To buy local fruits, vegetables, and meat, we do not have to look much further than a nearby farmers market or community supported agriculture share. But to buy wheat flour, we have traditionally spent our dollars outside of the farmers market to find the product we use during all seasons. For a large part, the underlying reason lies in the industrialization of wheat production, which started in the 1880s with the advent of the steam roller mill. This large-scale mill turned out a cheap shelf-stable flour which essentially crippled regional grain markets. But as we begin to realize the detrimental economic and nutritional effects of the transformation of wheat to a commodity crop, regional grain economies are beginning to regrow across the country. Over the past five years, the necessary infrastructure has been put into place to process and sell grains at a smaller scale and keep profits within local communities.

When we talk about grains, we are referring to starch-rich hard seeds which grow on cereal grasses. Common grains include wheat, maize, rice, barley, oats, rye, and more. The anatomy of a grain consists of three parts: endosperm (starch), bran (fiber and fatty acids), and germ (fatty acids, nutrients, and proteins).

When processed, industrially grains are stripped of their bran and germ, leaving only the endosperm. The resulting processed grain lacks fatty acids, which prevents rancidity and allows for long-term storage–but it also lacks the core nutritional value of fiber, proteins, and other vitamins/nutrients. Whole grains contain the same proportions of the bran, germ, and endosperm as the grain pre-processing; whether cracked, split, or ground, the grains maintain their nutritional value. The health benefits of a diet rich in whole grains has been documented to decrease blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Sparked by these alarming public health implications combined with a hike in the price of grains on the global commodity market in 2008, regional grain economies have been developing. Some involved parties include farmers, millers, distributors, and bakers. Groundbreaking efforts to build these networks across the country include: Community Grains in the San Francisco Bay Area, Somerset Economic Development Corp. in central Maine, North Carolina Organic Bread Flour Project in Asheville, NC, and Northeast Organic Wheat in upstate New York. Many of these efforts focus on regional grain varietals, community education, regional economic growth, and job creation.

Join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks at Oliveto Restaurant in Oakland as we discuss the local grain economy in California from the economic, infrastructural, and public health perspectives.

Date: Sunday, June 17th
Time: 1:30 to 3:00 PM
Location: Oliveto Restaurant (5665 College Avenue, Oakland, CA)
Price: $10 at Brown Paper Tickets
Note: A limited amount of sliding scale tickets may be available at the door, dependent upon capacity.

Bob Klein has been a broadcast television producer, executive producer, national program consultant, and developer/syndicator. He’s currently co-owner of Oliveto Restaurant and founder of Community Grains.

Craig Pondsford is founder of Artisan Bakery, winner of the Specialty Breads category of France’s 1996 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (an international, invitational, artisan baking competition held in Parish every three to four years). He recently opened Pondsford’s Place Bakery & Innovation Center in San Rafael, CA.

Doug Mosel, founder of the Mendocino Grain Project, grows a variety of grains and lentils in the Ukiah Valley. Whole grains and stone-milled flour are distributed locally through a CSA-style grain-share. Doug is a member of the Mendocino Organic Network and host of a monthly radio show, the “Agriculture and Ecology Hour.”

The newly established farm on UC Berkeley-owned Gill Tract will soon be empty. At the time of this writing, it is surrounded by riot police from at least 8 different UC Campus police forces. Nine have been arrested. This is the end to a standoff that began on Friday, when the police blocked farmers from entering or leaving, forcing supporters to toss food and water over the fence. In addition, the UC has filed suit against 14 individuals and 150 additional unnamed persons.

The farm began with a celebration of life, the planet and the people’s right help determine the fate of a place owned by a state-supported institution. Three weeks ago on, Earth Day, a group of 200 volunteers occupied the Gill Tract. The multi-generational crew planted two acres of vegetables, including a children’s garden, and began to offer workshops on sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty. A small encampment sprang up, but organizers insisted it be limited only to those doing the everyday work of maintaining the farm.

The land in question is a 10-acre parcel that comprises the last remaining class 1 agricultural soil in the East Bay. Despite years of community action favoring the creation of a research site specializing in urban and organic agriculture, the land is slated to be sold for development. 

