What issues have you been focused on?

Women, Food and Agriculture Network provides information for all women involved in healthy food and farming to connect, learn and become empowered to act in their communities. We exist as a network for women because 15 years ago, when we started, there was no Midwest network of women farmers. Now we have members nationwide , and try to keep our members aware of federal funding opportunities and policy. We exist for social support and skills sharing but also for policy work.

What inspires you to do this work?

Originally my inspiration came from two places. I grew up on a conventional farm in Iowa; my father was an outdoorsman and was very careful with his land. I learned about careful farming from him and a love of the outdoors. So I was always interested in the environment. As I’ve become a mom and more aware as a consumer, I’ve seen a link between heath and food, and heath and the environment. It’s a natural link for me to support people who support that.

I am a feminist. I totally embrace it. Opportunities for women in whatever field they prefer should be there and I love working toward that in agriculture.

What’s your overall vision?

That what’s now considered alternative agriculture becomes mainstream. I believe we can have healthy agriculture and a healthy environment and feed people. There is no reason why we can’t feed the planet. It can feed itself using healthy farming methods and in fact it’s the only way we can feed the world. Women must become more involved in creating more systems in the world. The more women have power in creating systems that work, the more things will change for the better.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I love to check in on Grist and Civil Eats, Huffington Post food pages, those are the three main ones. I’ve really enjoyed Michael Pollan’s work and he’s done a great job of popularizing the movement. I love anything by Barbara Kingsolver. I really liked Temra Costa’s Farmer Jane book last year. I’m also an unabashed crime novel reader too.

Who’s in your community?

My professional community exists in the groups of women who are farming, landowners and advocates all over from Europe to the U.S. In particular, the women who work in other networks:

The Women’s Agricultural Networks (WaGNs) in Vermont , Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

The League of Women Farmers in Southern Oregon. Networks of women are popping up everywhere who are ready for activism training and leadership development.

What are your commitments?

I have two sons, one a college freshman in Portland, the other a sophomore in high school, Richard and David. My husband Ed works at Iowa State University. Family is my first priority. Regarding work, I really want to leave a legacy here of a successful organization. Coming up on five years we’ve grown from 300 to 3,000 and funding has increased almost 10-fold. I’d like to see that growth continue. Staying balanced and sane too. Funny that comes third…

What are your goals?

For WFAN it’s to keep it growing and to continue to ramp up advocacy and leadership training on a national level. We want to find the dollars to prioritize our leadership development program, Plate to Politics. Another goal is to find a way for me to continue to contribute to this work and step aside for the next leader. I’m in my early 50s and I’m ready when the time comes to make a transition smooth and positive. The new leader will have the skill set we need to take it to the next level.

What does change look like to you?

Public opinion has a lot to do with change. I particular with institutional systems like agriculture and food, change looks like more people understanding the connection between food systems and health and ecology and health. But it’s a big ship to turn. There are big interests that want to take financial advantage of this turn and like any big change those that have a financial stake will continue to find a way to keep that. Like Monsanto finding a way to have patents on organic ag. Change means making sure that the people take control of their power, by being aware of what U.S. corporations are doing to the detriment of their health. Change means they make sure they speak up. We need to continue to monitor corporations and stay vigilant so their power doesn’t dominate. As in any capitalist society, change is an educated public aware of social issues, people who stay informed and continue to care and act. The danger is that all the decisions we make are based on money.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

Again the key piece for our work is Plate to Politics as ag is probably the most policy dictated sector of our economy. Policy dictates what gets grown, where it’s grown, how much people get paid, and it’s often driven by corporate interests. We have to make sure the public good is protected. So all of us as individuals need to get educated and support the kind of food systems we need to see.  Our outreach has to focus on educating women on what’s happening in their communities and supporting them to help digest policy language and chopping it up into bite-sized pieces. We teach them how they can do good on a mom schedule. I think when more women’s voices are heard, more policy will change for the better. Women are more community minded, they are better negotiators—this is gender-based research—women are more likely to reach across party lines, reach compromise and be effective leaders in many ways.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

We have three programs: Plate to Politics, Women Caring for the Land, and Harvesting our Potential which is our work with aspiring and beginning women farmers. We just received a grant to expand that in Iowa and Nebraska. We’ll be doing some structured networking, business planning for career exploration and more detailed week-long classes for women who already have farms. A key piece that’s been missing is training the mentor famers. We will give them training to understand labor law, how to teach, workers’ comp, conflict management, etc. We’ve had a cohort of women who’ve been hosting apprentices for years and doing a really fine job but they’ve had to learn this on the fly, so we want to teach them how to minimize their risk. We’re adapting the Cultivating Success training program which we’ve found to be the best, so the author, Diane Green will help teach that and spread that curriculum in the Midwest.

We’re also hosting the 4^th national conference for women in sustainable agriculture “Cultivating Our Food, Farms and Future,”  Nov 6-8 in Des Moines, IA. You can learn more about it at our website, www.wfan.org.

What projects and people have you got your eye on or are you impressed by?

Food Corps is phenomenal.

I’m a huge ATTRA fan, everything they do is awesome.

I love the Worldwatch Institute. I saw their list of 25 women changing the environment.

Environmental Working Group.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility? 

Obviously it’s always a real possibility. Currently I’m worried there’s no new Farm Bill. The fact there isn’t one is a symptom of something that I can’t foresee getting better in the next five years—interparty ideological and money issues on the federal level. Instead of working through compromise they say “I quit.” Now that the election is behind us we’ll see what happens.

At the local level it’s exciting to me that communities of all sizes are creating food and farm plans, that they are setting aside spaces for urban gardens and farmers’ markets and paying attention to food in that way. A county here is incentivizing transition to organic with tax breaks.

In terms of the focus of WFAN, there’s now a record number of women in Congress. It’s sad that it’s so low but good that it’s a record. In the census it’s fabulous that women are growing as farmers; women are entering ag and changing it. That of those areas give me the greatest sense of hope; having those women farming and promoting healthy food systems in their communities.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

Money would be helpful. I’m really heartened by all the private foundations giving to sustainable agriculture. There’s an interesting debate about whether or not to take Walton Family Foundation money but just the fact that Walmart is investing in helping women of color, particular in the Delta states to help get products into their stores is great. Resources are vital. Continuing to work in collaboration; we have to collaborate because resources are scarce. We need to collaborate in a smart way, locally and federally and to present a fairly united front in some key areas.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

A beautiful locally grown pork tenderloin, braised in my husband’s home brewed beer served with a bunch of diced locally raised winter vegetables.

After a year that included arguably more food mishaps and misdeeds in history, there is clearly no time like the present to voice what we the people really want for our families, friends, and our planet. Corporate greed has gone too far and the need for grassroots, community action is greater than ever.

The time has come, really it has. At the risk of sounding very West Coast, I’d like to quote my yoga teacher the day after the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings: “Now is not the time for you to figure out your purpose,” she said, “It is simply time for fierce love and kind action.”

