Paula Jones, Director of Food Systems, S.F. Department of Public Health and lead drafter, discussed the background and development of Newsom’s directive. It set out to increase the amount of healthy and sustainable food in San Francisco, promote public health, social responsibility and environmental sustainability; eliminate hunger; reduce the environmental impact of the food system; encourage food production within the City and on City property. Jones explained that rather than write a new resolution, it was decided that an executive directive would be the best means of implementing this ambitious food policy. Typically a directive has the immediacy and power to garner implementation across all departments more efficiently than a resolution. A resolution has its role in city policy, but it cannot advance policy as quickly. Jones stated one final important point that no new funds were allocated for or used to create the Executive Directive. She researched existing policies and resolutions relating to food and combined them to draft the directive.

Our second speaker, Antonio Roman-Alcala, has been instrumental in reviving Alemany Farm. The recent interest in food systems and policy made it easy for Newsom to support such a distinctive food policy.  Initially critical of the directive and Newsom’s connection to it, Roman-Alcala realized that it was the result of the combined hard work of Jones and community activists that made the directive a reality. However, he pointed out that an executive directive is only valid and enforceable during the course of that mayor’s term. Once the term has ended, so goes the directive. Roman-Alcala said that this is why it is critical for people to get involved now, especially since Newsom’s term could be coming to an end as he runs for California Governor. So, how do we ensure that parts and/or the entire directive become permanent policy?

A lively discussion with the audience began after our speakers finished. A point that came up several times is that local government is paralyzed by the number of issues facing the food system. A possible hope for institutionalizing sustainable food policy is to pick a few key issues that are likely to succeed; start with those and let the policy continue to grow and develop. Eventually, we will have a healthy and sustainable food system but it cannot happen overnight.

“How about those organic carrots?”

Roman-Alcala said the most important thing we can do is talk to our friends, neighbors, and community. Discuss organics, composting, or whichever component of the food system is most important to you.

“Democracy is a verb”

Jones told participants to pick up the phone and talk to your city supervisors. Find out who is in charge of the issues that concern you most and then contact them to discuss it. If enough of us call, they will take interest and start to listen.

San Francisco residents need to get involved and make their voices heard to help institutionalize sustainable food systems and policy which can ultimately be adopted in other cities and areas around the country.

To learn more about the steps San Francisco is taking towards a just, sustainable food system, visit: SFFood.org.

Kitchen Table Talks is a monthly conversation about the American food system. Its purpose is to build a coalition of stakeholders from all segments of society who come together to develop relationships, exchange knowledge and ideas and leave with specific actions they can implement to make meaningful improvements in our food system. To receive our newsletters, please email ktt@civileats.com.

In July, Major Gavin Newsom issued a new Executive Directive for Healthy and Sustainable Food for the City, 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.

One of the most ambitious food policies in the country, the Directive sets far-reaching mandates for 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; and educating residents about healthy food and sustainable food systems.

Leading us in conversation will be Paula Jones, Director of Food Systems, S.F. Department of Public Health, and Jason Mark, co-manager of Alemany Farm, a 4.5 acre urban farm, recently featured in the S.F. Chronicle, and on the forefront of the urban food movement in the City. Everyone involved and interested in Citywide sustainable food and urban farming policy is encouraged to join the discussion.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of Civil Eats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit which promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and people who feed us. It is hosted by Sagan-Piechota which created Linden Tree in the same space.

Space is limited. Please RSVP to ktt@civileats.com or leave a message at 925.785.0713. $10 suggested donation at the door; no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Sustainable food and refreshments will be provided, courtesy of Bi-Rite Market.

Roots of Change deserves serious kudos for planning and executing a truly ground breaking event. The USDA, until now, has not focused efforts on supporting those small-scale, organic, sustainable operations of which we’d like to see more. In the area of hunger and food access, USDA has previously been content to provide food banks, food stamp and WIC program recipients, and childhood nutrition and school lunch programs with surplus industrial food. The idea that USDA, food justice and sustainability activists, and farmers, along with regional government officials would sit in the same room working together toward solutions to fix our broken food system would have been unthinkable just a year ago.

The main focus of the two-day summit was on enhancing opportunities for farmers and increasing community access to nutritious foods, with special emphasis on ways to replicate and scale up the efforts happening now. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made an important announcement at the conference about his plan for a regional sustainable food initiative in San Francisco. And Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums discussed the upcoming work of Oakland’s Food Policy Council.