Even as the occupation phase ends, the farm represents a cross-pollination between the food movement’s embrace of sustainable and urban agriculture and the occupy movement’s emphasis on direct action and democratic control of resources.

This occupation is a direct confrontation with a university that, according to the occupiers, has long ignored its public mandate in the pursuit of profit. It is an attempt to seize a piece of land that is publicly owned in name only, and use it for the public good. It is an exercise in land reform, demanding that “farmland is for farming,” and insisting that because farming this land is the right thing to do, the occupiers have every right to do it. It remains to be seen whether some kind of agreement might allow the farming to continue once the occupation has ended. The land is currently used by UC researchers. Some explore agroecology while others conduct basic research on gene mutations that, if successful, will likely aid the development of GMO crops. But the tract is large enough that the occupy farm could remain while that research is conducted.

Occupy the farm is one of a handful of efforts that can reenergize a food movement that has become satisfied with its own success. Supporters of the food movement have become content to “vote with our dollars” in favor of local and organic alternatives, for small farms and farmers markets. But for all the good they do, these vibrant alternatives have not confronted the system head on. No farmers market places limits on the power of corporate agribusiness. No community sponsored agriculture program interferes with industrial farming’s ability to exert its influence on the way that agriculture is governed. Alternatives build power, but they cannot seize power from the systems that currently hold it.

Occupy the Farm represents a new way forward for the food movement, one that moves beyond support for alternatives to confront an important player in the industrial food system.  It’s a chance to vote, not with our dollars, but with our voices, for the kind of agriculture we want to create and the kind of society we want to be.

Here are some actions that Occupy the Farm has asked for in support:

Sign the online petition:  Show the UC Berkeley administration that you support the vision of Occupy the Farm – and call on them to stop police action so that the farmers may continue to farm!  Click here for the petition.

If you are an organization or group that wants to support: Endorse the collective letter of support, being signed by organizations, alliances and groups nation-wide. To sign on, please email occupythefarmletter@gmail.com.

Take more land, wherever you live: Wherever community needs are not being fulfilled and traditional avenues of change have failed, take space at the required scale to meet these needs. Occupy. Make Productive. Contest the Title.   

Stay updated:
–Twitter: @OccupyFarm
–Facebook: Occupy the Farm –Sign up for text message alerts if you’re local: Text “gilltractfarm” to 41411.
–Email list: send a message to GillTractFarm@riseup.net with “listserve” in the subject line to be added to the email list.

Donate to the Farm: Click here to find a link to their online donations page, as well as a current list of needed materials.

Learn more: www.OccupyTheFarm.org

We all know that “Every Day is Earth Day” and many environmentalists feel that their eating habits are their daily affirmation of a commitment to the planet. But what does it look like to take action for the environment, beyond the fork? There are many options, of course, but one particularly inspirational tactic manifested this past Earth Day in Albany, CA.

On April 22, a week after the International Day of Peasant Struggle, hundreds of Bay Area food sovereignty activists and community members broke the locks on a huge piece of urban agricultural land, tore up mustard weeds, and planted veggies. “Occupy the Farm” was organized as an occupy-style protest, including tent encampments and a “farmers assembly,” but with one very meaningful difference: This act of “moral obedience” (AKA civil disobedience) was the direct outgrowth of years of neighborhood organizing around the piece of land in question.

The “Gill Tract” is a 10-acre parcel that has been owned by University of California, Berkeley since 1928. The university’s founding as a land grant college made the purchase of this Class 1 agricultural land an obvious choice for experimentation, and for years much of the property was used for biological and chemical pest control research. By the late 1990s, however, the future of the site was unclear, and UC began seeking other uses.

Then came the formation of the Bay Area Coalition for Urban Agriculture (BACUA), composed of UC professors in the College of Natural Resources, food justice and sustainability organizations, and local citizens. They petitioned UC to consider a proposal to develop the site into a community-focused educational farm showcasing sustainable practices. According to their mission, “The center would conduct fundamental technical, economic, and sociological research and education into ways cities can create food systems that serve citizens and the environment well through localized, economically healthy and ecologically sustainable production and distribution.”

