oyster harvests, gorgeous greens and multi-colored root veggies, we are also on the cusp of our Carnival season, starting on January 6th. It starts then because Carnival is a pre-Lenten celebration and that is the date of Feast of the Epiphany known in France as Le Jour des Rois and in Latin American countries as Dia de los Reyes Magos. Coincidentally, it is also the Maid of Orleans Joan of Arc’s birthday which is also celebrated in New Orleans with one of the most beautiful candelit parades on her day.
Parades and king cake parties will go on here until “Fat Tuesday” which is February 13th in 2018 and is the day before Ash Wednesday. That begins the Lenten countdown to Easter.
By the way, how many of you know that where Easter falls is based on the natural world?

First, find the vernal equinox, or the first day of spring (about March 21-22), on a calendar that lists basic astronomical data. Then look for the next full moon. Easter Sunday will then fall on the following Sunday.

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 spying those deep red Ponchatoula strawberries, or watching a senior walk to their car dwarfed by a bag of greens. Very similar to those presenting carnival tableaus 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.
In this start of year post, I usually go on and on about the importance of markets and measurement and system thinking. If that appeals to you, you’ll find plenty of that in my archives.
But today, I just want to share what the godfather of place and stewardship, Wendell Berry wrote in his new book, “The Art of Loading Brush”:

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.

That, my friends, is my 2018 call to action. Capacity, scale, form. How we understand this concept for our work, especially now when so many outside actors strive to co-opt our language and mock our efforts as too small or too limiting is vital.

So you’ll find me talking about these three points all year, adding them to my 2017 exhortations specifically for market organizations (“Don’t hide the hard work” and “act like networks, not silos”) in all public presentations and posts here.

I hope to see many of you in person and to talk to more of you via (appropriate) technology.

And I hope your winter is joyous and productive.

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The international language of farmers markets

This is the second piece I have read in as many days about the role of local food to support newly arrived residents. A few years back, I wrote a presentation about trends in farmers markets and what may be coming in the next era: one such possible trend was an increase in attracting immigrant population attendance to markets both as vendors and as shoppers. (Another was the role of planning departments and city officials to use markets to build social cohesion in public space; based on the number of calls and emails from those departments and from municipalities on building or renovating public markets or asking how to work with existing open-air market organizations to create a permanent, public presence for local food, that may be happening in your corner of the world.)
In truth, it is vital that markets start to reach out to a multiplicity of resident demographics, moving away from only using the passive media that attracted the early adopters in the first few decades and moving to targeted outreach and the use of multi-language, graphically-strong materials. When I go to a town that has hired me to help increase their shopping base, one of the first questions I ask is who are the new residents and how many of them are ESL shoppers. I am surprised by how few market organizations know the answer and are unsure of where to find information about the cultural goods and habits of that demographic. In contrast, those markets that are aware and adding materials for those new shoppers are finding more loyal and savvy shoppers of their markets, and ultimately building great farmers too. If you are aware of who is moving to your area, use the FMC listserve to ask other markets with that same population if they have materials or what they used to get their attention. Reach out to government program managers and to centers and settlement houses* to see if there are any in your area.

I did an article for Growing For Markets in the November 2012 issue (“Growers offer immigrants familiar vegetables”) about one such project being conducted in Toronto (which has an incredibly dynamic immigrant population) called the World Crops Project which had all of the main components for successful entry for growers into the local markets. It was a very thoughtful approach to newly arrived residents being seen as both producers and as shoppers. Here is the link but you will need a subscription to Growing For Markets to access it. If you don’t have a subscription, maybe now is the time to get one. They have a great archive of articles for growers that can be shared with vendors.

So build those partnerships and ask for the research to help your market find its next wave of community members.

Quote from the first article:

Unlike other ubiquitous institutions like hospitals or government, a person can operate in a market without knowledge of the local language, provided they speak marketese, the international language of farmer’s markets.

Source: Read the rest of the above article here

The other piece on immigrants and food systems comes out of the excellent work being done in Buffalo NY. This was a qualitative case study of two ethnic food retailers and how they could advance the grower-retailer relationship.