So what does love and kindness have to do with the food movement? Well, it’s a good place to start. I once heard that love is giving what is needed. It’s as easy as offering up your space in the coffee line even when you’re in a rush to telling your representative, senator, supervisor, superintendent or boss that you will no longer tolerate policies that are inane, insane, and downright harmful to humans and the earth (GE Salmon, really!?). It’s cooking a meal with friends and family or teaching a young person to stir the pot. It’s as simple as supporting school and community gardens or shopping at your local farmers market.

Whatever you choose to do, the clear way towards change is action (money helps a lot, too). Every day, in every way, we hold the power to be kinder and more loving towards each other, our planet and our future.

One act of love we here at Civil Eats perform daily is to volunteer our time so that independent reporting on the American food system can continue. Our intention remains to educate and empower you to act – wherever you may live.

We have many people to thank for our fourth full year at Civil Eats. First, we thank our more than 200 contributors who make this “community supported blog” all the more engaging and informative.  Thank you to our donors. With their support we hired Southbend designer Jeff Fassnacht to give the site a facelift. (Thanks Jeff!)

We thank co-founders and Editor-in-Chief Naomi Starkman and Managing Editor Paula Crossfield for their tireless work to keep the lights on and for their contribution to the creation of the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Thanks to their efforts, writers are being paid for investigative reporting on critical food, ag, and environmental stories.

We also want to thank former Deputy Managing Editor Stacey Slate and current Deputy Adrien Schelss-Meier for their help. Our interns Arielle Golden and Jezra Thompson joined the team in 2012. We thank them for their reporting and enthusiastic assistance.

We are humbled by our readership stats. Since our 2009 inception, Civil Eats has had more 2.5 million pageviews, with clicks coming from decisionmakers in Washington, D.C. and ordinary citizens across the nation. Thank you.

Finally, we want to thank our collaborators and supporters. This year we cross-posted pieces from heavy hitters such as: Consumers Union, PEW Research Center, Environmental Working Group, Anna Lappé, Grist (Thanks to intrepid editor Twilight Greenaway), Lettuce Eat Kale (Thanks, Sarah Henry), Pesticide Action Network, CUESA (Thanks, Brie Mazurek), Cooking Up a Story, Michele Simon’s Appetite for Profit, NRDC, Food Safety News, Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, EcoCentric, and many others that work to communicate the efforts of the thriving good food movement. Thanks also to the team at Shutterstock for allowing us the use of photos that help tell our stories.

We posted many good stories this year, too numerous to mention. However, we’d like to highlight some of our favorite food news of 2012, each original to Civil Eats.

1. Paula Crossfield skewered Thomas Keller for shirking any responsibility for his carbon footprint in Cooking for Solutions: An Alternative to Chef Provocateurs.

2. Health writer Andrea King Collier told us that “addressing the truly uncomfortable things that hold us all back” is the key to being a change agent in her story Trayvon Martin and Getting at the Root of Food Justice.

3. We kept tabs on the future of the Food and Farm Bill as it inched towards expiration. Ferd Hoefner, Policy Director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition told us why this puts forward thinking food policy at risk.

4. We love a good book. Urban farmer and advocate Jason Mark wrote a beautiful piece on farming guru Masanobu Fukuoka’s posthumous Sowing Seeds in the Desert. He explained that the book “excels as another primer on Fukuoaka’s Zen Buddhism-inspired ideas of re-conceiving our relationship with the natural world.”

5. Adrien Schless-Meier told the story of one farm incubator program that’s making a difference in Georgia.

6. In August, we received an urgent email from the dairy community on the passing of activist Bryan Wolfe, whose policy work was at a critical juncture for the future of the sustainable dairy industry.

7. Frequent contributor Kristin Wartman reported on why Anthony Bourdain may have been right to call Paula Dean the “worst, most dangerous person to America,” after Dean came out as a diabetic then proceeded to promote her unhealthy food and support the pharmaceutical industry.

8. The Occupy movement inspired occupy our food supply initiatives, here Michael Ableman wrote about the 2 percent: the farmers.

9. Civil Eats showcased more visual reporting this year. The video, “Labels Matter,” is the result of collaboration between the Just Label It campaign and Rob Kenner’s new project, FixFood; our announcement of it was the most commented on piece of 2012.

10. We covered many stories regarding California’s Prop 37 (Just Label It). As a sign of the sincere efforts of concerned eaters, Naomi Starkman announced that a record-breaking one million Americans called on the FDA to label genetically engineered (GE) foods.

11. Finally, a bit of frustrating food safety news indicative of the current D.C. climate. Thomas O. McGarity, University of Texas Law Professor, shared how the Food Modernization Act is tied up in political limbo.

Together, let us ring in 2013. May it be a positive force for the food movement and for the world at large. Happy New Year!

Adam Brock is an urban permaculturalist currently serving as Director of Operations at The GrowHaus, a nonprofit food justice center based in a half-acre greenhouse in Colorado’s most polluted zip code. He is a graduate of NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a concentration in Ecological Design and has been active as an urban agriculture practitioner and advocate since 2008. Adam is a member of Denver’s Sustainable Food Policy Council and collaborates with numerous sustainability- and social justice-oriented groups in the Denver area.

Adam’s passion for permaculture design extends into creative endeavors, including a sincere effort to create a regionalized cuisine in Colorado and work with hip hop artists to communicate good food ideas.

What issues have you been focused on?

Our work at The GrowHaus is about creating a hub for new ways of relating to our food, particularly in our neighborhood where the food system is pretty much broken. We believe in a holistic model that tackles food production, food distribution and food education simultaneously to rebuild our food system from the ground up.

Permaculture is a big part of our mission and organizational culture – we teach permaculture classes for all kinds of people, and it informs everything from how we grow food to how we relate to our neighbors.

What inspires you to do this work?

What keeps me excited is seeing firsthand the change we’re making in people’s lives – especially young people. We’ve worked with some of the same neighbors for years; we’ve seen people take on cooking and permaculture as a career path and watched it become a core part of who they are and how they want to transform their communities.

Even on a one-time basis, there’s an amazing transformation that takes place with the school groups in our service learning workshops. When they come in, they may be skeptical, but then they taste lettuce out of our aquaponics system for the first time and you can see the change happen right in front of you. Once they get to work, they get right into it and leave inspired.

What’s your overall vision?

At The GrowHaus, we say it’s about creating communities where everyone has the means to nourish themselves. We take that literally – people being able to feed themselves – but we also see it as empowering people to express themselves and their culture fully, to have meaningful employment related to what they love.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

One of my permaculture mentors, Peter Bane, came out with a book called The Permaculture Handbook just last year. It’s a great guide to implementing permaculture design practices in urban and suburban areas.

The Empowerment Manual by Starhawk has also been inspiring to me recently. It’s about applying permaculture ideas to working with collaborative groups.

On the fiction tip, The Wind-Up Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi is a fascinating sci-fi book that explores what happens to people after the oil contraction, after people get back on their feet in Bangkok in the year 2200.

Who’s in your community?

I try to think of my community in the broadest way possible. Living in a diverse place like Denver, I try to make connections among all the different kinds of people that live here. Two very different but close communities to me are the rural farmers in the High Plains Food Co-op and a community of spoken-word and hip-hop artists in town who make sustainable food accessible to folks who wouldn’t read a blog or download a TedTalk.

