The surprise darling of the Community Food Security Coalition conference last May was a little-known city councilman from Cleveland. He spoke fervently about his city, a city of flourishing community gardens, backyard bee hives, and chicken coops, a city where all farmers’ markets accept food stamps, where schools get discounts for sourcing local food, and where both trans-fats and smoking on playgrounds are banned. His name? Joe Cimperman.

A 4th term Democratic city councilman whose parents hail from Slovenia, Cimperman is a vocal advocate of community gardens, which create community and self-sufficiency. He told of coming together with community leaders, public health officials, doctors, and foundations to pass the Healthy Cleveland Initiative — a series of audacious policy goals that will improve the health of Clevelanders for years to come. (That is, if Ohio’s Republican-majority legislature doesn’t pre-emptively squash them.) He ended with this rallying cry: “Why are we in food policy? Because we want our friends to live longer!”

What are Cleveland’s secrets for becoming a food justice utopia? I recently interviewed Cimperman to find out.

How did you get involved in food justice issues?
It was Marge Misak at the Community Land Trust, Kristen Trolio, who is a community organizer and a farmers’ market pioneer, and Morgan Taggart from OSU land extension. In about 2002, they came to me about the garden on west 45^th Street, St. Paul’s Patch, asking me how we could preserve both the garden and the housing next door. The developer was working behind everyone’s backs and told the community gardeners that it was city-owned land and zoned residential. He wanted to turn the garden into a parking lot and evict the family next door.

I had barely been on the council for a term — I had no clue about anything. They said, “The only way you’re going to change anything is if you change the zoning code.” I thought, well this sounds like a great idea, and these are people who I admire and trust. I’m learning from them. So we did it.

So all of a sudden people in the community started saying, “Hey, what about this? And what the hell are you doing about this?”  It was the education of a Councilman. They started to pull me under their wings and say, “You don’t have to think about this now, but this is something you’re going to have to think about in five years.” We’re servants so we have to fix these things.

So, Cleveland really was the first city to pass an urban farm zoning law?

Well, we passed it in 2007. The only way to create justice in this situation was to create a permanent garden there — change the zoning of the community garden. So we start calling around — Portland, Boston, Seattle. No other cities of any size had such a law. That’s when we wrote the legislation ourselves. It ensures that no one can rip out the community’s investment overnight. After that, community gardens would come forward and say, “We’d like to zone our garden this way, too.” People think twice now about threatening gardeners because it’s there.

What other efforts is Cleveland taking to ensure that all residents have access to affordable healthy food?

A funny thing happened on the way to the community garden. There are so many people out there doing urban gardening and agriculture that it’s changed the tenor of the city. So much so that the City of Cleveland has said, “This is important enough for us to change laws. Now the city gives out $3,000 forgivable loans to market gardeners — more and more people are keeping their own chickens and bees. There are 250 community gardens that we know of and we think that there are an additional 75 that operate with some support from the city.

There’s also a strong agricultural ring around Cleveland and that has yielded a great farmers’ market situation. Amanda Dempsey, who is now managing Cleveland’s West Side Market, is the reason we’re having an international Public Markets Conference in Cleveland. I’m really proud of what Cleveland is doing.

All of Cleveland’s farmers’ markets now accept food stamps (aka SNAP benefits), right? That’s impressive. How did that come about?

John Mitterholzer at the Gund Foundation has a real passion for social agricultural justice. He came to me and said, “I’d like to fund a program to give people on food stamps an incentive to shop at farmers’ markets.”  We meet, come up with an idea on four specific farmers’ markets which were willing to accept both EBT (the debit card for food stamps), and a $5 matching program. In some cases, the number of food stamp shoppers doubled. Then we did a study with John, on the zip codes around the farmers’ markets and showed the amount of money available if everybody with food stamps and WIC used the farmers’ market.

Farmers were like, “You mean, I get to go home with an empty truck? And I get to sell to people who really need this food?”

Everyone agreed it was a good idea but it had been kicked around for a decade. With the Gund Foundation and people in policy and politics like me backing it, it was hard for farmers’ markets to say no.

[Today, 14 of Cleveland’s 15 farmers’ markets accept food stamps and 13 are part of the EBT Incentive Program.]

You gave a rousing talk in May at the CFSC food policy conference in Portland, Oregon. Portland is often cited as a model for farm-to-school and urban agriculture. What can Cleveland take from Portland’s example?

I was out on Sauvie Island to visit Sauvie Island Organics and the Food Works youth gardening program. I saw four school buses pull up while I was there. If you want to educate kids in every way, that’s how you do it. I want to figure out how to do that in Cleveland. The conference was great — we got so many ideas and talked to so many people. There are many programs on the horizon in Portland — beautiful new public housing projects like New Columbia, which has a community garden called Seeds of Harmony. They’re opening up corner stores with affordable, healthy food like Village Market.

There’s a debate about whether or not it’s necessary to bring full-service grocery stores to food deserts. Some in the food justice world think you can you just bypass the big box grocery stores in favor of community gardens and family-run bodegas (that are stocked with lots of fresh produce). What are your thoughts on this?

In the 90’s, there were areas of Cleveland where there were 100 blocks where you couldn’t get fresh produce. The Department of Economic Development is working on changing that — they’re giving huge subsidies to local grocery store chains such as Dave’s (a family-owned chain with great labor relations).

Now we’re doing the bottoms-up approach. We have a pharmacy, Sheliga Drug, that’s started carrying a line of produce. They’re supported by the Ohio State extension. There’s a hardware store in a Latino community that has bins of apples, bananas, everything else. We’re definitely not where we need to be — but my opinion is that if we start from the grassroots, do the community gardens, family-owned shops and so on, somewhere heaven and earth will meet.

