Terry Sawyer is on a mission to rescue oysters from newly hostile seas. Sawyer has been farming these briny bivalves for almost 30 years in Tomales Bay, north of San Francisco, at Hog Island Oyster Company. The business he co-owns sells $9 million worth of Sweetwaters, Kumamotos, and Atlantic oysters a year at the company’s two local oyster bars, at nearby farmers markets, and direct from the farm to hungry consumers who can’t seem to get enough of this sustainable shellfish. But Sawyer’s seafood business is threatened by ocean acidification (aka climate change’s evil twin) and he and other oyster growers are working overtime to find creative ways to save these sea creatures—and their own livelihoods.

As the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the air like a sponge, it also grows increasingly acidic. As a result, baby bivalves, or “oyster seeds,” have a tougher time growing shells and maturing into those plump, juicy adults destined for dinner plates. (Acidification, which lowers the pH of salt water, has also recently been shown to make for a hostile environment for other marine life, such as sea snails.) This shift in the chemical makeup of seawater started wreaking havoc in Washington a few years ago, when Taylor Shellfish Farms and Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery began losing large numbers of oyster larvae.

But the Pacific Northwest wasn’t alone in this predicament: California’s oyster industry has long relied on hatcheries in Oregon and Washington for its oyster seeds. “We’re getting squeezed,” Sawyer told a group at a recent tour of his farm. “While demand is growing, seed sources are dying off. We’re talking about a paradigm shift.”

In previous years, Sawyer said he bought some 7 million oyster seeds from hatcheries. (There’s a significant mortality rate from seed to market; on average only 50 percent survive in the 18 months to three years it takes for an oyster to mature.) This year, he could buy just 2.5 million seeds—supplies are down as a result of this problem—and they were much smaller than the typical six-millimeter size he used to purchase, which significantly lowers the oysters’ chances of survival.

So, out of necessity, Sawyer finds himself in the oyster seed growing business. And he’s solicited help to keep his baby bivalves alive. Hog Island has partnered with scientists at UC Davis’s Bodega Marine Laboratory to keep close tabs on these vulnerable young oysters in the same waters where they used to thrive without much fuss. Such collaboration between scientists and shellfish industry innovators to study, and, ideally, minimize the damage caused by ocean acidification has already taken place at Whiskey Creek with scientists from Oregon State University and will likely be replicated all along the western coastline, said Tessa Hill, lead scientist on the Hog Island partnership.

Hill and her colleagues place sensors in the cold Tomales Bay waters to measure temperature, salinity, and pH levels. So Sawyer can now check conditions around the oysters on an hourly basis. For the past three months the scientists have been maintaining the sensors and interpreting data they’ve collected. Sawyer has shared the findings with other oyster farmers in the area in the spirit of collaborating for the common good. “There is definitely a culture of openness about trying to solve this problem,” said Hill, who added that while it’s early in their monitoring process, Hog Island can use information already gleaned from the data to, for example, change the water flow into their oyster tanks, if needed, to avoid low pH levels.

Such research can’t happen fast enough, as this industry-wide dilemma unfolds. In fact, just this week, Washington State Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) signed an executive order mandating that her state address ocean acidification on the same day an expert panel she convened announced its recommendations to protect the state’s $270 million shellfish industry. Gregoire also allocated $3.3 million towards efforts to combat the problem (like reducing carbon dioxide emissions), and recommended funding for a new university research center to study the issue.

The bottom line for now? “The oyster industry is in jeopardy,” said restaurateur Jesse Ziff Cool, who attended last month’s Hog Island tour and reported back to her staff on what’s happening in nearby waters. Cool says she wants to hold an awareness dinner to educate diners about the risks faced by their much-loved local oysters. And she wants to school them on another emerging reality about the popular shellfish, too. “The cost of oysters might skyrocket in the next few years.”

Outrageous prices and shortages aside (especially in light of the federal government shuttering, just last week, of the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. in nearby Point Reyes National Seashore) saving the shellfish industry is going to take a multi-pronged approach like the one getting started at Hog Island. But that might be the least humans can do as fossil-fuel pollution threatens a key filter feeder that cleans gallons of seawater a day, allowing other marine life to survive and thrive.

Despite the ominous outlook for oysters, oyster growers like Sawyer remain optimistic—and have recent innovation on their side. “The only reason we still have oyster farmers on the West Coast is because they were extraordinarily lucky, smart, and resourceful,” said Brad Warren of the nonprofit Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, and a member of Washington’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification. “They teamed up with scientists, figured out what was killing their tiny baby oysters … and worked out ways to dodge or treat the corrosive water that was causing the problem,” he added. “The oyster industry survived the blow and, for now, they are adapting. These people are the coal mine canaries who lived to sing.”

A version of this story originally appeared on Grist.

Sam Kalalau, a Native Hawaiian who lives in the isolated, rural town of Hana on Maui’s eastern edge, has a dream for his people, many of whom suffer from chronic conditions with dietary links such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Hana is known mostly for its lushness, postcard-perfect beaches, and spectacular oceans views, and less so for its fertile fields. But this produce whisperer helps run Hana Fresh Farm, a seven-acre, certified organic farm situated on a gentle slope and filled with tropical fruit trees, heirloom greens, and fragrant herbs. The 60-year-old also seeks to educate locals and visitors alike about the health benefits of homegrown foods like avocado and papaya over the canned and processed goods transported from the mainland.

Hana Fresh sells freshly picked crops at a roadside stand in front of Hana Health, the squat community wellness center that sits between the popular produce stand and the farm, which also grows gourmet greens and exotic fruits for high-end restaurants, resorts, and grocery stores on the island. Fresh food from the farm is incorporated into the site’s senior meal program. The Hana Fresh Market also sells prepared foods and complete meals in addition to produce and locally sourced fish. Profits from the farm and stand help support the medical facility; last year $60,000 went to fund community health programs, according to the nonprofit’s Executive Director Cheryl Vasconcellos.

For local residents, many of whom are Native Hawaiians, Hana Fresh offers one-stop wellness shopping. “I’d love to see our elders go in for health checkups and come out with a prescription for kale,” says Kalalau. “We’re working on ideas like that now.” He and other staff lead tours of the farm, where visitors can learn about the challenges of growing food in the tropics and traditional Hawaiian medicinal ways.

Most tourists think of Hana—reached by navigating a stunning stretch of “highway” with hundreds of hairpin turns and dozens of one-lane bridges—as a patch of paradise with gorgeous waterfalls, verdant landscapes, and serene swimming holes.

