Mark Winne's Blog, page 4

Fires, Floods, and Farming

A vulture is circling overhead as I’m staring at the rubble of a house that used to be a home. Randy Cruz, the sad owner of these ruins, is giving me a tour of this ungodly collection of charred debris. “There’s my bed,” he says, pointing to the remnants of a bedspring. “Under that is where I kept my guns, but I can’t find them. They must have melted.” A stack of red, yellow, and orange Fiesta tableware sits where the kitchen used to be, covered in soot but still neatly stacked, the only stroke of color to relieve an otherwise blackened scene of total devastation. Asking him if I could take a photo, Randy poses in front of a small woodstove, one of the few recognizable items amidst the twisted sheet metal and piles of brick. “Sure,” he says chuckling, “Should I start a fire?” Fortunately, three months after one of New Mexico’s worst wildfires in history, his sense of humor is still intact.

I met Randy almost three years ago at the Eldorado Farmers’ Market located just east of Santa Fe. Like other local food enthusiasts, I started buying eggs from him while catching regular doses of his contagious excitement for the hens, ducks, turkeys, and geese he raises at his Sapello, New Mexico farm. It was at the market one day that I overheard a conversation between him and a customer. Apparently, a neighbor’s pack of marauding dogs had tunneled under his fence and wantonly killed over a thousand birds—an event that occurred not once, but twice. Randy was distraught and angry with his neighbor’s carelessness, but the very next day, he placed an order for replacement pullets.

As the dark cloud of the pandemic settled over New Mexico six months later, and Randy’s restaurant and direct sales accounts began to dry up, he wondered how he’d sell the thousands of eggs that his poultry were now producing. It turned out his concerns were premature. Worried about their own food insecurity, individuals were driving 75 miles one way from Santa Fe to buy his eggs, often a case (30 dozen) at a time.

Any reasonable person—even natural risk takers, like farmers—would assume that two catastrophic hits in six months is more than your fair share. But this spring, just two years after the lockdown began, smoke was blowing from the direction of Hermit’s Peak across Randy’s farm. Pretty soon firefighters were everywhere, evacuation orders were issued, and the flames swept through Randy’s farm on their way to consuming 350,000 acres of New Mexico’s forests and grasslands. But just as the final embers of the house he shared with his husband Dan had died out, the angry gods of the Pecos Wilderness whipped up a gully-womper of a monsoon deluge that drowned pastures, moved fences into the next county, and turned roads into canals only fit for amphibious vehicles. Every farmer knows that shit happens, but these events were beyond excremental.

If there was any justice left in the universe, Randy was certainly due some. Though the wildfire took out his home, it spared the chicken coops (900 baby chickens were lost to the April cold because power was lost for weeks and his heaters couldn’t operate), two other houses on his property, and most of his farm equipment. The mercurial behavior of the fire was apparent everywhere. A bone-jarring ride in Randy’s ATV throughout the Manuelitas Creek area and along county road A4A revealed house after house burned to the ground interspersed with a house that was untouched. Hillsides and ridgelines were nothing but blackened pegs of needleless ponderosas that would alternate with pastures later made verdant by the floods.

If there was an upside to the New Mexico spring and summer from hell, it was that the valleys and pastures had turned so impossibly lush that you were tempted to ignore the combined destruction wrought by fire and flood. On an 80-degree, cloudless August day in the Pecos foothills, Paradise had supplanted the Inferno that had brought a billion dollars or more of wreckage and ruin to people’s lives. But blue skies and green grass are not salves for hearts broken by extreme assaults of man and nature; warm temperatures and a new FEMA trailer don’t heal the trauma of dislocation and barely escaping with your life. “As I was driving away from my house, I could see it going up in flames in my rear-view mirror,” Randy told me. “I thought our car was going to blow up because hot cinders were raining down on us.”