Tell me about the Healthy Cleveland Resolution.  What part of it are you most excited about?  What’s going to be the most controversial aspect?

We are going to have Dr. Anthony Iton, the doctor from Place Matters, come back to Cleveland, and we’re going to do a day-long session for thought leaders: politicians, foundation people, corporate folks.

What I’m really excited about is that our school system has shown itself to be very interested in food justice. They want to help us achieve a garden per five blocks, by reinstating this program that came from the Victory Garden movement. Cleveland was the leader in school gardens nationally back then. There’s a new book about it called Cleveland School Gardens by Joel Mader.

We’re also working with cafeterias, which are continuing their progression of sourcing healthier food.

The chief purchaser for the Cleveland Public School District was nominated for something called the Walnut Award. His name is Regis Balaban. He has figured out how to get sugared cereal out of the schools by getting wholesome cereal with skim milk and fresh fruit. He said to me, “Please don’t stop passing legislation.” I said, “It’s kind of funny you’re saying that to me, because you’re exempt from the stuff I’ve been pushing through.” But then he said, “I can use what you’re doing to force my providers to provide us with better food.” For me in terms of food justice, that’s kind of the big.

At the CFSC Conference, you said that the life expectancy discrepancy between an African American community in Cleveland and the white community was 24 years. Fully half of those years were attributable to smoking and diet.

In neighborhoods with community gardens there is less crime. There are more people attending school. We have a high-rise in downtown Cleveland that’s 22 floors. There are about 24 seniors who live there — mostly African American. They’re petitioning me to purchase containers because they want a container garden on the rooftop. They left their homes, they like walking to the theatre without the burden of a mortgage.

It’s not specific to one community, though. The fact of the matter is that the neighborhood that has the 24 year disparity, Hough, is almost 100 percent African American. There are a lot of other issues, of course: violence, the ability to access health care.

As you and I speak, the Ohio state senate has introduced legislation into the budget banning the city of Cleveland from banning trans-fats. Let us die early! Let our children be morbidly obese! They admitted that their restaurant industry wrote the legislation.  So now the battle for food justice has begun.

If the state senate does this, it’ll strike down Cleveland’s law. [Last month, that's exactly what the Ohio state senate did, tucking the provision into a 5,000-page budget law. Cimperman has said he'll challenge it in the courts.]

It’s ridiculous! The trans-fat ban came from doctors and public health professionals. The four major health systems in the state  — Cleveland Clinic, St. Vincent’s, MetroHealth, and University Hospitals — have all signed on to the Healthy Cleveland Resolution. The hospital systems are the number one job provider in Ohio. How do you say to these hospitals, “You don’t know what you’re talking about”?

I may not understand trans-fats, but why the hell is the government telling locals what we can and cannot do?  They haven’t found a way to ban community gardens.

Here’s my gut feeling. What’s going to happen when those 300 gardens that we have in Cleveland double? When in 2020 the city of Cleveland will have a community garden within five blocks of every resident? All of a sudden, local grocery stores are working with local farms. What’s going to happen when the hoop houses start to provide food three seasons a year? What happens with canning? What happens when agribusiness starts to see this? We have a multinational food production company here in Cleveland. I was at a meeting a couple months ago and some folks from this company started asking me about local food. I think we’re starting to get people’s interest. We’re not a threat yet, but what happens when we become a threat?

What can other cities learn from Cleveland when it comes to food justice?

We let the policy be informed by the practice. We have a lot of people who have been doing this for generations. There’s recognition of that: the importance of learning from our elders. Also, we all really like each other. We enjoy each others’ company. Entire weddings are filled with friends and guests who they meet from within the food justice world. Regardless of your political background or racial background or your proficiency in English, there’s something about the gardens that brings people together!

Community gardens just make us a nicer city. They make us share more, pay more attention to each others’ kids, understand each others’ cultures more. There are just so many ancillary benefits to community gardens — we can’t imagine.

The business community is also excited about the hope of urban agriculture and food justice. It means so many things in terms of employment and in terms of people having a purpose and getting out and getting to know your neighbors. I think if we can keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to be in a really good spot.

Originally published on The Faster Times

Miles Gordon is the Founder and Project Coordinator for The Gardens Project of North Coast Opportunities which he started in 2007 in Ukiah, Mendocino County, California. His inspiration for The Gardens Project began 10 years ago as a result of a local hunger assessment. It revealed that Mendocino County needed more access to food which inspired Miles to help organize the Cleveland Community Garden – now Ukiah’s oldest and largest. As a former teacher who worked with school gardens, Miles noticed that some struggled, competing for resources. He saw a real need for two things: networking existing gardens so they could share resources and expertise while simultaneously, and rapidly, developing access to new gardens.

In the last three years, The Gardens Project has helped develop 16 new gardens and network over 65 in Mendocino County. These include gardens at schools, senior centers and those in the community at large. Miles and his wonderful Americorps VISTA volunteers also work on farmer development and rebuilding the food system on many levels.

CE: What issues have you been focused on?

MG: Empowerment. Empowering local communities through food. Access to land, organizing, facilitating community ownership of process, developing gardens, and empowering leadership by facilitation.

CE: What inspires you to do this work?

MG: Being in a community garden on a Sunday evening filled with families, tending gardens, talking story, sharing food, it’s beautiful. Whenever I need inspiration I go out the garden and I talk to people. It’s the community spirit and the feeling of joy that comes from connecting people back to the garden and their communities at the same time.