But people live here too. And the roughly 2,200 residents of this remote area rely on Hana Health and Hana Fresh for routine things most tourists take for granted, like primary medical and mental health care, dental cleanings, and access to nutritious food. Hana is a federally designated underserved area, and the organization’s mission is to provide a safety net and improve the health and wellness of the community, particularly for Native Hawaiians and others who are at risk due to financial, cultural, and geographic barriers. “Many of our patients go straight out the door from their medical appointments to buy vegetables, pick up a salad or smoothie for lunch, or even dinner,” says Mary Hanchett, a medical receptionist who has worked at the clinic for nine years.

The 35-year-old mother of two was born and raised in Hana, and relies on the farm stand as well. Hanchett is healthy, but she keeps close tabs on her blood pressure and cholesterol, since there is a history of these conditions in her family. “I’ve always been careful about what I eat because of my genetic disposition,” she says. “I do enjoy Hawaiian food—like pork—but I also eat a lot of vegetables and the farm and market make that easy for me to do. There was nothing like this when I was growing up here.”

Native Hawaiians like Hanchett are at greater risk for a slew of health conditions: The population is three times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes compared to white folks, and they face twice the risk of heart disease compared with other ethnic groups. Hawaiians are also 70 percent more likely to have high blood pressure than their white counterparts, according to the U.S. Office of Minority Health.

Preventing such conditions takes education, community outreach, and money. The recently constructed on-site kitchen, the Hana Nutrition Center—which took about 10 years to complete—is key to the program’s continued economic sustainability, as it allows the facility to expand its prepared food line and make value-added products such as preserves and pickles. It will also allow Hana Health to expand its nutrition, meal, and obesity-prevention programs, says Vasconcellos. The organization previously ran its programs out of a 75-year-old, 100-square-foot building.

Hana Health supports healthy lifestyles and hopes to prevent chronic medical conditions on what Vasconcellos calls “a stealth basis.”

“We make sure we have good food that people will want to eat at the market,” she adds. “We don’t ever refer to it as ‘healthy.’ We refer to it as ‘really good.’ And it’s taken off.”

The facility is experimenting with incentives to attract locals to come in for regular checkups. A women’s health initiative will include a “no fee” health exam, pap smear, half-hour traditional lomilomi massage, wapine (lemongrass) ice tea, and a $75 gift certificate for the farmers market. A school-focused effort will give elementary-age students a pedometer, and, upon walking to school two mornings a week, a healthy snack once they get there. Children with the most activity for the week get gift certificates for fresh fruit smoothies at the farm stand.

For the past three years, the medical center has been tracking residents’ fresh produce consumption, and they’ve seen it increase by one serving a day. It’s a modest improvement in diet, which the Hana Fresh staff hope will rise and translate into improved health over the long haul, says Vasconcellos. Anecdotally, she’s seen health benefits in the local population who access the nonprofit’s services. “We know that there is still just one patient receiving dialysis, and this has not changed in several years,” she says, as another indicator of the community’s health.

The farm has operated in earnest since 2006, although prior to that a large on-site garden provided fresh produce for seniors, says Vasconcellos. The stand started in 2007, and moved to a daily market three years ago. The medical facility dates back to the 1940s plantation era, when six sugar companies operated in the area and several thousand people called Hana home.

In addition to her official administrative, financial, personnel, planning, and public relations duties, Vasconcellos can also be found pulling weeds and serving meals. There is no room at the nonprofit for slackers, she says. Running a farm business is rewarding—but it’s also a lot of hard work. There’s some overlap in job descriptions, but the organization employs about 36 people: 17 in the clinic, 14 in the farm and farm stand, and five in the nutrition center.

“On any given day you can find me harvesting carrots, baking banana bread, or washing dishes, depending on what needs to get done at the time,” says Vasconcellos. “It’s the nature of working in Hana. We have to be self-reliant. It’s not for everyone.”

But it’s clear that the work suits Vasconcellos, a resident for 15 years. “Hana Health is on the cutting edge of so many issues,” she says. “It’s exciting, challenging, and often frustrating, but I think we are on to something important and hope that future health indicators bear this out.”

Solving the community’s food supply problem—by growing its own—seems like a good place to start.

Photos: Above, Hana Fresh Farm’s executive director, Cheryl Vasconcellos, is in the front row, center. Farmer Sam Kalalau is sitting on her right. Below, Visitors to the Hana Fresh Farm Market.

Originally published on Grist.

The meeting was held in San Francisco earlier this week at the offices of SPUR, a nonprofit created to promote good planning and good government. The focus of the discussion: an ambitious plan to overhaul Oakland Unified School District‘s inadequate and antiquated school food service. But the driving force behind what could be a model program for re-imagining school lunch in large school districts around the nation is a Berkeley-based nonprofit that has quietly been rethinking school lunch for many years.

No, not that nonprofit. The Center for Ecoliteracy recently released a detailed feasibility study that, if implemented, would amount to a massive makeover for the OUSD school food program. It includes recommendations for a newly outfitted, green central commissary with a 1.5-acre edible farm in West Oakland, refurbished existing kitchens, and the development of 14 school-based community kitchens dotted throughout the school district, which serves 38,000 students at 101 schools, 70 percent of whom are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. The community kitchens are envisaged as places where budding edible entrepreneurs and local organizations with a food focus could work, for a fee, during after-school hours.

On May 23 the OUSD board approved a $1.5 billion facilities master plan with a unanimous vote, recognizing the need to upgrade all existing school sites to contemporary standards, including radically improving nutrition services facilities throughout the district. This Wednesday, the OUSD board discussed a proposal to place a $42 million bond initiative on the November ballot in support of realizing part of the plan to better nourish children in Oakland schools. A voted is expected June 27, according to OUSD spokesman Troy Flint.

When project director Zenobia Barlow, the Center for Ecoliteracy’s cofounder and executive director, scouted around for a school district that was well placed to consider such a radical rethinking of the school cafeteria, she realized she didn’t have to look any further than neighboring Oakland. Barlow wanted to work with a large, urban school district with a significant need, where school meal decisions are made on a district level, and where district-wide innovation and change would be welcome and could serve as a model for the nation.

Oakland met all those criteria. It also had a new superintendent, Tony Smith, who exhibited a commitment to innovation and equity that Barlow admired (even if his hands were tied on the money front), and an award-winning nutrition director, Jennifer LeBarre, who had worked her way up through the ranks and consistently made changes to improve school food in a district with scant resources to do so. And Barlow knew that an active parent group, the Oakland School Food Alliance, was also on a mission to improve school food across the district.

It also helped that all parties recognized the impact school food reform can have on academic achievement. “Other school districts say that they cannot afford to concentrate on school meals because their attention and resources are focused on closing their achievement gap,” noted Barlow.

Not this group. “It was the perfect storm of people to bring about change,” said Barlow. “We knew we had the leadership and buy-in, both from within the district and in its surrounding community, to make an investment of this nature worthwhile.”