What are your commitments?

I think of it in terms of the ethics of permaculture: Take care of your eco-system, take care of the people in your community, and re-invest the surplus you have (time, energy or money) into the health of the first two things. I let those ethics drive my work and hold me accountable. They help me walk the talk.

What are your goals?

At The GrowHaus, we’re working on finishing up our commercial aquaponics system, one of the largest in Colorado. We also just got a USDA grant to create a weekly food box program to get healthy food to people in the neighborhood at an affordable price.

Another goal I have personally is to take the local food concept to the next level with what I call “bioregional cuisine.” Here in Denver, we’re in an almost desert, so I’d love to see us create a food culture that embraces foods which actually make sense to grow here. In a couple generations, I could see species like quinoa, sorrel, bison, currants, or Jerusalem artichoke really forming the basis of our diets here.

What does change look like to you?

Ultimately, I feel like I’m helping to create a society that actively restores soil quality and bio-diversity by just going about its business. It means re-organizing our physical structures like transportation, as well as invisible structures like our political and economic systems. It means embracing our culture and sense of place. And it means adopting culturally-appropriate diets rather than pretending we live somewhere like California.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

It’s important to think big and start small, doing what you know you can accomplish with the resources you have and the people with whom you’re connected. You’ve got to deeply understand your community – let go of your ego and really listen to what people need. Then, use the skills you have to deliver on that need. One strategy that I’ve found helpful is cultivating cultural translators – people who can take ideas that may not immediately relate to someone and communicate them in a way that speaks to where they are, in a way they feel comfortable with.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

The GrowHaus is just one part of an eco-system of amazing work happening here in Denver. There’s Colorado Aquaponics, whom we helped incubate as a small business years ago and is now a national leader in this technology.

I teach every year at The Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute, where they are growing tropical plants in greenhouses above 7200 feet with low-tech solutions and no fossil fuels.

There’s also a great group here in Denver called Going Green Living Bling who make eco-conscious hip hop. They take the message to schools all over town and get kids interested in gardening and eating right.

What projects and people have you got your eye on or are you impressed by?

One of the projects I’ve always admired is Planting Justice. They do a lot of work in the East Bay and work with residents there and inmates in Oakland. They’ve come up with an amazing model combining urban agriculture and social justice.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility?

Yeah, I think so, but we’re not quite there yet. Obviously Prop 37 was a real bellweather. It showed there’s a lot of public support, but it seems like we don’t have the bucks we need to fight the misinformation out there. I’m sure a lot of people are learning lessons on how that went down. I’m not too much of a policy person but I can see from the sidelines that we’re coming really close to influencing how our country makes decisions that impact the food system.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

I think it just needs to keep doing what it’s doing. Every time I went to a CFSC conference I was always humbled by the incredible work happening all over the country. I would go thinking I had some new insight to share and then I would meet all kinds of people who were three or four steps ahead. There are thousands of us involved in this movement in a grassroots way – the next step is joining forces and showing the rest of the country that we mean business.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

Well, the Thanksgiving meal I just ate with my housemates was pretty tough to beat. We ate tilapia from our aquaponics system, lettuce from The GrowHaus and fresh berries, a few pies. It was pretty great.

Denise O’Brien is a farmer and community organizer from Atlantic, Iowa. She has farmed with her husband, Larry Harris, for 37 years in the southwest of the state and maintains 16 acres of fruit and vegetable production. Denise also raises turkeys and chickens for market.

For over 30 years Denise has helped develop agriculture policy on the state, national and international level working specifically on local food systems and conservation issues. She is the founder of Women Food and Agriculture Network and recently returned home after a year working as an USDA agriculture adviser in Afghanistan.

Denise has spent years as an activist farmer, raising children and crops, milking cows and being politically engaged. Now, she wants to restore prairie, save seeds, support women landowners and encourage the next generation of women activists.

What issues have you been focused on?

I’ve been an organic farmer now for 37 years. My whole focus for almost all those years has been dreaming about a better world and better agriculture. I didn’t grow up a farmer; I married one. There was something in me that was drawn to working the land. I was born with genes or something that steered me towards farming. For the years I’ve farmed it’s been about taking care of mother earth and leaving her in better condition. I’ve learned most everything about farming from my husband and during the time of learning I was always drawn towards the fact that women don’t take credit for what they do in a farming situation. I’m talking about the older generation of women who were raised on farms and know all about farming like men but always defer to the man and say they are just a “farmer’s wife.”

So my focus, while it’s been organics and local food, always comes around to women’s role on a local, state and international level. If women had a seat at the agriculture decision making table, the landscape would look differently.

There’s been an emerging issue of women’s land ownership. In the Midwest they own at least 50 percent of the land, most of that is rentable farmland. Who makes the decisions? So we started helping women dream about what to do with their land.

What inspires you to do this work?

To encourage women to talk about their ties to the land in a setting where men aren’t always included. There is a real need for that. Internationally 55-95 percent of the world’s food is grown by women. I wanted to dig in and see what women are doing because they are underrepresented; much more involved than what they get credit for, especially in the US. I’ve always been about quality and equity. I’m one of those people who looks at organization’s Boards of Directors or corporations or non-profits to see what percentage are women and it’s consistently negligible.

What’s your overall vision?

That the landscape changes. Women would take responsibility for the assets they own, the farmland, and make decisions based on their own dreams. Women want natural resource and conservation management and families on their land. If women’s voices were heard we’d have a different landscape; buffer zones, there would be less soil loss, more families on the land. Here in the Midwest where industrial agriculture rules, I keep thinking “wow, this would just look so different if women were in charge.”

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I just got done reading are Gathering by Diane Wheelie who started Seed Savers with her husband. It was really inspiring. We come from the same generation and have had similar experiences. Another book is The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food,and Love written from the point of view of an urban women who falls in love a farmer and takes a journey with him.

As a consequence of reading those books I’ve focused in on what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’ll be 63 soon and have had the great privilege to be a farmer. I want to finish my life out with a dedication to women in agriculture, restoring prairie and seed saving.

Who’s in your community?

I’m real isolated in my physical community and what draws me is that I grew up here. There’s a generation of people that I really admire. My broader community of women activists moves me. Joan Gusow has been amazing for food and nutrition guidance. Women like Kathy Ozer, Executive Director of the National Family Farm Coalition. She has worked diligently for years with unbelievable dedication to family farmers. Local women, women in Iowa, that have meant a lot to me, like Mary Swallow Holmes with conservation, Jean Eels a county soil commissioner, Laura Krouse and Susan Jutz who are single women farmers. The people most endearing to me are in my mother-in-law’s generation; they worked tirelessly with no recognition. I look at them with them with respect and admiration.

What are your commitments?

To write a book. I feel responsible to tell my story because it’s been a pretty incredible life. Through all of these years of activism I have raised children and crops, milked cows and have been politically engaged. I’ve been privileged to travel the world; I’ve been in the presence of Presidents and celebrities and I feel strongly that we can grab life by its fullness. My commitment is to pass that on to younger women who are farming or food processing or even my daughters who didn’t stay on the farm but are interested in cooking, eating and having good food.