The UC administration completely ignored this effort (and many similar efforts: see here and here) and instead made plans to sell development rights to various interests, including Whole Foods Market and a for-profit home for the elderly. This move might be a surprise for someone under the impression that a public institution’s mandate is to serve the public, not private interests. But understanding the force of “neoliberalism” on governance in the past 40 years means that we instead can expect such acts: governments are now expected to solve societal problems with increasingly austere budgets, and to turn to entrepreneurship (like the sales or rental of their assets) to bolster those budgets. Privatization and the dismantling of public programs in favor of “public-private partnerships” are only logical outcomes of this condition. Austerity (seen in reduced state funding for UC and resulting tuition increases) combines with deregulation (which led to the most recent recession) and the consolidation of corporate power within the government to create the neoliberal framework.

“Occupy the Farm” poses an alternative framework: Food sovereignty. Instead of profit seeking as the ultimate factor in decision-making around land use, food sovereignty puts public benefit in the foreground. Instead of distant bureaucracies headed by neoliberal capitalist heroes like Richard Blum (i.e., the UC Regents), food sovereignty demands local and democratic control over our public institutions. And instead of a historically and logistically impossible division of “government” on one side and “markets” on the other, food sovereignty promotes a market that is accountable and humane because it is built up from the lives and decisions of those who are affected by it. This may all sound very theoretical, but land occupations like the effort to Take Back the Tract make these ideas real, immediate, tangible, and imaginable.

Discourses of “growth” and “development” on the world scale are mirrored in fights like the one over the Gill Tract. Like World Bank and IMF promotion of a constantly growing world economy and the supposed “trickle down” of benefits from neoliberal policies, UC apologists are likely to react to the Gill Tract takeover by arguing that selling the land is the most “reasonable” act, and one that will benefit the public…eventually.

They will demonize the protestors as much as they can, belittling their image, intent, or naiveté–much like neoliberals belittle “protectionist” or “socialist” government moves (see the Economist’s recent critique of Argentina renationalizing its previously privatized oil company). If neoliberalism myopically seeks to grow markets, its opponents push for real development: of democracy, equality, and environmental health, and yes, of markets which can coexist with these values. We could attempt, as the BACUA did, to petition those in command to support development over growth. But as the Occupy Farmers decided, waiting around for powerful people to “do the right thing” can be a fools’ errand and at times it takes people rising up in powerful acts of disobedient love to force the hand of defensive elites.

In this particular case, UC elites in question are already reeling from many recent losses of legitimacy: A massive student movement perpetually protests their fee increases and union busting; their mishandling of these protests with overly zealous police violence reaps world and official condemnation; reports on the Regents’ financial conflicts of interest breed further distrust; and the general occupy movement has put the one percent on the defensive. Combined with the thoughtful planning that went into the Earth Day action (and the clear community support for it), UC’s hands have been relatively tied, and its only retaliatory act thus far has been to shut off the new farm’s water supply. This is itself a powerful show of how an occupation can be daring, illegal, inspiring, and strategic; challenging the power of a delegitimized elite while building up power from below.

Land takeovers have been more common in parts of the global South, and Occupy the Farm was enacted in solidarity with La Via Campesina, an international peasant’s movement whose largest organizational member, the Landless Peasant Movement (MST) of Brazil, has settled over 150,000 families on land expropriated from that country’s largest landholders. The action can also be linked to the struggles of independent farmers in Honduras (who took land this past week, in a political move that ties in to their already-pressing concern for the reintroduction of their democratically elected president who was deposed in a coup 2 years ago).

The Berkeley occupation may seem anomalous for it having occurred in a first world country. People have said these kinds of actions couldn’t work here: After all, we lack the peasant population of most third world countries, and we are stricken with a deep cultural commitment to the sanctity of private property. Less than one percent of the U.S. population is full time farmers. Many Americans when they hear about the Gill Tract action will probably be incapable of seeing beyond “trespassing.”