Finding the money, of course, in which to implement sweeping change, is another matter. That’s where the bond measure could kickstart the commissary and cafeteria campaign.

The center’s feasibility study for improving school food in Oakland cost $200,000, and was funded by the TomKat Charitable Trust and the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation. (Kat Taylor and her husband Tom Steyer founded the Oakland-based community lending institution One PacificCoast Bank.) The nonprofit center, housed in Berkeley’s David Brower building, has received follow-up funding from both granting groups to work with the district on implementing the recommendations, including identifying potential funding sources for the community kitchens, helping to facilitate a nutrition advisory committee, and providing other, as-needed services to implement the master plan.

While Berkeley schools have garnered international attention for widespread reform in the cafeteria, the district is a relatively small one and it has received significant financial support from within the district and through the foundation and groundbreaking work of restaurateur and school food reformer Alice Waters.

In contrast, neighboring Oakland has slowly but steadily been making changes to improve school food for its students. Nutrition services director LeBarre has overseen numerous improvements in meal programming—including banning soda before the state mandated such action, outlawing trans fat and high-sodium food, introducing “meatless Mondays,” universal breakfast, and increasing local purchasing, particularly produce. There are also 67 salad bars in cafeterias, 37 schools participate in the nutrition program Harvest of the Month,  and 22 farmers’ markets after school. LeBarre works in a foam-free environment, has reduced chocolate milk to just once a week, and is trying to rid her district of the dreaded spork, a cafeteria implement that few think enhances the eating experience.

All this, and yet LeBarre would be the first to concede the district has a long way to go. She battles significant obstacles to bringing about change, and not just economic ones: fewer than one in four Oakland schools has a working kitchen, even in schools with kitchens, most of the equipment is so old it no longer works, some kitchens don’t even have a sink, making installing a salad bar impossible. It’s a sad reality that many of the 300 food service workers at Oakland schools do little more than rip the plastic off pre-packaged, processed foods and pop them in the microwave.

But when LeBarre looks ahead ten years from now, she imagines checking in at the central kitchen where fresh, made-from-scratch food is cooked for the entire district using food from the farm out the back door. With the help of the Center for Ecoliteracy, LeBarre can see a future when people flock to Oakland, just as much as to Berkeley, to find out how to fix school food around the country.

Photos: Top, Cooking classes at MetWest High School in Oakland. Photo: Tyler/Center for Ecoliteracy. Middle, Fresh fruit is popular among students. Photo: Tyler/Center for Ecoliteracy. Bottom, A farmstand at Castlemont High School in Oakland. Photo: Tyler/Center for Ecoliteracy.

Originally published by Berkeleyside

Andrea Northup grew up with cows in her backyard. But it wasn’t until she visited France, and caught a glimpse of how a whole country can revolve around a robust food culture, that she found her calling.

Northup went on to launch the D.C. Farm to School Network, a nonprofit dedicated to providing healthier school food in 200 public schools and 90 charter schools in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2008. Since then, she’s been on a mission to transform school lunch menus one piece of fresh, locally grown produce at a time. And Northup has her hands full: The first orange food most D.C. kids can think of isn’t carrots, she says, it’s Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

Her greatest accomplishment to date: playing a principal role in the passage and implementation of the landmark Healthy Schools Act of 2010, which makes D.C. one of the first jurisdictions in the country to provide financial incentives to schools that serve local food and offer nutrition education in the classroom.

Northup, 25, was recently honored with a Natural Resources Defense Council Growing Green Award in the Young Food Leader category.

What sparked your interest in school food?

I studied environmental engineering and community health at Tufts University, so food is right at the intersection of my interests in environmental sustainability and child health. But truthfully, it was time in France that changed my way of thinking about food. Most French people take hours each day to enjoy delicious, regional, scratch-cooked meals with friends and family. When I came back to the States, I saw reforming school food as a perfect marriage of my interests that would tie together my newfound appreciation for farm-fresh, regional food.

How has the Healthy Schools Act improved school food in D.C.?

Almost every school in Washington, D.C., is now serving [at least one] local food for breakfast or lunch every day, partly because of the extra five-cent financial incentive that schools receive for doing so from the Healthy Schools Act. Schools are also meeting higher nutrition standards, giving students more time to eat lunch, extending the amount of physical activity they do each day, and serving breakfast in the classroom (to increase participation rates). The act also created a school garden specialist position, and a garden grant program to help schools start and maintain their gardens. I know a dozen schools that were able to either take their garden to the next level, or start a new garden as a direct result of the funding provided by the act.

Can you point out some improvements in D.C. cafeteria menus since the network started working with school staff and local producers?

In D.C. public schools, meals include approximately 35 percent local foods on average. That’s up from probably 10 percent or less three years ago, but we’re not entirely sure because there wasn’t much information sharing back then. This is hundreds of thousands of dollars in our local food economy, and thousands of servings of fresh, regional produce on the cafeteria trays of D.C.’s youth.

For a concrete example, I helped one charter school connect with a source of pasture-raised, grass-fed ground beef from a grower in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The school serves the local beef about once a month. The food service director says the beef is miles beyond the quality of what she was previously getting, and she makes the pricing work by serving inexpensive meat-free meals during the month to offset the cost.

Does being in the capital help you do your work, given your proximity to people like First Lady Michelle Obama and White House Chef and Food Policy Adviser Sam Kass?

Sam Kass and the White House pastry chef have been great; they’ve come to the D.C. Farm to School Week kick-off events, and Michelle Obama has visited a few of the schools I work with. More importantly though, they’ve been rallying the entire nation around the issue of feeding children well and getting kids active, which has driven a lot of national and local movement on the issue.

Are there other farm-to-school programs that you admire?

St. Paul Public School District‘s program is a great model of how a large, urban school district has methodically been working for decades to develop a functioning procurement system that relies heavily on local foods, and a culture of healthy eating within the schools. Their nonprofit partner, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, provides support connecting the schools with growers in the area who can meet their needs.

I am a huge fan of Vermont FEED, a partnership of three nonprofits in Vermont that help schools all over the state by providing trainings, workshops, toolkits, and educational opportunities. I always go to them for tools and resources.

Also: the Massachusetts Farm to School Project, Georgia Organics, and Farm to Table in New Mexico … the list goes on. We all get to share experiences and resources through the National Farm to School Network.

What’s next for the D.C. Farm to School Network?

I have two goals: The first is to find ways to support more small growers in our region. Right now, there isn’t the aggregation to make it feasible for small, sustainable farmers to provide food for D.C.’s nearly 100,000 meals a day. I would love to help schools pilot some programs to provide markets for them, and begin to work those types of farms into the rotation.

