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 regional 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 food production to meet industrial food’s demands and (b) those who firmly believe that 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 alternatives and so on. The development of multiple 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.

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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

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Systemic Change is our Shared Goal

In thousands of public actions, 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.

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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.

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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.

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Louisiana Food Policy- Pepper Bowen

I have been following Culinaria Center for Food, Law, Policy, and Culture work in my city for a while- I find it to be very impressive, inclusive, with systemic work being done.

This interviewer may seem a little too focused on fetishizing our culture including the odd choice of requesting a midday drinking resulting in featuring massive daiquiris from our walkup and drive-through drinking culture (which, as true as that is, could use more context in the description of it), but still Pepper Bowen’s responses are excellent and thoughtful.

like this:

Bowen: What I find is that, especially for lawmakers, they really do want—as much as we give them crap—they really do want to do whatever it is that their constituents want for them to do. But the problem is that sometimes they are divorced from their actual constituents. They are also, sometimes, funded by folks whose desires and needs are at odds with their actually constituents. But by giving them the information they can make a more intelligent decision.

Still, if this gulp encourages you to check out the National Food and Beverage Museum, and Culinaria’s work, it is worth posting.

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Deserts, swamps, or apartheid? the language of food organizing

Brilliant interview with Karen Washington as she breaks down the institutions and words that deflate the potential of our food work. I agree whole-heartedly with her assessment that the term food desert does not describe the actual problem that communities face. I remember when a local academic dismissed it some years back but only substituted the term food swamp because as he said, it is not a lack of food that is the issue, but a swamp of bad food choices. I thought then well maybe that’s slightly better but it still doesn’t define the issue.

In contrast, the term food apartheid is properly defiant and active. Apartheid is the system of segregation, most often based on race, and as such does describe the structural issues with food, in consumption and production, in rural, urban, and suburban places. The solution includes food sovereignty (and health to be understood as the most important type of wealth), but of course in the US, the structure of sovereignty and self-care has been entirely warped by our corporate food structure and our statist political structure.

It is hard for many, but it is vital that all people see the food apartheid that has always been present in the US for people of color and now stretches to every community. How to see? Look down and note the chronic illnesses among family and neighbors; look around and see the lack of actual food growing in your public spaces and neighbors’ yards; look to City Hall and your state capital: see the policies that discourage or criminalize the production and sale of good food by neighbors. Once made, these observations can lead to action and unity and should become the core of our messages as farmers market leaders.

From the Karen Washington Guardian interview.

The conversation around actual food value is a conversation that we don’t have in low-income neighborhoods, regardless if they’re black or white, rural or urban. But things are changing. People are talking more than ever about food. It’s such a major shift, so you’re seeing major corporations offering different options, like fast-food chains offering salads. The consumer is starting to understand the relationship between food and health. It’s also happening in low-income communities. The rise in school gardens impacts children and they shift their parents’ perspectives. In my neighborhood, every year, we have a block party and they don’t serve soda anymore. The kids are asking for water! Education is working.

I think that food activists who see the work they do as truly measurable in terms of justice or of successful resistance to the dominant system are most likely to achieve actual change and will find themselves less frustrated by small disappointments and failures in their daily work. I also think that those food activists who see their work as organizing -and who see organizing as leadership development at the grassroots level – are also more likely to find allies and to be good allies, which to me is the primary goal of creating public entities like farmers markets or non-profit organizations.

I’ll leave the last words for agricultural leader LaDonna Redmond who eloquently said in the foreword to Professor Monica White’s Freedom Farmers:Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement:

While the white movement describes my community through a deficit model, Monica’s work describes agriculture as a site of resistance…The book is a conduit of those stories and memories that restore our dignity. I hope it will forever remind us that we are people of this land.

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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.

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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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Bob Dylan and Contract Theory

As excited as many are about an American folk/rock singer composer winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, the economic prize is also worthy of mention here. First though, my favorite song lyrics of Mr. Dylan:

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I wake in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you’re havin’ a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
Ah, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
Well, she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law
Everybody says
She’s the brains behind Pa
She’s sixty eight, but she says she’s fifty four
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more

Many of Dylan’s interpreters suggest this is a criticism of capitalism or of the military industrial complex. That actually leads us to a chat about the economic prize this year, given to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström for their contributions to contract theory. (Disclaimer: not only am I not an economist or a lawyer, my understanding of these theories is very casual and centered on my community organizing work. I may over or understate many of these theories and will always edit when better information comes my way. Feel free to add to my knowledge via email as needed.)

Contract theory focuses on the relationship between the parties in a contract, especially those which are asymmetrical in terms of how much information each side has access. The world contains scads of examples of information asymmetry: citizens and media, citizens and police or the military, employees-employers, consumers and technology providers etc. When one party has access to more information than the other, the fairness of the contract should be questioned. The other contract issue relevant to markets and farmers is what are called incomplete contracts. This covers the likelihood that a contract in present time cannot always cover every possible outcome and so often must be renegotiated at some time; in th, t case it is possible that renegotiation can go off the rails because of lack of trust.

In many ways, these scenarios describe much of what drove farmers and their advocates to the creation of the alternative food and farming movement. The desire for fairness and trust for both producers and for eaters led to transparency being one our chief indicators of success and in keeping the heart of our movement in direct marketing channels which offer simple ways to create fairness. But even within those models, there can be an information asymmetry. For example, some farmers markets have created systems where information only flows from vendor to market and not the other way around. In others, vendors cling to systems that ask little of them as far as information sharing with the market. One way to gauge whether this is an unequal contract is at the time that the agreement is being changed.