CE: What’s your overall vision?

MG: A community that has access on all levels, from backyards to neighborhood gardens to schools to cafeterias to farmers markets—that we’ve rebuilt the food system so people have control over their own food supply and therefore their own political system.

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

MG: The lastest one is the Monthly Review Journal. Now it’s a great issue on 21st century socialism in Latin American and about organizing from the bottom up. It’s all about bottom up!

The last good novel I read for an escape was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and on, the whole series.

CE: Who’s in your community?

MG: There’s a strong, mostly Mexican migrant community here that really make up the backbone of the local food movement and the gardens, who bring a recent tradition of farming and community spaces. There’s a lot of back-to-the-landers and second generation of back-to-the-landers from the 70s, with those values too. We have a strong tradition of ranchers and farmers that have grown pears and cattle and now grow wine grapes. There’s a dying timber industry and lot of people trying to figure out what’s next. And, a lot of people in between.

CE: What are your commitments?

MG: My kids, they are my biggest commitment and my greatest joy of commitment. It’s cliché, but another one is making the world a better place—and not just in my image, but in helping others realize their vision. I’m at a place in life where I’ve chosen the work I do. I’ve gone from being a full-time public school and college teacher to working longer and harder for less money but greater joy.

CE: What are your goals?

MG: For myself, for my kids, for my community, for where I go, to bring joy to humans in all their interesting manifestations. And, have that joy connected to this world we’re in right now. I try to make things less bad and more loving and joyous when possible. It comes with a lot of hard work, but it wouldn’t be as satisfying if it didn’t.

Professionally, my goal is to make myself obsolete by facilitating the change.

CE: What does change look like to you?

MG: Change looks like a lot of people, a lot of new people, and a lot more people getting involved with their destiny than previously. The more involved people are in shaping their destiny is what change looks like to me. It’s people speaking up. When people are activated and involved in what’s happening in their world, then change is happening. Otherwise someone else is in charge.

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

MG: A lot of listening and assessment. What do people want? If you ask the questions and open an opportunity, people have a good idea, in general, of what they want. So finding what the needs are. It’s connecting again to the resources. Community assessment. Knocking on doors, canvassing. And, facilitating the process to enact it. Connecting people to accessible land, figuring out legalities of land, who the players are, talking about the possibilities and setting a date to get to work and being committed to making those dates happen. Sometimes people just need an opportunity and a little cheerleading and off they go.

Then once they are started we can help facilitate leadership and organizational training too.

CE: What projects are affiliated with yours?

MG: Master Gardeners of the UC Cooperative Extension, School Nutrition Network, Network for a Healthy California, Head Start, the state pre-school system, local tribes, Family Resource Centers and gardens, local soup kitchens and their gardens, public health, all the cities in the county, lots of local businesses around materials and labor. And, the First 5 Commission, which focuses on children 0-5 and their health.

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

MG: One of our issues is scale since we are small and rural compared to many great urban projects. But, I love Friends of the Urban Forest in San Francisco because they have successfully brought on neighborhoods that take responsibility for their change, while simultaneously working with the city to create a viable program for developing urban forests. There’s a lot of ownership and accountability for those who want the trees.

I love the CFSC. They are doing what we’re talking about. They are networking and providing a national forum. They are active and showing we can do this locally, regionally, and nationally.

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

MG: I see us in a transition period and how long that lasts will be based on the global commodity system. We will gradually build because we reconnect people to their roots, and that’s too inspiring to let go. There are cracks in the global system and every disaster brings a window that we need to push through. And, it will require subsidies during the transition that support our work. I think we’ll always be in a process of struggle; that’s what makes life interesting.

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

MG: It needs to focus as much as possible on connecting on a local and regional basis with as many partners, agencies, and people. We shouldn’t see ourselves as an isolated piece of our policy and economy, but as an integral piece, because food connects to everything. So the more we make the connections between health, self-sufficiency, economy, etc. the stronger it becomes. It’s really about re-building, not building the local food system.

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

MG: Hanging out in an apple orchard on a beautiful, sunny, Fall day eating crunchy apples out of a tree.

On Tuesday, March 9th approximately fifty of the city’s gardeners, urban farmers, beekeepers, and strong allies met to pose and answer questions like these in hopes to develop cooperation between the different groups that make up San Francisco’s urban agriculture movement.

Similar meetings are happening in other cities. In Los Angeles, the Urban Farming Advocates recently formed to “legalize urban farming in the City of L.A.” and gardens in NY have worked cooperatively to save gardens, extend garden hours, and secure resources. The urban farming community in San Francisco is proactively coming together to create and steer a change that is growing in popularity, rather than to react to a threat or restriction.

In doing so, San Franciscans passionate about growing food and community have a rich documented history to learn from, starting with the 1975 San Francisco Community Congress, a two day conference of 1,000 representatives of “ virtually every San Francisco community.” The resulting document touches on school and community garden policy, issues discussed in more detail in the 1996 five-year Sustainability Plan for the City of San Francisco [PDF] which also considers city food procurement, fruit tree plantings in backyards, interim use agreements for urban farms, and access to healthy food.

As such, the discussions that happened on March 9th about policy, movement coordination, and food justice are not the first and are planned to continue. Discussions that included deciding how to manage the recent increase in volunteers ready to pick up a shovel and help out, identifying local, regional, and national political partners, the importance of defining an overall vision, and planning how to ensure that all San Franciscans interested in having a backyard kitchen garden can get one installed and learn the maintenance skills required.