Second, even though we’ve done a lot of youth education, we need more programs that empower youth to truly be a part of the school food movement. The changes to school meals have been drastic over the past few years, in a good way. For students who are used to processed convenience foods, the switch to fresh, whole foods is a big one; not only do the foods taste drastically different, but they’re unfamiliar. We need to educate students about fresh, local foods through hands-on experiences that leave them empowered to take charge and demand the types of changes they want to see.

Our work will be done when students understand, demand, and enjoy farm-fresh, local foods in their school meals, and when the school meal program supports our regional food economy.

Originally published on Grist.org

HBO has a history of tackling serious American health-care crises. In recent years, the cable network has taken on addiction and Alzheimer’s to much critical acclaim. And now the network has turned its attention to another huge health problem: Obesity and its enormous economic, emotional, social, and health cost on individuals, families, communities, and the country at large.

As Americans have gained weight in recent years, rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other obesity-related health problems have also skyrocketed. Rates of Type 2 diabetes (once known as “adult-onset diabetes”) are soaring among kids. And this is a generation of people that may well die at a younger age than their parents, largely because of medical concerns associated with excess weight.

These facts have become commonplace to those of us who have been paying attention. Still, The Weight of the Nation: Confronting America’s Obesity Epidemic serves as a clarion call to the country to take action — and fast — to combat this pernicious, complex problem that has myriad root causes.Despite the familiar territory, this viewer gives the filmmakers points for framing the issue in a fresh, visually compelling way through astute story selection. The first episode recounts The Bogalusa Heart Study in Louisiana — a landmark investigation which found that cardiovascular disease can begin in childhood. And in the final installment we meet a Nashville mayor trying to help his city get healthy and a Latino community in Santa Ana, Calif., whose members spend years advocating for a play space for their children.

At the current rate of increase, obesity-related health-care costs are projected to exceed $300 billion by 2018.

Bigger than individuals

Some critics (including those who have yet to watch the series) worry that The Weight of the Nation only fans fear, stereotypes fat folk, and doesn’t go after the real villain in the war against weight: the food and beverage industry. But from this critic’s perspective, the program doesn’t lay shame and blame at the feet of the overweight and obese people it features. On the contrary, it presents their struggles in a sympathetic and non-judgmental light, revealing how hard the body fights weight loss despite good intentions, and how current social, economic, and government systems sabotage Americans’ attempts to stay healthy.

Yes, there is the question of personal responsibility, and the films address physical inactivity and poor diet as key contributors to this problem. But there’s also healthy discussion of factors outside an individual’s control — including genetic makeup and evolutionary biology (we’re programmed for scarcity in a time of abundance), workplace changes, fast food marketing strategies, federal farm subsidies, changes in American food culture, and the ready availability of low-cost, high-calorie food.

The series also points a finger at the global corporations that are responsible for peddling the unhealthy, highly processed foods at the crux of the problem. It’s hard to imagine commercial television, hugely dependent on advertising by the makers of such food, taking on this topic in the first place.

To produce The Weight of the Nation, HBO teamed up with some major government agencies battling this spreading epidemic — the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health — as well as the child-focused philanthropy Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and health-care giant Kaiser Permanente.

The series doesn’t sugarcoat matters, but makes it clear that obesity-related health problems will become an unprecedented crisis with dire consequences if left unchecked. They’re also incredibly expensive: At the current rate of increase, obesity-related health-care costs are projected to exceed $300 billion by 2018.

In conjunction with the series, HBO also launched a massive social media campaign to spread the word about what can be done about these health problems, and reached out to more than 40,000 community-based organizations across the country.

Take that, obesity epidemic. And yet, as John Hoffman, executive producer of the series, noted in a discussion after a recent screening in Oakland: One of the first steps that might put a serious dent in this problem would be addressing government subsidies for commodity crops, which have made ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup cheap, accessible, and ubiquitous. He suggested changing the date of the Iowa caucus — a step that would give this farm state considerably less political power. (Such creative thinking didn’t make it into the series. But it’s food for thought — as is the hormonal defect hypothesis, detailed in a Newsweek story last week, which argues that refined sugars and grains are the major players in a problem that no amount of dieting and exercise could correct.)

Chicken nuggets are served for school lunch in the Weight of the Nation.

For kids’ sake

Foraging for food—whether it’s ferreting rare mushrooms in the woods, picking abundant lemons from an overlooked tree, or gathering berries from an abandoned lot—is all the rage among the culinary crowd and the D.I.Y. set, who share their finds with fellow food lovers in fancy restaurant meals or humble home suppers.

But an old-fashioned concept—gleaning for the greater good by harvesting unwanted or leftover produce from farms or family gardens—is also making a comeback during these continued lean economic times.

In cities, rural communities, and suburbs across the country, volunteer pickers join forces to collect bags and boxes of fruits and vegetables that find their way to homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries, as well as senior centers, low-income homes, and school lunch programs.

Where some may see excess, others see opportunity—the chance to make a difference, feed the hungry, and avoid waste. It’s a win-win-win all round: Growers who have surplus or seconds find a good home for these edibles beyond the compost pile; financially strapped aid organizations get much-needed fresh food for free for their patrons; and the gleaners get to give back in their communities. “I’ve been surprised at how emotionally rewarding this is,” says Andrew Sigal, an avid gardener in Oakland, California, who started Food Pool last summer to share the abundance from his prolific 800-square-foot garden with local food pantries. “It’s one thing to give someone in need a dollar or a donation, but seeing someone get excited about beans from my backyard has been deeply fulfilling.”

Some gleaners have even made a national name for themselves. Take The Lemon Lady, aka Anna Chan, a stay-at-home mom who began collecting excess fruit in suburban Clayton, California, while driving her then-baby daughter around to nap. Chan, who knew hunger as a child and how it felt to wait in food lines for canned goods, was shocked to see so much fresh fruit—such as oranges, apricots, and apples—left rotting in her neighbors’ front yards. so she started a single-handed campaign to do something about it.

Three years on and hundreds of tons of produce later, Chan, who is now a regular fixture at local farmers’ markets where she collects unsold fruits and vegetables that she hauls to a local food pantry and Salvation Army site, has been featured in People, The Huffington Post, and Civil Eats. While the press attention has helped her cause, she keeps a laser-like focus on her mission to feed those in need. “Many people don’t know where their local food pantry is located and don’t realize that food banks will gladly take fresh produce,” says Chan, who encourages people to get started by picking excess fruits and veggies in their immediate area and passing it on.

From California to New York and places in between, communities are finding creative, local ways to get fresh food to the residents who have the most challenges accessing such food. Glean for the City in Washington, D.C., for example, has a three-pronged approach: picking surplus produce from regional farms, gathering leftover greens from farmers’ markets, and harvesting excess residential edibles.

