Meanwhile, only meager public resources have been invested smartly to build the kind of dynamic local food economies that support agricultural diversification and help link small- and mid-sized family farms to local and regional markets.

With the 2012 Farm Bill fast upon us, Congress has an opportunity to make smart, timely changes to help  fix our broken food and farm system by embracing a package of policy reforms outlined in the Local Farms, Food and Jobs bill. This legislation was recently introduced by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and is co-sponsored by 63 representatives in the House and 9 in the Senate.

The Pingree-Brown bill includes a comprehensive package of cost-effective policy reforms that would boost farmers’ and ranchers’ incomes by helping them meet the growing demand for local and regional food.  The legislation also aims to make fresh, healthy and affordable food-especially fruits and vegetables- more accessible to consumers.  Given our nation’s costly epidemic of diet-related disease, small investments now that increase access and affordability of healthier food will save us billions of health-related dollars down the road.

Trends show people want fresh, healthy, local food

Demand for locally grown, sustainable food is growing in every corner of the country, with more than 100,000 growers now serving more than 160,000 outlets (pdf):

• In 2011, 7,175 farmers markets were open for business, more than double the number in 2002.
• An estimated 6000 Community Supported Agriculture programs are delivering food directly from the farm to consumers.
• More than 2,000 farm-to-school programs are up and running, a five-fold increase since 2004.
• More than 300 universities are involved with the Real Food Challenge and sourcing sustainable food locally.
• More than 360 hospitals have committed to sourcing more nutritious, locally grown food through the Healthy Food in Health Care pledge.
• The number of restaurants purchasing locally-grown food has skyrocketed; For the fourth year in a row, locally sourced food is the top restaurant food trend in 2012.
• More grocery stores are carrying food produced locally or from farms within the state–and labeling it for customers!

In 2008, the USDA valued this expanding market for local and regional foods at nearly $5 billion. The total will likely surpass $7 billion by the end of 2012, when the current farm bill expires.

This growth is particularly remarkable considering the tiny amounts of federal funding that have been invested in local and regional food system projects. Since 2008, funding has almost doubled but EWG estimates that still just a measly $100 million dollars of taxpayer money a year is being channeled to projects supporting increased local food production, distribution and consumption.

Compare that to roughly $12 billion in subsidies annually that go to industrial-scale growers of commodity crops who are enjoying record income year after year.

Farm Bill must help scale up local and regional food systems

While the recent expansion is impressive, local and regional food markets represented a mere two percent of gross farm sales in 2008. We desperately need the new investments and policy reforms outlined in the Pingree-Brown bill to help this burgeoning market grow and remove the many barriers farmers face in meeting existing demand from grocery stores, restaurants, schools, universities, hospitals and consumers. The Local Food bill has a  $100 million a year price tag, a small sum compared to its potential benefits.

The Local Farms, Food and Jobs bill will improve our broken food system by:

• Increasing support for local aggregation, processing and distribution so that farmers can more easily sell healthy food, including locally raised and processed meat, directly to schools, hospitals, stores and restaurants.

• Enabling schools to use more of their federal food funding to buy fresh, local foods. Public schools could opt to use up to 15 percent of their school lunch commodity dollars for buying foods from local farmers and ranchers, instead of through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s nationalized commodity food program.

• Improving the diets of food stamp recipients and low-income seniors by making it easier for them to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers markets, community supported agriculture programs, and other direct food marketing services, putting more money in the pockets of local farmers and generating additional economic activity in nearby business districts.

• Diversifying and increasing the production of healthy and sustainable food by increasing funding for the Specialty Crop Block Grant program and increasing access to credit, crop insurance, and other support for organic producers, diversified operations, smaller-scale and beginning farmers.

Together, these modest but effective investments will yield important, much-needed economic benefits. Farms that sell locally through shorter supply chains often keep a higher portion of the retail dollar, increasing profitability and potential for expansion and job creation.

According to a recent USDA analysis, farmers producing for local markets generally provide 1.3 full time jobs compared to 0.9 for farmers who sell through traditional wholesale markets.  And local food farmers grow higher value crops that generate greater sales per acre—$590 per acre versus $304 for the average farm. Local food markets also provide a critical pathway for new businesses, with beginning farmers accounting for 48% of local West Coast food producers.

Tough road ahead

Despite proven economic and public health benefits, getting this bill through the House agriculture committee may be challenging, given the panel’s hostility to the “Know Your Farmer” Program, the USDA’s comprehensive local and regional food initiative.

Pingree’s bill presents both a major opportunity and challenge for the highly decentralized local food and farming movement to work together in a unified, focused way to transform its considerable success at the local level into the political power needed to win support in the House and Senate agriculture committees.

With the stakes as high as they are, we believe that local farmers and the more than 180 hundred organizations that have endorsed the bill are up to the challenge.

Originally published on EWG

The attacks coming from economists against the local and sustainable food movement sound a lot like this joke: The arguments are based in flawed assumptions, obfuscated by fancy charts, big words, and complex calculations. 

Consider this most recent rant, “The Inefficiency of Local Food,” on the Freakonomics blog by economist Steven Sexton, who challenges the claim that “relocalized” food systems can be as efficient as today’s modern farming. He writes, “Today’s high crop yields and low costs reflect gains from specialization and trade, as well as scale and scope economies.”

Let’s start with Sexton’s assertion that industrial agriculture’s high yields can be attributed in part to specialization and trade—gains presumably lost when we “locavores” start frequenting farmers’ market. He writes, “The case for specialization is perhaps nowhere stronger than in agriculture, where the costs of production depend on natural resource endowments, such as temperature, rainfall, and sunlight, as well as soil quality, pest infestations, and land costs.”

When I was in graduate school, our economics textbooks spun this old yarn, too. It’s based in the theory of “comparative advantage,” dating back to classical economist David Ricardo’s writings in the 19th century. Specialization, argued Ricardo, makes sense because regions and countries should grow what best suits their climate and soils and then trade for what grows best elsewhere.

But when Ricardo extolled the benefits of comparative advantage, “capital” couldn’t move. Now that corporations can, and do, this theory no longer holds. In fact, regional or national agricultural comparative advantage often reflects nothing “natural” at all, but rather the extreme imbalances in power in our food system that enable those at the pinnacle to more heartlessly exploit the land and the workers lacking power.

To choose but one example: Ricardo’s theory doesn’t explain why North Carolina jumped from a bit player in the hog industry to number two, after Iowa, just in the past few decades. The key was the state’s concessions that lured the hog confinement industry, including its weak environmental and labor laws.

Of course it doesn’t make sense to try to grow mangoes on rooftop farms in Manhattan, but contrary to what Sexton implies, that’s not what regional food advocates suggest. Indeed, one of advocates’ core tenets is that the healthiest diet, for eaters and the planet, prioritizes choosing foods that grow well where we are, when they are in-season or when they can be stored, and considers those mangoes a special treat.