Ethnic retail food outlets can not only improve public health by stocking and selling healthy foods to urban consumers; they can also provide a market for produce grown locally and regionally. Typically, ethnic growers must travel long distances to acquire produce. Local governments can facilitate networking among local and regional growers and ethnic wholesalers/distributors/retailers to evaluate possibilities for growing (at least some) ethnic crops within their region. One of the store owners interviewed for this study reported that she occasionally visits produce markets in Buffalo, and she expressed interest in working with local farmers more systematically to grow high-demand ethnic vegetables, to allow her to stock this produce more consistently.

Dowload the report here

• “Since World War II, the number of settlements has fluctuated. Today, it is estimated that there are more than 900 settlement houses in the United States, according to UNCA, an association of 156 of them.”

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Social isolation, loneliness could be greater threat to public health than obesity

I encourage you to cite this report and the ‘loneliness epidemic’ when preparing proposals to city or county entities or public health advocates. Framing the market as a connector and place of civic engagement will allow your market to write a proposal to fund children’s activities like POP, and to offer more seating and events in order to bridge to more people and to allow more bonding.

There is robust evidence that social isolation and loneliness significantly increase risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds that of many leading health indicators,” said Holt-Lunstad. With an increasingly aging population, the effect on public health is only anticipated to increase. Indeed, many nations around the world now suggest we are facing a ‘loneliness epidemic.’
….adding that community planners should make sure to include shared social spaces that encourage gathering and interaction, such as recreation centers and community gardens.

Source: Social isolation, loneliness could be greater threat to public health than obesity –

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What if Our Economic System Was Set Up to Generate Happiness?

In the design of our community food system, it is clear that our work must be coordinated with other sectors of civil society even as we do our best to remain light and fun and designed to encourage regular, easy participation. Some may assign this work under the social determinants of health but I think organizers need to be expansive and exciting with words as often as possible. Using terms such as lasting happiness and well-being as goals of our work offers that vision.

This podcast showcases Liz Ziedler, co-founder of Happy City Bristol, an organization geared towards fostering holistic happiness in Bristol, U.K., through measurement tools, workshops, and campaigns.
Lasting happiness should be our real aim for any system change and one that is articulated by a sense of community, purpose in your life, availability to nature and so on. All of these things can be helped with the community food system leading the way. ( I love her idea of “topping off the reservoir” of good times to build the resilience you need for tougher times. Wouldn’t that be a cool way to describe one impact gained from regularly attending farmers markets?)
What works helping people and places to flourish? What supports that kind of mind shift?
Here is how Happy City does their work:

– communication and campaigns: using all kinds of mediums to get people thinking, talking, sharing about well-being;
– training: get skills and habits into lives to know and use resiliency tactics;
– measurement and policy: offering an alternative to using GDP as the measurement for the individual, for communities and organizations and policymakers (Happy City Pulse). Survey of different areas of well-being, using academic and experiential knowledge to measure (loosely):
Be (emotional)
Do (behavioral
Connect (social)

HC uses the federated territory model (love the term) to help each place using Happy City’s resources maintain their own path and independence.

Their Happy City Index also measures if the right conditions exist to build well-being.

Lots of great ideas as to how to combat industrial system or commodity thinking and language and tools for us to use. The discussion in the interview about the connection of happiness, equity, and sustainability was really great. As was the talk around challenging the status quo on economic measurement through individual patterns which then leads to those engaged persons entering the political arena to work on changes at the municipal level and then to the system level.

https://soundcloud.com/upstreampodcast/liz-zeidler-interview

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System thinking among market leaders: advocacy, mobilization and organizing.

As leaders, you should be cognizant of 3 levels of activism: advocacy, mobilization and organizing. Knowing the difference between those is often the key to avoiding burnout and engaging people successfully: actively educating others about ideas and needs around your market and its producers (advocacy), encouraging others to be active about those ideas and needs (mobilization), teaching others to lead, defining tactics and building campaign strategies to push those ideas forward or to address a looming legislative crisis(organizing). There are wonderful resources like this one from NYFC to get up to speed on the skills and tactics necessary for different types of work. It is also vital that this work is visible at the local, state and at regional and/or national level.

