What if we could use technology-based products or services to grow local food systems ten-fold or even twenty-fold in the next few years–from one percent of the current food production in our country today to 10 to 20 percent in the next decade? Our new company, Goodeggs, seeks to do just that. Our hypothesis is that some technology-based product or service will be an important enabler of that future.

We’re a group of folks who care about the growth of local food systems–for the sake of health, environment, cultural impact, and plain old delicious meals. The six of us have been working in the technology industry for a number of years at big companies, startups, and everything in between.  (We’ve even sold a a startup to Google!) During that time, we have been increasingly inspired by the local food phenomenon in the Bay Area and around the country.

A few months ago we decided to leave our jobs and put our technology skills and business resources in service of the good food movement.

Right now our company is in research and design mode as we attempt to invent technology that will grow and sustain local food systems.  We’re trying to learn as much as possible about the massive wave of innovation going on in the local food universe: New CSA concepts, neighborhood grocers finding new ways to feed their customers, food hubs rebuilding infrastructure all over the country, community kitchens… the list goes on. In parallel, we’re learning about what drives people to spend their food dollars on local food instead of the alternative. What drives “convenience” in food shopping? What’s missing in the conventional grocery-shopping experience that can be met by new local food channels?

Our research isn’t being done in a library. It’s driven by real conversations we’ve been having with real people. In the past few months we’ve visited small farms and big farms, spent time interviewing food entrepreneurs and advocates, and followed along on grocery-shopping trips with a diverse set of folks.

Our latest research technique, started this past month, has been to run a mock daily grocery shopping service, where a small group of folks here in San Francisco have agreed to let us study their food shopping habits and run experiments in their food-lives.

Here are a few highlights of our research to date:

• The local food businesses that are making it work, profitably, truly care about their customers, across the board.  As a result their customers are extremely loyal and a new kind of community starts to emerge. We hypothesize that a future with more small, relationship-driven food businesses is good for the local food system.
• The local food businesses that are making it work, profitably, have diversified their sales channels: They all have a base membership (structured as a CSA or otherwise), plus they’re set up to sell wholesale and at various markets.
• Most people demand the convenience of a modern grocery store: Wide operating hours, easy parking, fine-grained control over what goes into the cart. We think this is what might be preventing CSAs from going more mainstream.
• For most food shoppers, taste is king. People want their food to taste great, period.  We see this as an inherent advantage for local food because most local food just tastes better.

• All sorts of food-shoppers crave inspiration about what to make (even the great cooks).  This is an opportunity for the local food system–seasonal eating is inspiring!
• Most food decisions are based on a protein: What kind of protein do I want to cook/eat?
• Cooking during the week is much harder than cooking on the weekend.

We also have a number of questions that we are working on today and we hope you can help us answer some of them:

• What are the newest innovations on the CSA model? We’ve learned about bread CSAs, beer CSAs, membership programs that involve pre-paying for groceries. What else is out there that’s inspiring and what hasn’t been invented yet?
• We’re interested in learning more about delivery-grocery services. We’ve learned about services that deliver local groceries to offices, a new wave of milk-truck businesses across the country, pickup locations for prepared foods, and more. What else is working to bring people the next level of convenience with locally sourced food?
• People mean all sorts of different things when they talk about health or nutrition. What kind of patterns exist across large numbers of shoppers? Are there any health considerations, or ways of thinking about nutrition, that are universal?
• How can we create new job opportunities in the good food movement for the many unemployed and under-employed folks in our country today?

We’d love to hear from you all and encourage you to comment on this post. What sorts of inspiring examples have you seen in your own communities of local food entrepreneurs making it work? As leaders of the food movement, what patterns do you see emerging? What needs are there in your own communities that could potentially be met by technology-based products?

We’re looking forward to working with you all to build the future of the food movement.

This past holiday weekend, hundreds of people gathered for a free conference, called Food Justice, hosted by the University of Oregon’s Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. In the words of the conference organizers the purpose was to, “Explore the history and future of our food system with a focus on three themes: community, equity and sustainability.”

With a heavy hitters Fred Kirschenmann and Dr. Vandana Shiva offering inspiring plenaries and a host of academics and practitioners sharing their latest research and ideas, the event was as stimulating as it was frustrating. As Dr. Shiva so eloquently said in her closing plenary, “No other species has achieved the amazing success of depriving itself of food.”

As I was manning the Civil Eats table at the food fair in the student union all day Monday, I wasn’t able to attend as many sessions as I’d like, but I do want to offer a few notes and ideas that I gathered. There is no way to capture everything, clearly, and the following may seem out of context, but hopefully something will spark new ideas and actions.