Sexton’s other hit on the efficiency of sustainable farming is that its yields don’t measure up. As a result, he says, shifting to a regional food system would require “more inputs to grow a given quantity of food, including more land and more chemicals.” But his calculations are based on assuming we’re not reconsidering what we grow or how we grow it.

But locavores and regional food advocates aren’t suggesting we try to plant Iowa-like monoculture corn farms in New York’s Hudson Valley; we’re arguing we need to radically rethink not only where we source our food, but what we plant and what methods we use.

Most American industrial farm acreage, for example, is devoted not to growing food for people to eat directly, but to grow commodity crops like corn and soybeans that are mainly used as inputs—for livestock production, ethanol, and industrial products. In addition, the American industrial food system wastes as much as half the food we could all be consuming. This waste embedded in the industrial model and its squandering of vital farmland for non-food production is enough to shake your head at the economist who praises its alleged efficiency—or suggests that by shifting away from this model we are putting the planet at a greater risk for hunger.

Sexton misses two other important points. For one, those industrial yield figures start looking a lot less impressive when you consider the cost by which we’ve achieved them—and especially when you learn that those costs are ones we need not pay. High yields from industrial agriculture rely entirely on external inputs—most of them in the finite, nonrenewable, we’re-not-gonna-have-them-in-fifty-years category.

Consider, for example, that in the Midwest we’re outstripping the nation’s largest source of groundwater faster than we’re replenishing it. A recent peer-reviewed study published by the National Academies Press concluded that if we don’t shift away from this industrial model, the Ogallala aquifer—which one-quarter of the farmers growing corn, soy, and cotton and 40 percent of those raising feedlot beef rely on for water—will be completely drawn down in a few decades.

Using new techniques to track soil erosion, scientists at the Environmental Working Group  found that vast swaths of Iowa and other Corn Belt states were losing their rich topsoil soil at rates many times faster than official estimates had assumed. Industrial monoculture methods leave the soil bare for most of the year and relying on external inputs for fertility defeats the build up of healthy soil—both practices make land vulnerable to erosion.

By definition, industrial agriculture relies on applying manmade fertilizer year-upon-year. But relying on external inputs for farming’s key macronutrients—nitrogen, potash, phosphorus—comes at big costs. While nitrogen is abundant in our atmosphere, to “bind” it into a usable form requires an enormous amount of energy–often natural gas. In China, 70 percent of nitrogen fertilizer production is powered by coal-fired plants.

The widespread use of phosphorus in industrial agriculture–by 2008 industrial agriculture was applying 17 million metric tons annually–has led to what some experts call “the gravest natural resource shortage you’ve never heard of.” Relatively rare on the Earth’s crust, phosphorus is mined from ancient marine deposits, but it’s running out. Some say that within 30 to 40 years we may have none left. Plus, for every ton of phosphorus we mine, we produce five tons of radioactive waste. Today, the U.S. is home to more than one billion tons of this waste stored in 70 towers, ranging from just a few acres wide to some the size of 720 football fields.  In addition, we’re using more potent pesticides than ever, yet despite massive chemical pesticide use, we still face significant crop loss due to pests.

The second point Sexton misses is that strong yields don’t necessarily require chemical inputs and egregious water overuse. Truly sustainable growers know how to grow abundant food without all these external inputs: They recycle nutrients, employ natural methods to repel pests and conquer weeds, and tap ecological sources for fertility, like nitrogen-fixing cover crops. And guess what? Yields hold. In one crop-by-crop analysis over three decades, organic corn yields held steady per acre with conventional ones. Even more notably, during drought years the organic fields, with quality soil structure that retain water better, had 31 percent higher corn yields than conventional ones.

Studies are coming in from around the world—from the UK government to the United Nations to the OECD—that innovative sustainable farming techniques can match industrial agriculture in yields. And, when and if yields are lower, the lower output is more than made up for in reduced costs (both financial and societal) of inputs, better nutritional quality, improved soil and biodiversity, and more. In one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers at the University of Essex analyzed 286 farming projects in 57 countries, including 12.6 million farmers transitioning towards agricultural sustainability, and found a yield increase of 79 percent across a wide variety of crop types. Take a look at just those projects in East Africa and the increase in yields jumped 116 percent when sustainable farming approaches were introduced.

But, despite the evidence, Sexton and other economists with their collective blinders on still argue that the only way to feed the planet is with the industrial agriculture methods they endorse. Sure, that works. Just assume unlimited water, fossil fuels, petrochemicals, potash, phosphorus, topsoil, land, stable climate, and endless storage for radioactive waste. Just assume farmers can keep paying for these expensive inputs. And, assume all of us can afford the environmental and health consequences.

You’ll also need to ignore the plain fact that industrial agriculture has already proven unable to feed the world: Globally, we’re now producing over 20 percent more food per person than the late 1960s, but there are more hungry people—now almost a billion. Fixated narrowly on production, industrial agricultural so concentrates power that people go hungry no matter how much we grow.

So, ignore all that; assume the can opener.

If, however, you’d rather join me in the real world—where the occasional economist resides—and where natural resources are preciously limited and where farmers prefer not to pay dearly for inputs or be poisoned by pesticides, you’ll see that the most effective way to feed the world is to embrace a food system based in ecological systems and common sense.

Recently, I attended an event at New York City’s famous James Beard House that took me back to Yellowstone National Park.

Around this time last summer, I was on a tour boat on Lake Yellowstone with my family, where we learned that lake trout, a non-native species introduced around 1995 (presumably by an angler), had grown extremely problematic for the ecosystem of the lake–in particular, for the prized cutthroat trout, which is easily preyed upon and out-competed by the larger lake trout.

Not only was there no fishing limit on lake trout but in fact,  the only rule about catching them was that if you weren’t going to eat them, you had to kill them before throwing them back. According to our tour guide, you could cart a fresh-caught lake trout to any of the park’s restaurants for professional cooking and earn a pat on the back from the chef and staff.

Why did my visit to the Manhattan-based James Beard House inspire me to recall that ecological factoid from my visit to the nation’s oldest national park? Recently, Kerry Heffernan, head chef for Central Park’s South Gate Restaurant, prepared a delectable feast based on four exotic invasive varieties of seafood: Green crab (known to most fisherfolk as bait for blackfish), Asian carp, lionfish, and blue tilapia.

The brainchild behind the event was Washington, D.C.- based Food & Water Watch, producers of the Smart Seafood Guide. In partnership with James Beard House, the watchdog organization had invited Chef Kerry to prepare the invasives Iron Chef-style–with a little more than a day’s notice. This isn’t much time to get acquainted with the four exotic new ingredients, but Heffernan managed the challenge admirably, at least, according to this amateur seafood lover.

I’ll be honest. I’d expected something that might challenge my sense of adventure a little more–something slimy, maybe–but all four dishes were delicious. Food porn isn’t my thing, so I’ll spare you the details and instead fill you in on what drew me to the event.