A bumpy ride down washed-out A4A may not be the best place to administer trauma therapy, but I asked Randy how he feels about all this, and if he ever thinks about giving up farming. “All I know is that I got a business to run,” he replies. “I don’t think about giving up; I just keep going.” One can argue about forms of denial and stages of grief, but you can’t help but wonder about farmers who are unable to take time to heal because they have a hundred chores to do. Maybe community support helps, which came from Randy’s many neighbors who volunteered to collect eggs because his workers were forced to leave. And maybe some fleeting moments of care come from the loyal farmers’ market customers who lined up at Randy’s stall on May 20th to welcome him back with hugs and kind words. One might hope, however, that there was more than good wishes and FEMA bucks to shore up our farmers’ resilience. Sometimes mending souls is just as important as mending fences.

Some farmers cope with calamities by redoubling their financial and time investments. Perhaps to insulate his farm against the vagaries of Mother Nature as much as to diversify his product line, Randy purchased a containerized, controlled-atmosphere plant production system manufactured by Freight Farm. The container, which he plans to have operational this fall, will hold the equivalent of two-acres worth of lettuce—seed to harvest in 60 days for each head. “Cid’s [a Taos supermarket] told me they’d buy $100,000 of produce from me a year,” Randy said.

Not to be content with his current egg production status quo, Randy also bought a $75,000 egg washing and sorting machine that processes 9,000 eggs per hour. This lovely little contraption takes eggs along a conveyor belt into a small channel lined with swirling brushes which remove any dirt and fecal matter. Each egg is electronically weighed and sent into the appropriate chute for packaging. More poultry, eggs, sales, and workers will ensue.

Persistence, capital, faith, and deep wells of human energy may buffer farming’s fraught enterprise. No matter how favorably the gods look down upon you from season to season, or how many resources you have to deflect the slings and arrows, it’s always three steps forward, two steps back, one year, two steps forward and three steps back the next. If over a lifetime you come out a little bit ahead, then you’ve done well. In the meantime, tending to the well-being of those who voluntarily choose that struggle—to feed us, among other reasons—is a community job. To simply praise farmers for their endurance and tenacity in the face of so much hardship is not enough. We better be there—emotionally as well as financially—when they need help, even when they don’t ask for it.

Purple Power!

Those who know me may legitimately ask why I’m reviewing a cookbook. Never having a strongly felt desire to follow manuals, “how-to” guides, or any kind of recipe for that matter, the thought of plodding through a complicated collection of cooking directions with long lists of ingredients is about as exciting as buttering toast. That is why Mark Bittman’s minimalist opus How To Cook Everything remains the source of 95 percent of my culinary improvisations.

But every now and then I come across an assembly of thoughtful cooking advice that seizes my attention because it makes a compelling argument. By that I mean, a cookbook that is written by a chef who has something unique and important to say about food and health without bludgeoning you into submission with excessive zeal. Such is the case with Chef June Pagan’s Purple Earth Cuisine (June Pagan’s Purple Earth Cuisine : Includes 23 Amazing Recipes – Kindle edition by Pagan, June. Professional & Technical Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.) which puts forth a modest and tasty proposal for eating closer to the purple band of the plant color spectrum. After considering the 23 easy but yummy recipes, trying some, and drooling over the book’s scrumptious photos, I found myself being seduced into a state of purpleness. As a gardener, I was a bit upended by discovering just how prolifically purple the plant world is. From broccoli to beans, tomatoes to potatoes, basil to beets, carrots to corn, blueberries to plums, kale to kohlrabi, and on and on, it seems as if botany’s desire has a decidedly purple blush.

As we know, Nature doesn’t just dazzle us with Her color variations, like baubles and gauds, or tantalize us with a heavy coat of lipstick to gratuitously seize our attention. Her devil is in the details which, believe it or not, follows a grand design. Purple foods are rich in polyphenols, which, according to Healthline, “may help prevent blood clots, reduce blood sugar levels, and lower heart disease risk. They may also promote brain function, improve digestion, and offer some protection against cancer, though more research is needed.” Anthocyanins are antioxidants and anti-inflammatories also found in red, blue, and purple foods that, again according to Healthline, “may benefit your brain and heart, as well as reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes and certain cancers.” Chef June brings the botany, health, and known science together when she says, “I discovered that purple plants are survivors by their very existence […since] the color purple develops in plants as a survival instinct against adversity such as drought, cold, pests, viruses, and bacteria.”