I’m particularly interested in the language we use to express this movement and advocate that we all get on the same page, so to speak, especially with terms that will resonate with consumers, therefore new or recommended terms always peak my interest. To that end, some of the words I overheard: The word local isn’t cutting it, we should use instead, “resilient” and “foodshed.” We need no longer say “climate change” when we should call it “climate destabilization” and need to refer to GMOs as “transgenesis.” The best wheat to buy is “small wheat” and fish from the Pacific Northwest should be “troll caught” to ensure the future for farmers and the fish. And, finally it looks as if almost everyone has started to say “Food and Farm Bill” in reference to the 2012 Farm Bill.

At Saturday night’s opening plenary with Kirschenmann, we heard from Pete Sorenson, Lane County Commissioner, who started the evening off saying, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Kirschenmann followed and framed my experience for the conference when he said, “We are all just citizens of the biotic community and we need to start [designing a just food system] from this perspective.” He continued by saying, “Not all local systems are the same size … therefore it’s about community engaged as a local ecosystem as a part of a larger ecosystem … so it’s about the health of each impacting the health of the whole and about a network of healthy foodsheds.” He also talked about “coming into the foodshed” and that “our first priority should be to make food for people in the foodshed by people in the foodshed.”

There were conversations about: Measuring the cost of food by its nutrition value; a resurgence of the concept of food commons; the idea that we’ve become too linear in our thinking as a result of the industrial food system – that it causes us, as humans, to think in terms of either this or that, one or the other, rather than holistically and bio-diversely; that there is no one definition of food justice.

Net neutrality, a free Internet, should be a second priority to any food security solutions we work towards.

What if deliciousness were the solution to the problem? How would that re-order our priorities? What would that food system look like?

As citizens participating in food, we have obligations, we have power and our resources are supposed to be equitable, so it’s up to us to fight for them. (There were a lot of references to Egypt … when will Americans stand up for what’s truly just?)

Chuck Benbrook, a leading scientist at The Organic Center told us, “Our community needs to up its game in terms of how we respond to our current food system.” He and University of California Berkeley’s Ignacio Chapela presented on my favorite panel entitled, “Sustainable Agriculture & Emerging Research in Plant Genetics.” Chapela, whom I’ve heard speak on transgenesis in the past, is a total anti-GMO bad ass. He presented, in detail, how the scientific community was derailed and high jacked by the promises of the Manhattan Project and how a small group of people created a national program, in secret, to push technology as the new frontier and led us inevitably into what he calls a “bio ponzi” scheme, or “faciscm as they call it in Italy” – the GE era. He advocates for science that is free and independent (more reason to support the Union of Concerned Scientists) and says “we are bundling when we should be diversifying.”

There was a riveting presentation about wheat production and seeds that lead to the question, do you want to rent your seed or own it? Resulting in a call for revitalizing local mills and keeping wheat in county; as well as breeding our own varieties so Monsanto can’t sue everyone for saving, cleaning, or supposedly stealing seeds.

Our very own Naomi Starkman presented, with Leslie Hatfield on New Media & Food Activism. In “Digitally cultivating food justice” they explored the impact of Twitter (“it’s the tool”) and Facebook, advocated for everyone to use Wikipedia to define their work, and told us that the Huffington Post is our friend. Naomi encouraged anyone interested to become one of their bloggers because, “If we don’t frame this debate, they will.” Plus, it’s quite easy and once you do, “the doors are open.”

One of the attendees asked a question that I must throw out there: When thinking about a new food system, it’s become apparent that we’ll have to do it with the big guys, not against them. So, if that’s the case, that we’ll have to work with Monsanto, McDonald’s, Wal-mart, etc., what are some of the non-negotiables? Panelists didn’t have any answers, but I thought of two, to start: People who work to produce food are paid a fair living wage and if commodity crops get subsidies so should soil health and bio-diversity.

These snippets are a mere tip of an iceberg of notes, fodder for my own advocacy and continued learning, all valuable indeed. But as my head spun with theories, facts, concepts and case studies, I had to wonder why we don’t use our time together more meaningfully when we gather at these conferences. Here you have rooms full of activists, academics and advocates — all concerned, interested eaters hungry for action and change and yet we do nothing but listen and ask questions. Fill our heads with more information. I’d like to challenge all future conference organizers to come up with one action that everyone can take, en masse, some galvanizing call that will give these people something to actually do when they are all together. You know, the old power in numbers theory.

On a final note, Alison Carruth, the conference organizer and resident scholar at the Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics, said in her closing remarks, “Food justice happens when communities define it with each other.” Great. Let’s get to it!

Kristin Kimball is an accidental agrarian. A reporter in her early thirties living in New York City, she fell for a farmer in upstate New York–the subject of a story she was writing–and then fell in love with farming with him at Essex Farm. She tells the story of leaving the city to grow food and more in her new book The Dirty Life, a compelling memoir that gives insight into the growing young farmer movement in America.