Since 1988, Friendship Donations Network in Ithaca, New York, has worked with local farmers to “rescue” thousands of pounds of produce that would otherwise go to waste and distribute it to low-wage workers, the elderly, and the young. Gleaned produce donated by the organization serves 24 programs that feed more than 2,000 people a week. The model just makes sense, says FDN program coordinator Meaghan Sheehan Rosen, who points out that there’s no reason perfectly good food should go uneaten if farmers are willing and people are needy.

Some gleaning efforts have grown out of religious organizations—not surprising, since the term has Biblical origins. In the Book of Ruth, for instance, the poor are permitted to pick grain leftover from the harvest. The Society of St. Andrews, based in Virginia, has gleaning groups in several states including Arkansas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that have collectively gleaned millions of pounds of produce. Faith Feeds, a Lexington, Kentucky, gleaning group that grew out of a church meeting, has picked up more than 111,000 pounds of produce since the summer of 2010, from farmers’ markets, farms, and private residences. “It is not hard to feed the hungry,” says Jennifer Erena of Faith Feeds, an interfaith group not affiliated with any particular religion or church. “The word is spreading and there’s a wonderful energy among different people and organizations that is both collaborative and community oriented.”

There are gleaning programs that connect homeowners overwhelmed by an abundant harvest with volunteers willing to pick produce and take it to local food banks, such as Portland Fruit in Oregon. But many gleaning efforts are simply started by an individual who sees a need and wants to fill it. “I particularly like picking fruit for seniors, many of whom can no longer climb a ladder or aren’t able to do physical labor anymore,” says North Berkeley Harvest founder Natasha Boissier, who started solo but now works with a group of volunteers. “They come out and talk with me while I work, and I appreciate and respect their wisdom and experience, and hearing about the ups and downs of having lived life. These moments of connection have brought me—and I hope them—a great deal of unexpected joy.”

Bossier’s first stop with fresh food is often the local men’s shelter. “These men are often blamed for what’s wrong with them,” says the clinical social worker. “I see them early in the morning standing out in the cold after enduring a night of who knows what and I want to give them a piece of fruit to offer a moment’s respite from their pain and suffering. That’s my hope: To provide something tangible, simple, and sweet in their lives.”

Some gleaning programs have become an integral part of their community. Take the Novato Unified School District Gleaning Program. Every week for the past six years, parents, students, and members of this Marin County, California, community glean excess organic produce from a participating local farm. (There are about 15 in the program.) Through a partnership with Marin Organic, a cooperative association of local growers, that fresh chard picked by a volunteer on Monday finds it way into school pasta sauce later in the week. The gleaned fruits and vegetables now offsets up to 25 percent of the district’s weekly produce, according to Miguel Villarreal, the director of food and nutrition services for the small school district, where some 4,000 meals a day are dished up at 13 schools.

For Villarreal, who has worked in school food for 30 years and grew up helping pick crops with his parents in the fields, the program is a no-brainer. “There is so much beautiful abundance in this area and our school food program can use all the help it can get,” says Villarreal, who sees educational and community-building benefits to the program, as well.

Others raise some unexpected benefits of gleaning. Melita Love, of Farm to Pantry in Healdsburg, California, found a community of people in her new hometown when she started gleaning. Love has collaborated with local preservers to extend the shelf life of the bounty she and her crew harvest in such staples as applesauce and tomato sauce — think canning for a cause — that food pantry patrons can pick up along with gleaned fresh goods. She’s also worked with local groups to explain to patrons how to use produce that may be unfamiliar. “The first time we dropped off kale to a food pantry nobody took it because they didn’t know what to do with it,” says Love. “So we did cooking demos for kale salad, kale chips, and a winter soup with kale, and we handed out recipes, too. Education is an important part of any gleaning effort.”

Food Pool’s Sigal points out that a group of gardeners who share their backyard bounty with less fortunate folk in his community have gone a step further, funding and constructing a community garden at a local food pantry where there was once an unused piece of land. “A year ago, most of these people didn’t even know there was a food pantry there,” he says. “There’s this incredible value in creating community that goes beyond just sharing surplus fresh food.”

Top, Lemon trees often produce far more fruit than a single family can use. Photo credit: Marco Chiesa. Middle, Blackberries grow wild all over rural and, often, suburban areas. Photo credit: Alex Brown. Bottom, One of several varieties of kale, lacinato kale grows abundantly and can be used in numerous healthy dishes. Photo credit: Oriana Papadopulos. All photos used under Creative Commons license.

Originally published on Shareable

Edible entrepreneur/video editor Dafna Kory is an ideal candidate for a food-focused Kickstarter campaign. Kory, founder of Inna Jam, an organic artisan preserves company in Berkeley, Calif., supplements her budding food business with commercial film, video, and web editing gigs and is well-acquainted with the crowd-funding platform. So, when it came time to expand her jam company this winter, she decided to give Kickstarter a whirl.

“It’s a very public thing—putting yourself out there like this—and it could have gone either way,” says Kory, who produced her own video for a campaign to renovate a commercial kitchen. The jammer already has some small business loans and didn’t want to take on any more debt. Kory, who just wrapped up her Kickstarter campaign, says it was by no means an easy endeavor. “I used every skill I have to make this campaign a success.”

Kickstarter, based in New York, earned its early reputation as the go-to place for up-and-coming filmmakers, gamers, and designers looking for funds. Increasingly, though, it’s become a hub for those involved in the sustainable, local food scene seeking capital for their creative pursuits as well. In the Kickstarter worldview, food artisans are artists too, whether they’re behind a community olive oil press in Berkeley, a beekeeping business in Brooklyn, or a Lebanese food truck in Asheville, N.C.

Starting an edible enterprise is expensive and risky, particularly in tough economic times. An infusion of cash via Kickstarter can be just the boost a food venture needs to go from fantasy project to viable business—with no loans to repay. A typical food project raises about $5,000. Kory, who began making jam commercially in 2010, sought $25,000 to buy equipment like convection ovens, cooking ranges, stainless steel work tables, and other tools of her trade. Her recent success, gathering nearly $28,000 from 474 backers, landed her on a list of the most funded Kickstarter food projects to date. “I’ve been truly humbled by the generosity,” she says.

Recent record donations for food projects

Kory’s windfall is by no means the biggest. That honor—tallying a whopping $257,307 last December—currently goes to Windowfarms, a Brooklyn-based vertical gardening enterprise, which allows people to grow herbs and produce in small spaces in the privacy of their own homes. Via video, Britta Riley, who runs the hyper-local company, essentially asked investors to pre-buy a product that hadn’t been manufactured yet. The company’s goal—in retrospect, a modest $50,000—followed a successful initial Kickstarter campaign in 2010 that netted $28,000 for the new business (a record for its time too).