Still, no matter how important property rights are to society, their primacy must be challenged if we are to achieve a sustainable future. With such extensive control of the global food system by profit-minded corporate conglomerates, it’s an act of faith to expect them to suddenly prioritize environmental, consumer, or worker concerns. It’s equally naïve to expect our public institutions to stand up to those corporate interests, considering how deeply vested the neoliberal ideology is, and how completely beholden elected officials are to moneyed interests.

Occupying the Farm is a valuable tactical next step for the Occupy Movement, the Food Movement, and all those who care about creating a just, sustainable, and democratic life for our children. Let’s continue to occupy the food system in creative, loving, challenging, and unexpected ways.

UPDATE: Occupy the Farm is having an open house April 28-29. More details here.

Photo: David Id

With widespread support by almost 60 organizations and businesses who have already written letters to the California legislature, including Bay Area institutions La Cocina, Garden for the Environment and Rainbow Grocery, the legislation was the subject of the Kitchen Table Talks discussion at 18 Reasons, co-hosted by SPUR. Richard Lee, the Director of Environmental Health Regulatory Programs at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and Christina Oatfield, Food Policy Director at the Sustainable Economies Law Center–which introduced the bill–joined Simley in discussing the implications of the legislation on California’s growing number of food entrepreneurs.

A Climate for Entrepreneurship

The California Homemade Food Act, introduced in February by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, frames itself as a response to the prevalence of obesity, lack of access to nutritional food, and power of small businesses to supplement income and create jobs in igniting our economy. In doing so, it creates a new classification system to define a “cottage food operation.” Establishing this new “cottage food operation” addresses the barriers to entry for a food entrepreneur by exempting them from the existing Sherman Law, which regulates the manufacture, sale, labeling and advertising activities related to food, drugs, devices and cosmetics, and the California Retail Food Code, which regulates the health and safety standards for retail food facilities.

For a craft food entrepreneur, for whom AB 1616 would allow to sell non-potentially hazardous foods to the public out of their home kitchen, the largest barrier to entry lies in the cost and logistics of working in a commercial kitchen space. As Simley relayed, graduating from the home kitchen is not something that you do until you are “physically, mentally or financially ready.” When her artisanal jam company moved from her home kitchen in Oakland to a commercial space at La Cocina, it required huge adjustments to scale up production properly and feel comfortable making food with new equipment in a new space, surrounded by the bustle of other food entrepreneurs.

Young food movement activists may be idealistic but we are not flower children. We are process and results-oriented; we may criticize, but also we learn from successful business models. We’re comfortable with money, know how to network and are handy with a spreadsheet.

Three years ago, I was organizing protests at UC Berkeley. Now I’m at my laptop, speaking with Camilla Bustamante, a Northern New Mexico College Dean.  She’s enthusiastically telling me about a student-run, local foods cafe that has just opened at her campus.

In January 2010, CoFED (The Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive) trained Jeff Ethan Genauer, a student at Northern New Mexico College, at our Training the Trainers retreat. For 10 days, he and a group of 5 other organizers huddled together around a wood stove and wifi router in a farmhouse in Sebastopol and learned the basics of how to open a cooperative food business on college campuses. Since then, he’s been hard at work doing financial planning and market research and now, with the help of his campus, he’s successfully opened a student-run cafe. And he even taped the only-slightly-awkward ribbon-cutting.

La Tiendita (“The little store”) sells healthy, local breakfast and lunch and provides meaningful employment to 5 students. It is currently run “collaboratively”, according to Bustamante, but there is interest in transitioning it to more of a formal student cooperative, though it’s unclear whether students, or workers, or both, would be the cooperative’s members. The produce for the Tiendita is either grown onsite at the Sostenga farm or purchased from local farmers. This is an unusual project for a college that is rural, known mainly for its athletics and is not filled with affluent foodie types.

It’s not just happening in New Mexico of course. At UC Santa Barbara, they’ve gotten administrative buy-in for a solar-powered food truck, at the University of Washington-Seattle they’ve gotten rent-free cafe space and are negotiating for a prime space in their student union, at NYU they’ve gotten funding for a food cart. This summer, some 80 new student co-op organizers will gather for seven days on the West and East coasts to re-”inspiregize” and learn basic organizing, fundraising, campaigning and planning skills.