So, I’m drawn to purple cuisine for its aesthetic value, for its ease of implementation in my under-resourced kitchen, and for its purported health benefits. But I’m also drawn to June Pagan, both chef and human being, who I said was modest. I emphasize her humble nature to set her apart from much of the Chef-as-God crowd whose career arcs are often one long preparation for prime time. You might say that her modesty is magnified when you discover that she is a Los Angeles-based chef who has been a cook for celebrities. As if to go out of her way to downplay the Hollywood throb, Chef June tells me in a voice I can barely hear that she has cooked for Al Pacino, Sally Field, Diane Keaton, and Elizabeth Taylor. While such encounters have certainly provided her with enough material to pen a tell-all book the equal of Kitchen Confidential, she reluctantly shares but one proud moment when her food skills enabled Elizabeth Taylor (“she was a generous and beautiful person,” June said) to lose 15 pounds in three weeks. Given the extraordinary actress’s legendary weight battles, that feat might make Chef June a candidate for a James Beard Award.

But she’s not just a chef to the stars, she’s a star as well to those who inhabit more ordinary firmaments. For instance, Chef June has kept herself busy in the greater LA community teaching classes at the Venice High School’s culinary program and Learning Garden, St. Joseph’s Culinary Program in Venice Beach, the Boys & Girls Club of Venice, and at numerous community gardens. She tells me, “I dragged my electric pizza oven out to many locations and made purple pizza with purple corn flour for groups from 10 to 150 people.” To reinforce her commitment to community, I found it noteworthy that her beautiful booklet is graced with endorsements from Frank Tamborello, the head of Hunger Action Los Angeles, as well as Al Pacino.

Since pesto making season is upon us, I happily remembered that I had a nice little crop of purple basil waiting for me in my garden. This gave me a chance to apply Chef June’s “California Walnut and Purple Basil Pesto” recipe. While pesto making is an easy process that even I am not likely to dismember, Chef June’s commentary on both the health benefits of purple basil as well as her walnut advocacy sent me on a pleasant detour. Her directions made me examine the place of origin for both the pine nuts and walnuts that I purchased. The pine nuts were from China and the walnuts from California. Sticking with my loyalty to the “home team” as Chef June recommended, I went with the walnuts which produced a rich, nutty, and purplish pesto that easily beat out the non-domestic and green basil version.

If pesto is too prosaic for your tastes, maybe you should try Purple Earth’s puttanesca sauce. According to Chef June, “I learned this recipe from a real live mobster” who taught her a real life, purplish Sicilian version. I was particularly impressed with the substitution of gluten-free or zucchini pasta as a healthier option (even the Mafia is trying to slim down these days). I can say that, either way, the recipe produces a beautiful sauce.

Other features of Chef June’s purple manifesto include her ten tenets of Purple Earth Cuisine. These include the preparation of simple dishes that have an artistic flair so as to excite the eye, the consistent inclusion of purple polyphenols, and food that is created from the heart and delivered with compassion. Of particular interest to me is a short section about where you can find some of the less common ingredients like specialty olive oils and select varieties of walnuts. But even in these cases, it appears as if the more plebian versions of the ingredients can be used.

What makes me most enthusiastic about Chef June’s work is her quiet passion and her own characterization of Purple Earth Cuisine as a “call to action.” One part culinary journey, one part spiritual quest, and one part empowering others to be awake and alive when it comes to food, earth, and health, she sees this booklet as but one stop on the road to healthy, sustainably sourced food for all. June told me her next step is a similar publication that will focus on affordable farmers’ market-sourced ingredients that can reinforce our natural defenses against chronic disease. But what she has made abundantly clear so far, is that there is no reason why we can’t all be people purple eaters, and chances are we’ll be a little bit better for it.

Bestselling Food Policy Council Guide Updated!