1. I like seafood, but. ..
2. even with productions like Food & Water Watch’s Smart Seafood Guide , Blue Ocean Institute’s Seafood Guide,  and Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Guide , I still find the “rules” around seafood difficult to navigate, mostly because:
3. Seafood is often not well-labeled in supermarkets or restaurants.
4. Harvesting seafood takes a toll on the environment, and/or…
5. Popular varieties of seafood are often overfished, and/or…
6. The seafood industry is largely unsustainable because corporate fishing enterprises out-compete local fishermen, which may keep costs down but takes a valuable source of protein away from local populations and hurts smaller markets, and this doesn’t jibe with my values.
7. There are a few fish that I like and feel good about eating, like U.S. farmed catfish and oysters, but I still worry about health hazards related to consumption of seafood.

As I made my way through the famously small James Beard kitchen, up the stairs, (past the shower where Beard supposedly enjoyed showering outdoors), rubbing elbows with food writers, chefs, and staff from Food & Water Watch, while sampling Chef Kerry’s tasty creations, I got to feeling hopeful.

Aside from the Yellowstone example, there are many cases of invasive species wreaking havoc, on water and on land, on ecosystems around the globe. Eating them would seem not only to mitigate harm, but to actively improve those “invaded” ecosystems. With so many proverbial genies let out of so many proverbial bottles–is it possible to fish and market and eat our way out of a situation that, at least in part, we’ve fished and marketed and eaten our way into?

New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal suggests a cautious optimism, noting:

Scientists emphasize that human consumption is only part of what is needed to control invasive species and restore native fish populations, and that a comprehensive plan must include restoring fish predators to depleted habitats and erecting physical barriers to prevent further dissemination of the invaders.

“We are not going to be able to just eat our way out of the invasive species problem,” Dr. Kramer said. “On the other hand, there are places where this can be a very useful part of the strategy.”

Having written about quite a few of the perils of our modern food system, it makes sense to me that there are no silver bullets for the many invasive species scenarios. Surely, working solutions must be as nuanced, or nearly so, as the complex problems we face, on land and at sea. At local levels, though,  harvesting these species as food sources could help beat back some of these invasives, and might help local economies, too.

Food & Water Watch director Wenonah Hauter is enthusiastic about the potential benefits of marketing invasives, noting that in order to do so effectively, supply chains need revamping and some of the species may need some added sex appeal, in some cases, through re-naming.

Chef Kerry Heffernan filets a lionfish

At the event, Chef Kerry spoke to a “learning curve,” for himself and other chefs, but also acknowledges the role chefs can play in promoting more sustainable seafood choices. In true James Beard fashion, foundation vice president Mitchell Davis called this a “cutting edge” culinary trend, one that the foundation was happy to get behind.

Count me in. Below, some information on the seafood we sampled last week. Here’s to guilt-free seafood smorgasboards!

Asian carp

Actually a catch-all term for eight different varieties of carp, including the common goldfish and silver carp, known for their tendency to jump–high–when spooked by boats. Cultivated for over 1,000 years in China, the varieties of Asian carp generally referred to as invasive in the U.S. are grass, black, silver, and bighead carp. Over the last decade or so, Asian carp have been the subject of controversy and legislation, as many worry that some of these varieties will make their way into the Great Lakes. Asian carp are believed to be low in mercury, though the FDA has yet to evaluate them for contaminants. Prolific breeders, they can out-compete other fish for feed like algae and phytoplankton.

But how does it taste?

Chef Kerry describes them as sweet and mild, like whitefish.  He also noted that the large fish was difficult to debone, a likely reason that this fish has not caught on in the U.S.

Lionfish

Native to the Indo-Pacific, the aptly-named lionfish (also known as the scorpion fish or firefish) is believed to have been introduced to East Coast waters, including the Caribbean, by pet owners releasing aquarium fish into coastal waters. The lionfish is prey to no known predators, is a voracious eater, grows fast and reproduces year round. It is quite impressive with its spines, which can cause death in other sealife and major discomfort for unlucky swimmers of the human variety.

But how does it taste?

Chef Kerry couldn’t think of a counterpart and described it as a cross between John Dory and monkfish.

European green cab

Introduced on the East Coast in the early 1800s, likely as a castaway on a European ship, the European green crab was discovered on the West Coast as well during the late 1980s. The FDA has not performed testing on the green crab specifically, but it is considered likely to not contain high levels of mercury or PCBs because it is sensitive to these contaminants itself.

But how does it taste?

Chef Kerry notes that the green crab boasts more flavor than its blue counterpart, but that its small size makes for time-intensive meat-picking. He used it in a delicious crab soup and says he’s waiting for molting season to try it out as a soft-shell crab.

Blue tilapia

Native to Northern and Western Africa and the Middle East, also known as Israeli tilapia, blue tilapia (PDF) were, in some cases, intentionally introduced as weed control in Gulf state lakes, and are currently wreaking havoc in lakes in Florida, Texas, and Nevada.

But how does it taste?

Compared to its farmed counterpart (which, so long as it’s grown right–we like recirculating systems–are quite sustainable) blue lake tilapia has a less “muddy” flavor, according to Chef Kerry.

Watch video on actual footage of lionfish hunt for the tasting:

Originally published on Ecocentric

Photos: Jon Simon

Video: Atlantic Charters

For four years Kim Allen has served as garden program manager for Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA), which provides a minimum-wage, internship program for socio-economically challenged adolescents ages 14 to 18. Some come to the garden through word-of-mouth from family or friends, others as part of mandated community service.

During the school year Allen’s youth garden crew, typically a group of six to eight, work and learn alongside her in two community garden plots in West Berkeley. There’s the half-acre Bancroft Community Garden, which the BYA shares with two dozen community gardeners on Bancroft Way, and the smaller Community Orchard garden on land the nonprofit owns on Bonar Street. The fruit tree garden includes many heirloom varieties, donated by Trees of Antiquity–among them citrus, apples, and pluots. The Bancroft Garden boasts typical farmers’ market fare.

In the summer, BYA offers an eight-week program for a dozen youth, who put in about 20 hours a week. The organization runs a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) during peak harvest season. It sells flowers and whatever is in abundance in the garden to Bill Briscoe, who owns The Bread Workshop. Briscoe puts surplus fava beans, sunchokes, garlic, and other vegetables to good use in his in-house soups. BYA youth harvest about two to four boxes of produce a week for The Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice program, which serves low-income residents. Every other week the garden provides perishables for a local food bank pick-up point.

Allen, 33, lives in a semi-cooperative house with a garden (that her roommates tend) in walking distance of her job. She hails from a horticulture and outdoor education background and represented the national grassroots network Rooted in Community at last week’s EcoFarm Conference, where she spoke about working with youth in urban farming settings. We talked in the garden early last week.

What do you enjoy about your job?

I love working outside and witnessing things grow—both the gardens and the youth. Everything in life is always changing and evolving. There are always new challenges and things to learn. A garden is a good metaphor for life.

What do you like about working with youth in a garden setting?

I like the confidence it gives them; they leave knowing how to create their own garden. They also learn about the life cycle, the value of growing food and the interconnectedness of plants and garden species. Some of our youth come in scared of insects but they leave with an understanding and respect for their role in nature.