The first day of the conference was organized around a series of presentations, or case studies, that attendees could participate in to learn about the work going on in communities along the west coast. Public and private funders were also invited to help gain an understanding of needs in various organizations and communities. The second day focused more on the nuts and bolts of getting things done with food policy council updates, funder reflections, working groups to plan prototypes and general overall sharing of what was learned.

The case studies spotlighted a number of diverse topics including, developing technologies for government food assistance recipients to help them access fresh food from farmers’ markets; sustainable food logistic web platforms; and both web-based and farmers’ market-based food distribution hubs. There were also urban and suburban farm education projects; business incubators; regional government food initiatives; mobile farmers’ market and slaughtering facility models, and more.

The case studies and activities I attended were fascinating. I attended the Soil Born Farms case study on Urban Agriculture, the study on Seattle’s Food Action Initiative, and an open space working session on providing support for value added food businesses and young farmers. A few reoccurring themes came up as areas to focus on in future work:

• The need for a central clearinghouse for government grants and stimulus monies. In every session, people were hungry for information on how to find and apply for the money that is available.
• The need for government to learn from the groups doing the work and then provide a framework and support for those grassroots efforts. This was illustrated extremely well in the session on The Seattle Local Food Action Initiative.
• The need to tie the sustainable, fair food movement to the green job movement. (At one point, somebody said, “Where’s Van Jones?”)

It was truly thrilling to witness so many smart, committed individuals sharing information and resources. I look forward to seeing the good work that is sure to come out of this summit.

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.

After 10 days of incredible action—sod removal, bed and ground preparation, installation of irrigation lines and fencing, the building of a fantastic soap box—the lawn in front of San Francisco’s City Hall was transformed into the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden. It was a perfect planting day as 150 volunteers helped moved nearly 4,000 plants into their new homes. Teams divided into zones with their leaders and peacefully planted lettuce, tomatoes, beans, herbs, flowers and so much more. Good thoughts and prayers (including those from the next-door religious meeting) were had by all. Together, we built a “garden of communities,” as Victory Garden Manager John Bela calls it. Bela and Willow Rosenthal, founder of City Slicker Farms, in West Oakland, where the seedlings were started, joined Slow Food Nation Executive Director Anya Fernald and Founder Alice Waters to welcome Mayor Gavin Newsom to the garden.

The Mayor and Alice planted lettuce together in the garden and each spoke of the need for a sustainable food system, with the Victory Garden being just the first step to creating a national goal of making fresh, local food available to everyone. With an emphasis on good food being a universal birthright, they championed the myriad individuals, organizations and City departments involved in making the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden possible, and called for continued leadership and stewardship for such programs.

The day was glorious in its simplicity: take an urban plot of land and make it green. Meet your neighbor and do good. Grow food for people in need. These are all part of the vision and mission of Slow Food Nation to bring good, clean and fair food to all. Come join us this summer at the Victory Garden and at Slow Food Nation.

We are extremely grateful to our partners on this project:

Garden for the Environment’s Victory Gardens 2008+ Program, CMG Landscape Architecture, City Slicker Farms and Seeds of Change;

The Mayor’s Office, the Department of Public Works, the Department of the Environment, the Department of Recreation and Parks and Norcal Waste Management;

Lyngso Garden Materials, Earth Savers, Bountiful Gardens, Cole Hardware and Demeter USA;

Food & Water Watch, the Presidio Native Plant Nursery, The Presidio Trust, Alemany Farm, Friends of the Urban Forest, Ploughshares Nursery, the Urban Permaculture Guild and the San Francisco Food Bank;

S.F. Beautiful and New Resource Bank;

Katrina Heron, our Board Chair, who has shown enormous leadership – and was the first to have vision of creating the Victory Garden in Civic Center plaza;

Whole Foods Market, lead partner of the Victory Garden, which provided us with a delicious Victory Garden planting breakfast;

Bon Appetite Management Company, which prepared an outstanding and beautiful lunch for nearly 200 people on Civic Center plaza, and whose Google Café prepared lunch for hundreds of volunteers over the 10 day installation period;

Sunset Magazine, lead Media Partner of the Victory Garden;

And last, but not at all least, the countless hours spent by volunteers, including Slow Food Nation staff, on creating a vital, living and breathing garden in the center of San Francisco.

Photos by Scott Chernis