Our generation of food movement leaders gets how complex the food system is–and we are committed to addressing the whole, messy picture. These projects are educating and taking action on issues many foodies would rather ignore, including issues of race and class, of corporate control and workers’ rights. And it’s definitely not just CoFED that sees things in this way.

I was privileged to join the Real Food Challenge leadership for a weekend national planning retreat last year. In between creating next year’s plan for shifting campus dining dollars towards real food purchasing, we took a couple hours to reflect on privilege and how it manifests in the organization. It was simply that integral to the work being done. Youth-led hunger organizations are seeing the connections as well–FeelGood’s student leaders don’t just want a world without hunger, they want water that is clean to drink and workers to have jobs with dignity.

To me, it’s clear that this is where the food movement is going–towards a justice orientation–and that’s because this is where the energy is with young people. The reason CoFED has been able to get over 250 students to commit themselves to starting cooperatives on 37 campuses is not just that students are excited about good, healthy food or starting their own business (they are though!).

Our generation is coming of age with the starkest income disparity since the 1920’s, with climate change already making major impacts on our environment, with student debt creeping towards $1 trillion, with progress on race and gender issues stagnating. We did not create this mess. We are pissed, so we are connecting the dots and we are skilling-up.

When our student leaders say, “I’m starting a co-op”, they are saying they find the individualism and alienation that defines much of our economy and our culture unacceptable. They are channeling common sense from kindergarden teachers, like that we should clean up after ourselves and share.

When CoFEDerates do our work, we are creating systems that acknowledging our interdependence–with those people we would easily ignore, with a future planet that our children will inhabit, between our health and what we put in our bodies. If you’ll excuse the pun, we’re creating a world that is “co-fed.”

Bustamante, of the NNMC cafe, says it is doing so well that they are expanding to a second cafe and considering converting the rest of the school’s cafe services. With this success, CoFED as an organization is looking at longterm growth and sustainability. As I write this blog, we’re wrapping up a $125,000 challenge to find 212 monthly donors at $12 a month (we’re at 184 right now, you can still give to help us reach our total!).   We’ll continue to meet the challenges ahead of us and keep growing–as will our allies in the young food movement.

Photo: The managers of “La Tiendita Cafe”

Hats off to this mother of three who got fed up and took charge. Thirteen years ago, Sofía Gatica’s newborn died of kidney failure after being exposed to pesticides in the womb. After the despair came anger, then a fierce determination to protect the children in her community and beyond.

Today, she’s one of six grassroots leaders from around the world receiving the Goldman Environmental Prize, in recognition of her courageous—and successful—efforts.

Pesticide Action Network will host Sofía as she travels to San Francisco for tonight’s ceremony and celebration.

Pesticides drift from GE soy fields

Sofía lives in Ituzaingó Annex, a working-class neighborhood of 6,000 bordering commercial soy farms in the province of Córdoba in Argentina.

Argentina is the third largest exporter of soybeans in the world. It is also the third largest producer of genetically engineered (GE) crops worldwide, following closely behind the U.S. and neighboring Brazil. The explosion of GE soy production in Argentina has brought with it dramatic increases in pesticide use, and specifically aerial spraying of Monsanto’s weedkiller, RoundUp. Spraying of the antiquated insecticide endosulfan was also common until this year. Its use is now banned in Argentina as it moves toward a global phaseout under the Stockholm treaty.

RoundUp, long touted by Monsanto as all but harmless, has recently been linked to increased risk of birth defects when mothers are exposed during pregnancy. Endosulfan has also been linked to health harms in children, including birth defects, reproductive harm and autism.

Local mothers take charge

Here’s where Sofía’s story becomes truly inspirational.

After she lost her newborn, she realized that such losses were all too common in her small community. Building on Argentina’s powerful history of movements led by mothers, Sofía worked with other concerned moms to go door to door collecting stories about health problems in each family—essentially conducting the community’s first-ever epidemiological study.