Imagine sitting on the beach this summer, or lounging poolside at your favorite community center, cool sunglasses highlighting your pretty face and a cold kombucha accessorizing your newly manicured nails. Your head is nodding in a barely perceptible manner to the tunes from your headphones. You’re looking good and feeling good, but the only thing that’s missing is the right reading material. Well, nothing is more likely to catapult you into the outer reaches of hipness faster than From Partnerships to Policy: Promising Practices for New Food Policy Councils (Center for a Livable Future, 2022).

If Partnerships to Policy sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because this is the updated version of the hugely popular “bestseller” Doing Food Policy Councils Right (Community Food Security Coalition, 2012). As a co-author and contributor for both publications, I can say without a shred of objectivity that the new and improved 2022 edition is, like its predecessor, destined for greatness. Not only is it longer (100 pages, exactly) than the “old one,” it is chock full of 10 more years of “lessons learned” from the ever-expanding—both numbers and diversity—food policy council field. And the graphics, photographs, and overall design of this spiffy new pub are, thanks to CLF’s Artist in Residence, Mike Milli, simply to die for!

When we started cobbling together Doing Food Policy Councils Right in 2010 with a grant from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (God bless them!), there were slightly more than 100 food policy councils in the U.S. Most of them had only been in existence for a few short years, and many of those, while punching above their weight, were often hanging on by a thread. In other words, the data we were working with from which to prepare a “how-to” guide, was pretty skimpy. But the still embryonic practice of FPCs didn’t stop a surge of academic curiosity. At one point, based on the number of calls I was getting from graduate students, there were more attempts to “evaluate” FPCs than there were FPCs to evaluate.

Fortunately, the John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future joined the fray shortly after the original manual hit the streets. They established the Food Policy Networks (FPN) project to put the power of research, networking, and continuous reflection at the disposal of the rapidly emerging FPC world. Success followed as the number of U.S. FPCs ballooned over 10 years to 300. From Partnerships to Policy is the product of that power and growth, the fuel for which comes from the CLF/FPN team led by Anne Palmer, and includes Karen Bassarab, Raychel Santo, Darriel Harris, and me. Along the way, numerous interns and graduate fellows also gathered and processed data that contributed to our growing knowledge of FPCs and has found its way into the new guide.

But all the scholarly diligence and resulting technical assistance in the world won’t be worth much if others don’t read about what’s been learned. To that end, much credit for both the former FPC bestseller and its recent offspring goes to their primary writer, Michael Burgan. Michael has written more than 300 books for young readers, including Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty, which won a gold medal in the California Reading Association Eureka Awards and was named a 2016 Carter G. Woodson Honor Book by the National Council for the Social Studies. He possesses the unique ability to turn thick academic prose, often so dense it will stop a .45 bullet on page 73, into remarkably readable and accessible language. All of us thinkers, doers, and would-be writers are grateful for his efforts.

Like the first guide, the new guide is written primarily for students, early-stage food systems and food policy practitioners, and those who may be joining a food policy council for the first time. But as food systems thinking has evolved, so has the complexity of food policy council work. The new guide reflects that complexity, and as such, will be useful to food system veterans as well as “rookies.” For instance, as the world has changed significantly over the past 10 years, so has the scope of issues that councils address. In addition to such “bread ‘n butter” topics as food security, food access, and farmland loss, today’s councils are just as likely to combat racial inequities in the food system, foster food system resilience, reduce food waste, and promote environmental sustainability. And even as the dust still settles from COVID-19, we are learning how dozens of FPCs played an out-sized role in ensuring that every community member was fed during the pandemic.

Take a look at the Nation’s oldest, continuously operating FPC and you’ll see what these shifts look like. Founded in 1982 as the Knoxville (Tenn.) Food Policy Council, it was renamed the Knoxville-Knox County Food Policy Council since its geographic focus has expanded. The council’s early interests included public transportation and access to USDA nutrition assistance programs, but 40 years later, their commitment to addressing food insecurity is done through the lens of diversity. To that end, the council is building relationships with Latinx and refugee residents and is holding educational events on hunger in the LGBTQ+ community, to better understand how to address its diverse food needs. The council is also monitoring trends in food insecurity by creating an annual countywide report that maps food system work and tracks various datapoints.