You will dig The Dirty Life if you are simply curious about how young farmers are making a go at it, breaking the industrial mold, and rebuilding our agricultural system one farm, one community at a time. And if you are a young farmer, there is plenty here to learn from as Kimball weaves her story together with elegant, and at times playful, prose. It’s also possible that reading The Dirty Life will spark an interest in farming and farmers, even if you’ve never tended a flower bed (making it a great read for the parents of young farmers, who might not quite understand why their college-educated son or daughter would want to put their hands in the dirt for a living).

But you will certainly be unable to put the book down if you are like me–a city dweller who dreams of owning and growing on a patch of land someday. In fact, should find yourself in that position, reading this book could be downright painful. You see, a farm requires your senses to be awake. And the trials of the farm, while frustrating, read like an adventure compared to working in an office cubicle somewhere. Here’s Kimball’s lament of weeds, for example:

“Farming, I discovered, is a great and ongoing war. The farmers are continually fighting to keep nature behind the hedgerow, and nature is continually fighting to overtake the field. Inside the ramparts are the sativas, the cultivated plants, soft and vulnerable, too highbred and civilized for fighting. Aligned with nature, there are weeds, tough foot soldiers, evolved for battle. As we approached the solstice, both sides were at full tilt, stoked by rain and the abundance of sun.”

Farming is no easy pursuit. As Kimball shows, sometimes your milk cow gets attacked by a dog, or the financial uncertainty puts a strain on your relationship, or perhaps your neighbors think you are cuckoo when they find out you are using draft horses to grow a complete diet (meat, grain, vegetables, etc.) for an uncertain amount of people. But there is so much joy in it too–in taking simple ingredients and preparing a delicious meal (even when cooking up a late winter pigeon from the barn), the challenge of the work itself and the community that springs up around a farm. Kimball writes, “As much as you transform the land by farming, farming transforms you.”

There has yet to be a new entrant, first-generation farmer to set down words so lucid about the purpose and desires behind the (re)emerging direct-to-consumer, diverse crop model of farming. Writing both of the brutal and beautiful sides of the work, Kimball seems to be saying, “If I can do it, so can you.” Part romance thriller, part guidebook, part high-minded manifesto, The Dirty Life is the kind of book that stays with you, like a softly whispered provocation. Get dirty! it says. The work is hard but satisfying, and you will eat well.

The discussion on American agriculture is evolving every day, and as a result, agribusiness has been stoking a backlash against those pushing for a change in how we grow our food. Notably, Michael Pollan has been a target at recent university speaking engagements; a few weeks ago at Cal-Poly, when a feedlot owner threatened to rescind a donation if Pollan was allowed to speak solo, the university caved, making his talk a part of a panel discussion. This is all an indication that the conversation on fixing our broken food system is gaining traction, as the discussion grows more nuanced, more solutions-oriented and more threatening to the status quo.

Last month in New York, Lisa Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, hosted just such a nuanced discussion on the current state of agriculture featuring Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times writer whose column is called “The Rural Life,” farmer Fred Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, and farmer Mary Howell Martens, who grows 1400 acres of organic corn, beans and other grains with her husband and three children in Penn Yan, New York.

The panel focused on assessing the situation farmers are now caught in, and discussed solutions, including focusing on improving the foodshed, rebuilding rural communities and strengthening “ag in the middle” through trade partnerships.

Hamilton began the talk by telling a story about an opinion piece she wrote that ended up in both rural newspapers and on various progressive outlets, including Civil Eats. She thought this was telling, because it showed that both rural and urban dwellers have an interest in redefining what it means to be a farmer, and bringing back a human scale to agriculture. Here is a quote from Hamilton’s piece from last May:

In the future, farmers’ importance will only grow. Their intimate, human-scale knowledge of the land is what will allow agriculture to adapt to climate change. And as the cheap energy that industrial agriculture depends on disappears, it is farmers, with their small-scale innovation and sheer manual labor, who will feed us. Why do we care about having more farmers? Because deep down we know they are essential to a functioning food system.

She defined a farmer as “someone who grows crops in sufficient quantity to be a true commercial entity, yet is still close enough to the ground to bring human scale and values to the process.” While the amount of small farms (1-49 acres) grew by about 100,000 between 2002-2007 according to the most recent ag census, medium-sized farms, most of which fit her description, have suffered, while the largest farms (with more than 2000 acres) have continued to grow. Martens brought this point home by talking about the crisis her medium-sized farm faced in 1993 when she realized that “500 acres of conventional crops cannot support a family financially.”

Martens also spoke about the dairy crisis as emblematic of the deeper problems facing our food system, in which the quest for slight increases in margins by numerous farmers has led to overproduction and then collapse. This happened in the dairy sector through the use of “sexed semen” which has increased dramatically the amount of female cows online to milk, and the use of rGBH, a growth hormone, which increases production (with risks to the health of the cow and the public). “We are sort of on the threshold of a major change, if we do this wisely, or a collapse if we don’t do it wisely,” she said.