It’s important as excitement over urban food production grows to listen to people who have built a wealth of experience in urban agriculture. Most San Franciscans want their city to be more green, both in color and in concept, and the clearest way to do this is to encourage and support the projects that are working and the people who have dedicated a lot of passion and thought as to how this city can be more self-sufficient. As Kevin Bayuk, a member of the San Francisco Permaculture Guild, noted in the Urban Permaculture Institute blog, “It may be that what is needed…is not only passionate individuals, acting with urgency, implementing diverse strategies…but also a wholistic strategy that connects and relates these projects and actions, helps prioritize and leverage energy, helps prevent burnout and expose opportunities to share resources and be more effective.” The resources are present, the people are present, the land is in greater abundance than many realize, know we just have to link up all three and let the collards, tomatoes, and friendships grow.

February 11, 2010: I’m sitting on the terrace of my temporary home in Rio, Casa Amarelinha in the Santa Teresa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, feeling remotely cool for the first time in over a week. It’s been hard to think much in this heat—we’ve been topping 110 degrees regularly this past week, in one of the worst heat waves Rio has seen in recent memory (to exacerbate what has been an unusually hot summer all around), with about 75% humidity. When the mercury rises to about 90 back in New York, everyone retreats into their air conditioned offices and apartments or flees to the beach or countryside. But here in Rio, life in the streets goes on in full force, despite the blazing sun. I am so grateful it does, for what life courses through the streets of this city! However, the oppressive weather has made my volunteer work challenging to bear, even for a seasoned farm gal.

Heat aside, my work has been rather disappointing all around, but also a tremendous lesson. The garden in which we are working is just over two years old. The half-acre plot sits right at the intersection of bohemian Santa Teresa and one of the surrounding favelas (an elegant word that masks its true meaning: sprawling slum). A group of impassioned volunteers from the community (residents, doctors, artists, longtime home gardeners, agronomists, concerned community members) came together to reclaim a vacant lot and turn it into a verdant oasis of food production and a place for residents to spend time outside (their homes are quite small and the favelas use up every patch of ground available for housing and walkways) and congregate. The photos of the garden it its first year are lovely—neat rows of greens and fruit tree saplings, smiling children holding freshly-harvested sweet potatoes, volunteers holding hands in a circle, discussing the work of the day. But now, with interest and support having waned over the last six months (as so often happens with community projects), the garden has gone practically to seed.

Most mornings are spent cutting back the vegetation in the blazing sun, preparing beds for plantings (some of which never take due to lack of rain and Rio’s frequent water system malfunctions), and cleaning out the debris that has accumulated over the months. There are two other Western women and I plus a Swedish post-doc. in urban ecology, Daniel, who is conducting an experiment in the garden and engaging in community issues and conducting interviews as well. Community residents pop in occasionally to buy a bunch of herbs or chat, often mocking the other volunteers and I as “gringos locos,” crazy foreigners come to work on this little plot of land.

I spent my first day at the garden brooding in frustration, wishing for the rapid pace and glory of planting, weeding and harvesting in a production atmosphere. But as I slowed and talked with Simone and Aureo, the community members who run the garden, a sense of acceptance settled upon me. As volunteers just passing through, we have to be careful where we offer our advice and ideas, how many initiatives we try to catalyze, and generally try to toe the fine line between imposing our own ideas and plans and offering up whatever assistance is asked by the community. I realized, if work that needs to be done is to clear the garden—to weed endlessly, repair fencing, rebuild raised beds destroyed by flash floods—then that is what we will do. It’s true, working at the horta communitarian (community garden) hasn’t been as productive or educational as I’d hoped agriculturally, but sometimes I’m caught by surprise at the enormous education to be gained by simply engaging with people with similar interests in a different cultural context; noticing the parallels and examining the divergences in our methodologies, our priorities, our ideals.

I know I will have much more to say on the subject of the garden in time, but some of it will have to wait, to marinate, develop. It’s certainly food for thought, though, to notice the remarkable similarities in community-based social projects here and in other places I’ve worked, and in particular to hear individuals’ thoughts about gardens and farms and their roles in struggling urban communities.

So although I’m not harvesting and distributing crate upon crate of gorgeous organic produce as I had hoped (although we do harvest the occasional papaya, malagueta pepper, and stunning Brazilian greens for ourselves and neighbors), I am in the throes of an important learning experience. “The work of the world is common as mud,” wrote Marge Piercy in her iconic poem “To Be of Use.” I am not, I must remind myself, here to revel in my own glory or to turn a project on its head. I am here to help, to be of use, to give with my sweat and my blisters and my time. To leave my ego behind and open myself to another context, other ways of doing and thinking. To build trust and relationships. That is where the impact and fodder for lasting change lies.

It’s obvious that Tricycle Gardens is the beating heart of Richmond, Virginia’s sustainable food movement. The 501c(3) touches every area of the local food system. Community gardens rise up out of vacant lots. Teachers appear at schools and community centers to teach kids about gardening and eating veggies, and classes on gardening and food preservation for adults are held regularly. Potlucks bring Richmonders together to eat local, seasonal produce. The success stories are numerous, with many more to come. So how and why has Tricycle Gardens succeeded in a city whose history and social landscape provide significant obstacles to progress in food justice?

To answer this question, let’s look at one their most successful projects involving a long-term partnership with the Neighborhood Resource Center (NRC), a community center serving a lower-income neighborhood. They offer after-school, preschool and adult education programs and Tricycle Gardens helped them design and build a raised-bed learning garden on what had previously been a patch of pavement. Now the NRC wants to use produce from the garden to supply an organic café located within the center and plans are in place to hire café cooks and staff to teach nutrition and use garden produce to provide healthy snacks for NRC kids. The center and the community around it have clearly made the garden its own while Tricycle Gardens maintains a presence through a weekly after-school gardening class for both children and adults, led by Allison Mesnard, their resident horticulturist.

