farmers/farming information

Remember to remember Japan

From Jacqueline Church’s excellent food newsletter, even though its now more like 10 months since the disaster:’As I finish these edits, I am just back from the debrief by the Japanese Disaster Relief Fund team. They had are just back from Tohoku, Japan. Two months after the March 11 triple disaster, 115,000 people are still in living in 2,000 shelters scattered around Tohoku. Volunteers from within Japan and from Boston are on the ground in various towns, helping to clear debris, trying to elicit health status from quiet and stoic citizens in shelters.

Don’t focus on your heavy heart. Be grateful for what you have but don’t forget Japan. Giving feels good. Help in whatever way, small or grand, you can. Just do something. You will be enriched for it and feel less helpful in the face of the horrific news as it continues to unfold, as surely it will.”

And in the months to come. Remember to remember. Japan is counting on us.

Leather District Gourmet

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Kitchen Gardener pods

Markets can do well to encourage kitchen gardeners to socialize and find ways to encourage share information – maybe even to curate those discussions at the market.

kitchen gardeners

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L3C designation

As many of you may know from the listserve postings and from this blog, I am beginning to do research on types of governance of markets and market organizations. Interestingly, I find that many organizers that I am chatting with simply believe that they cannot get 501c3 status (mostly through informal local advice they get or even during the first foray to I.R.S.) or think the 501c3 process will be too long or arduous. In response, they incorporate as other types of 501s that do not allow donations or make it easy to receive grants. Just as often, many seem to not do any incorporation which, until a terrible thing happens and those running the thing are held financially responsible and lose their personal property as a result, may feel like enough. This is particularly of concern to me when markets are run by a farmer and therefore operating without a corporation or LLC designation may mean endangering the farm itself.
One of the options may ultimately be the L3C designation. As I was beginning this post, I received a call from a friend who works with a foundation (that does not fund food work, sorry!). Upon hearing what I was writing about she shared that she is also researching the L3C as a way to help innovative social enterprises that will not be covered under their grant-making rules.

While still largely untested, the low-profit limited liability incorporation may become useful for food enterprises, such as farmers markets. It means that profit is possible but profit is secondary to the general purpose and good of the organization. It allows for program-related investments (PRI) from foundations in states that have authorized it. So far, legislation has been passed in Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming with many other states having introduced legislation.

So take a look and I’ll have more on this later…
L3C

Much more L3C info

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Stifled by corporate America, the young turn to farming

Well maybe they’re stifled, or maybe they want to farm…

Stifled by corporate America, the young turn to farming.

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Olive this.

This is a great story about someone finding growing food as a second life. Wonderful really.

olive producer

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Calling All Food-Based Businesses: New book seeks your capital-raising stories!

New book on financing food-based businesses seeks your capital raising stories.

BALLE fundraising book

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National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition Announces Introduction of Local Foods Bill

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine and 35 original co-sponsors introduced the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act (S. 1773, H.R. 3286), a comprehensive bill intended for inclusion in the 2012 Farm Bill. The legislation helps farmers and ranchers by addressing production, aggregation, processing, marketing, and distribution needs to access growing local and regional food markets. The bill also assists consumers by improving access to healthy food. The measure provides secure farm bill funding for critically important programs that support family farms, expand new farming opportunities, create rural jobs, and invest in the local food and agriculture economy.
“We applaud Senator Brown and Congresswoman Pingree for introducing this legislation,” said Helen Dombalis, a Policy Associate with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act revises and expands existing federal farm programs to ensure that they effectively foster local and regional food system development. The bill invests in communities—when consumers are connected to and invested in where their food comes from and agricultural producers meet this demand, local economies reap the benefits.”

The bill includes provisions that cut across ten titles of the Farm Bill, including proposals that address conservation, credit, nutrition, rural development, research and extension, food safety, livestock, and crop insurance. Some of the specific proposals within the bill include:

Local Marketing Promotion Program

The legislation will establish $30 million a year in mandatory farm bill direct funding for what is now the Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP). The newly refashioned Local Marketing Promotion Program will do everything FMPP does, but also will provide grants to scale up local and regional food enterprises, including processing, distribution, aggregation, storage, and marketing.

School Meals

The bill will improve institutional access to local and regional foods through a series of provisions regarding school meal procurement. For example, through a “local food credit program,” originally championed by Representative Pingree in her Eat Local Foods Act introduced earlier this year, School Food Authorities could opt to use up to 15 percent of their school lunch commodity dollars for making purchases of foods in their own communities, from their own farmers and ranchers, instead of through USDA’s nationalized commodity food program.

Rural Development

Funding for Rural Development programs has declined significantly in recent agriculture appropriation bills, and these programs are at risk during the farm bill reauthorization. The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act boosts rural investment by increasing the Business & Industry Loan funding set-aside for local and regionally produced agriculture products and food enterprises from five to ten percent. The legislation will also provide authority for specific types of local and regional food system funding under Rural Business Opportunity Grants (RBOG), Rural Business Enterprise Grants (RBEG), and Community Facility Grants and Loans.