Kirschenmann gave some historical perspective, describing how farming was the last place where the principles of industrialization (specialization, simplification and economies of scale) were applied, and unsuccessfully, as we are now seeing a strain on resources that cannot continue into the future. He described infrastructure as a key to getting farmers out of this broken system. Right now, they are not able to grow other crops because there is no market; elevators in Iowa are only prepared to buy corn and soy. He suggested a new model of localism, revaluing the foodshed around towns and cities, and he encouraged farmers to band together and create cooperative structures and share technology, so that they all benefit from access to new markets. We must move away from a discussion of “black hats and white hats,” he said, referring to passing judgment on farmers who choose GM seed or chemical agriculture. “Conventional farmers’ backs are against the wall,” he said, adding that they, too, are “looking for alternatives to expensive inputs.”

Klinkenborg spoke about extending the conversation to places like Iowa, stating that we should ask ourselves, “not how broad we can make local, but how personal we can make it.” He reminded us that the decrease in social and biological complexity in rural America was not the natural fulfillment of the free market operating, but instead a purposeful chain of events leading to such a consequence. As a result, he said, farmers have fewer and fewer choices about what they can grow. He cited his cousins, who grow GM corn and soy in Iowa, and saw the decision to change seeds as an attempt to increase yields, and thus margins. This comparison paralleled Martens’ dairy example, but issues of pricing with commodity crops are often masked by subsidies.

Martens and her husband, Claas, are great examples of how, beyond the land, farmers can also be stewards of the community. In reaching out to their neighbors, they have shown many of them a way out of the trap of chemical-based agriculture and helped them to transition to organic. “We need to bring back the sense that farmers have some control over [the choices they can make on their land]” she said.

For a taste of the discussion, check out this short video produced by Wicked Delicate co-conspirator and Civil Eats contributor Curt Ellis:

There’s some very big news on the environmental front, and it’s big news for the animals, too! Green food resolutions are starting to pop up, and this is a very good thing for everyone, as it’s an important sign that the public at large is beginning to confront the truly inconvenient truth: What and whom you consume has a direct effect on our planet.

By consuming a plant-based diet, you are significantly reducing your global foodprint. You’ve probably already heard by now that in 2006, the United Nations came out with a study (“Livestock’s Long Shadow”) documenting that livestock production is a major contributor to global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. The report estimates that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions; that’s more than the entire transport sector combined.

Thanks to the diligence of hay-makers like you, people are slowly starting to talk about this. And recently, two city council resolutions have found their way into the mix.

Earlier this week, Chicago’s City Council Committee on Energy, Environmental Protection and Public Utilities approved a resolution urging that sustainable plant-based food be made readily available to all the city’s residents. This signaled a milestone in Farm Sanctuary’s campaign to introduce Green Food Resolutions in cities across the country. Thanks to Alderman Margaret Laurino, the sponsor of the resolution, the Windy City is a shining example of green progress. People are listening. Eating animals is simply unsustainable and wreaks havoc on our planet. This resolution is a platform for change, and it shows without a doubt that there is a strong demand for vegan food, which is the best answer for the animals, our health and, of course, the environment.

As if that were not enough, the Big Apple is also making big strides. On June 30, New York City Councilmember Bill de Blasio introduced Resolution 2049, another groundbreaking step toward a greener, kinder planet. FoodprintNYC, as it is called, is the creation of the NYC Foodprint Alliance, a coalition of several nonprofits – including Farm Sanctuary. It is a citywide initiative that aims to create greater access to local, fresh, healthy plant-based food, especially in low-income communities and city-run institutions.

For two years, I have been personally enmeshed in FoodprintNYC. What started with a conversation between Farm Sanctuary and the New York League of Humane Voters grew to become a coalition of movers and shakers, and now, thanks to Councilmember de Blasio, we can see this resolution get passed. If you reside in New York City, we need your help to make that happen.

Here’s a video that Councilmember Bill de Blasio put together, along with the help of me and my dog, Rose:

Watching this idea grow to become a citywide and then national campaign is enough to make this hay-maker a believer. Not only can change happen, but change needs to happen so that we can preserve and care for our planet and all its inhabitants. That is why we’d like to work with you so that a Green Food resolution can be introduced in your city, too. And if you need support in doing that, let me know.

I have the sudden strong desire to end this entry with my favorite quote, said by Margaret Mead. If you know me personally, then you know I recite it on a regular basis. It’s my MO, and it should be yours, too:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of lending a hand as a volunteer at Rooftop Farms in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The name says it all: it is a 6000 square foot urban vegetable farm on the roof of an industrial building, growing rows inter-cropped with lettuces, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, kale and much more, which they sell directly to restaurants and at a farm stand inside the building every Sunday from 9am – 4pm.