In second place for the most money raised to date: A Washington, D.C., public school kitchen($60,000), and in the No. 3 slot, a meat-curing processing facility in Pennsylvania ($48, 000). Last year, 241 successful Kickstarter food projects netted over $2.8 million from more than 30,000 backers. The projects reflect recent food trends—think artisan brewing, mobile cupcakes, urban farms, edible education, vegan pop-ups, and community restaurants—and appeal directly to a generation that has grown up online.

Why do food projects do so well with this new fundraising mechanism? For starters, behind these appeals is a good story, and everyone loves a good story, note the Kickstarter crew. Creators who articulate clearly what they’re working to accomplish in a compelling way do well, says Kickstarter’s Justin Kazmark, as do campaigns that offer creative rewards or a behind-the-scenes view of the creative process.

But that’s not all. “There’s also an increased awareness in the importance of supporting local, independent businesses as a way to preserve the unique character of our communities,” says Elizabeth Ü of Finance for Food, who curates a page of food project favorites on Kickstarter. “These projects allow people to experience a sense of vicarious pride for those who turn their passions into a tangible project,” adds Ü, author of the forthcoming Raising Dough: The Complete Guide to Financing a Socially Responsible Food Business.

For those unclear on the concept: Kickstarter curates its site (projects are selected and must meet specific guidelines). A tiered reward system is set up based on the pledge amount. For instance, Kory offered pledgers who gave $25 or more a jar of her jam while those who gifted $50 or more will receive three jars, and so on. Anyone who donated $2,500 was guaranteed their moniker on a convection oven. (No takers.) In addition, locals were offered incentives such as a behind-the-scenes tour of the kitchen, an invitation to the grand opening, and tickets to Kory’s jam-making classes.

Unlike another internet-based fundraising platform, IndieGoGo, which includes food projects and allows creators to keep all the money they raise, Kickstarter has an all-or-nothing approach: People seeking support must meet their stated financial goal in a specific time frame, often 30 days, or they get none of the money pledged. On the plus side, this adds a sense of urgency to the campaigns—and a good deal of anxiety for those running them. Food projects have a higher success rate (56 percent), compared with all Kickstarter projects combined (47 percent), Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler told the Los Angeles Times.

Project creators must keep in mind that for successful campaigns, Kickstarter keeps a 5 percent cut of pledges, and an additional 3 to 5 percent comes off the top for Amazon Payments, which handles the monetary transactions. Recent changes to reporting requirements mean that these donations are now subject to taxes too, which was something of a grey area (gifts versus revenue?) in the past.

While there are many pluses to food-specific projects, there is one obvious drawback: Food products make great rewards for pledgers, but prospective funders can’t sample the merchandise via cyberspace, in the way they can, say, consume an art project or film trailer online. So there’s also a certain leap of faith required on the part of prospective funders.

Benefits beyond bankrolling a business

Kory believes there are benefits beyond bringing in the big bucks. “It’s been amazing publicity—just getting my product out there to a national audience,” says Kory, whose initial support came from family, friends, other food artisans, and customers. But as word spread, more pledges started coming in from people she didn’t know. “It’s also created this much larger community around what I do,” she adds. “When people get involved with a project in this way, they have a vested interest in seeing you succeed.”

The pair behind the popular sustainable food video series The Perennial Plate, Minneapolis-based chef/filmmaker Daniel Klein and cameragal/co-producer Mirra Fine, used Kickstarter to fund their local series because it was the easiest web-based fundraising platform to use. It was also the best looking, and had garnered a lot of attention. “I think people are more likely to put their money into something that looks legitimate,” says Klein. The first time around, The Perennial Plate raised over $10,000 for its Minnesota-focused weekly web series. In April of last year, for their road trip video tour across the country, they reeled in over $22,000.

It’s not enough, says Klein, to have an awesome project. “The key to a successful campaign is to have built a community that wants to support your work and values it,” he says. “Most people who give aren’t random browsers. They’re more likely to be someone you’ve engaged with online or met in real life.” His other advice: Make your video short, funny, and personable. “People make their videos too long.” He also points to the importance of appealing rewards. “People want something in return, whether it’s a DVD or T-shirt or whatever.”

What else brings in the bucks? It’s key that a project has a specific beginning and end, or is something that’s already in the works, and exudes an authentic approach that is more personable than professional (think cocktail party over job interview). Getting the nod from Kickstarter as a “project we love,” social media buzz, and traditional media coverage can make a difference too. Kory agrees with Klein’s advice and adds one more piece: Show your gratitude. She thanked every donor individually, and included an update of herself jumping for joy after reaching her goal on her Kickstarter page.

“Being public about financial struggles is kind of scary,” she says. “But I got so much positive feedback it was worth those anxious moments when I wasn’t sure I’d make my goal. I wasn’t prepared for how meaningful it would be to build a whole new community. You can’t put a price on that.”

Originally published on Grist.

Three of Berkeley Unified School District‘s elementary schools–Malcolm X,  Rosa Parks, and Washington—are in jeopardy of losing their entire cooking and gardening program funds beginning in October this year.

Under existing guidelines, the schools will no longer qualify for federal funding because they have fewer than 50 percent of their students enrolled in the free and reduced-lunch program, according to Leah Sokolofski, who supervises the program for the district.

Berkeley has an international reputation for its edible schoolyards, where public school children of all economic means learn what it takes to grow a radish and sauté some chard. Such funding cuts to the program, whose total budget is $1.94 million a year, would represent a significant setback in the city’s pioneering efforts to date.

School gardening and cooking champion Alice Waters, whose Chez Panisse Foundation helped fund the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, expressed dismay at the potential budget cuts to programs. “It’s inevitable cuts will come—people think these programs are dispensable and the state of California is in a financial crisis—but it’s a tragedy,” she said.

Waters recently raised over $500,000 to launch the Edible Schoolyard Project (ESP), an online resource that shares curriculum and best practice principles for garden and cooking programs with schools around the country. ESP has affiliate programs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York. “We have to continue to make the case for why an edible education is so important to the health of every child and the health of the whole country,” she said.

BUSD school garden and cooking programs are funded through September 2012 through Network for a Healthy California, a state program that distributes federal monies to local school districts through a three-year grant. The network seeks to improve the health of low-income Californians through increased fruit and vegetable consumption and daily activity.

Changes to funding

Changes to the way school cooking and gardening programs are funded are coming down the track, however, following the passage of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which President Obama signed into law amid much fanfare in December 2010, with the goal of improving childhood nutrition.