While Knoxville may be a familiar story for old food policy council hands, the 2022 guide abounds with new cases from new places of both internal and external FPC strategies. You can read about how Philadelphia is “centering community voices” as a big part of their work to ensure equity in the development of local food policies, and how Salt Lake City established Resident Food Equity Advisors to include the lived experience of community members in their policy making activities. You’ll learn about the Palouse-Clearwater (Idaho) Food Coalition’s use of a virtual food summit to identify areas of resilience and weakness in their region’s food system that surfaced during the pandemic, and how the Greater Cincinnati Regional FPC brought more local food into their region’s schools by improving coordination and infrastructure.

One feature of the new guide that I find particularly useful is the glossary of terms. If there’s one thing about the food movement that has bedeviled me, it’s the way that terms like food security, access, and equity, among others, are bandied about with reckless disregard for precision and unanimity of meaning. Yes, the English language is constantly evolving, but co-opting terms and then assigning them an idiosyncratic meaning that suits one group’s agenda does a disservice to the larger movement. While we might argue over the exact definitions of such concepts as food system resilience, inclusion, and food sovereignty, at the end of the day we have to arrive at a common understanding of these terms if we have any hope of working together. This is especially important as new people come to the food policy council table. To that end, the glossary should be an enormously helpful addition to our eternal communication challenges.

On page 23 of From Partnerships to Policy, the question of why someone should start or engage with a food policy council is discussed. Many good reasons are offered such as pursuing individual and sectoral food system interests or pinpointing the community’s most pressing food needs. But the one that sparks the fire in my belly—that still compels me to act after all these years—is the promise that democracy makes: if you show up, work with others, and study the problem thoroughly, you can actually make change happen. As the 2022 guide states, “FPCs foster communication and civic action at the grassroots, and they give people a chance to shape, from the bottom up, the nature of a system that can seem distant and bewildering.”

Nothing instructs us on the fragility of democracy with more urgency than current events. We have learned the price of neglect, of what happens when we turn our heads away from the demagogues for even one minute. As with our nation, we still have a chance to make democracy work with our food system, but it will take daily practice and the kind of concerted muscle that only comes when many arms, legs, and minds pull together in the same direction. With this new and radically improved food policy council guide, the folks at the Center for a Livable Future have given us a map, a compass, and a kit generously overflowing with the tools we need to build an equitable, just, and sustainable food system.

 

My Dinner with Embry

The ineffable Jim Embry, raconteur and food activist extraordinaire, motored through Santa Fe early this June as part of his Kentucky to Hawai’i “Joy and Justice Journey.” I convinced him to join me at my favorite local eatery, The Shed, for a margarita and chili-laden enchilada. The deal was simple, I pick up the tab in return for an hour of his thoughts. Three-hours later, there was no doubt I came out ahead.

Up until he retired a few years ago, Jim was the Director of Community Education for the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension where he worked with county agents on urban agriculture and community food projects across the state. He’s also part of an extended and diverse family farming enterprise. Wearing both hats—an African-American farmer and University educator—Jim has engaged with USDA over the on-going anti-discrimination Pickford case. He tells me, “Our family has a history of interaction with USDA over the last 10 years. The county people from USDA just hem and haw every time you ask for help. The good old boy network is alive and well in my county! But on the other hand, African-American farmers haven’t taken advantage of USDA loan programs. Much of that is due to generational trauma. I hear from farmers ‘my grandfather was messed over by USDA, and, hey, I’m not going there.’”

Mark: Every time I encounter someone who was a victim of racism, I’m always surprised that more people don’t turn violent. Instead, they find a way to navigate peacefully through the hostility of others and the pain of their own anger.

Jim: It’s amazing! That shit should be written up in psychology books for courses 101 to 501!

Mark: But before we wade into this more, you have an important decision to make: do you want green or red chili?