Maybe more than anything else the garden is a safe, peaceful place where these adolescents can come and forget about other things—whether it’s personal struggles, academic issues, family problems, or concerns about violence in their communities—and just work together doing physical labor in a social setting.

Are there any misperceptions people have about what you do?

When I tell people that I run a garden program for youth in Berkeley they always assume it’s the Edible Schoolyard, because they’ve heard about that garden. Many people don’t realize that there are school gardens in every public school in Berkeley. And of course that particular garden is beautiful. It’s nice to see what’s possible if you have resources like they do.

We’d like to be able to hire more youth and give step raises or incentives to our crew as they move into leadership roles. In terms of equipment: our wheelbarrow is about to fall apart and we can always use tools. We don’t have a truck so it’s a big help if someone with a truck can pick up soil. We can always find jobs for people who can repair things. It’s good to have more money to do the things we want to do, but finding people willing to do physical labor is key.

Are there any wrong assumptions that people make about food in Berkeley?

A lot of people don’t realize that hunger is a real issue in this city. Because Berkeley has a reputation as a food town people forget that there are a lot of poor people here who don’t have access to good food.

Who are your local food heroes?

The people who have the passion and dedication to nourish our under-served communities. I’m thinking of Farm Fresh Choice, run by Gerardo Marin (who just left) and Hunia Bradley. School food reformer and food justice advocate Joy Moore has tremendous positive energy and teaches youth about growing and cooking healthy food. Daniel Miller at Spiral Gardens is another food security activist in our area doing good work. And Willow Rosenthal, who lives in Berkeley now and started City Slicker Farms in Oakland, which builds produce gardens in people’s backyards and sells locally grown produce through its food security program. She’ a role model and a colleague and I admire that she knew when it was time to move on, she worked her arse off doing hard, physical labor at that non-profit and recognized she needed to find balance in her life.

What plans do you have for the garden?

If we could find both the funding and someone to manage it, I would love to put a chicken coop in the garden.

I’d like to move the front fence and open up the entrance so that more people in the neighborhood can come and visit. I’d like to make it a place where people can sit and enjoy the peace we have here.

I’d also like to create a memorial garden space. A lot of youth in our program have dealt with family or friends dying. Violence is a constant in some communities. I’d like the memorial space to evolve, with new and different plants, just as life evolves, but the space would be a permanent refuge and a safe haven in nature.

Photos: Kim Allen, top. BYA garden crew share a Thanksgiving meal, middle. From left to right: Nahom Fasil, Kithorny Porter, Andranee Nabors, and Davion Barnes. Photo: Kim Allen. Growing greens for the community, bottom. Photo: Courtesy BYA.

View a student video of the Berkeley Youth Alternatives garden program.

Originally published on Berkeleyside

The food companies have created an industrialized agriculture system that uses a multitude of chemicals in fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides as well as genetically-modified products. Some people believe these additives contribute to skyrocketing rates of diabetes and obesity not to mention asthma, food allergies and other health problems.

Accessibility to good food can also be a problem, especially for lower-income groups in large metropolitan areas who typically do not have grocery stores in their neighborhoods. Instead, these “food deserts” have an ample supply of party and liquor stores that stock snacks and processed foods but not fresh fruits, vegetables and meats.

Participants in the food movement have actively taken on these “food security” or “food sovereignty” issues by creating substitutes to the industrialized food system including community-supported agriculture (CSA), farmers markets, local food, family and neighborhood gardens, farm-to-school initiatives, food as economic development, food policy councils, food assessment programs, and youth programming and training. And, they are beginning to make a difference in the way America eats.

Food sovereignty means that people have the right to decide what they eat and to ensure that food in their community is healthy and accessible for everyone, according to the Community Food Security Coalition. It also means that producers receive a fair price for their products and that local family farmers and fishers should have the first right to local and regional markets.

With this mission in mind, food security advocates have been successfully changing food policy not only in the United States but all over the world.

Here are some good examples of groups that were honored at the Community Food Security Coalition at its annual conference held recently in New Orleans. Family Farm Defenders received the 2010 Food Sovereignty Prize, which recognizes organizations that uphold the principles of food sovereignty and fight for and make real change to end hunger and poverty.

Honorable mentions were also awarded to ROPPA (Burkina Faso), the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, and the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty (Vancouver, BC).

Family Farm Defenders

Family Farm Defenders (FFD), a grassroots non-profit organization in Madison, WI, was founded in 1994 to support the livelihoods of small dairy and vegetable farmers.

John Kinsman, who is president of FFD, began pushing for food sovereignty when he helped protest the injection of bovine growth hormones (rGBH) in dairy cows on the University of Wisconsin campus. Researchers there were beneficiaries of corporate gifts that encouraged and affirmed its use. Even the National Dairy Board promoted rGBH. But no one ever asked the dairy farmers if rGBH hurt their production, said Kinsman, despite Monsanto’s claims that it did.

Kinsman worked with former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold who at the time was a state senator, on labeling rGBH milk, which the corporate milk producers didn’t want to do. A labeling law was eventually passed, however, and it became a model for the organic food movement, which now is trying to label genetically-engineered (GM) foods.

Through FFD, Kinsman also worked to re-localize food/farm economies and forge new economic relationships between consumers and farmers. An example of this cooperative effort is the Family Farmer Fair Trade Project that enables FFD to direct market cheese from Cedar Grove in Plain, WI. One outcome of this relationship is that farmers receive a fair price for their products as they provide consumers with rGBH-free alternatives.

“I’m a peasant farmer,” said Kinsman who uses this term to differentiate himself from food corporations that are now trying to call themselves “family farmers” just as Monsanto is trying to call itself “green.”

“We need to find new words,” he said.

It is important to note that Family Farm Defenders makes sure that urban people are on its board–40 percent of them. This is because the board believes that they must be as involved in defending the family farm as the farmers themselves.

“Farmers are so beaten down by industrial food companies and low prices,” he said. “They have had their dignity taken away from them.”


ROPPA

Our culture requires us to behave in a certain way and that is centered around food, said Djibo Bagna, of the Network of West African Peasant and Agricultural Producers’ Organizations.

Food policies are usually formulated by people in offices and agriculture is governed only by financial considerations, he said. However, peasants are leaving their farms because they cannot earn a living.

“As a food sovereignty council, we first had to decide that we would no longer allow others to speak for us or tell us what kind of agriculture we should have,” said Bagna.

Poverty is a rural phenomenon and its strongest conflicts center around resources. Unfortunately, there typically is no investment in rural areas nor is credit offered at reasonable rates. ROPPA tried to change this situation and decided that in order to do so it had to be present at the policy table.

The United Nations Agriculture Policy group was surprised to learn of ROPPA’s request. At first it allowed them only one representative but ROPPA baulked. It didn’t just want representation; it wanted to shape the policy. When the UN refused to give ROPPA representation, ROPPA promised that it would organize 10,000 farmers to take the streets during the policy group’s meetings. The UN capitulated and allowed ROPPA a seat at the table.