Annie Novak and Ben Flanner are the farming minds behind the project. Both are passionate about how food gets to our table (Novak works with farmer with Kira Kenney of Evolutionary Organics at the Greenmarket, and works as the Children’s Gardening Program Coordinator at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Flanner is new to farming but seems to get a kick out of hawking produce). Chris and Lisa Goode of Goode Green, a green roofing company, found the roof and funded Rooftop Farms as a test. With this project, the team hopes to determine what is possible in terms of scale for growing on rooftops in the city.

Flanner was managing the farm stand while I was there, encouraging everyone to try a tomato, or a leaf of the alternative sweetener stevia. Most of the people who came by were neighbors. The stand quickly sold out of red and green kale, and I joined Flanner in the field selecting the largest leaves for new bunches.

Novak, meanwhile, handled coordinating the fifteen or so volunteers. On Sunday we removed sweet peas plants (the season had ended), harvesting the beans and breaking down the rest into compost. We also harvested lettuces growing in between the tomato plants, planted radish seeds (the Rooftop Farms radishes have been quite a hit with local restaurants like Marlow and Sons and Anella, and they get quickly bought out by the neighbors at the farm stand, too), applied fertilizing compost tea and did pest management, among other tasks. As a new grower myself, I found it all to be quite educational; Annie showed me some pests to look out for in my own garden, and she gave me some information on how organically minded growers are dealing with the tomato blight. (Luckily Rooftop Farms grew almost everything from seed, and are not as worried as they would be with transplants, but she is still taking precautions like spraying copper in some areas.)

This is part of the point for her: She wants others to jump in and learn and hopefully create their own version of what Rooftop Farms is doing in other parts of the city. One rooftop is enough for Novak for the time being, as what needs to be done there is at times keeping her up at night. But what they are doing is replicable, and she is willing to teach all who come to help out about her methods.

One of the first questions she often gets asked is about the soil: they had to lift all 200,000 lbs to the roof with a crane. And yes, an engineer was brought in to get clearance on the weight. The soil is a mix containing shale, a light material made specifically for rooftop applications. But as Novak tells it, they are experimenting with growing vegetables instead of sedum, the succulents considered the standard green roof plant species. The experiment seems to be working, as they’ve harvested 600 pounds of produce since early June, and the tomatoes and cucumbers are just getting started.

Novak wants even beginners, or New Yorkers without much growing room to get in on the act. One row on her farm even showcases what can be done in a small plot. “The square foot bed is an example of the amount of space a renter might have,” she said. “We’re using that space to show that you don’t have to be confined to one tomato plant.” (In photo, vegetables growing together include swiss chard, cabbage, tomatoes, lettuces, peppers, beans, onions and more)

The roof is exposed from all directions, overlooking the East River and a glorius view of the city. Novak said that it can get windy, but that the plants compensate when grown from seed by growing denser, deeper root systems and heartier stems. Standing on the rooftop soaking in the lush rows and the abundance of food growing there (not to mention the view) was enough to make an urban farmer out of almost anyone.

The increasingly coordinated campaign to inject the current mainstream food system with good-food principles has slowly gained momentum. For three decades now organic and sustainable food producers have been preparing the ground by offering food that is place-based, healthier for humans and ecosystems, and more delicious. For about ten years, visionaries and writers like Carlo Petrini, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Alice Waters have been providing the intellectual and cultural underpinnings for the good food movement. More recently, with local activists leading the way, a few cities, counties and states (notably New York City, Seattle, Woodbury County in Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Illinois) have been working to codify in ordinance and law a glide path for development of a better food system. Most recently, Michele Obama’s garden at the White House, Tom Vilsack’s at the USDA, and Maria Shriver’s in Sacramento sent a message that the top tiers of American political leadership are receptive to the good food movement. The stage is set for an explosion of comprehensive reform.

In Oakland, there were three concrete indications that a new level of grass tops political leadership has emerged to meet the grass roots. First, the Agricultural Marketing Service of USDA provided the bulk of the funding for a summit meeting entitled “Developing Sustainable Foodsheds to Enhance Food Access and Nutrition.” The senior USDA official attending the summit, Deputy Under Secretary, Ann Wright, head of marketing and regulatory programs said the term “sustainable foodshed” is not exactly part of the everyday lexicon at USDA. Yet, she and 15 officials from the marketing, food and nutrition, rural development, and regulatory divisions came anyway to engage good food activists in a substantive dialog so that summit participants can offer recommendations to policy makers on how foodsheds and food access may be improved. Clearly, today’s USDA is moving toward a new food system, not seeking to defend the old one from much needed evolution.