Jim: Christmas

Mark: Whoa! You must be a native! So, when did your life of activism begin?

Jim: I’ve been active since I was ten-years old because my mother was the state president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and we spent a lot of time on the picket lines. I became president of the north Kentucky youth chapter of the NAACP, and eventually statewide president.

Mark: Obviously, your mother influenced you, but why have you chosen civil rights work and food work as a lifetime pursuit?

Jim: My mother’s grandparents were enslaved. My mother and her parents had to give up their bus seats in the 1930s and 40s. My family’s culture was to protest these things; on the picket line, I was used to getting cussed out and spit on.

Mark: Navigating your way through such horrors without responding violently requires the skills of a saint. How did you do it?

Jim: One of my three great grandfathers who fought on the Union side in the Civil War died at a battle in Kentucky. He left behind his wife and seven children, all about two years apart. What was my great grandmother going to go? She was living in a county that had confederate sympathies. But she found her way through those challenges by holding her tongue and not allowing her demeanor to antagonize white people. All seven kids were inspired by their mother and they all eventually owned their own small farms.

Mark: Last summer, I drove from Santa Fe to Connecticut and back again making several stops along the way to gather up community food stories. You are doing the same thing, except that you’re going from Kentucky to California, and on to Hawai’i, then home again. I called my trip a “Voyage of Discover,” and you are calling yours “The Joy and Justice Journey.” In these divisive times, joy and justice aren’t two words I hear juxtaposed very often. Why joy and justice. and maybe more importantly—I’m 72 and you’re 73—what’s driving old guys like us to drive?

Jim: My short answer is I don’t know any better! A longer version is that the tour is simply a continuation of my family’s social justice/social change journey—this year’s manifestation. In reality, I’ve actually been traveling for a long, long time!

Mark: Yes, you are kind of an itinerant preacher…

Jim: We were reared in the Black Baptist Church which had many gatherings all over the state. They always had lots of food and prayer. Because my father worked on the railroad, we got free train passes that allowed us to travel and visit family.

With Slow Food, I got to go to Tierra Madre 2008 because of my role in co-founding the Lexington Food Coop in 1972 [the “Lex Food Coop” is a multi-faceted and beautiful grocery store that I had the pleasure of visiting several years ago] on principles that align well with Slow Food’s—work with food that is local, healthy, and organic. Slow Food is about food that is good, clean, and fair. Similar principles. But there’s another reason as well. When my Aunt Bessie wondered why I was going to Italy, she asked me, “what’s slow food?” I said, “Aunt Bessie, it’s what you’ve been doing your whole life.”

Mark: But how did the notion of joy become kissing cousins with justice?

Jim: Slow Food USA asked me to be the primary writer of their Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Manifesto. But there was a push back around some of the language. I wanted social justice to be woven into everything at Slow Food. We started a campaign to get the manifesto out to all the chapters. So rather than calling it something contentious like the “Dismantling Racism Manifesto” or the “Anti White Supremacy” campaign, we decided to call it the “Joy and Justice Campaign.”

Mark. That’s fascinating. I came into the food movement in my teens. I was in college and raising money for famine relief in Africa. I saw food as the gateway to social change. I started a coop; started a breakfast program. Yes, it was social justice work, but too often we were forced to sacrifice food’s “deliciousness” and pleasurable qualities simply to make cheap calories available to hungry people. We worked hard to put pleasure on the plate, joy in the jabber, but too often joy goes missing in action leaving some ponderous force scowling in your face.

Jim: Slow Food contracted with a women’s coop in Kenya to make posters and bracelets to give us merchandise that promoted joy. We sold some of these items through Slow Food chapters to generate money to send more people of color to Tierra Madre.

But personally, I have to enjoy what I’m doing. If I’m doing social justice work creatively, purposely, effectively, I can’t be pissed off. I have friends who are caught up in the negativity, and they often drop out or burn out. You and I are still sitting here holding ground. I guess I learned from my early experience on the picket lines that you can be abused but still come home and be rejuvenated by the common experience of those you were with. And then we’d have a big meal!