Still, the very nature of the mutual dependency and face to face nature of farmers markets and their vendors can usually correct these small imbalances. Same goes for other type of direct marketing contracts, especially CSAs which began as simple contractual relationships between producers and eaters for a single season and a single farm. More recently, some CSA relationships have become imbalanced: like when a farmer offers a member a credit for a bad season, even though the contract in a CSA explicitly states that the shopper loses their investment if the crop fails. Or, when a CSA farmer begins to morph into an aggregator of goods from nearby farms and cottage industry producers without creating a updated contract with their shoppers that outlines the new rules of bringing those goods to the shopper.

However, the concern over unfair contracts really “scales up” when systems move into intermediate (back door or bin sales) and wholesale (middle-man or pallet sales) contracts. Here, I’ll focus on intermediate sales, as wholesale sales are a whole other kettle of fish and in most cases, are beyond the capacity or interest of small family farms. (The reason for that is that few of those systems have really changed anything about their purchasing policies or their regulations for small farms, and so the costs and risk are all on the side of the farmer still.)

The hope is still that restaurant owners and wholesale buyers will build contracts with producers with the same transparency and information sharing as those in the direct marketing sector, but often that has not been the case. The key to mutually beneficial agreements on all levels of our food work relies on building contextual contracts and incentivizing them for all involved. What are the main benefits for a producer to sell at a lower cost to a chef? Well, two might be consecutive, consistent sales and the ease in delivery (meaning the farmer can deliver when most convenient to him or her and get quick payment), and yet rarely are these benefits described in agreements for most of our producers when they sell at these levels. What is the main benefit for the buyer? Often it is the quality of the product or the name recognition of the producer attached to the goods and yet rarely are those benefits understood and outlined in these agreements.

One way to incentivize the fairness of the contract in these situation may be to create a shared asset owned by all of the parties, such as a mutually owned cold truck or even branding. Another way to make them contextual might be to have an external party monitoring the agreement. Maybe this is where farmers market leaders can grow their influence?

And of course, markets managing transactions through card technology has led to lopsided contracts with processors. Markets scramble to understand these complex agreements which exist over different eras of management and open markets to many new layers of liability. Another issue is that the energy that markets must reserve for reaching and encouraging benefit program shoppers is often wasted by the lack of good information about the client lists from local or federal government authorities. Too many markets I talk to have no idea how and where to reach these shoppers in their area and when you take in the short time that the majority of these shoppers remain on these programs at any one time (also not shared by most government entities), successful outreach becomes even more unlikely. The market vendor in this situation is also underrepresented in a fair contract, as most markets – or the processors working directly with farmers – use boilerplate agreements about card processing with their vendors.

So, one can see from just these few examples that center around direct marketing and intermediate farmers how many contract issues arise. So maybe before the alternative food system becomes another one of Maggie’s farms, let’s spend some time on increasing transparency and incentives for everyone’s benefit.

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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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From WWII to Syria, How Seed Vaults Weather Wars

But though the need for seed banks is often associated with more stereotypically environmental, even futuristic, cataclysms (climate change; disease; pesticide-resistant insects) their history is inextricably tied up with something more banal and present-day—war.

…virtually no conflict has gone by without a devastating loss of seeds, often mitigated by a heroic rescue or underscored by a tragic attempt. Afghani mujahideen destroyed Kabul’s national seed collection in 1992. (Local scientists managed to smuggle some seeds into the basement of a few city houses, but by the time they returned to check on them a decade later, looters had dumped them on the floor in order to steal the storage jars.) During the Georgian civil unrest of 1993, just before the country’s Sukhumi Seed Station was destroyed, an 83-year-old botanist named Alexey Fogel escaped into the Caucasus Mountains with its entire lemon collection. Scientist Alexis Rumaziminsi, now known as the “bean boffin of Rwanda,” protected the many varieties of beans in his research plots during 1994’s civil war and genocide. The US-led invasion of Iraq resulted in the razing of the country’s national seed bank in Abu Ghraib—not to mention the implementation of American-style seed laws, which mean that if Iraqis want to buy new seeds, they will have to pay for yearly usage licenses.

Source: From WWII to Syria, How Seed Vaults Weather Wars | Atlas Obscura

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The Law of Seeds

“The Law of Seeds” is a Bill of Rights for seeds, created by Beth Grossman. She scribed these rights with a quill pen on eleven vintage seed bags that are also painted with images of the stages of germinating corn from seed to mature plant. This traveling art exhibit evokes an appreciation of the wonders of seeds and the importance of protecting this precious source of our food chain. Brisbane, CA was the first U.S. city to adopt this Law of Seeds as a Proclamation. As the exhibit travels, the artist hopes to encourage other cities to develop, adopt and enforce rights of nature.

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Great Places Awards, Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario

Big fan of the Fayetteville food work I have seen and heard about.

The EDRA 2015 Place Planning Award recipient, “Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario,” asks the question, What if Fayetteville’s projected growth enabled the city to sustain its food budget through a local urban agriculture network? And what kind of infrastructure would a city have to develop if it cultivated a local food system? While the large metropolis sponsors the most efficient carbon footprint per capita, moderate scale cities like Fayetteville are better equipped to evolve resilient food-secure environments given the interconnectedness and metabolic alignment among their natural ecosystems, infrastructure, and urban fabrics. Food City’s transferable set of planning tools, established by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, not only assists to embed high-quality food production into American urbanism, but shows how urban infrastructure can also deliver important ecosystem services.

All of the 2015 Environmental Design Research Association awards here

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