as markets

advocacy: Don’t Hide the Hard Work: Get ready folks, as this is my new mantra. It is wonderful that markets work hard to put on lovely, comforting markets that celebrate all that is good in community food and hide the duct tape that keeps it all together, but sometimes I think we leave the market organization’s own story behind. In order for it to be seen as a community asset, it is important that those who use it understand that money must be raised, partnerships have to be managed, and logistical issues are constant. So tell the story of the market and producers in words and pictures to audiences that are interested in expanding its impacts to others nearby. Don’t just tell the same “product available” version week after week, month after month; mix it up and instead use your email newsletter to advocate for a single policy change or to explain the FMPP proposal process or to highlight an evolution that one of your vendors has achieved or is working on. For example, it may be a story about one of your vendors getting their products on grocery store shelves and share some of the steps in terms of policy changes or product development that it took to get that done.

mobilization: • Ask your community to send out emails and tweets when legislators or other audiences need to understand how to make community food better. • Post your municipality’s public meetings and your state’s legislative schedule and invite members of your market community to attend as a group, dropping off some of FMC advocacy materials with your market information. That way, some of you might become information providers on food and farming issues for your legislators when necessary. • Don’t rely entirely on social media to mobilize everyone: Create a phone tree among your producers and affiliated stakeholders for when you want them to call about an issue concerning the market or production. • Offer bulleted points for people to write their own emails or letters. Don’t spend time creating online petitions; legislators rarely take those seriously. They are fine to raise awareness among a group of voters but do little beyond that when it comes to policy changes.

organizing: • Build an advisory team made up of vendors, shoppers, and neighbors. If possible, include younger people like vendors’ teenage children or employees, using the time to talk about policy issues affecting your market and its producers. Ask them to write short pieces for the market’s newsletter or tag along when you do an interview about the market. You’d be surprised how quickly members of your market community will get comfortable in talking about and even for the market if you bring them along carefully and with sensitivity to their fears about public speaking. • Invite state leaders to open the season (even for year-round markets) at the market with a ribbon-cutting ceremony or a bell-ringing. Ask a vendor board member or longtime shopper to spend a few minutes showing the leaders around. • Use Dot Surveys to regularly ask visitors and vendors questions about local issues and not always about food or farming. Post the responses and share them with the municipality.

as coalition members

advocacy: Don’t Hide the Hard Work. • Team up with the area’s intermediate buyers like restaurants to build support for farmers using multiple sales outlets. Ask those chefs and store buyers to use their social media sites to talk about the daily work of the market and your farmers.

mobilization: • Share data on your market impacts with your fellow markets and other food and farming advocates. • Organize a “rapid response team”for misleading stories about markets or farmers to give some context or analysis for the media or the market community. • Create a shared google calendar for writing letters to editors, to legislators and to your state’s policymakers on food and farming.

organizing: • Become members of an active market coalition and of at least one coalition where good food is not the primary goal; make sure any coalition you join is actively working on solutions for markets, producers or shoppers, and inclusive and transparent in its process. In those cases where it is less useful to meet regularly with nearby markets, focus on joining larger coalitions- like FMC of course!- but also try to find markets across the US that are similar to yours in terms of size, age or intent and organize yourself into an issue group. • Encourage your active community members to add a food and farming approach to their work if they are part of other groups, like anti-fracking, safe streets, immigration or in networking events for different professions (i.e. architects specializing in green building or recreational fishers) • Organize an event to show what a local food system looks and acts using as a toy village set up at your town hall or at the community center. Show some of the many, many films on food and farming now available.

This is only the beginning of the conversation. Be prepared to hear more from me and others about the need for our market leaders to engage on many issues outside market day. Remember too that markets are already “ahead” of many other organizers in that our work is all about being bridge-builders and working with people with a wide range of goals and perspectives. Let’s use our place in the public arena to connect more people and to build support for food sovereignty and active citizenship. And remind each other to not to allow “naive cynicism” to cloud our future or to limit the possibilities for action.

P.S. Hopefully most of you saw this on various listserves from Debbie Hillman but I think it bears reposting as often as possible:

Post election, this seems a good moment for U.S. food-and-farm activists to compare how federal resources are used on a regional (or state) level, especially whether these resources are

— truly accessible to anyone and everyone

— truly responsive to food-and-farm activists and practitioners.

In this email, I am focusing on the seven regional offices of USDA’s Food & Nutrition Service (FNS), which is the primary federal division that focuses on food access — the food side of the food-and-farm dyad.