Despite few resources and very real threats, Sofía led the Mothers of Ituzaingó to concrete victory.

“The Mothers of Ituzaingó” discovered the community’s cancer rate to be 41 times the national average. Rates of neurological problems, respiratory diseases and infant mortality were also astonishingly high.

The group then launched a “Stop the Spraying!” campaign, leading demonstrations and publishing materials warning the community about the dangers of pesticides.

Their efforts bore fruit. In 2008, Argentina’s president ordered an investigation of the health impacts of pesticides in Ituzaingó Annex; the resulting official study corroborated their informal door-to-door research. Sofía and the Mothers of Ituzaingó then won a municipal “buffer zone” ordinance, prohibiting aerial spraying less than 2,500 meters from homes.

Honoring leadership & courage

Each year since 1989, the Goldman Prize has honored grassroots leaders across the globe, unsung heroes who are campaigning for environmental justice and sustainability in their local communities. This global recognition of Sofia’s work couldn’t be more deserved.

Despite few resources and very real threats—including being held at gunpoint in her own home—Sofía led the Mothers of Ituzaingó to concrete victory: on-the-ground protections for the children in their community. The group also raised the profile of the broader issue of the health harms of pesticides to the national level, making room for a push for safer and more sustainable approaches to agriculture.

Sofía is now working with mothers in other Argentine communities, looking for ways to expand protections to families across the country.

Originally published by PANNA

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.

As a health writer who often talks about the links between what gets grown and what gets put on the plate, I consider myself an advocate. I want to see people eating good food in close proximity to their homes. It never occurred to me that walking to the store—no matter what you go there to get–could get you murdered. And as a person who cares about justice, I never thought that in 2012, our system would care so little about seeking justice for this boy. He was somebody’s son. As the mother of a young black male who often walks to the convenience store by our house, my heart is broken. 

As a person who wants equity and justice for everybody, I am just mad. But there is a teachable moment here. We who work hard in the food movement often work in the silos of our own passions and forget that justice and equity move across sectors. Place matters. Race matters. Humanity matters.

The other day a young woman I know who is righteous in the food and environmental movement was upset that organic produce wasn’t getting the media attention that she thought it deserved. She wanted me to write an expose on apples. She said that it was the real social justice issue of the year. And it was also an hour after I learned about Trayvon Martin. “Why aren’t you mad as hell about the fact that all the good organic food never makes it into poor communities?” she asked.

There are a lot of things I want to see happen. I want kids to have healthy meals at school and at their homes. I want them to be educated so that they can compete in the workforce. I want there to be places that offer workers a living wage and health benefits. I want kids to be able to walk to the store to get a snack and not get killed. I want law enforcement to care enough about all our kids to protect them—even when they buy Skittles. And, I want them to have access to apples.

I still might write about apples. But I also want folks in the food movement to care about the people we want to see eating those apples. I want people to see that equity and advocacy are bigger than an apple.

Over lots of conversations with folks who are trying to make a difference, whether it is through the food we eat, the wages we earn, or where we lay our heads at night, I have learned about the notion of being a change agent. I discovered that we all come to it on our own paths, sometimes deliberately and strategically and for others it is accidental and surprising. Some are trained and groomed for the work of change, others like Trayvon Martin end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sometimes, sadly, young black men can become change agents by walking to the wrong convenience store in the wrong city, at the wrong moment.

There is a lot of work for us all to do together. If the food movement  wants to make real progress, we must be vigilant in addressing the truly uncomfortable things that hold us all back. We have to tear down the silos to begin to deal with the constructs of poverty, racism, and inequities wherever we see them—in the food system or in a young man with a hoodie. It all matters.

The Just Label It (JLI) Campaign announced today that a record-breaking one million Americans of all political persuasions have called on the FDA to label genetically engineered (GE) foods. Today, March 27, is the date that the FDA is required to respond to the petition. It took JLI and its more than 500 partner organizations less than 180 days to accumulate an historic number of public comments—a testament to the power of collective voices to demand our right to know what’s in our food. (I’ve written about the campaign before here, here, and here.)