Tricycle Gardens employs its staff and volunteer force to collaborate with communities all over Richmond, enabling gardeners to grow food and relationships in their own unique ways. “We’re drawing together the energy of the community towards making the entire city a better, friendly, more environmentally aware place through gardening and gatherings related to local food,” says director Lisa Taranto. The organization’s first project was a community garden in the diverse Church Hill neighborhood. Taranto lives in Church Hill, and many of the organization’s efforts focus on that area. Like many parts of Richmond, posh row houses on one block abut dilapidated or vacant buildings on the next, with residents divided on expected ethnic and socioeconomic lines. Though eating local and organic produce is an underlying current, a more explicit goal is to unite these fractured communities, inspiring neighbors to work together to change the surrounding landscape and grow healthy food.

Other ‘plot’ gardens built around Richmond allow tenants to rent growing space. Gardeners benefit from all the positives associated with community gardening – new friendships, advice on growing and cooking vegetables, a greener neighborhood. Stacey Moulds, Tricycle Gardens board member and the Church Hill community garden coordinator says, “Before this garden, we had no gathering place. Now, it’s a place where you see different types of people you wouldn’t normally meet.” All of the plot gardens have long waiting lists of eager gardeners.

Children play an important role in Tricycle Gardens’ efforts to change the city, and several childrens’ programs are taught through Tricycle Gardens in addition to Mesnard’s after-school work at the NRC. The Peter Paul Development Center and the Winchester Greens Neighborhood Center also host learning gardens and invite a Tricycle Gardens staffer to teach on a weekly basis during the summer. Mesnard, who teaches two programs, says “The children’s gardening programs are about experiential learning.” The time she spends with her students may be chaotic, sometimes, but even through play her students develop positive relationships with gardens, nature and fresh vegetables. “We take stuff that we’ve harvested and make a snack out of it,” says Mesnard. “And we always make sun tea with lemon balm, mint and stevia. They totally love stevia.”

Next on the list of Tricycle Gardens accomplishments is the new Kitchen Gardens program, headed by staff member Nellie Appleby. Appleby and a team of volunteers assist individuals in the installation and maintenance of private backyard vegetable gardens. Once again, the goal is to send Richmonders on their way to a do-it-yourself sustainable lifestyle. Appleby digs raised beds and provides as-needed education on organic methods.

So what’s next? Several visits by MacArthur Genius Grant winner Will Allen have galvanized folks to get on board with the urban farming movement. Two urban farms are in the works, with Tricycle Gardens at the helm. One location in north Church Hill, the other on land belonging to the Science Museum of Virginia. “We want them to have substantial earned income,” says Taranto, implying that the farms will ultimately sustain themselves through produce sales. Goals include creation of green-collar jobs and internships as well as ample opportunities for volunteer work and education.

The installation, organization and staffing of two urban farms is a big job, but Tricycle Gardens built some serious momentum in 2009. In October, they held the first annual Harvest Dinner, a fundraising event that melded gala finery with a can-do urban grittiness, creating a welcoming atmosphere that brought in a wide variety of patrons and interested supporters. Speakers included Bev Eggleston of Eco Friendly Foods and Tricycle Gardens’ new board chair William Snyder, a Wall Street Journal writer with an aim to develop urban agriculture in Richmond. And earlier this summer, they welcomed food leaders Michael Pollan and Dr. Marion Nestle to the NRC and Church Hill gardens for a brief tour.

The success of Tricycle Gardens has been in the widespread energy surrounding the organization and its countless projects across the city. As gardens transform from dream to reality, a thriving force of gardeners will continue to collaborate towards Richmond’s transformation into a greener, more sustainable and friendlier place to live. Richmond has a long way to go, but there’s certainly hope as Tricycle Gardens “changes the way we eat, one garden at a time.”

Jeffery Betcher was clear — he and his fellow organizers consider themselves community, not food, activists. Betcher, co-founder of the successful Quesada Gardens Initiative in the Bayview Hunters Point Neighborhood of San Francisco, was joined by fellow co-founder and board co-vice chair James Ross as featured presenters at Kitchen Table Talks’ third installment: Community Organizing: Addressing Food Access and Security in Bayview Hunters Point.

For decades, Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP) has been much maligned for regular reports of violence, environmental hazards and poverty. Betcher, a 10-year BVHP resident, believes the neighborhood doesn’t deserve its negative reputation. It has many strengths, including the highest rate of residential property ownership in the entire city, and many of its residents are thriving despite enormous environmental and economic injustices.

Ironically, this neighborhood that now processes 80 percent of the city’s waste, used to be the primary food shed for the city; a lively patch work of pastureland, vegetable farms, breweries, slaughter houses and food processing and shipping facilities. Studies show that there’s a $30 million potential for profit from food production in BVHP Hunters Point, said Betcher.

As its landscape shifted from breadbasket to toxic industry and waste processing, its residents increasingly suffered the highest rates of cancer, asthma, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. While asthma and cancer rates have been tied to environmental conditions, all other health-related issues prevalent in BVHP are food related. “All the –isms are there here,” said Betcher. “Poverty is the fundamental problem.”

While the problems are obvious, solutions are harder to come by, said Betcher and Ross. For solutions to stick, they need to be not only accepted by residents, but owned by them. This is the secret to Quesada Gardens’ success. “If people are involved in change, they will reinvest in community,” said Betcher.