1. USDA FNS REGIONAL OFFICEsHere is a list of the seven USDA FNA Regional Offices:

Mid-Atlantic (Robbinsville, NJ), Midwest (Chicago, IL), Mountain Plains (Denver, CO), Northeast (Boston, MA), Southeast (Atlanta, GA), Southwest (Dallas, TX), Western (San Francisco, CA)See https://www.fns.usda.gov/fns-regional-offices for a list of the states served by each.

2. QUESTIONS to spark reflection and sharing

What do USDA FNS Regional offices do for food-and-farm activists?

How do activists in each region engage with the regional offices?

What can we learn from each other, region to region?

In 2017, what do we want to maintain in our regional offices?

In 2017, what do we want to put in place in our regional offices?

3. MIDWEST OFFICE EXAMPLE: GoodGreens (OH, IN, MI, IL, WI, MN)

To kickstart the conversation, here is a description of GoodGreens, a monthly networking event (plus monthly newsletters), hosted by the Midwest Office of USDA FNS. I have written about GoodGreens before, but have never asked about other regional offices. In my opinion, GoodGreens is a win-win model of government staff engaging with residents.

Official description: GoodGreens – Supporting local food systems in the Midwest RegionGoodGreens is a collaboration facilitated by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service Midwest Region to share resources and best practices that support sustainable local foods production and increase consumption of healthy, locally grown foods. GoodGreens meetings are held monthly in person at the USDA Midwest Regional Office in downtown Chicago and via conference call.

WHAT

— Monthly networking meetings open to anyone (every month except December)

— Monthly newsletters (usually 2 per month)

— Occasional special notices (new USDA grant cycle, events)

WHO

Public Affairs Office (Alan Shannon, Public Affairs Director)

USDA FNS Midwest Office

PRACTICAL BENEFITS TO REGIONAL ACTIVISTS

— Regular and easy-to-ready information (including meeting agendas and minutes)

— Meet or learn about other activists (people, organizations, businesses, projects)

— Connect niche areas (farm-to-school, urban agriculture, food hubs, etc.)

— Connect geographically (find potential partners in same state, county, municipality, etc.)

— Share details of your work (presentation at meetings, announcement through newsletter, etc.)

— Access to information about current resources (jobs, grants, events, etc.)

— Food justice activists learn about farm justice

— Farm justice activists learn about food justice

— Mutual learning among rural, urban, suburban communities

— Meetings are well organized but informal, held in a circle (conference call capability for people who can’t come to the office)

— Easy coalition building – no one is excluded

PRACTICAL BENEFITS TO USDA FNS REGIONAL OFFICE

— Easy way for regional office to learn about new food-and-farm initiatives

— Creates database and regional and state-by-state snapshot of food-and-farm issues

— Professional development for government staff: observe and learn the interconnection of everything and everyone in the food system

— Non-partisan (office is a facilitator, not a promoter of any agenda)

COST

— Free to activists

— Little additional cost (if any) to USDA FNS regional office

HISTORY

GoodGreens began in 2007 as a collaboration between the USDA FNS Regional Office and a Chicago Congressman (Bobby Rush, 1st Cong. District – IL). I believe that Cong. Rush was getting a lot of requests from constituents about food-and-farm issues. Like most urban people in the U.S. (who are trained to be ignorant of the food-and-farm system), no one really knew what to do. So a senior staff member in Cong. Rush’s office (Anton Seals) suggested monthly networking meetings. These meetings were originally held in Cong. Rush’s office. After a couple of years, they were moved permanently to the USDA FNS Midwest Regional Office in downtown Chicago.

REPLICATION IN OTHER REGIONAL OFFICES?

I think that this model is easily replicable in other regional offices — and would even be a good model for civic engagement in most (if not all) areas of government. Getting a local Congressional representative on board might be one of the best ways to start the conversation.

Key to replicating this model is having a Public Affairs Director who is really interested in people and mutual sharing, in addition to being concerned about food access. In my opinion, we would not have GoodGreens without Alan Shannon, who set the tone for GoodGreens from the very beginning. (I sure hope we can keep him, but I’d be willing to share if he can help other government offices learn how easy it is to engage with the people they’re supposed to serve.)