To encourage and be the cheerleader for future generations of girls and women activists; not to ignore the boys and men, but they have a leg up and they were born with that. You have to stand up for what you believe in and you can’t expect the world to change without your one’s own effort.

What are your goals?

On my farm: to build a high tunnel to grow crops to market. To restore prairie; ninety-eight percent of Iowa was prairie but now it’s more like two percent. To write this book to engage women starting out and that need encouragement. To draw out those women who own the land now and to encourage them to make decisions about the legacy of their land. Finally, to impact change in the monoculture of corn and soybeans. To change the landscape of my state to a more regenerative caring for the land.

What does change look like to you?

A physical change in the landscape. If you took an aerial flight, the land would be greener than it is now. Cover corps would be on the land, we would lose less soil due to erosion. There would be animals on the land where they should be not in buildings isolated from their natural place. The image we get of agriculture as we grow up with the barn, the farmer, it would be that image mixed with farmer Jane and equality; contemporary ideas and progressive issues attached.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

The outreach is to the consumer and to those who are interested in raising a nation of healthy, smart children. All people should have access to good, nutritious food. There needs to be policy change to make permanent change. Policy plays a role in all of this. We need to run for political office or support those who are willing to run to make the change.

Awareness needs to be built. People have to take on an active role in changing policy, having local food policy councils, and living the change you want. It is not to our benefit to concentrate our work as individuals–we must work in community. The power needs to be taken away from the monied people and corporations who have strongly influenced laws in their favor. This is not an easy task.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

Navigating the Waters: Women, Food,and Agriculture Network has received funding to do work with women on water and wetland issues. I will facilitate some meetings looking at watersheds.

Another WFAN project is Women Caring for the Land. This is the empowerment work with women landowners.

Pesticide Action Network. I’ve recently joined the Board. PAN can help bring life to another vision; having teams of people monitoring the air and water where we live since industrial agriculture has become king. Gathering scientific evidence that can help us understand how chemical agriculture affects our health.

What projects and people have you got your eye on or are you impressed by?

Pesticide Action Network does impressive stuff. I always have my eye on the beginning farmer work that many organizations are initiating. The Greenhorns are wonderful; Severin and the crew of young upstarts are out there doing great innovative work. Dave Murphy and Lisa Stokes continue to needle people with Food Democracy Now and the Occupy movement.

Almost everything that interests me is in how we can revitalize and regenerate the degradation that’s happened to our land.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility?

In the 1990s when we started work on local food and organics we asked ourselves is this a trend, or a fad or is this for real? Now it’s mainstream in many ways even in Iowa. But we have to be ever vigilant of cooptation There are many, not enough yet, attacking the corporate domination of agriculture. Corporate ag is fighting back. They continue to portray farming with the pastoral images we grow up with. The fantasy of farming. Corporations own Congress so they just pay for influence. We need to continue working on good food, healthy soil, healthy kids and we’ll have to do work on all fronts, policy, raising awareness, and farming. In all the 30 years I’ve been involved someone is always trying to co-opt what we’re doing because we’re on the right path. It’s about justice! We have to bring the truth to light!

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

The bottom line is we have to have good funding so people can lead organizations. People like myself need to pass on our historical perspective our institutional knowledge. Those of us who hold the history need to communicate it to people who are taking over the movement and be open to new ideas and ways of doing things. The “elders” of the food movement need to step back and encourage new leadership. We have to understand that things change and are being done in different ways as new leaders and greater diversity enters the scene. We don’t need to exit but be there as mentors and advisors. Let things happen as they may. The movement is just a toddler.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

I would like the vegetables that are growing in the garden in the Midwest summer as we transition into Fall. A simple garden meal, eating things just as they are, a nice mix of fruits and vegetables fresh out of my garden.

At a time when our nation’s family dairy farmers are in jeopardy of losing their farms and the independent dairy industry is in a state of volatility due to the price of milk paid to farmers, higher feed costs, corporate consolidation in the supply chain–and what many believe is a flawed pricing strategy–it was a huge loss when on August 7, 2012, Bryan Wolfe, a dairy farmer and activist, was tragically killed working his haybine on his farm in Rome Township, Ohio. He was 55.

According to Arden Tewksbury, Manager of the Progressive Agriculture Organization (Pro-Ag), Bryan was a well-known and respected dairy farmer activist who continually worked to obtain a fair price for all dairy farmers. He felt very strongly that a cost of production formula should be developed (like S-1640; the Federal Milk Marketing Improvement Act) to ensure all dairy farmers would have a fair chance to survive this RAT RACE that many dairy farmers are experiencing.

An obituary in Ashtabula, Ohio’s Star Beacon stated Wolfe’s incredible career in both farming and activism: “Bryan was a Dairy Farmer all his life and owned and operated Maple Lane Farms in Rome, Ohio since 1980 with his wife. His passion for farming went well beyond the boundaries of his home farm and he was an avid farming activist, who served with many organizations to be a voice for the family farms over his lifetime. 

Among his involvement in such organizations: Vice President of the Ohio Farmers Union for four years. President of the Lake, Geauga and Ashtabula County Farmers Union for 12 years. He was a member of The National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) for 10 years and served on the Executive Committee, Dairy Sub Committee, and Chaired the Credit Committee.

 He also spent 10 years with the Family Farm Defenders.”

Wolfe was also an active member of Pro-Ag and the American Raw Milk Producers Pricing Association. According to Pro-Ag officials, Wolfe had developed a very workable relationship with Representative Steve LaTourette from Ohio, with meetings set up regarding amendments to the 2012 Farm Bill.

“Bryan tried passionately to change the federal polices that have been destroying dairy farmers and their rural communities since they were first implemented in 1981,” said Brenda Cochran, fellow Pro-Ag member, dairy activist and Bryan’s dear friend. “He made a personal commitment to see justice done for dairy farmers, never sparing himself in the effort to do so, whether it required long distance traveling to special meetings and federal hearings, making endless phone calls, contacting politicians, or reaching out to other farmers to get their support for whatever project he was working on, all the while struggling to keep everything going on his own farm with his wife Diane.”

His final project in this effort was completion of the paper he wrote for Representative Steven LaTourette in late June. The paper, called “Time for Real Change: Overview of the Challenges Threatening American Dairy Farmers and the Role Government Must Play to Correct These Inequities” is being called “Bryan Wolfe’s ‘White Paper,’” and it has been very well received. Said Cochran: “Many of us who worked with Bryan so closely over the years know that this paper embodies Bryan’s beliefs about dairy farmers, consumers’ rights to access fresh, unadulterated, local milk and dairy products, and the federal government’s role in the dairy farmer crisis and what must be done to correct the injustices overwhelming dairy farming families everywhere.”

At the heart of the matter is a reform to the current federal raw milk pricing formula that currently does not include the dairy farmers’ cost of production.