Ross and Betcher believe that once you gain consensus, people will not only accept an initiative, but work hard to advance it. This was why a food survey, led by Quesada Gardens as a project of the Southeast Sector Food Access Working Group in 2007, was a critical step to help organizers understand what residents really wanted. “We know there’s a lack of fresh produce options in the neighborhood, but how do we know the residents want a supermarket?” said Betcher. Of the 562 residents surveyed, 95 percent said they would “actively support new food options,” 58 percent said they wanted a co-op market and 53 percent said it was important to have foods free of pesticides and chemicals.

Started with one garden on the median of Quesada Street, the initiative has grown to include 14 individual backyard gardens and nine community gardens. Residents are relishing in the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables they are growing and readily sharing it with elderly and hungry neighbors. But something even more fundamental has sprouted that is changing the fabric of the neighborhood. “People are coming out of their homes. They’re meeting their neighbors. They’re looking out for each other,” said Ross.  He has lived intermittently in BVHP since the 1980’s. “This is the first time that I know everyone on my block. The garden has become a safe place for people; a place to gather instead of the street corner.”

When asked about how they avoid vandalism and other forms of destructive resistance, Ross pointed to the community’s feeling of ownership of the gardens. “When there is vandalism, it comes from outside the neighborhood. Everyone on the block is looking out for the community gardens and their neighbors’ gardens because they feel a sense of pride and involvement,” said Ross. “People are more aware now. They will come outside and spend time with their neighbors instead of closing their doors.”

After hearing an overview of the Quesada Gardens Initiative from Ross and Betcher, a lively conversation among a record crowd of Kitchen Table Talks attendees followed.

When the question was asked, “what happened to SLUG,” — the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners — Paula Jones, Director of San Francisco Food Systems and former SLUG Director of Urban Agriculture, pointed out that the urban agriculture movement is thriving, but an organizing framework for all the disparate groups such as the one that SLUG once provided would be ideal.

The million dollar question of the night: if so many people want supermarkets in BVHP, why aren’t there supermarkets? “There is a misconception that there’s not enough money in poor neighborhoods. Corner stores gouge their customers with a huge mark up,” said Oriana Sarac, founder of Neighborhood Fruit. Oakland’s HOPE Collaborative Project Manager Hank Herrera offered the insight that structural racism keeps supermarkets out of poor neighborhoods. He said this is true in every city across the country. “The most important thing we can do is support local ownership and local supply chains.”

“What about the cooking factor,” asked FarmsReach Founder Melanie Cheng. This Sunday’s New York Times magazine feature article by Michael Pollan, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, drives this point home. Betcher told the group that there are cooking classes being offered in BVHP, but more are needed. Hai Vo, who worked on UC Irvine’s Real Food Challenge, stressed the importance of youth engagement.

The importance of commercial kitchens was brought up and Betcher told the group the BVHP mainstay Eclectic Cookery was considering shutting its doors. Susan Coss, Kitchen Table Talks co-founder and catalyst for bringing this conversation on community organizing together, stressed that a commercial kitchen must pay for itself to survive.

Betcher offered, “While other sectors of the economy are bleeding, social entrepreneurship is alive and well. BVHP really needs businesses committed workforce development.”

Despite the progress Quesada Gardens has made, Betcher stresses that the organization is in the “infrastructure building phase” and that while the project is mitigating climate change and health issues, the real focus of the initiative is community building. “We need people, especially funders, who get community building,” said Betcher.

Quesada Gardens is an inspiration, not just for other blocks in BVHP, but for all urban dwellers everywhere, starving for community in the neighborhoods where they live. Even if a community garden isn’t possible in your neighborhood, the simple act of spending a little time with your neighbors can yield fruit.

Things you can do:

• Learn more about the people working to make fresh, healthy food more accessible to underserved neighborhoods:
  • Quesada Gardens Initiative
  • The City’s Southeast Food Access Workgroup
  • The Oakland HOPE Collaborative
  • People’s Grocery, Oakland
• Get involved in the social media dialog for food accessibility and community development in BVHP at the portal-in-progress www.bayviewfootprints.org
• Volunteer, donate funds or in-kind items for a Quesada Movie Night being planned Sept. 12-13, contact info@QuesadaGardens.org
• In addition to dollars and volunteers, Quesada Gardens is in need of regular in-kind donations such as plants, seeds, lumber, and mulch. Sponsorship from local garden supply and hardware stores would be greatly appreciated. contact info@QuesadaGardens.org
• Start a garden in your yard. Talk to your neighbors who also garden. If you have a community garden, volunteer to help. If you don’t have one yet, talk to your neighbors about starting one
• Support local ownership and local supply chains
  • San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance
  • Buy Local Berkeley
  • Oakland Merchants’ Leadership Forum
  • Directory of networks beyond immediate SF Bay Area
• Add a comment to this post with a suggestion, resource or idea to keep to conversation going and forward it to friends, family and especially neighbors

This food task force is but one example of a groundswell of interest among churches. For a faith whose central sacrament is the Eucharistic meal, a number of Christians are seeing the far-reaching implications of that meal for how they eat. And they are beginning to ask some hard questions. Why, for example, must that old warhorse known as The Church Potluck still feature tables brimming with Jell-O, high fructose corn syrup, and other “food products” we know to be bad for us? And why should our food supply be so dependent on fossil fuels which are quickly disappearing? Why has the number of malnourished people in the world (one billion) been surpassed by the number of obese? Clearly our eating habits are destructive. How, then, do we rethink the way we eat and what resources for that re-imagining do we already have within our faith tradition?