“You can’t have food sovereignty unless you are involved in the debate,” said Bagna. “You need funding for farmers to grow food and communication to break down the barriers between policymakers who set the rules and farmers who produce the products. You need agricultural research, value-added products and a dialogue space to talk to each other.”

Detroit Black Community Food Security Network

Detroit has one of the poorest urban populations in the country. With 50 percent unemployment in the city, which contains areas labeled as “food deserts,” a group of school parents, teachers and administrators decided it was time to act: they would learn how to grow their own food for their children.

In 2006, this group became known as the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. It focuses on urban agriculture, policy development and cooperative buying.

The group observed that “many of the key players in the city’s local urban agriculture movement were young whites, who while well-intentioned, nevertheless exerted a degree of control inordinate to their numbers in Detroit’s population,” according to its website.

DBCFSN believes that the most effective movements “grow organically from the people whom they are designed to serve.” So, the group is creating model urban agricultural projects that seek to build community self-reliance and to change people’s consciousness about food.

For example, its urban agriculture program planted and maintained a quarter-acre garden in 2006 and a three-quarter-acre mini-farm in 2007. In 2008 it built the D-Town Community Garden where it grows 35 crops, keeps bees and maintains a vermiculture compost program.

All produce is grown using sustainable, chemical-free practices, and sold at the farm sites, the Eastern Market, and markets for urban growers throughout Detroit. The group also holds harvest festivals four times a year.

Policy development, however, is DBCFSN’s “jewel in our crown.” It has crafted food policy for the city that was adopted by the Detroit City Council. This policy includes provisions for education, economic justice, finding ways to combat hunger, discerning the school’s role in food security, advocating and providing for urban agriculture, developing emergency responses to food shortages and food deserts and forming a food policy council.

With cooperative buying, the network has tried to go beyond the basic co-op model and include food distribution networks. So the network formed a regional system with Detroit, Toledo, Chicago, and Milwaukee in cooperation with the trucking industry.

“We didn’t do anything that we didn’t feel we had to do,” said Aba Ifeoma, one of the members of the network.

Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty

Dawn Morrison of the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty is a member of the Vancouver Island Network that has mobilized people to define the food system in Canada for indigenous peoples of 27 nations. They did this by working together with non-indigenous people.

Morrison pointed out that food is a sacred gift of the Creator and humans have a responsibility to maintain right relationship to plants and animals that provide us with food.

“We must be free from corporate control to determine where we get our food and how we grow it,” she said. “We do this in our day to day actions with family and the community. Our policies, meanwhile, must be driven by practice and be community-based.”

Citizen participation is the key to establishing and keeping a democracy. As we watch our representative government crumble through corporate influence, political corruption and hate speech, we can look to the food sovereignty movement to remind us how democracy really works. Then, let’s hope that spirit will spread.

In 2004, Morgan Spurlock‘s documentary film Super Size Me debuted. In it, Spurlock eats McDonald’s food for 30 days straight. This extreme experiment sought to document the adverse health effects of the all-to-common practice of over-eating fast food, using himself as test subject. Indeed, Spurlock gained weight, scared his doctors when his liver went south, felt depressed, lost sexual function and more. But the film also became a sort of watershed moment, shocking general audiences and thereby playing a big role in spurring growth of the food movement. I met Spurlock recently while picking up my weekly farm share (we belong to the same local CSA), and he kindly agreed to talk about the food movement, changes in the fast food industry, and how his McDonald’s binge has affected his long-term health.

McDonald’s has gotten a lot of heat since Super Size Me came out. I thought it was amazing, for example, how much media attention that non-decomposing Happy Meal photography project recently got. Do you think your movie inspired people to be more brazen in taking on fast food companies?

I think people were already questioning them. Maybe it gave them reason to know they would not get sued afterward! I do think the film did open people’s eyes, and at least opened the door to an even bigger conversation.

Are you surprised at how the interest in food and agriculture has grown since you made Super Size Me?

Yeah, I think there’s a big trend, which I am also joining. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), locally grown produce, whole farmshares and landshares are happening now. It seems like there has been, even a post-Slow Food movement–people wanting to get a healthier, better, more sustainable way of eating and living, which I think is fantastic.

You were an early pioneer of the food documentary. Do you ever consider making others?

There are great films that are out there that deal with food, [and] I think if there’s a way I can help champion some of those other filmmakers, I’d rather do that than go into making another food movie. For me, movies have to be something that if you don’t [make them], then you are going to go crazy. If you don’t tell this story, if you don’t put it on a page, if you don’t put it on film, then it is literally going to effect your brain from this moment forward. There may be something that comes along that kind of strikes me in that way, and if it does, I’ll have to tell it.

In what ways did making Super Size Me change the way you eat?

It was really after the film that I decided that I wanted to become part of a CSA, I wanted to support this whole locally grown movement. I think the biggest thing that happened after that movie was that it really turned me into someone who reads labels. It made me a really conscious consumer in a way I never had been, and I think that’s the greatest thing that could happen. I’m not going to tell anybody, hey, don’t eat fast food. I’m somebody who still loves to have a good burger, but I’m not eating a burger everyday. I may have a burger once a month.

Do you still eat fast food?

Never. [laughs]. When I am in California, I go to an In-and-Out Burger, and that is a fast food chain. But its a much smaller, and even more sustainable fast food chain. The meat when it comes in is still in a patty form, the french fries are still potatoes. There is a process of actually cooking food that happens at In-and-Out Burger. Part of the blessing of living in New York City, is that we can get all kinds of food fast. We can get good Italian food fast, we can get good Mexican food fast, I can get great Chinese food fast from a little mom-and-pop shop around the corner.

Have there been any long-term health effects following your McDonald’s binge?

I think the biggest thing is my ability to gain weight. Ever since making the movie, I can put on four or five pounds in a weekend so easily. Its incredible how my body has kind of lost its resiliency. Part of that comes with age, but it also comes with your body having all these additional fat cells that weren’t in your body before. As you create fat cells to store fat and you lose weight and those fat cells get smaller, they don’t magically vanish. They are still in your body, still swimming around waiting for you to overeat so they can store more fat.

For those of us who will never conduct such an experiment–Could you describe in one word how you felt physically after a month of eating only McDonald’s food?

Nauseous.

What do you think about the regulation of Happy Meal toys in San Francisco?

I think toys do make kids want to go to these places. But I think parents need to be brave enough to tell kids no. Parents need to claim some responsibility.

What needs to happen for fast food companies’ role to change in our society?

One of the things that is already happening is they are making companies put the calories and the fat content right up on the menus, which I think is a great idea. I think the more you can arm consumers with information, the more you start to leave the choice in their hands. In the movie we were trying to find the nutrition information [in McDonald's stores], and it was behind a door or in the basement. They didn’t even have it out. Its almost like they don’t even want you to know how bad the food is. [I think they should] let people know. Are people going to stop suddenly eating fast food? No. I mean, people haven’t stopped smoking cigarettes. That’s a product [that] when used correctly will kill you. So I think we need to arm people with as much information as possible and then ultimately let them make that choice.