As described in a letter to Congress written by Gretchen Main, a dairy farmer from Waterville, NY, the cost of milk sold on the market is unsustainable when compared to increased cost of feed and other farm costs necessary to producing milk; making the prospect of independent dairy farming unrealistic.

“Our advance check used to pay the feed bill, the phone bill, and the truck insurance,” said Main. “This past year it has barely covered the feed bill. In July it was $1,200 short of covering just the feed bill. I have a friend who milks 250 cows and their milk check was $6,000 short to pay their feed bill.”

Pro-Ag officials say it’s up to all of them now to work with Bryan’s associates in Ohio to help fulfill his efforts to obtain a dairy bill that would allow dairy farmers to cover their cost of production plus a reasonable profit.

“We really do not want to be a welfare class, but are pushed into it by a government pricing system that guarantees the processors a cost of production, but not the farmers who produce the milk,” said Main.

Some progressive dairy farmers have suggested they unite efforts to obtain what Wolfe wanted for all dairy farmers: To return profitability to family dairy farmers by helping them get a fair price without any form of a government subsidy. Some suggested actions that consumers and dairy farmers alike can take:

1. Support a milk pricing formula that would be based on the national average cost of producing milk.
2. Support a milk supply management program that would be implemented only when needed.
3. Urge Congress to reject the proposed insurance program that has passed the U.S. Senate.
4. Ask that a thorough study be made of the safety of milk protein concentrate and whey protein concentrate.
5. Request an end to the unnecessary imports of dairy products (especially milk protein concentrate, known as “MPC”).

This is quite a list, however if we want to our family dairy farms to succeed and Wolfe’s death to not have been in vain, it is up to dairy farmers, activists and consumers alike to take a stand for the healthy and sustainable milk supply we all want.

Main’s message is clear, we are at the cusp of potentially losing ground on the rural foundation of the American food system. “We just can’t keep up when your input costs keep going up and there is no way that you can get your cost of production, much less make any profit with the flawed pricing system that we have,” she said. “At one time there were 18 farms on this road. There was more milk produced here than in all the rest of the county. Fourteen farms on my road are gone. Two of us might sell out and one sold 35 cows just to keep going.”

Recently pesticide manufacturer Arysta LifeScience agreed to stop selling the cancer-causing strawberry pesticide methyl iodide in the United States. It was a tremendous victory for the 200,000+ farmworkers, farmers, rural residents and environmentalists that worked over the past several years to pull a chemical that one scientist called “one of the most toxic chemicals on earth” off the market.

One of the central figures of this battle from the get-go, both behind the scenes and in the media spotlight, has been Paul Towers, Organizing & Media Director for Pesticide Action Network (PAN).

For the past decade, Paul has worked to protect communities from hazardous pesticides in their food, air, soil and water. He’s worked side-by-side with people that bear the brunt of industrial agriculture, and helped share their stories, grounded in science, with elected officials and policymakers. It hasn’t been easy. He’s gone up against the likes of pesticide and biotech corporations, oil and gas interests, and industrial food companies.

Highlighting food and environmental injustices has been a priority for Paul from an early age. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona, a state where the five C’s were imprinted on young schoolchildren: copper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate. It didn’t take long to see that many of these industries, coupled with explosive growth, were incompatible with the desert.

Over the years, Paul has come to see his work on pesticides, food and agriculture as a means of unraveling the larger issues of building democracy and diminishing corporate control and influence. He’s focused a lot on breaking down the pesticide treadmill–the trap that farmers get caught on as they are forced to use more (and increasingly toxic) chemicals to control insects and weeds that develop resistance to pesticides.

Paul recently moved from Sacramento to the San Francisco Bay Area, but still remains connected to neighborhoods and issues in the political hub of the state. Paul was a key leader of a multi-year effort in Sacramento aptly entitled CLUCK (Campaign to Legalize Urban Chicken Keeping) which eventually legalized keeping egg-laying hens in the city. He continues to be involved in efforts to create more local farmers markets in underserved neighborhoods, spur more urban gardening and strengthen community organizations that collect and deliver social services.

Every one of these efforts required building political pressure to put new policies in place to allow people to grow safe, healthy and local food.

What issues have you been focused on?

Bees and strawberries have been the main focus in recent months.

First, a word about bees. It’s widely understood that one in every three bites of food we eat is reliant on bees. In working with beekeepers across the country, including some of the largest commercial operations, I’ve learned about the dramatic losses they’re experiencing–over 30 percent of their hives each year. These losses are often termed colony collapse disorder. This is bad for all of us, especially if you like to eat things that require pollination like almonds, cherries, and blueberries–and dozens of other crops.

Increasingly, science points to this newer class of systemic pesticides called neonicotinoids as a critical factor in CCD. We filed a legal petition with over two-dozen beekeepers last month urging EPA to take action on these neonicotinoids. As you can imagine, pesticide corporations like Bayer are pushing back, trying to confuse the science.

Strawberries have been a big focus too. With strawberry season now upon us in California, many of us are getting excited to eat our share of the fruit. While the controversial fumigant pesticide methyl iodide is off the shelf, other strawberry pesticides are still widely used in California and across the country. Many rural residents and farmworkers are on the front lines of exposure, with these gaseous pesticides drifting into their homes and bodies. Many fumigants are known to be cancer-causing, neurotoxins and reproductive toxins. So we’re working with people across the country to bring their case to local, state and federal officials to phase out the use of these chemicals and invest in green, safe and cutting-edge agriculture.

What inspires you to do this work?

A lot of things inspire me to strive for an ecologically sound and socially just food system.

But more than anything it’s the injustices I see and the people who are taking incredibly courage steps to counter them. It’s the people I meet from all over the country–from Alaska to Florida, Illinois to California–who are working to ensure that their communities are safe and healthy. Last week, I had a chance to meet with a diverse group of Hawaiians who are actively working to take their food system back from pesticide and biotech corporations and the plantation system.

I’m also an expecting father. It is likely that our child is already being exposed to pesticides and other chemicals in utero. And that makes me angry. So I work to create protections and find solutions to ensure our child isn’t saddled with a toxic legacy of pollution.

As I look toward the upcoming adventure of fatherhood, the health and future of my child–very literally–is a big part of what inspires me to keep doing this work.

What’s your overall vision?

In the not so distant future, my vision is that we re-build our food and farming system to create a sustainable form of agriculture and lift up human rights to food, justice and self-determination.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I don’t spend nearly enough time reading books, including those on my nightstand. I do consume a lot of news, including newspapers and magazines from all over the country. I’m especially impressed by blogs by folks like Tom Philpott at Mother Jones, Twilight Greenaway and Tom Laskawy at Grist, Barry Estabrook, and so many others.

Who’s in your community?

Our community is large–we’ve got “network” in our name. It’s international and it’s farmers, beekeepers, farmworkers, rural residents, and everyone in between. PAN has five regional centers based in the major continents, representing tens of thousands of people and organizations. I am honored to be part of this global community of concerned and committed citizen activists.

On a day-to-day basis, I work closely with lots of people involved in coalitions like Californians for Pesticide Reform, the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition and Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy.

What are your commitments?

I’m committed to science, justice, and people, across the globe.

What are your goals?