Before meeting we all read Michael Pollan’s instant classic “Letter to the Farmer-in-Chief” as well as a recent essay by agrarian theologian Norman Wirzba on his work with Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson to develop a 50-year farm bill.

Bishop-in-chief of the NC Methodist Conference Al Gwinn referred to these articles as places where the church needs to perk up her ears, and began the discussion on a sobering note: “We know that our society is going down an extremely treacherous path that does not have any potential of a good ending given the way we’re traveling.”

The bishop was followed by Dr. Ellen Davis, professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School and author of the excellent Scripture, Culture, Agriculture—Reading the Bible Through Agrarian Eyes (foreword by Wendell Berry), who said that one of the best resources for thinking about the way we eat and grow food is the Bible:

It’s difficult to go more than a few chapters in the Old Testament without seeing reference to land or food. The biblical writers were particularly interested in arable land. They were remarkably attuned to the incomparable value of land and its fertility. Situated in a semi-arid climate with erosion-prone soil, Israel had no margin for error. A point of connection here in the U.S. is that while we had a huge margin for error a few centuries ago, we’ve used it up. We’re like ancient Israel in that we now occupy a marginal ecological niche.

Dr. Wirzba, also present at the meeting, then asked,

How do we envision an economy in which the health of land and people together can be established? We need practices in which we can reestablish our relationship with the land. This is where church gardens are so important. To be in a garden is to learn that we need a new relationship with creation. It’s where our own lives become a gift to be given to others. Gardens can be a powerful witness to the world for the church to be able to say, ‘this is how you receive the world, this is how you receive each other, and this is how we share God’s goodness. This is how we resist treating each other as commodities.’

Stan spoke up to encourage our group to think about land use. “The local re-design of our food system requires land, any and all kinds, for gardens, local market space, and supporting storage and handiwork,” he said. “Churches need to actively seek donated land wherever it is available, and provide that space to community partners to nurture local food alternatives.”

Rev. Jeremy Troxler spoke next. Jeremy is a former tobacco farmer. Despite his awe-shucks demeanor he is an elegant spokesman for the agrarian way of life and is now director of the Thriving Rural Communities program at Duke Divinity School. “We need our parishioners to see that sustainable farming is not a liberal agenda,” he said. “In fact it’s really the way my grandfather lived. We need to use the deep wells of scripture to find ways to express that clearly to our congregations.”

Lunch that day was an all-local menu of onion and broccoli quiche, a salad of Jericho lettuce and sugar snap-peas, and fresh strawberries for dessert, all grown in the church’s community garden and on neighboring farms.

Before we ate Stan said something that’s stayed with me. We had been talking about the recent groundswell of interest in agriculture among churches. Shaking his head slightly and speaking in a hushed, almost reverent tone Stan said, “There are 830 churches in the NC Methodist conference. Think if every one of those started a garden or produced their own food. Once they are in motion—that’s an unstoppable force.”

Heads around the table nodded in agreement. The bishop blessed the food. And then we feasted.

Last week, I sat riveted at the Horticultural Society of New York while watching a screening of the 2008 Oscar-nominated documentary, The Garden, a tour de force that pits a 14-acre community garden in South Central Los Angeles, run by mostly Latin American immigrants, against a wealthy developer with questionable city ties. A powerful treatise on power and racial discord, The Garden tells the story of farmers who organize to fight back against backroom deals to try and save their green urban oasis. [spoiler alert]

In the wake of the 1992 riots in South Central Los Angeles, the garden was created by the city as a way to heal the community. In turn, it became the largest garden of its kind in the country, sustaining more than 350 families and an antidote to the surrounding inner-city blight. The garden flourished for nearly a decade, until the city notified the farmers in 2003 they would be evicted within two months and the garden destroyed to make way for warehouses and a soccer field.

The film follows the farmers from the day they receive an eviction notice through the discovery of shady deals and courtroom drama to a last minute showdown replete with celebrity treesitters. With the looming threat of losing their land, Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy draws the viewer into the farmers’ struggle to continue planting and maintaining their community.

As the farmers decide to fight back and not merely vacate the property, I could almost smell the soil rising up against the smog of L.A. Through Kennedy’s lens, we follow the farmers’ leaders Rufina and Tezo as they hire a law firm who help them determine that the city had originally acquired the land for $5 million from owner Ralph Horowitz through eminent domain. They then discover that the Los Angeles City Council, in a secret, closed-session meeting and endorsed by Councilwoman Jan Perry, had sold the land back to Horowitz for $5 million—a price far below market value. Horowitz announces his intention to build warehouses on the land, as well as a soccer field. The situation is further complicated by Juanita Tate, the founder of the Concerned Citizens of South Central, who is adamantly opposed to the farmers’ cause and focused on her pet project, a soccer field.

In a bright moment, lawyers help the farmers’ score a preliminary victory: the County Superior Court issues a temporary restraining order and later a preliminary injunction halting development of the property until the lawsuit is settled. Sadly, later, the farmers lose the lawsuit and the court raised the injunction, freeing Horowitz to evict the farmers.

Initially, Horowitz seeks $16.3 million for the property, more than three times the 1986 eminent domain valuation. Then, in a deal brokered in cooperation by The Trust for Public Land, the farmers raise a little over $6 million. The film cuts to the only thing that seems to matter (but ultimately cannot save the garden) in L.A.: star power, as Willie Nelson, Danny Glover, Darryl Hannah, Joan Baez, Martin Sheen and others turn out to shine a light on the issue. In a stunning moment, the Annenberg Foundation announces they will donate the remainder of the money to buy the farm. And with crashing devastation, Horowitz declines to accept the offer; in his voice over, he says he would not have sold the land to them even if they offered him $100 million.