Second, Oakland Mayor, Ron Dellums, who spent 28 years in the US House of Representatives, 21 years on the Armed Services Committee, which he chaired for a time, addressed the Summit. He said that food security is national security, that military planners now see food as a potential primary cause of war. He emphasized that food links the global to the local and is therefore fundamental to the future of cities. He stated that the good food movement could count on him to assist with any effort by mayors to deliver the message to Congress that food security for cities must be enhanced. As if to underline his point, on the same day, the G8 issued its statement on food security in which they said, “food security is closely connected with economic growth and social progress as well as with political stability and peace.”

Third, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the man who actually spawned the trend among political leaders with his Slow Food Nation garden in 2008, issued the most comprehensive food policy document yet produced by any politician in the nation. His Executive Directive on Healthy Sustainable Food for San Francisco is truly holistic, knitting the many elements required to create a functional foodshed that serves rich and poor. It contains 11 guiding principles and 15 actions with clear deadlines. Other cities have already embraced some of the items in Newsom’s directive, but what is most impressive is that he calls out the need to prioritize healthy food access, ecological health, and the interdependence of rural and urban communities in a period of economic crisis. He sees the link between sustainable food and the nation’s future economic growth.

Newsom orders City departments dedicated to nutrition programs to remain sufficiently staffed despite budget cuts to serve those needing better nutrition. He directs the City to advocate for federal and state policies that will bring about a sustainable food system. Specifically, he cites policies that conserve the region’s prime agricultural land and regional food and agriculture businesses — outside the city’s political boundary. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he calls for good food principles to be implanted within the City code and general plan in order to ensure that development of a sustainable foodshed and good food access will continue after his administration.

With the linkage of food security and national security and San Francisco’s groundbreaking directive, the bar for healthy sustainable food policy has been reset for all other policy makers in the nation. We applaud both men for their vision and particularly Mayor Newsom for his bold action.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issued an Executive Directive [PDF] this week at a City Slicker Farm in Oakland during the Direct Farm Marketing Summit organized by Roots of Change, making food system planning the unambiguous responsibility of city government. Under the directive, it is the official city policy to increase the amount of healthy and sustainable food available to San Francisco residents, charging mayoral agencies with specific steps to accomplish this goal. By using his executive powers, Newsom was able to move swiftly, though some agency initiatives will eventually require legislation enacted by the Board of Supervisors.

The Directive is ambitious in articulating a vision of a food system with nutritious food for all San Franciscans, shorter distances between consumers and producers, protections for worker health and welfare, reduced environmental impacts, and strengthened connections between urban and rural communities. Such progressive goals are nothing new for San Francisco. A number of existing plans, resolutions, ordinances and executive directives address elements of sustainability within the food system. San Francisco’s 1997 sustainability plan, which was adopted as a non-binding city policy, has a chapter on food. Resolutions adopted in 2005 commit city agencies to maximize their purchases of fair trade and organic food. A 2006 “shape up at work” directive requires agencies to support a healthier living and eating environment in the workplace. Ordinances requiring farmers markets to take EBT cards, banning agencies from buying bottled water, and resolutions supporting cage-free chickens and opposing foie gras have been passed in recent years.

But several things distinguish the new Directive from these previous efforts. First, it is notably comprehensive in scope, recognizing the need “to consider the food production, distribution, consumption and recycling system holistically.” The principles outlined in the Directive include: allocating city funds to ensure that hunger is eliminated; planning neighborhoods to ensure healthy food options; spending municipal food dollars on regionally produced and sustainable food; encouraging food production on City owned land; promoting local food businesses; supporting policies to conserve peri-urban prime farmland; helping to market regionally grown food in San Francisco; recycling all organic residuals and eliminating chemical use in municipal agriculture and landscaping; educating residents about healthy food and sustainable food systems; and advocating for consistent state and federal policies.

Second, it was developed with the involvement of a broad range of municipal officials, advocates, and business representatives, and empowers these stakeholders to monitor and advance the Directive’s initiatives through a new Food Policy Council that will meet bi-monthly. The Council is explicitly charged with reviewing the City Code, General Plan, and other policies to identify amendments that can achieve the goals of food system sustainability.