You are from West Virginia. What did you think of Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution?

I love Jaime Oliver and I loved his show. [But] I think that there were people, even people I’ve spoken to, who were turned off by the fact that there was a Brit in America kind of telling them what to do. I think that threw off audiences quite a bit and made it less accessible than it should have been. I know they are getting ready to do another version of the show, and what I think would be great in this next season is to really empower people to grow their own food. Go into these schools and build community gardens, like Alice Waters did. Get the kids hands in the dirt, get the community’s hands in the dirt. Let them do things that not only support their schools but support their local communities.

What would be your last meal on Earth?

A home-cooked meal by my mom. She is such a great cook. I would have mom cook up some pepper steak, mashed potatoes and green beans. And I am a big pie fan, but I love her chocolate cake. I’d probably have her make a three-layer chocolate cake with white icing.

On October 15th, the trade publication The Packer reported on an issue of growing concern for farmers market vendors and shoppers: grocery chains are copy-catting farmers markets by using “farmers market” signs outside of their stores. The Wall Street Journal had previously reported on the issue, including retailers that use the term “farmers market” in their name, like Sprouts Farmers Market and Sunflower Farmers Market. Farmers in Washington State interviewed about the phenomenon seemed dismayed that retail chains “want to attract people and give the illusion that there are all these small farmers there.”

Kathy Means, vice president of government relations and public relations for the Produce Marketing Association defended the sale of produce at grocery chains under the name “farmers market” as a “legitimate marketing tactic.” Aside from military connotations, ‘tactics’ are generally defined as “isolated actions or events that take advantage of opportunities offered by the gaps within a given strategic system.” The Farmers Market Coalition opposes marketing tactics that cloud the truth. Taking advantage of the public by leveraging the term out of context is not only misleading, but, I believe, illustrates an unfortunate failure of creativity.

Farmers markets have been defined in many ways, as Means acknowledges, but never as anything resembling a chain grocery store, in which there are no farmers present, and where the dollars spent do not go directly to the local farm businesses who work so hard, on often slim margins, to grow the food that nourishes us. Farmers are, obviously, the key ingredient in any farmers market, and not solely in the form of a slick, full-color poster. I have yet to meet anyone that goes to the grocery store (‘farmers market’ branded or otherwise) to connect with their neighbors, create meaningful relationships with farmers, taste produce that was picked that morning, or ask questions about where and how their food was grown or how to prepare it.  For these things, people seek out farmers markets, where they can watch first-hand the power that their dollars have in nourishing local entrepreneurship and sustainable growing practices. In fact, a recent input-output analysis [PDF] in Iowa found that farmers markets there generated $59.4 million in economic activity in 2009 (Otto, 2010). That’s no small potatoes.

Means’ statement that “many fresh vegetables available at grocery stores come from local growers anyway” appears to be overly generous. My own (admittedly limited) efforts to identify estimates from Progressive Grocer and the Food Marketing Institute yielded the equivalent of shrugs. I greatly respect and encourage retailer efforts to support farms in their community by offering locally-grown produce to their customers. Even if it means that farmers must accept lower wholesale prices in return for their goods, who wouldn’t agree that more marketing alternatives for agricultural producers is a good thing?

Thankfully, this issue attracted the attention of the produce industry just as flaws were exposed in California’s farmers market system by local media, covered by The Packer in another story on October 15th. In this piece, Means echoed all our concerns by saying that product misrepresentation is something the entire industry needs to be watchful for, especially with the increasing popularity of ‘locally grown’ food. “It’s bad business, because once you lose your customers’ trust, it’s very hard to get it back,” Means said. The exposé prompted the California Department of Food and Agriculture to schedule four listening sessions around the state to ask for public comment about its Certified Farmers Market Program and address concerns about its integrity. It also prompted thoughtful recommendations for California’s certification system by David Karp in the LA Times.

As local food purchasing continues to grow in the retail sector, and farmers markets themselves evolve, we must find and use language that is appropriate, honest, and, more than anything, transparent to the shopper.  There are so many ways to describe the products for sale in a grocery produce section, and the fact that all produce originates on a farm somewhere is simply not enough to earn the label ‘farmers market.’  By the same token, I would encourage farmers markets on the ground, regardless of their capacity, to look at their mission and put in place systems to ensure integrity that are realistic, fair, and clearly communicated to all existing and potential vendors as well as shoppers. This is the first step for any farmers market to build trust and ensure that farmers earn fair compensation for their work.

Recent research [PDF] from the USDA Economic Research Service, for example, found that “grocery-store shoppers were willing to pay more for a ‘freshness guarantee’ marked as ‘harvested yesterday’ than for food that was produced within closer proximity.” Direct-market shoppers were “willing to pay more for both attributes, but placed a higher premium on information about production location (proximity) than on a marked freshness guarantee.” (Martinez, et al., 2010). Apparently, a ‘freshness guarantee’ seems irrelevant for shoppers that have the opportunity to simply ask “Did you harvest these greens this morning?”

I urge farmers, produce retailers and grocery stores to put on their thinking caps and find the right words to describe what it truly is that they are selling, whether it be freshness, convenience, or something else altogether. Shoppers are smart enough to see through the hype and put their trust in the venues that earn it. This is what farmers markets stand for, and why, in communities across the nation, they bloom again and again like wildflowers, pollinating healthy change and meaningful relationships.

Photo: Corey Templeton via Flickr

Last week, Wal-Mart–the largest grocer in the world with over 8,600 stores in 15 countries, two million employees and sales of $405 billion–made news when it launched sustainable agriculture goals for the U.S. and emerging markets focused on regional food systems. The move is part of decade-long trend of food businesses–from producers to purveyors–adapting, or at least claiming to adapt, to the consumer demand for sustainable food.

Wal-Mart’s decision–the details of which I will get to in a moment–comes on the heels of the success of chains like Whole Foods, which also touts local foods. But unlike Whole Foods, which is considered “niche”, Wal-Mart is mainstream. Some say that this announcement is going to shake the ground under agri-business, which has vehemently fought against anyone suggesting changes to the food system for years now. But agri-business companies are not going to take this shift in consumer demand lying down.

In fact, agri-business elites have been trying either covertly or otherwise to convince the consumer that sustainable food advocates have misled them into thinking the current food system is unsafe, unjust, and unhealthy. And the evidence shows that more of the same is coming down the pipeline.

Just last month, the subscriber newsletter Agri-Pulse reported that Tip Tipton–the man behind the “Got Milk?” campaign–has been tapped to create an “ag image” campaign that seeks “to reverse consumers’ negative perceptions about a broad range of issues including so-called ‘factory farming,’ the use of agricultural chemicals, livestock management practices, processed ‘industrial food,’ and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).” The amount the parties involved feel would be needed to reverse the tide of “consumer backlash”? Twenty to 30 million dollars per year. These groups hope to get funding from companies like Monsanto and Cargill and will be seeking out commodity check-off program funding via commodity growers if possible.