Ever-present is the glaring disparity between power and poverty, race and class. The immigrant farmers eking out a green space versus a wealthy developer and tainted city council member with a corrupt local organizer in her back pocket. Amongst claims of brown vs. black racism, anti-Semitism and “pimping poverty,” endless politicians parade their way through the garden, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who meekly states that he wishes there was more he could do to save the garden.

In the end, as bulldozers tear down the garden, tears rolled down my face. Perry manages to get re-elected, some of the farmers are relocated to a subpar parcel under power lines, while another group relocates to farmland in Bakersfield. The garden is still a dirt patch and Horowitz and the clothing company Forever 21 are now working on a proposal for a warehouse and distribution center on the now-bulldozed site. For what? I kept asking myself. Greenery turned to dust. Trees turned under for cheap clothes from China.

The Garden is a gripping and enraging film. While they may not longer have their garden, the South Central Farmers are still organized and protesting. Go see the film and learn how you can support local urban farms.

The Garden is playing select theaters:

05/01 Irvine, CA, University
05/01 San Francisco, CA, Lumiere
05/01 Berkeley, CA, Elmwood
05/01, Pasadena, CA, Playhouse
05/08 New York, NY, Cinema Village
05/15 Phoenix, AZ, Valley Art
05/15 Washington, DC, E-Street
05/21 Hudson NY, Time & Space Ltd
05/22 Santa Rosa CA, Rialto Lakeside
05/22 Waterville ME, Railroad Square
05/22 Boston MA, Coolidge Corner
05/29 Amherst MA, Amherst Theatre
05/29 Salt Lake City UT, Broadway Theatre
06/05 Grand Rapids MI, UICA
06/09 Normal IL, Normal Theatre
06/11 Saratoga NY, Saratoga Film Forum
06/12 Portland OR, Hollywood Theatre
06/12 Tallahassee FL, Regal Miracle 5
06/12 Charlotte NC, Regal Park Terrace
06/19 Tucson AZ, The Loft
06/26 Houston TX, Museum of Fine Art
06/26 Austin TX, Alamo
07/03 Nashville TN, Belcourt Theatre
07/24 Santa Fe NM, CCA

Yesterday at Columbia University, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer hosted a conference entitled “The Politics of Food,” which he called New York’s next policy challenge.   Stringer is known for his work paving the way for better health in East Harlem, and for the Go Green East Harlem Cookbook, a bilingual guide that is available free of cost to East Harlem residents.  Sounding like Michael Pollan, he recognized that so many issues, from health, to energy, to environment all dealt with food in some way.  So it was his goal, he said, to create a Food Charter for New York, based on community-oriented plans brought to scale.

Among the speakers was Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recognized that protecting the health of its citizens was the number one priority of a city.  Bloomberg has successfully banned trans fats in restaurants, as well as smoking, and has passed legislation requiring the listing of calories on menus.  His next tough food policy, he told us, was taking on the salt content of processed food.  But he also wasn’t too shy to admit that he likes some junk food too. “You’ve got to be addicted to something,” he said. “Coffee and Cheez-Its, what’s wrong with that?”

UN General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto gave a rousing speech, calling for the end to the dominance of large corporate food entities like Monsanto, McDonalds and Wal-Mart.  “In food politics, I would advocate food democracy,” he said. “We can move our food provisioning away from dominance by a few very large corporations to the control of people-oriented food systems that respect communities and their right to food sovereignty, and localized and regionalized food systems at the local and regional levels.”

He reminded us that hunger and poverty are realities for many New Yorkers.  The most moving part of his speech came when he said that “we must stop deluding ourselves and face up to the fact that the ‘haves’ of this world must change their way of life, the patterns of consumption that show little or no regard for the disastrous impact of their lifestyle on the well being of their neighbors, our brothers and sisters, and our shared home, the planet Earth.”

Maya Wiley from the Center for Social Inclusion spoke next, and reminded us that “policies matter dramatically.”  She gave a few facts: New York is #1 on the inequality index.  Communities of color make up 62% of New Yorkers, and are more likely to suffer from food related health problems and less likely to have a residential supermarket.  She addressed the affordability of fruits and vegetables, saying “its not that food prices are too high, its that wages are too low.”  At the end of her speech she urged us to act, suggesting we take a shovel, a checkbook, or a pen in one hand, and take someone else’s hand in the other.

There were seven sessions to address specific issues facing different parts of the food agenda, in which experts could come together and give their input.  The sessions included From Field to Market: A Blueprint for Food Distribution in New York City, Finding Healthy Food: Supermarkets, Farmers Markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) and Food Deserts, The Importance of Nutrition Education, Urban Farming: What Does It Look Like? What Makes It Work?, How Schools, Hospitals, and Other Institutions Can Serve Healthier Meals, Recession’s Consequences for the Food Safety Net, and The Urban Food Agenda: Shaping City, State, and Federal Policy.  After the sessions, the conference goers regrouped and a summary was presented of what was gleaned from each session.

Scott Stringer gave closing remarks, assuring those present that this was not the end of the discussion, and promised that this was a top priority for him.

Overall I was surprised by how much awareness the city has of the issues facing our food system.  It is my hope that New York can become a model for other cities in land use, including sustainable urban gardening, in providing good school and hospital food, in creating equal opportunities for access to vegetables and in nutrition education and inspiring people to cook again.  While the process has been bottom up until now, maybe with better policy-making, we can meet with city government somewhere in the middle.

Photo: Kevin Matteson, Mapes Avenue Community Garden in the Bronx