Personally, I want my artichoke plants to thrive this year. Professionally, I want to be part of fixing our food and farming system to protect farmers, workers, communities–and children, include my own. Both are challenging, but of different magnitudes.

What does change look like to you?

It’s what Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers did and do, what Lois Gibbs and the Center for Health and Environmental Justice did and do and its what Luke Cole at the Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment did and do.

Change means organized, coordinated people pressuring elected officials and decision makers–including corporate leaders–to take steps to protect health and the environment, while advancing safe solutions. The good news is that people want their communities and environment to be healthy–we just need to reach decisionmakers with our collective voice.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

The success of our international network over the past 30 years has taught us a few things, especially as we’ve helped broker new protections through international treaties. Change requires organizing. Organizing people and partners requires patience, time and commitment. It requires online and offline engagement, meeting people where they are and creating collaborative opportunities to advance a shared vision.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

I already described my work around safe strawberries and healthy pollinators. I also work with PAN to hold the “Big 6” pesticide and biotech corporations–Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, Dow, Dupont, and Syngenta–accountable for human rights abuses. We concluded an international trial late last year in India, documenting harms to live, health and livelihood. And the final verdict should be issued soon, so this work will continue to unfold. In addition, we’re continuing to document the harm to Midwest communities from water contaminated by the Syngenta’s gender-bending atrazine, an herbicide commonly used in corn fields.

What projects and people have you got your eye on or are you impressed by?

I’m impressed by so many people and organizations. I respect organizations that shine a spotlight on the broken industrial agricultural system, finding policy solutions, and those that are helping us get out of it. Off the top of my head, I respect organizations like the Center for Food Safety, United Farm Workers and Food & Water Watch are doing a great job of advocating for change. I also deeply respect organizations like ALBA and the California Farm Academy, who are training the next generation of farmers with cutting-edge, green agriculture.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility? 

Farmers, rural residents, and consumers are demanding something different–whether it’s labeling of genetically engineered crops and products, phasing out the use of hazardous pesticides or investing in sustainable agriculture. We are in a moment of real possibility for a real shift in direction on our agriculture and food policies.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

Political and organized. The challenges before us are large and profound, including the power of pesticide and biotech corporations. These corporations exert undue influence in the elections, lobbying, and through the revolving door with government regulators. So we, as a movement must gather our voices and be determined, creative and persistent. We can’t afford to be anything but political and organized.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

Anything my wife cooks. She’s got a real knack for pulling things together, including fresh ingredients from our yard and weekly finds at farmers markets. And she’d probably wrap it up in a fresh tortilla, a nod to those I use to get fresh off the line at the spot across the street after school growing up.

On behalf of Civil Eats we’re proud to have made it through our third full year of delivering some of the good food communities’ top stories and posts from the front lines of the food revolution. Occupy your food system people!

As we do on a daily basis, we gratefully acknowledge that this labor of love continues to grow and thrive. Without the tireless volunteer efforts of our talented and dedicated managing editor, Paula Crossfield, our co-founder and editor, Naomi Starkman, and the support of Stacey Slate, our tenacious deputy managing editor, we would not be here today.

We are very proud of our accomplishments to date. Since January 2009, we’ve now posted 1,471 pieces, averaging 30 per month this last year.

In 2011, we published 21 interviews with folks working towards a just and equitable food system. We talked with Mark Bittman, Kathleen Merrigan, Josh Viertel and Albert Straus to name a few. Ten of those interviews were part of our Faces & Visions of the Food Movement series which aims to highlight the motivations of people who work on behalf of food systems change and connect the dots between their goals, the people and groups in their community, and how they work together to realize their visions.

We covered critical stories relating to Genetically Modified Organisms, Occupy the Food System, the Secret Farm Bill, BPAs, Farm Workers and that irritating Food Plate.

We continued our monthly community conversation, Kitchen Table Talks, in San Francisco and in New York and hope to see one in Chicago in 2012. In those conversations we discussed critical topics relating to the growing food revolution including: Occupy the Food System, the secret Farm Bill, food activism, farm labor, war veterans turned farmers and chocolate, to name a few. (Please let us know if you’d like to start a KTT in your town. We are happy to help you get started.)

This year we also partnered with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism News21 course on food reporting and the class wrote a few stories for us and will continue to in 2012. And, we thank the New York Times and Washington Post for sending readers our way.

As an all-volunteer effort, we are thrilled to have accomplished so much.

Thanks, as always, goes to all of our writers who contribute their work without compensation. We’d love a shout out to all of our dedicated contributors: Tamar Adler, Vanessa Barrington, Helena Bottemiller, Haven Bourque, Siena Chrisman, Eve Fox, Twilight Greenaway, Rose Hayden-Smith, Sarah Henry, Kate Hoppe, Ulla Kjarval, Anna Lappe, Tom Laskaway, Ralph Loglisci, Dave Murphy, Kim O’Donnel, Antonio Roman-Alcala, Kerry Trueman, Amber Turpin, Adrianna Velez, Kristin Wartman, and Mark Winne. As always our goal is to pay our writers a fair wage for their efforts. We hope the work we do brings value and inspires continued efforts for a world that works for everyone.

Now, in no particular order, some of our favorite stories of the year:

1. Why Laying Off Ag Reporter Phillip Brasher is Bad for Food by Paula Crossfield got a lot of attention and played a part in why Gannett re-hired him.

2. Why the Food Movement Should Occupy Wall Street by Siena Chrisman connected the dots between the national Occupy movement and the good food revolution.

3. Andy Fisher’s piece, Growing Power Takes a Massive Contribution from Wal-Mart, generated a good deal of conversation on money and the movement.

4. A Big Fat Debate by Kristin Wartman was one of our most read pieces with 77 comments and 35,915 views. Kristin covered how the health and nutrition community are beginning to debunk misleading information about the importance of fat in our diets. The piece caused a big fat debate on Civil Eats as well.

5. The second most popular post was Where do Americans Get Their Calories (Infographic) by Andrea Jezovit. It was one of many articles posted as part of our ongoing partnership with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism News21 course on food reporting.

6. We are ever grateful that Anna Lappé has written a lot of pieces for us recently, a few exposing conflicting interests. Her post Who’s Behind the United States Farmers and Ranchers Alliance and Why it Matters generated 25 comments and contains very valuable information for any food activist.

7. The North East had it hard this year and Ulla Kjarval shared New York Farmers Struggle in Wake of Hurricane Irene … keeping us all up to speed with the challenging situation.

8. GMOs will continue to be a hot topic for years to come. GMO and Organic Co-Existence: Why We Really Just Can’t Get Along by Paula Crossfield highlights how we really must take a stand against GMOs if we value our organic farming heritage.

9. Transparency in labeling will also continue to be an important issue worth fighting for in 2012. Read Naomi Starkman’s piece on the Just Label It campaign and look for an updates in the year ahead.

10. Finally, for all those who say it’s too expensive to buy good food. Please read How to Stay a Foodie Family on Food Stamps by Corbyn Hightower.