We will see if the various groups jockeying to lead the vision of this campaign will succeed beyond past failed attempts like the Corn Refiners Association’s Sweet Surprise campaign, which sought to change consumer ideas about High Fructose Corn Syrup but was instead mercilessly mocked. In the end, the Corn Refiners scrapped the plan in favor of an attempt at re-branding their product “corn sugar.”

One thing is certain, Michael Pollan is the most feared man to agri-business interests. To wit, from Agri-Pulse: “The Michael Pollans of the world and others of his ilk really have captured the imagination of the American public who now think that ‘organic’ is a brand and that everything else that is out here… has no brand image whatsoever,” said Jay Vroom, the CEO of CropLife America, an organization that advocates for the use of pesticides.

National Corn Growers Association Communications Director Ken Colombini told Agri-Pulse:

There is actually a very positive image of corn farmers and corn growers out there… [But] Food, Inc. almost won an Oscar. The other side is getting so much more funding, so much more interest in the mainstream media… We’ve seen so many attacks… we see Michael Pollan going on Oprah… what’s going to happen when those people like Michael Pollan start to have an impact in Washington on policies and regulations?

The author of the article even took to editorializing:

One wake-up call to the ag sector was the remarkable speed with which major food companies reacted to the Pollan message by replacing HFCS in their cereals, soft drinks and other food products with old-fashioned sugar–despite the fact that a number of studies have demonstrated that there’s no difference between the two as far as the human gut is concerned. The only difference, it seems, is in ‘Pollan-ated’ humans minds.

The “ag image” campaign, which according to Agri-Pulse will launch early next year, is joined by another initiative to protect future Big Ag profits with a messaging blitzkrieg. Agriculture communications departments are common at ag schools–what is new is the blatant fund-raising focused on agri-business. The College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is speaking Big Ag’s language in its brochure to invite donations [PDF]:

There is a fundamental mistrust among many people of new and novel commercial technologies and the companies that develop them. These companies, critical partners in food and fiber production, face increasingly longer and more expensive development and regulatory lead times, and thus fewer years of exclusivity to reward innovation and pay down research costs.

Their answer: Two million dollars in donations to churn out “key partners in implementing and positioning new technologies vital to meeting a growing demand for biofuels and safe, nutritious and affordable food.” DuPont is on board for $200,000, which we know from a press release [PDF]. But just like the corporate-driven shadow funding this year’s political campaigns, we may never know every player who is behind these types of efforts.

Meanwhile, giants like Wal-Mart will divert our attention from its labor practices by presenting an initiative, that while questions linger, at least focuses on measurable commitments. These include investing in regional food system infrastructure to facilitate bringing local produce to Wal-Mart stores; the creation of a sustainability index that would provide information directly to the consumer in-store about production methods; and new guidelines for product sourcing–including specifically seeking out sustainable palm oil for use in over 100 packaged items sold in the store. The company hopes to double local produce (defined as that which can be procured in-state) sold in U.S. stores to nine percent by 2015.

There is no doubt that by its sheer size, Wal-Mart’s plan will have a huge impact on buying and growing practices worldwide. In places like the Southeast U.S. where cotton and tobacco growing has waned, for example, the company is encouraging the re-emergence of diversified vegetable operations. This initiative has the potential to push forward regional food systems more quickly than the government would be able to through policy-focused rural redevelopment programs–which are currently hyper-focused on broadband and ethanol.

But while Wal-Mart aims to bolster local communities by putting more money into the hands of farmers, critics argue that much of the money the consumer spends at the cash register will still leave the community. Marion Nestle writes that the initiative could only truly help farmers if Wal-Mart, which has historically demanded the lowest prices from its suppliers, pays them fairly for their work. Other sustainable food advocates think that the move is just “greenwashing.” Indeed, the plan makes no mention of organic practices or labor standards, both of which are very important to the sustainable food community. But unlike Monsanto’s claim of being sustainable based on drought tolerant seeds that never materialize, or PepsiCo’s claim to “encourage people to live healthier” while selling them empty calories, Wal-Mart’s plan has muddied the waters of sustainability with added nuance.

However, the ag sector is changing–many would argue irrevocably. Consumers who have developed a preference for unprocessed foods don’t seem to be ready to go back to junk food anytime soon. We will see soon enough whether consumer buying power and commitments like Wal-Mart’s inspire other companies to adopt the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality–and what kind of dent this massive corporately-funded “ag image” campaign will have. One thing is clear: the cash is on the side of the powerful, and the sustainable food movement still has a lot of work to do on messaging in order to define what is, and is not, sustainable.

Photo: fourstarcashiernathan via flickr

The continuum of problems associated with our petroleum-based economy hit a horrific apex this summer when millions of barrels of oil from an exploded deepwater well gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. For many, the catastrophe has spurred a serious look at their own reliance on fossil fuels.

But for San Franciscan Gene Thompson, a dawning consciousness about the destructive nature and unsustainability of American consumption habits started in the wake of an even bigger paradigm-shifting disaster: September 11th. Several years of brooding over cause and effect and each individual’s role in the chain of events leading up to the attack resulted in a life-changing resolution that few Americans, let alone urbanites, make: taking responsibility for growing their own food.

It started three years ago with a single tomato plant. Today, he and his wife Ellen estimate that they grow 25-30 percent of their total food intake. Current crops include tomatoes, peas, blackberries, raspberries, basil, carrots, mushrooms and several types of lettuce, almost all cultivated in nine half-barrels of soil, tucked away in a corner of their San Francisco apartment’s parking garage. He is also growing sprouts in a couple of jars on his kitchen table.

Gene tells the story of his project’s germination (pun intended):

“When 9/11 happened, I thought a lot about what importance it had to me personally. At that time I was working mostly in theater and it just felt like sitting around memorizing lines wasn’t what I ought to be doing. I wanted to have my own actions be reflective of something positive with respect to what had happened. I was thinking about how oil and all the energy used in mass food production was one of the problems. That thought just evolved.”

Part of that evolution was a moment of clarity that came to him while looking at a package of frozen blueberries. “The blueberries came from Serbia,” he recalls. “I’m living in California and eating in my oatmeal blueberries shipped from Serbia. Finally, I got too bothered by my growing understanding of just what’s involved in buying a simple tomato to not do something.”

Thompson had “never planted a seed before,” he says. But an initial tomato plant was a success, followed by one that he grew in his living room that the family called Stretch. “He grew all the way onto the ceiling and across,” says Ellen. “We harvested tomatoes from him until he became infested with bugs. He was a total experiment; we had no idea what he’d do. He just kept looking for the sun.”

Thompson next planted lettuce. “Lettuce and salad greens are the ticket if you’re talking about sustainable gardening,” Gene says. “I grow salad greens all through the year because of our mild, cool, moist climate. You harvest the lettuce as the leaves grow, and they grow back again. It’s so much easier than everything else and in about 30 days you can harvest the stuff and put it in your salad. That’s really gratifying.”