Third, and perhaps most significantly, the Directive contains a series of sixteen mandatory actions that various agencies must take, within relatively short order, to plan and implement its goals. The specificity of these requirements separates this effort from other municipal resolutions, non-binding plans and charters, and other mainly hortatory exercises. Among these various mandates, several stand out as particularly significant:

• Within six months, every department with jurisdiction over property is required to audit the land under their control to identify sites suitable for food production.
• To increase access to federal food and nutrition programs, the City’s Human Service Agency is required to offer online eligibility screening and enrollment in addition to new neighborhood based registration programs.
• Within six months, city departments that lease property to food establishments or permit mobile food vendors must either require the sale of healthy and sustainably produced food or give preferences to those who do so.
• All city agencies that purchase food for events or meetings must buy healthy, locally produced or sustainably certified foods to the maximum extent possible. Within two months, the Department of the Environment will draft a local and sustainable food procurement ordinance for City government food purchases.
• The City’s planning department must integrate sustainable food policies into elements of the city’s general plan as it is updated.
• Within six months, the Redevelopment Agency must develop a Food Business Action Plan to identify economic development strategies, such as enterprise zones, expedited permits, tax incentives, and other policies to establish new food businesses.
• The Parks Department is directed to facilitate access to gardening materials and tools to support increased production of food within the City.

Newsom’s food Directive has the potential to set in motion a series of plans and initiatives that would dramatically accelerate urban food production, increase food access for low income residents, stimulate the market for sustainably produced food at the urban edge, and incorporate food into long-range city planning. And with continued public concern about the food system, this is a politically opportune time for Mayor Newsom to advance sustainable food policy. However, given California’s dire fiscal condition, the implementation of the agency mandates, such as a buy-local requirement, could not have come at a more challenging moment. It will be extremely difficult for the Mayor and Board of Supervisors to garner the political support for new food policies and programs that have short-term costs, no matter how brief the payback period and how large the long-term benefits are. San Francisco’s new Food Policy Council, together with other food advocates, have a critical role to play in ensuring that the public gets behind necessary city legislation.

The City’s Environmental Quality Review process (CEQR) requires all discretionary actions of government (building new facilities, granting zoning variances) to undergo an assessment to determine whether the action will create adverse environmental impacts. The city’s environment is defined broadly to include the natural and physical environment as well as the socioeconomic environment and related infrastructure (e.g., housing) necessary for humans to live in cities. Despite the importance of food to human health and welfare, the effects of projects on the food infrastructure (such as the displacement of a supermarket by a proposed development, or the removal of an urban farm by a city facility) has never been required to be analyzed in an EIS. Stringer’s proposal is for the city’s CEQR manual to explicitly require such food system assessments.

EISs generally analyze the adequacy of existing infrastructure when a proposed action will increase the population of a neighborhood by, for instance, allowing tall residential buildings to be constructed in an area formerly zoned for low-density uses. Under the current practice, the effects of population growth on the water and sewer system, and other key parts of the city’s infrastructure, must be analyzed, and if the project will over-tax the existing infrastructure, the EIS must examine alternatives with lower impacts and measures to mitigate unavoidable impacts. EISs have not considered whether the existing supply of healthy food is sufficient to meet the demands of population-generating projects.

Under Stringer’s proposal, environmental impact statements would have to identify the following key information:

* The number, type and location of food retail stores including full-line supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants, and fast-food establishments;
* The frequency, size, location and hours of farmers’ markets, green carts and fruit stands, urban agriculture sites, and other sources of fresh food; and
* The availability of authorized fresh food retailers that participate in Federal, State or City programs related to healthy food access such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”) and the Women, Infants, and Children (“WIC”) program.

One of the benefits of the environmental review process is that it enables city agencies, developers, and the affected community to discuss what alternatives and mitigation measures, if any, are needed and feasible. If an EIS were to identify adverse impacts on the food system, potential mitigation measures could include:

* no action — not building the project
* creating new on-site or off-site healthy food suppliers;
* improving existing fresh food supply by, for example, supplementing existing resources such as farmers’ markets; or
* by reserving retail space in a proposed project for fresh food retailers authorized to participate in programs such as SNAP or WIC.

The environmental review process is no guarantee that government decision-makers will use the information in them to require better projects that have fewer adverse impacts, which often makes developers irritated with the cost of preparation and the possibility that flaws in the impact statement will hold up a project.

Nevertheless, EISs are often the only publicly available sources of detailed data and analysis to enable communities and decision-makers to understand the anticipated consequences of new projects and programs. Adding the food system into that analysis, along with water, energy, transportation, open space and other critical urban systems, would provide the tools for agencies, developers, and citizens to become aware of potential negative impacts on the food system so that they can, hopefully, avoid them before irreversible decisions are made.

For more information about the proposal, see Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s website.

The day before, Dr. Jackson opened the Institute with the first keynote speech of “Why Sustainability Matters.” This crowd of food writers and activists are constantly searching for a better, all-encompassing term to describe everything “sustainability” has come to illustrate, and that discussion alone could take up it’s own two day Institute. Jackson spoke about sustainability as a value term, like justice or health. These are things that cannot be defined because they are all subject to human history. The responsibility falls on those people who are passionate enough about value terms to defend them. That being said, his definition for the thrown around and subjective term is simply “living within our means,” the best examples are nature’s own ecosystems and economies, such as rainforests or prairies where water and sunlight act as vast self-sustaining recycling systems.