“Until the new guidelines for eligibility are released we just don’t know what’s in store for our school programs,” said Sokolofski, who anticipates hearing later this month. “This is the biggest change in the funding for these programs in 11 years.”

Further complicating matters: The U.S. Farm Bill is up for reauthorization in 2012. Potential changes to funding priorities there may impact all the BUSD’s gardening and cooking programs as well. “The Farm Bill is yet another wild card because that’s the overall place where our funding comes from,” explained Sokolofski. “And any changes there could trump changes elsewhere. There are a lot of unknowns right now.”

While it’s possible that funding for these programs could remain intact, for now the immediate concern is the three schools who will likely not qualify for federal funds for the next school year, Sokolofski said.

Sokolofski has been sharing her concerns with school administrators, principals, parents, and teachers. A recent presentation at Malcolm X spurred dozens of parents to attend the March 7 BUSD board meeting, where they made a passionate case for protecting a program beloved of both students and adults.

Malcolm X parent and family doctor Shannon McCune, a Malcolm X alum herself, sees many young children in her practice and said she can immediately tell which of her patients have gardening at school. “They have a favorite vegetable and know why they’re good for you,” said McCune, whose daughter recently taught her mom how to make kale salad by massaging the leaves with oil, which eliminates the need for cooking the fibrous vegetable. “I would never have known how to do that if my daughter hadn’t shown me.”

Another physician-parent echoed McCune’s sentiment. Mickey Adams, a parent from Washington Elementary, talked about the challenges of working with adult patients who have obesity and other lifestyle diseases. “These people don’t know how to eat well and cook food—they’ve never been taught,” said Adams, whose children make recipes at home they’ve learned in school cooking classes. “These programs work and there will be so much damage done by cutting them and we’ll all pay on the other end.”

If kids grow and cook it they will eat their greens

As a school board member noted at the March 7 meeting, the value of such programs was measured in a recent UC Berkeley study, which found that young students routinely exposed to fruits and vegetables through cooking and gardening instruction ate 1.5 more servings of produce a day compared with kids with fewer opportunities to dig in the dirt and work the stove at school.

School gardening teacher Joy Moore doesn’t need data to know the benefits such programs can bring. This kind of instruction gives young people alternative and innovative ways to learn, along with “skills for life,” said the long-time school food advocate.

School board president John Selawsky promised parents that the board will “see what it can do,” while acknowledging the challenging fiscal constraints already impacting the school district.

For now, Berkeley schools are researching ways to sustain these threatened programs. “We’ve been looking at the possibility of grant funding, but most of the grants available are small and aimed at schools just starting a garden plot,” said Alexander Hunt, principal of Malcolm X. “We haven’t been able to find anything comparable to the $135,000 we stand to lose.”

Despite serving a growing group of children in need, Malcolm X’s free and reduced school lunch numbers stand at 46 percent of its student body. “Materials can’t replace the quality of programming currently being provided by our staff,” said Hunt. “It’s wonderful how these classes engage students in learning at the same time they impart the benefits of health and nutrition. They’re key to our students’ education.”

The Malcolm X PTA is also exploring whether a large corporation, local merchants, philanthropic individuals, or some other benefactor may step in to fill the void. It is also in the early stages of discussions with other PTAs about a collaborative effort to secure contributions. “The garden and cooking program at Malcolm X is beloved by the school community and the community at large,” added Hunt. “It’s sad to see that in the place where this school food movement started, we’re now going backwards trying to sustain these valuable programs.”

Sense of urgency

Malcolm X parent Marian Mabel noted a sense of urgency to secure funding for next year, which must be identified by June 30, when the school district’s budget is finalized. In addition, Mabel pointed out that not all the city’s schools currently offer these programs—Berkeley Arts Magnet, Cragmont, Jefferson, and Oxford don’t receive any federal funds for such instruction. These schools rely on parent volunteers, PTA funds, and other sources to fund programs at their sites, if they have them at all.

“Short term, these three schools need to fill these funding gaps,” said Mabel, “but long term we want to find ways to make these programs available and sustainable to every public school student in Berkeley.”

As for Waters, another ESP program is in the planning stages for Sacramento, a strategic move, she said, so that she would be “under the noses” of state legislators. Waters, whose foundation has gifted about $10 million to BUSD, mostly to the Edible Schoolyard at King, also hopes that the governor will convene a taskforce for edible education soon to address the healthcare crisis among school children.

A parent-led meeting open to the community to update interested parties about the problem and brainstorm ideas about potential solutions is scheduled for today, Monday, March 26, at the Malcolm X library at 7 p.m. Malcolm X is at 1731 Prince Street. Parents will also prepare public comments for the school board meeting on Wednesday March 28, where they intend to keep this issue on the minds of school board members.

Watch “The Whole World in a Small Seed,” a Lunch Love Community video on the Malcolm X school garden program run by Rivka Mason.

Originally published on Berkeleyside

Photo: Middle, sharing the pleasures of an outdoor table at Berkeley’s Malcolm X Elementary School. Below, Malcolm X’s school under the sky teaches more than just how to grow good food.

Alison Cross and her older brother Alphonzo saw a vast need for fresh food in the Castleberry Hill neighborhood of Atlanta, where they’d spent time since they were kids. The community, which is adjacent to the Atlanta University Center, had seen both vibrance and decay, and was begging for transformation.

So the siblings decided to fill that need, and hatched a plan to open The Boxcar Grocer, a new food business. Alison, who studied architecture and worked as a video editor, and Alphonzo, with a background in fashion, describe the independent grocery store, which stocks local, organic, whole foods, as being at “the intersection of food justice and high-concept retail.”

And they’re right; it’s not your average corner store. The market looks modern, with lots of light, stainless steel, and wood. The shop, which had a “soft” opening in late October and celebrated its grand opening last Monday, sits in an area dotted with old railroad warehouses. African Americans own the majority of the storefront businesses. The neighborhood is undergoing a renaissance with small art galleries, graphic design firms, and a tattoo parlor that attract the typical urban mix of students, artists, and free thinkers.

Alison, 36, has also written about the personal inspiration for Boxcar (“This is Our Land“), the socioeconomic challenges of the food movement (“All the Foodies are Rich, All of the Farmers are White, But Some of Us are Still Cookin’“), and its shortcomings (“A Limited Engagement“) on the store’s blog.

I spoke with her recently about her hopes for the family business and the obstacles she and her brother have faced along the way.

Why did you decide to open a corner store in Atlanta?

For years we recognized a lack of stores in the area where we could get food we liked when we came to town. The space became vacant in May 2009 but we couldn’t find anyone willing to put in a store. So we researched, wrote a business plan, and started submitting to banks for financing.