SAMPLE NEWSLETTER: Jan. 26, 2017 meeting

Here is a link to the most recent GoodGreens newsletter (now on Constant Contact):

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/GoodGreens–New-Grants–Opportunities–News–January-26th-Meeting-Info—More.html?soid=1123821222616&aid=Y1jEVdlwkIs

Contains:

— Agenda for Jan. 26, 2017 meeting

— News, Resources, Grants, and More….

— Sign-up to receive future newsletters

4. OTHER USDA FNS REGIONAL OFFICES?

I’d be interested to hear about what’s going on in the other six USDA FNS Regional Offices. Maybe activists in the Midwest Region would want to borrow from the other offices. I’m pretty sure that others on COMFOOD, FNS, and NAFSN would be interested, too. — Debbie

P.S.S. Check out Mark Bittman’s post in Civil Eats too. This is from that piece:

You can’t fix agriculture without addressing immigration and labor or without rethinking energy policies; you can’t improve diets without reducing income inequality, which in turn requires unqualified equal rights for women and minorities; you can’t encourage people to cook more at home without questioning gender roles or the double or triple shifts that poor parents often must accept to make ends meet; you can’t fully change the role of women without tackling the future of work, childcare, and education; you can’t address climate change without challenging the power of corporations and their control over the state—and, not so incidentally, without challenging Big Food. The fight for healthy diets is part and parcel of these other struggles, and it will be won or lost alongside them.

It’s all connected; the common threads are justice, fairness, and respect. “Sustainable” is a word that we must now apply to democracy itself: a nation built on perpetuating injustice and the exploitation of people and nature doesn’t qualify. And a “sustainable food system” cannot exist inside an unsustainable political and economic system.

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Apply for Vanguard gathering in Montreal

I am sure that many market leaders are also involved with their urban system too and some may be even under 40- If so, check out Next City’s annual gathering, this year in Montreal.

Vanguard is Next City’s annual gathering of 40 of the world’s best and brightest urban leaders age 40 and under. The conference is free, and the window to apply closes Monday, December 12, at midnight. Here are their top 10 reasons to throw your hat in the ring to be part of the 2017 Vanguard conference happening in Montreal, May 31 to June 3.

1. Get to know 39 amazing leaders in your generation all doing innovative work in cities across the world.

2. It’s Montreal’s 375th anniversary and the city is celebrating year-round. Vanguards will explore one of our favorite projects, Cite Memoire, a nighttime multimedia experience projected throughout Old Montreal.

3. Participate in the planning process of Montreal’s urban transport network by using MTL Trajet throughout the conference. Designed by our conference partner Concordia University, Vanguards will track their movements across the city contributing to the Smart City Action Plan.

4. Finally get your chance to not be the biggest urban planning geek in the room.

5. Visit Mount Royal, designed by the world-famous Frederick Law Olmsted.

6. Participate in the annual Big Idea Challenge, which will leave a lasting impact on the city.

7. Form deep and lasting connections within an influential network of your peers.

8. Practice your French skills amongst Montreal’s Francophiles in the heart of the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec.

9. You won’t be just another tourist. Yes, there are fun photo ops, but Vanguard classes dive deep into host cities. Check out what we packed into three days in Reno in 2015.

10. After seven years of hosting the Vanguard conference, we’ve built an influential alumni group, and many past participants will be attending. You’ll get to meet them — and join that growing club.

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Facebook versus Face-to-Face

Anthony Flaccavento talks about how we lose community in clear and practical terms in this post. And yes, much of it has to do with that screen I am looking at now and the one many have in their hand some 15- 16 hours per day. I think my readers know that I like technology a great deal. I do like it, but it may be interesting to you to know that I gave up my smart phone for a texting phone – albeit one that has some ability to use the internet if absolutely needed – a few years back because a) it was too invasive b) my work had become much more office-bound and c) not having it meant I needed to rely on others to assist me once in a while.
My market organization was one of the first to equip their staff with smart phones and they were a supremely useful tool. Often though, I handed the market phone to a volunteer to monitor for me while I tried to follow these rules: spend more time roaming the market and talking to people than tweeting about it; attend and help arrange events at bowling alleys/bookstores, in parks and at senior centers to meet more of the community; and more than any other: turn off or ignore my phone when someone engaged me in a conversation.