But then the “doom” descended when he told us that the “population bomb is still ticking and consumption is on the increase.” He aptly compared our country’s financial deficit spending mess to how we treat the environment, starting 13,000 years ago with the first agricultural systems. Without our overdrawn soil, forests, and coal carbon, we would still be a healthy hunter-gatherer society. Today, a 10 year old has consumed 25% of all oil ever burned and a 22 year old has consumed more than 50%. In a nutshell, these statistics he presented indicate the alarming rate of consumption we, as a planet, are gobbling up in the modern day compared to pre-industrialization. And when 70% of our calories on a global level are derived from grain, it makes agriculture the primary cause of the planet’s degradation.

Last month I wrote a piece here at Civil Eats that presented, in my mind, examples of “sustainable” food communities. For me, the solution that always makes the most sense when thinking about our current food system is to bring the focus back in, to zoom the macro lens to micro and do everything on a local level. Between bites of golden beets and shaved fennel I posed this idea to the kind Dr. “Don’t we just need to create self-sustaining systems one small community at a time?” I rosily queried. He turned to me and gave me this answer: “Well, I’m not sure, but it strikes me that that might be escapism.”

Yep. I’ve been a bit naïve. Although the “buy fresh, buy local” ideology is wonderful, and “food not lawns” should reign supreme, some of these ideas may just be a simplistic, black and white way to rationalize my safe little bubble of privilege living in progressive, fertile California bounty. When examining the real problems of global hunger, climate change, peak oil, etc., just skipping over to my favorite farmers market for a basket of strawberries doesn’t seem to fit into the fix-it equation. Paul Robert’s article “Spoiled” in the last issue of Mother Jones discusses this problem as well. He writes, “When most of us imagine what a sustainable food economy might look like, chances are we picture a variation on something that already exists-such as organic farming, or a network of local farms and farmers markets, or urban pea patches-only on a much larger scale. The future of food, in other words, will be built from ideas and models that are familiar, relatively simple, and easily distilled into a buying decision: Look for the right label, and you’re done.”

He goes on to discuss that our ideology of local equals better does not always take into account food miles accurately. Sometimes the carbon footprint of a fully stocked semi carrying goods from a single source distributor is less than the food miles tallied up from all the farmers participating in a single farmers market. In fact, at Cooking For Solutions 2007, CEO of Bon Appétit Management Company (BAMCO) Fedele Bauccio discussed this same idea. His company is a great example of how big does not always mean bad. They have made a strong commitment to being a leader in responsible food practices and have the power to actually fund research, implement programs, and alter trends on a corporate level. While putting together the impressive BAMC Low Carbon Diet program, Bauccio found that completely local purchasing models were actually less efficient than regional spending. And this program also corroborates that the emissions released due to transporting food is actually less than one-tenth of its total environmental toll. We should be looking at how food is produced (fuel and water inputs/outputs for things like meat and dairy) much more than if it is made in this county or the next, and limiting how much of those high methane gas and nitrous oxide generators we put into our diet.

But the carbon impact is just one issue. What about space to actually grow all of this sustainable food? Will we just hope that the people in our society who actually have the money to afford large expanses of land will want a variety of fruits and vegetables growing there? And is there even enough rural land on this planet to feed our entire population without the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers? Robert sites environmental scientist Vaclav Smil who essentially says that farmland would have to possibly triple, eliminating rainforests, grasslands and prairies, and our whole labor force would have to become field workers.

Okay, so I’ve been hit in the head with a reminder to think outside of myself, to broaden my scope and remember that we are tiny ants in a huge universe that needs some work if we are to survive. What should I do now? What are the big solutions if growing my own tomatoes and sharing my Meyer lemon marmalade isn’t enough? Too bad, it’s not that simple. There won’t ever be a checklist for being sustainable. All we can do is stay motivated, note advances and focus on ideas that prioritize balance within all the issues, from carbon footprints to labor rights to accessibility to the environment. Putting aside stoicism and unwavering one-track thinking to embrace a little cooperation, even if it means (gasp!), learning something from a farmer that uses a little bit of Roundup once in awhile. (Also read fellow Civil Eats blogger Rose Hayden-Smith’s post, “There Is No Box: Big Ideas About Urban Agriculture and Local Food Systems”)

After a whole life of studying botany, biology and genetics, Dr. Jackson has come to the conclusion that we need to perennialize crops to end fossil fuel dependency and reduce chemical contamination and dead zones. We need a 50-year farm bill and we need to grow double the amount of vegetables and trees. Some other current thoughts dwell on polyculture, vertical urban farming, roof top gardens on big-box stores, inner-city produce mobiles. The ideas are out there, the theories are abundant, but remember to shake yourself from time to time and make sure the whole picture is in view.