To help get him going, Thompson took a class at San Francisco City College from Pam Peirce, the author of Golden Gate Gardening, a sort of local Bible for those who garden in the Bay Area. He also received help setting up from The Ecology Center, a sustainable living organization. But he believes anyone can start planting with the same lack of experience he started out with.

“There’s a lot of trial and error, but the basic information you need to start is given on the package of seeds itself,” he says. “How many days it takes to germinate, how deep you have to plant, how far apart. Absolutely anyone can just put the seeds in the ground and see what happens. What kind of soil you plant in and all that, that’s important, but most likely the seeds are just going to grow no matter what you do. They may not grow quite as well as you like but they will grow.”

Cost is not a hindering factor, Thompson thinks. “Just buying a package of seeds and planting them costs just the price of the seeds.” He points to a package of seeds for mesclun lettuce. “That costs $2.69 for about 12 different solid greens. Buy that and some soil and just start planting.”

Space, however, is a bigger issue for people who want to grow in an urban environment. One solution Thompson hit upon was to plant his lettuce in the same container as his tomatoes. “The tomato planet is tall with broad leaves that really like sun,” he says. “It sinks deep roots into the ground. Lettuce is a much shallower-rooting plant, so you can put it on top of the tomato plant; their roots can coexist. And the lettuce likes the shade it gets from the tomato plant.”

Such ingenuity is a key component in maintaining his project. He lives out by the ocean, in the foggiest part of San Francisco, so “nobody can figure out how I get this great production out of the tomato plants.” His secret: He moves them every day from the back parking garage to the building’s front, enabling them to soak up both the morning and afternoon sun. In the front, right on the street, he nestles the plants in an open storage area and magnifies the sunlight using reflective material he salvaged from a dumpster.

Thompson would like to stop growing the tomatoes in favor of more complex projects. He is learning, for example, how to create his own soil using compost. (He doesn’t like buying commercial soil because it comes in unrecyclable plastic bags and has been shipped from outside the Bay Area). But, the tomato plants have become a sort of neighborhood symbol of optimism.

“I was going to stop doing them,” he says, “but there is so much interest from people who regularly pass by. One person said to me ‘It just makes me so happy when I see those tomatoes.’ Another person told me it made her hopeful. Another told me it made her proud. She was a Russian girl in her 20s and I thought, well, maybe she doesn’t have quite the right word. But I mentioned it to Ellen and she said maybe she did mean proud. It makes her proud to know somebody else is growing their own tomatoes. People really understand this.”

Photos by Jon Brooks

Originally published on Tonic

When the New York Times reported on the growing phenomenon of underground food markets in New York City earlier this month, the Greenpoint Food Market in Brooklyn was forced to shut its doors.

The Times article “put us on radar with the officials,” wrote Joann Kim, the market’s organizer and founder, in an email to market devotees. “Since then we have gone back and forth with the city trying to find a solution to how the market can keep its mission while adhering to rules and regulations.”

Kim, 26, began the market after baking for friends and family grew from a hobby into a means of providing supplementary income. “I didn’t find the right channels or environments where my goods were welcomed,” she said. “So I daydreamed of a flea market setting selling only homemade food made by people like me: amateurs with an inkling in the kitchen and a special recipe up their sleeve.”

As food safety becomes a growing concern nationally, these small, artisanal producers have fallen under scrutiny for preparing their goods in uncertified home kitchens, and selling food items without liability insurance or a permit. However, to meet these requirements would mean that pursuing most small food businesses would not make financial sense.

Nationwide, certain states have opted to relax food safety laws for small home producers, re-igniting debate around how to balance food safety with laws that allow for small food businesses to thrive. In New York State, baked goods, candy (except chocolate), jams, spices, and snack foods like popcorn are exempt from the requirement of using a commercial kitchen. In Maine, small farms are allowed to slaughter chickens and sell them directly to consumers without oversight, and one legislator in Wyoming hopes to do away with all restrictions for home cooks selling directly to consumers altogether. While opponents claim that these kinds of exemptions put the public at risk, small producers argue that the face-to-face relationship with their customers provides a different kind of food safety guarantee.

“As many restrictions, regulations, and safety guidelines our federal legislative bodies can dream up, people are still dying from Salmonella from processed meat or tainted vegetables,” said Rich Awn, who has sold kombucha–a fermented tea beverage–under the name Mombucha at the Greenpoint Food Market. “As responsible makers of healthy food, we know better than to serve a product that’s ‘unsafe’.  We’re making it in the same way we’d make it for ourselves, our friends, and our families and in the spirit of fellowship, we want to share it and sustain the process.”

Awn and Kim are part of a surging movement in which cooks often bypass culinary school and restaurant kitchens, preferring to cut their teeth in home kitchens. Kim speculates that the enthusiasm around becoming a “small batch food producer” could be related to both career experimentation as people lose jobs in this economic downturn, as well as an “interest in learning not only how to make food but knowing where it came from and who exactly made it.” She said, “the direct connection, the human interaction that you’re able to get at the food market gets everyone excited and builds a strong incomparable sense of companionship and community.”

However the market, she stressed, is not an end in itself. “People do not make a whole lot of money at the market,” said Kim. “[It] serves as an incubator for folks to test their product, to see if it’s viable, and if it’s something they can take to a bigger, vaster level within launching a food business.”

Last Saturday, in lieu of the market, Kim hosted a panel, featuring Bob Lewis, Chief Marketing Representative at the New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets; Sam Miller, Assistant Commissioner of the Intergovernmental Affairs Bureau at the NYC Health Department; Stephen Levin, Greenpoint City Council member; and a few of the producers, including Awn and Jessamyn Waldmen, the creator of the successful food and social justice venture, Hot Bread Kitchen. Over 50 people, many of whom have been vendors at the market, brought their empanadas, baked goods and prepared dishes to share as they participated in a town hall-style discussion about the future of the market.

One of the most promising ideas the panelists spoke about was turning a 2,500 square foot space in Greenpoint into an affordable incubator kitchen for around 30 cooks. Foundation, private, and corporate donation money, as well as membership fees, would help keep the prices low for producers testing the viability for their product. In addition, operating like a cooperative would mean that participants could teach classes, or run the planned retail shop in exchange for kitchen time. “This is for makers who’ve been producing goods out of their homes, unregulated, who are ready to take the next steps to legitimizing their business and willing to contribute their skills, time, and creativity to the benefit of the cooperative on the whole,” said Awn.

For now, the Greenpoint Food Market intends to be up and running again on July 24th, but all participants will have to comply with permits and food protection regulations. Meanwhile, Kim will continue talks with the Department of Health around the possibility of using group permits or other measures to amend food policy as it pertains to small markets.

“Working with local government to open an incubator kitchen is not exactly what I had in mind when creating [Greenpoint Food Market],” said Kim. “But it’s a beautiful evolutionary process with some serious growing pains but with hopefully a happy ending.”