In the meantime, I was working at The San Francisco Foundation part-time and part-time at Feldman Architecture, so I was getting this great vision of what could happen when social ideals merge with beautiful design. We felt no one had done that. And there were very few people actually creating something new in terms of for-profit business models for food access. We also figured if we were going to uproot our lives and move away from the Bay Area, it had to be for something extraordinary.

Did you run into any challenges?

Unfortunately, the economic crisis meant the process took us two years to complete. Banks flat-out weren’t lending, especially not commercial loans to novices. But we kept charging along. We applied to nine different banks and one foundation and all said no. All we needed was one yes, and that happened in March 2011.

Did you get support from the healthy corner store movement?

People we approached in the national food movement didn’t really take us seriously until we actually opened the store. Maybe it’s because we came out of nowhere. We were not involved in politics, nor did we run in foodie circles. We’d meet people at food movement events and when I mentioned opening a store I got the sense that people were dismissive.

What kind of response have you had from local residents?

We have had overwhelming support from the community. That’s a wonderful validation because for so long it was this thing rattling around in our heads and on paper. People have been amazingly patient with our mistakes. People are just so grateful to have a grocery store here after all these years. On opening day–which we tried to do quietly to work out the kinks–there was so much buzz about the business we had a line outside the door before we even opened. It was insanity.

Locating local farmers has been a discovery process–we thought we’d be dealing with rural farms–so to find such well-established urban farms as Truly Living Well, Metro Atlanta Urban Farm, HABESHA, and Patchwork City Farms right here in the inner city has been incredible. It’s allowed us to tap their network of supporters and access a knowledge base that is helping us learn about organic farm operations.

I spent last summer riding my bike from farmers’ market to farmers’ market meeting vendors, tasting food, and connecting with the producers.

What about some of the craft products in the store?

One couple make these phenomenal pulled pork sandwiches and organic barbecue sauce called The Heat Legend. A product like that speaks to our diverse community. It allows us to meet people where they are with their diet but offer a healthier option that is culturally appropriate. Another producer makes these kale salads with sun-dried tomatoes that people go bananas over. We can barely keep them in stock. It feels good to offer a healthy fast food that people can snack on.

What’s it like running a business with your brother?

It’s awesome. We’ve always been close and we’ve always wanted to work together. I’m in awe of his creativity, social nature, and energy. He appreciates the way I dig down in the details and my diligence in seeing things through. We respect each other’s visions and know that we get more done together than we do on our own because of our complementary skills.

Can you give us some background about your own relationship to food?

I was a notoriously picky eater as a child. Left to my own devices I’d consume nothing but Frosted Flakes and Kraft macaroni and cheese. Both my parents cooked. My mom made Cajun spiced red snapper, jambalaya, and gumbo, foods influenced by her mother, who was from Louisiana. My dad liked to cook us breakfast. We weren’t really allowed candy or lots of fast food, which was maybe a once-a-month treat. After my dad passed away in 2001, I went to Grenada, West Indies. It was the first time I was really surrounded by utterly fresh food. I was eating fruit right off the trees, vegetables directly from the ground, and seafood caught the same day it ended up on my plate. It was healing and cleansing and opened my eyes to what a difference food can make.

What does food justice mean to you?

It means approaching food access as an issue that is not reduced to a socioeconomic determinant. It means adding more faces to the cause so people can identify and desire to be part of a lifestyle shift. If Jay-Z and Kanye can create a lifestyle brand that people in urban and suburban areas aspire to, regardless of their actual income, why can’t we do that with organic food?

We have had family members and friends who are highly educated and in the middle class develop diseases directly related to the food they are eating. I like to tell people that we are not in competition with Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. We’re in competition with KFC, Burger King, and McDonald’s, who are marketing directly to people like me. The food [access] movement is looking at low-income people and telling them to eat better, but not necessarily including the people who CAN afford to eat better but don’t think it’s important or don’t connect with how it has been presented thus far.

What does the future hold for Boxcar?

We have always envisioned Boxcar as a national model. We wanted to be able to create something that would inspire other social entrepreneurs to replicate and hopefully get more healthy corner stores popping up in food deserts to show the demand is there for these businesses. What Alphonzo and I have done is an incredibly risky venture from a financial perspective. But we made a healthy gamble that was deeply rooted in the strength of our education, experience, work ethic, and commitment to seeing the model thrive in different incarnations across the country.

For now, we are focused on building this brand into a strong foundation. We would love Boxcar to be the Walgreen’s of healthy corner stores. We’d like to see at least another five to 10 stores like Boxcar in the next five years.

Originally published on Grist

Luc Chamberland thinks oyster farming is often misunderstood. That’s why the aquaculturist wants to educate the public about the benefits of cultivating bivalves in Tomales Bay, a pristine estuary in West Marin, Calif.

A recent, high-profile controversy surrounding a commercial oyster farm in the area has focused on the potentially negative environmental impacts of cultivating oysters (namely disruption to native species). But Chamberland sees oyster farming as a sustainable practice that does more good than harm.

That’s why, a few years ago, he conceived of Pickleweed Point Community Oyster Farm–a kind of CSA for the briny bivalve–so that the public can, quite literally, grow their own oysters, and in the process better understand the critical role oysters play in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. 

Chamberland has about 25 participants–some as young as six and some as old as 80–who pay $100 for the privilege of hands-on oyster farming lessons. Each spends an average of eight-12 hours a year maintaining their oyster plot. “If the water is healthy then our oysters are healthy,” he says. “The health department requires frequent water quality testing with oysters, so they’re a great water quality indicator.” Members are shown how to load Pacific oyster “seeds” (young oysters about the size of a penny) into wire-like mesh bags, which are then numbered, tied to a line, and released into the intertidal region of the bay, where waves, wind, and filter feeding are routine.

This oyster farmer was inspired to launch Pickleweed after learning about a similar community farm in Washington. It is a labor of love Chamberland tends to on nights and weekends; he has a day job as a project manager for an oceanographic and wetland restoration company.

Chamberland also hosts school field trips to the farm for local middle and high school students, organized through the community farm’s fiscal sponsor, The Watershed Project. Chamberland began working with The Watershed Project as a volunteer and was impressed by their native oyster restoration work in the Bay Area. He approached the project for support, as he thought they’d make a good fit for his idea.

The feeling was mutual. “Other farms may give a tour of their facility, but Luc actually wants students to be an oyster farmer for the day,” says Christopher Lim, the Living Shoreline program manager for The Watershed Project. “So he has students take on the tasks an oyster farmer would perform,” Lim says. “He also emphasizes the connection between good water quality and healthy, delicious oysters. And he explains the different methods of oyster farming in the area.”

Originally published on Grist

Photos: Gwendolyn Meyer, Christopher Lim