Specialty Crop Block Grant Program

Within the Specialty Crop Block Grant program, the bill proposes an annual allocation for local and regional specialty crop market development. Although the program is already in place to enhance the competitiveness of specialty crops, which include fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts, there is no explicit focus on specialty crops marketed in their local and regional areas. This legislation would change that.

For more information on the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act, see the entire press release
HERE
Posted on: December 2nd, 2011

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The Sourlands

Another film from the director of “The Farmer and The Horse” to back:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1480255348/sourlands-stories-from-the-fight-for-sustainabilit/widget/video.html

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From Fighters to Farmers

The mission of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition (FVC) is to mobilize veterans to feed America. Their motto is “Farmers Helping Veterans-Veterans Helping Farmers.”

FVC was started by experienced farmers who share their experience with recent military veterans and help them use their skills to create a new generation of innovative, ecological and financially successful young farmers.  They do this through direct assistance, and training and mentorship programs.

Read more

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There’s still time…

To join the Farmers Market Coalition’s webinar today at 11 EST, “Markets As Business Incubators: Strategies To Grow Your Vendor Base” with a simple registration on their website.
To register
Young Kim from Fondy Food Center in Milwaukee WI and Peter Marks from Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project in Asheville North Carolina will present some case studies and recommendations for markets to increase the benefits for vendors to participate, large or small.
The archives of the webinar will be available to review for FMC members after the call.

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Fair trade; yes? no? not yet? too late?

As a market organizer that created and ran a fair trade market in New Orleans for 5 years, I researched the idea heavily, many times while sitting at my neighborhood fair trade coffeehouse, Fair Grinds. I did find the fair trade argument thin in places, as it seemed to be more about a fuzzy mostly environmental rating on a bag and less about the part that a market organizer would focus on: that it offers more direct relationships with farmers and allows for a fairer accounting of labor and resource use. The painstaking knowledge of what it takes to farm and to survive in colonial regions is often reduced to a sepia toned photo of a farmer and a name on a sign. What is also interesting is that fair trade has not spread past commodities such as coffee and chocolate. Where is the fair trade wheat or sugar for example? And as more and more distributors enter the game, everyone it seems has at least 1 fair trade coffee on the shelf, often with very little paperwork or knowledge to support it. So, it seems to me to be have developed as more of a brand for consumers than a new values-based set of relationships. I will say, I continue to support my fair trade coffeehouse and purchase it when I can find it.
This article explains some of the weaknesses that it has as a movement, but I will say, their argument that it lacks a “single issue” focus is, in my mind not one of them. In any case, I appreciate the article and the magazine that published it.
Briarpatch

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Utne Visionary

Food hero Gary Paul Nabhan surely deserves this award since his “place-based” food research has been groundbreaking for decades. “Coming Home To Eat” was the first short mile diet I read and it is quite different from the rest (still), with the cultural reclamation context he shares in it. His Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) work was immensely useful for me and my fellow organizers; the RAFT map (see below) is a wonderful representation of how America should be seen. Gary’s books range from a leisurely walk through a Franciscan walk in Italy to why peppers are heaven to some to his essays on desert life. Treat yourself:
Book list

Utne award

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Seed and Cycle

As the movement grows robust, many shoots are growing from unlikely and likely places to support local place-based organizers of alternative food systems. I myself have become one of those, and the folks at Seed and Cycle are there too, offering smart resources for urban growing. Goals such as extending the growing season and soil building are imperative for small space farmers to utilize, but reading books alone will not give you the skills needed. Look for your version of Seed and Cycle in your community or, maybe, encourage a market volunteer or partner agency to start one.
Seed and Cycle

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Women Farmers Feed the World

The Al­liance for a Green Rev­o­lu­tion in Africa (AGRA) is a Gates Foun­da­tion-funded ini­tia­tive based in Nairobi and spear­headed by Kofi Annan, for­mer sec­re­tary gen­eral of the U.N. It’s a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar pro­ject that seeks to in­crease food pro­duc­tion in Africa by im­ple­ment­ing vig­or­ous West­ern-style agri­cul­tural tech­niques, promis­ing high-yield re­sults for food-in­se­cure pop­u­la­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the Gates Foun­da­tion and other sup­port­ers, it’s an African-led en­deavor, mod­eled on the pre­vi­ous Green Rev­o­lu­tions of Latin Amer­ica and the In­dian sub-con­ti­nent but placed in the hands of Africans. It sounds like a good idea.

But a grow­ing move­ment of local farm­ers—largely led by women—argue that the surest path to food se­cu­rity is se­cur­ing food sov­er­eignty. It’s a con­cept that was put for­ward in the early 90’s by Via Campesina, an in­ter­na­tional al­liance of peas­ant, in­dige­nous, and women’s or­ga­ni­za­tions that ad­vo­cates for com­mu­ni­ties’ con­trol over how food is pro­duced, and who gets to eat it.
Women Farmers

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