Albert Straus is a dairy farmer and President of Straus Family Creamery located on the beautiful shores of Tomales Bay and the Point Reyes National Seashore, 60 miles north of San Francisco. He is an outspoken advocate for sustainable, non-GMO dairy production, farmland protection and environmental stewardship.

Albert’s family farm, which has been operating for more than 65 years, began when his father, Bill Straus, began farming there 1941 with just 23 cows. Ellen Straus, Albert’s mother, read the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in the early 1960s and began the family’s strong commitment to environmental sustainability.

In 1993, the farm became the first certified organic dairy west of the Mississippi River, making Albert an industry innovator and organic pioneer. The creamery, which he founded in 1994, is a leading producer of the highest quality organic milk, yogurt, butter, sour cream, and ice cream. In 2004, Albert introduced methane-digester technology to convert dairy waste into energy, which today not only powers the farm but also powers his car. The extensive sustainability program that Albert implemented at the dairy and creamery also includes a closed-loop water reuse system; production of milk in reusable glass bottles; and an employee carpool program.

What issues have you been focused on?

Primarily it’s the financial viability of our family farm. Specifically, the lack of availability of certified organic, verified non-GMO feeds for cows. There’s pressure on farmers to grow GMO crops for fuel and not for food. I’m also focused on helping consumers and farmers keep GMOs out of our food supply.

What inspires you to do this work?

As a farmer, I’ve built the creamery with a vision to sustain local family farms. I enjoy challenges and taking on the innovations necessary to move farming forward toward sustainability. I also love making high-quality dairy products; making great ice cream is fun, too.

What’s your overall vision?

The vision for our company reflects my own vision to sustain local, family farms and produce the highest quality dairy products that are organic, non-GMO, minimally processed, and without additives. We’ll add more to our vision as we continue to look at the triple bottom line and how we can have a zero impact on our environment.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I don’t have much time to read, but when I do, I mainly read trade publications about the organic foods industry and alternative-energy technologies.

Who’s in your community?

Family farmers and local food producers, like Cowgirl Creamery and local bakeries. Our community is also environmentalists who are working together with ranchers to preserve our area, keep it as agrarian as possible and a local food source. My mother helped start MALT (the Marin Agricultural Land Trust), which was the first agricultural land trust in the country.

What are your commitments?

I’m committed to organic, sustainable family farming, and to keeping family farms economically viable.

What are your goals?

To produce food and be part of a community that looks at everything we do through a sustainable lens. To work with our land, treat our community and our employees well, and be profitable at the same time. And, to provide a source of food that is healthy and comes from a sustainably produced farming community.

What does change look like to you?

A positive change would be getting away from the conventional methods used since World War II, like pesticides, commercial fertilizers, and GMOs.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

We’re reaching out to consumers and students with information about the connection between what you eat and how it’s produced. We’re all very involved in the labeling of GMOs in foods movement. We are the first dairy to be verified by the Non-GMO Project.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

The Non-GMO Project and the Just Label It campaign; MALT and Marin Organic; Slow Food, Slow Money and Vandana Shiva’s organizations.

What projects and/or people are you inspired by?

I’ve been inspired by Dr. Vandana Shiva, who came by our farm and creamery. I’m inspired by what a great spokesperson and advocate she is for farmers, especially in India. She’s asked me to help produce an organic dairy there. She has a great heart and great vision. For me, it feels like a genuine opportunity and I hope to collaborate. It’s for a vision of sustaining land and people and making organic available and to make a difference in India. The motivations are right and are likely to succeed. Even though there are huge challenges.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

It needs to have the foresight to be proactive to protect organic integrity and to develop the local food movement as well. As far as being more effective, I think we need to test and verify our products for GMOs so consumers don’t have to question whether products are tainted. We also need to work together more as a community to protect our food systems.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility?

I think consumers and the public can demand that we have labeling of GMOs and that would be essential to protecting what organic is about. We need to enact laws to prohibit companies from patenting life forms. And, get rid of a lot of the subsidy programs that allow a third of the corn grown in America to be put into ethanol and biodiesel and taken out of the food system.

Consumers have the power to make change in this country. A real possibility? I think that anything is possible. Since people are pretty fed up with what’s happening in this country, I think change is coming. When things get really extreme people react and make change. I think we’re about there. And, then it’s just educating the public so they know what the issues are and it’s not all hidden.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

Of course it’d have to be a bowl of ice cream. My latest favorite is our brown sugar banana with chocolate chips.

Over 1,000 people have gathered in Oakland, California to attend the Community Food Security Coalition Conference today, an annual gathering that, as Nieto says, is “a real opportunity to organize and a call to action to take back our food system.” We are just steps from the tent city housing a lively group of Occupy-ers and the boarded Bank of America and Wells Fargo storefront windows along Broadway Street. In light of these converging movements and the urgency of communicating the needs of the 99 percent, it’s fitting to highlight and champion the work of Y. Armando Nieto, Executive Director of the California Food and Justice Coalition. A child of the 60s, he is a staunch supporter of rising up and speaking your mind. Nieto is also a veteran of the environmental movement and a seasoned executive and development professional who is applying his business acumen towards good food for all. Let him inspire you to rise up and take a stand for what matters most to you and your community. The time is now.

What issues have you been focused on?

The California Food and Justice Coalition is focusing on the 2012 Farm Bill reauthorization process as an organizing mechanism, not to organize for organizing sake, but to keep people more engaged in the system. We are a coalition of California organizations, but in order to affect the Farm Bill legislation, we partner with other organizations around the country. Our goal is to build a strong coalition that will work together for this Farm Bill and beyond.

Within the state, we have a real emphasis on holding listening sessions to set up a dialogue process that’s on-going; to learn what priorities people have for food and farm policy; and demystify the legislative process so people see what’s going on with food policy.

We also work with a couple of counties on a pilot project called Mothers Taking Action in San Joaquin and Ventura counties to provide a safe environment for mothers to share how they care for their families in good and bad times and how they can empower each other and effect change in their communities. It gives us a way to stay directly involved with families at a grassroots levels.

What inspires you to do this work?

I’ve been building up to this my whole life. I was CEO of Redefining Progress and Managing Director with the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, and Executive Director at Eagle Eye Institute in Somerville, Massachusetts, Earth Share of California and the Environmental Defense Center. I’ve also done a lot of social justice work. All along, people become engaged then their attention wanders—but start messing with someone’s food plate they start paying attention again. I can bring the experience and expertise of the networks I’ve known, to use food as an organizing mechanism for fixing what’s wrong with our society.

What’s your overall vision?

We take back the food system. The necessity of this will engage people in conversations about values. I believe the purpose of food is to nourish people, it’s not a commodity to create wealth. That puts the cart before the horse. We can get back to core values of what we as people around the word believe in and re-create the kind of government and society that will work for us.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I work a lot and do a lot of volunteer work, so I read a lot of absolute fiction. I became a good friend of Dean Koontz at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. His books can be post-apocalyptic, about society that isn’t sustainable, and individuals responding by creating their new environment. He raises practical information in fantastical situations.

Who’s in your community?