Many Saturday mornings the line at our farmers market booth includes libertarians, quiet conservatives and liberals; readers of The Nation and folks who listen to Glen Beck. You can be sure that there are some very strong disagreements on economic, environmental and social issues in that queue. But there’s no shouting, no hateful, dogmatic pronouncements. What would happen if I stopped bagging produce and asked what everyone thought about climate change? Or Black Lives Matter? Or the president-elect? I honestly don’t know. I do think, however, that the realities we share, around food, our land and our local economy, may bind us to each other just enough that we’d actually listen, perhaps even consider a discomforting fact or two. Maybe, only maybe. Even so, compared to Facebook’s placeless world, this face-to-face community at least has a common place from which to begin the search for shared truths.

Source: As shared realities have disappeared, so have our shared truths | BottomUpEconomy

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The Farm-To-Table Movement and Rural Gentrification

Nice article on food-based communities cropping up in rural areas, although I am bit puzzled by the choice of title.
In many ways, rural places are in a better position to build an entire system that supports the farmer than the urban garden movement has been able to do. There, one can start with the farm and the farmer and build out in an expanding set of connected circles.
Of course, we need all types of food production in our regions; urban, suburban and rural and building prototypes of each is the first step to that.The next step will be to then connect these local food systems into a regional system which has been done in very few instances.
I know the Saxapahaw model and even wrote about the store and farm in an
https://darlenewolnik.com/?s=saxapahaw on here. I have also written about the tension that arises when a rural farm community adds these innovative entrepreneurial outlets; in a book that Ben Hewitt wrote about Hardwick VT.

Source: The Farm-To-Table Movement and Rural Gentrification – CityLab

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All Aboard: Food Barge and Hospital Greenhouse

Floating Food Forest Prepares for Debut Voyage in New York

That garden is Swale, a food forest that sits atop a 120-by-35-foot barge. All of the food grown on Swale will be free and available to anyone who wants to hop on board. Patrons will be able to forage for dozens of perennial plants, such as persimmons, Swiss chard, strawberries, and asparagus.

While Swale will serve the community as a free food service, it will also be an artistic space. Biome Arts, a collective of artists and ecologists, is hosting its EcoSummit 2016 aboard Swale in the summer, with plans to build an installation, host performances, and offer free skill-sharing workshops.

Food produced on Swale will be free to the public.

Source: All Aboard: Floating Food Forest

Hospital Greenhouse in New Jersey

The greenhouse is hydroponic, and officials say it’ll produce the same amount of fresh vegetables that five acres of farmland would. The about 10,000 pounds of food that will come out of the Beth Greenhouse each year will be available to residents at “affordable prices” at a weekly farmer’s market, according to Barbara Mintz, the hospital’s Vice President of Community Engagement and Healthy Living…

…We will lose money off of this greenhouse, that’s the point,” said Darrell K. Terry, the President and CEO of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center and The Children’s Hospital of New Jersey….

The greenhouse is the latest step in what Newark Beth Israel officials say is the hospital’s transition from focusing on treating illnesses to preventing them. It will work in tandem with the hospital’s other major wellness efforts – KidsFit, a school-based curriculum to prevent a treat childhood obesity, and The Beth Challenge, a community weight loss and fitness program. The greenhouse builds on the indoor farm and farmers market the hospital started in 2011, and will double the farm’s previous production.

http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2016/05/teaching_a_man_to_garden_hospital_opens_urban_gree.html

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The new Storefront Index

I could see how this tool can be helpful to food system organizers, although I certainly know we need other key indicators too. Clearly though, this type of mapping will assist the typology work that will help organizers to know why, where and what to throw in the mix to build the appropriate type of market best for that community.

Rejoice in the Storefront Index and see how your hometown’s storefront index stacks up against neighboring cities.

Read story here

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Farmer gives away harvest to feed hungry in his town

Now he’s on a mission to feed the hungry in Central Indiana. Lawler has revamped his 36-acre farm into a nonprofit operation called Brandywine Creek Farms. His goal for the first year is to donate 500,000 pounds of food, which he said is realistic based on the farm’s capacity and the addition of an army of volunteers to help through the season.

On top of that, Lawler has joined forces with Gleaners, Midwest Food Bank, Kenneth Butler Soup Kitchen and other area food banks as distribution partners.

Farmer gives away harvest to feed hungry in his town

An example of social (bridging) and human (knowledge shared) capital impacts, designed and led by a farmer.

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