The campaign also announced today a new national survey revealing that more than nine out of 10 Americans across the political spectrum supports labeling food that has been genetically engineered. This new infographic is a compelling visual that shares the results of the survey.

New Survey Results: Motherhood, Apple Pie and GE Food Labeling

Voter support for GE-foods labeling in the U.S. is nearly unanimous, according to the political opinion survey on GE food labeling conducted by The Mellman Group on behalf of JLI. Explained pollster Mark Mellman, “Few topics other than motherhood and apple pie can muster over 90 percent support, but labeling GE-foods is one of those few views held almost unanimously.” The survey found nearly all Democrats (93% favor, 2% oppose), Independents (90% favor, 5% oppose) and Republicans (89% favor, 5% oppose) in favor of labeling. The study also revealed that support for labeling is robust and arguments against it have little sway.

In the era of pink slime, BPA in our soup and deadly melons, we have a right more than ever to know about what’s in our food. The FDA needs to restore confidence in our food and our right to know about the food we eat and feed our families. It’s time for the FDA to give Americans the same rights held by citizens in over 40 nations, including all of our major trade partners, to know whether our foods have been genetically modified.

Stay tuned as the campaign now works to make sure that the FDA and Washington knows that one million Americans are watching to make sure they deliver.

I have a weird fascination with inventions, and often wonder what the beginning of something was. What led to someone coming up with stained glass? Or what about an alarm clock? These are simple creations that pale in comparison with even more complex items that we also use without much thought…dishwashers? Copy machines? This computer? Maybe I should have pursued a career in engineering, but more likely my preoccupation with these inventions is due to the fact that I have little understanding of them. It seems that that disconnect between the things we use and depend on and how they function leads to a pretty common level of frustration. The rise in DIY projects and interest that we are seeing these days surely has to do with that frustration leading to a push for self-reliance.

I think it also has to do with a larger disconnect, one that has moved us away from community minded information sharing and collaboration. We have less and less opportunity in this modern world to wave down a neighbor with a question about chicken husbandry or how to fix a broken well pump. Instead, we jump on the Internet and Google the answer, hoping that the source we choose to trust is reputable and fact-based. The National Young Farmers’ Coalition (NYFC) has launched a project for the today’s sustainable farming community that brings the best of both worlds together. FarmHack taps the same age-old premise of learning directly from others in a similar community while creating innovative open source sharing technologies to reach small farmers around the globe.

Co-Founder of FarmHack, Severine von Tscharner Flemming (and Founder of The Greenhorns), says that the idea “grew out of a frustration of using 1940’s tractors that were busted” and then finding that the new technology available to fix or replace them was based on chemical and energy dependent industries, not ecological stewardship. “FarmHack is a core complement to reclaiming a more bio-intensive, resilient, prosperous, locally oriented, appropriate scale to farming,” she says, and it is driven by the needs of farmers but built by reciprocal relationships among people with various applicable skill sets. That means, not only farmers but hackers, makers, engineers, even robot builders; all becoming allies in developing opportunities to monetize ideas, create commerce, and to share blueprints for the future.

This Tools Repository on the newly revamped website features clear descriptions, plans and instruction on creating or fixing a variety of implements. It can be utilized and contributed to by anyone who may have more information about any particular item. Although it is still in Beta mode, this development offers tons of potential in assisting folks trying to fix, make or find certain farm tools and innovations. What started with solar tractors moved into wool and chicken processing equipment, then led to securing a grant that will create technology for text messages to be sent when your greenhouse gets too hot. One of the newest inventions shared a recent FarmHack event was a bike powered root washer.

Mainly, though, the key issue to what NYFC and FarmHack are working towards is that a new generation of farmers step up to the plate. It is essential that we have capable, viable, passionate people growing our food who in turn, encapsulate those very same traits into what we eat. There are so many hurdles in the way, from funding to policy to access, that make these kind of collaborative sharing networks that much more important as we look ahead. In essence, as Severine points out, FarmHack “is also a cultural project of re-evaluating what is valuable…to rebuild our economy.”