All the young people. Where are the people my age? I just turned 60 and it was great to get well wishes. Staff here tends to be 35 and younger and the work I’m doing tends to be with that age group. I’m energized and empowered to be associating with people who care and work for similar values.

What are your commitments?

I totally believe I’m on the planet for a reason. I’m a child of the 60s, a lot of civil unrest and rage against the machine. I’m blessed to be a survivor, to have a seat at all the tables I’ve wanted to be at and have solution-oriented conversations. I am all about service. I’m a recovering alcoholic and believe we have the opportunity to create a better world. I’m old enough to have seen things going in cycles, the pendulum swinging back and forth; I choose to believe that we can spiral to a higher consciousness and apply lessons that seemingly generations have learned over and over again. We can evolve from that.

What are your goals?

They used to be when I was 30, live fast, die hard and leave a good looking corpse. My goals now are to be of service until I stop breathing. I have a 25-year old daughter who is half Chicano; I hope the world I’m creating provides her the opportunities for professional and personal growth that have not been available to me. If I stay teachable, I will probably live forever and continue being an example of what you can do right and wrong and continue to survive. That’s my goal.

What does change look like to you?

I think that as individuals we are changing all the time, but I hope THE CHANGE happens in my lifetime. I’ve been around long enough to see how a culture evolves around fear, so change looks like freedom, people being able to breathe free and really discount and not pay attention to the histrionics and propaganda. Just see it for what it is and ignore it. It’s the most powerful thing we can do.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

It’s showing up. It means questioning everything that’s the common lexicon. For example, democracy isn’t voting every four years. It’s about being responsible and accountable for yourself. People can begin to not look to the President, like after 911 ‘go shopping’; what if it was to reach out to your neighbor, come of out of fear, have a potluck, take responsibility for being a part of a community? I think one of the sins the grown ups did in this country, morally, two big ones we allowed to happen, after 911, when the world said we are America, we allowed that to be politicized for a little man from Texas, and during the 2008 political campaign, we allowed Hilary Clinton to be demonized for saying it takes a village to raise to child. It was morally corrupt to demonize her. I was not a huge Hillary supporter, but we were wrong to do that.

We don’t have enough discourse, that’s where it starts.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

The Mothers Taking Action program we’re piloting for two years and building a replicable model to offer to all 52 counties in California. It’s a way to honor how families have survived, what mothers know and what has kept families fed in good times and bad. In society we have set ways of doing things and this puts our money on the mothers.

There’s local work we do on food policy councils. We’re members of the Oakland Food Policy Council, and Berkeley Food Policy Council.

We’re working with Roots of Change to build a council of councils. To create a platform, a statement of values that we all can share.

We co-hosted the 15th annual Community Food Security Conference. It’s a real opportunity to organize and a call to action to take back our food system. So some of the things we’re doing are challenging people to engage in conversations. It’s important to organize the organizers, but we want to go deep and engage citizens and residents and find out how they can to be engaged.

We’re working more and more on the effects of climate change and food systems. And the struggles for nutrition we’ll have in changing economic and climate times.

What projects are you inspired by?

I’m inspired everyday by work that individuals do. I’m skeptical of magic bullets; so while I totally appreciate and participate in celebrating the efforts of groups and individuals, I don’t think it serves anyone to single out anything I don’t have first hand knowledge of. What I’ve learned in putting together this conference is the Black Panther Party put on breakfast for over 200,000 children without any government support. We can celebrate that without getting into any political things.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility?

Yeah, so I’ll give it to you straight. What happened before I took this position, I worked extensively in the environmental and environmental justice movement and climate change, and AB32 as CEO of Redefining Progress,which was a think tank of economists. I learned that things will get a whole lot worse before they get better.

So let’s focus on what we can do, on food. What is the purpose of food, not the histrionics of population and starvation; no let’s go back to what that means for individual communities and how a community can be self-sustainable and how we take that conversation away from multi-national corporations and money interests.

All of this is coming to fruition right now in a time of economic, social, environmental and psychological change. It’s a wonderful opportunity to catalyze grown-ups and responsive people to take back agriculture from the people who have effectively destroyed any opportunity for a sustainable future.

Non-traditional partners will have to come together and figure out how we interact and make it work for all of us. Then see what partners we have at the next concentric ring.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be, to be more effective?

It needs to get over it’self. Like any movment, I’ve always felt the same; I’ve always felt like a martian on the planet. Whether the civil rights or Chicano movement, we all think we are very cool, a way of being that’s probably been with us since we crawled out of the scum. But we have to realize we are all in this together. What comes out of today’s activities will be something new. It won’t be the food movement but a movement of peole that falls out of being accountable and reponsible. The food movemnt is a part of that, but we really have to get over this singleness and specialness to realize we all have to work together to creat the kind of world we all want to be in.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

Carnitas and mole enchaladas.

Everyone from Willie Nelson to your average Zuccotti Park resident knows that we need to see policy that reflects our national needs for good, clean, healthy, and fair food. But, how and where to get involved in a piece of legislation as complicated and entrenched as the Farm Bill? To aid in your education, we’re excited to announce a special Kitchen Table Talks on Sunday, November 6, in conjunction with the Community Food Security Coalition’s annual conference. Join us in San Francisco for a lively conversation about the Farm Bill at our new location at 18 Reasons and we’ll take a look at this important piece of legislation from national, state and local levels, and answer your questions about what the it is, where it is headed and how you can get involved.

When: Sunday, November 6, 2011; 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Where: 18 Reasons, 3674 18th Street (@Dolores), San Francisco

Tickets: $10, available at Brown Paper Tickets

Food and drink at 6:30 pm; Discussion at 7:00 pm
8:30/9:00 Mission Pub Crawl with Jen Dalton

Joining us in conversation will be:

Kari Hamerschlag is a senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group. Kari monitors implementation of the 2008 Farm Bill and promotes policies that expand local and sustainable agriculture, increases consumption of healthy food and reduces agriculture’s negative impact on the environment. She educates and activates consumers on these issues and recently authored a comprehensive Meateater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health. Kari is a member of Oakland’s Food Policy Council and recently helped lead a collaborative effort with over a dozen groups to promote a California citizen petition and organizational sign on letter on the Farm Bill around National Food Day.

Udi Lazimy helps farmers advocate for federal policies that support organic agriculture, and currently runs the Organic Farming Research Foundation’s (OFRF) national 2012 Farm Bill Campaign to ensure that widespread public support for organic is adequately reflected in the Farm Bill. Before coming to OFRF, he ran the farmland preservation and agriculture outreach program for Cascade Land Conservancy in Seattle. Udi has also directed programming for nonprofit conservation and sustainable development organizations across the country and abroad.

Susan Kuehn is the SF Coordinator for Food & Water Watch building a grassroots coalition of SF residents, organizations and businesses around our Resolution proposing that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors support initiatives that rebuild local and regional food infrastructure, support small and medium-sized producers and ensure that they are fairly compensated by buyers, promote sustainable and urban agriculture, increase access to health food, and connect San Francisco residents with local farmers and ranchers.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of CivilEats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Seasonal snacks and refreshments generously provided by Bi-Rite Market and Shoe Shine Wine.