We have to overcome the bad experiences—my sister died because of Jim Crow. The hospital had a “colored” waiting room and a white waiting room. She had pneumonia and the hospital made her wait too long. My mother lived that trauma, but there was still a higher calling; we have to keep moving forward and not give in to bitterness.

Mark: You can’t be constantly angry and also effective. If you let that moment of violence and rage seize your life, you’ll lose sight of the big picture.

Jim: I’m interested in the longer sweep of human existence. We humans have been around for about two million years. As a species, we are among the newest. We’re still evolving; it’s Mandela’s “Long March to Freedom,” for instance. I always remember that plants and seeds came way before us. I think of myself as stardust condensed into human form, like the particles swirling about in space cohering into heavenly bodies over billions of years.

Mark: We don’t honor our history or respect the process of adaptation. I think of the few seconds on the universe’s clock that we humans have occupied terra firma. It’s truly humbling. But to then look at the incremental progress that has been made to reduce injustice—even when we can sometimes acknowledge great progress—well, it sure tests your resolve.

Jim: Stolen land and stolen labor is the story of food and agriculture. This was the foundational injustice. That Slow Food will acknowledge and adopt this principle soon is a pivotal point for transformation to justice, and clearly a big moment of progress.

The exploitation of the environment mirrors the exploitation of people. The rise of the state was accompanied by the rise of the patriarchy which led to the oppression of women–the Divine, as it has been conceived in most mythology and religion, used to be both male and female, then it became entirely male which brought about assault on nature, including women. The disregard of mother earth became a disregard for women. The good news is that as a species, we are maturing because of this realization, and we get to feel alive because we feel a sense of joy.

Mark: If we didn’t feel alive, if we don’t find joy, we’d be teetering toward mass depression and suicide.

Jim: I loved reading Nietzsche, Lao-tse, Plato, Mumford, and Huxley. They give me a sense of different people’s view of humanity and the contradictions. At the very least, I learned that that we’re the not first people to suffer. Some of those black kings and queens enslaved black people to build the pyramids. They were sons of bitches!

Mark: Intellectually, you have a big project, especially when it comes to helping someone feel that they are not the first person to ever be a victim of another person’s exploitation and greed.

Jim: Marx’s analysis of capitalism is that the person who spends their life assembling widgets day after day is only given a diminished view of their history and humanity. A person with a larger sense of themselves won’t work for the man. Helping people get to that point is my ultimate objective.

Mark: My first encounter with you was maybe 20 years ago in Lexington, Kentucky at a local food summit. There were 150 people in the room, 99% of whom were white, and you were leading the discussion. I thought that was interesting. Everybody was totally engaged because of your aura and facilitation skills. Though you seem continuously buoyed by faith, I’ve always been curious about the larger source of that aura.

Jim: Again, I had three great grandfathers who fought in the civil war, and they were fighting for their own freedom as well as that of their wives and children. My family has always been engaged, even when they were enslaved, even when they were property. My mother was confronted with sexual attacks. How did my family know to build schools and churches after Emancipation? They knew they only had one direction to go, and that was up

Mark: Yet, in your professional life, you must have had your share of dark moments and push back?

Jim: Some of my family called me and told me to be careful about this journey. One of my cousins said they would pray for me. If you’re an activist, you’re a marked person. I’ve been stopped by the police; I’ve had police point guns at me; I’ve had the FBI come to my house. As an African-American, that happens all the time.

Mark: Your response, as well as that of other members of the Black community, almost seems Christ-like at times—everyday you’re crucified; you could stay in a tomb of hostility, resentment, and anger, or, like Christ, you roll back that stone and get on with the work.

Jim. Somedays on a farm, a flood comes along and wipes out your field; or the coyotes take out your chickens; you can’t give up or dwell on the past. You need to heal or you’ll do things that make things worse. I was taught a faith in myself; you can weather this storm if you can look back and laugh at what happened.

Mark. I got one more question for you, but I want to make sure you’re okay. We’ve been talking now for almost three hours. It looks like we’re the last people in the restaurant. Do you need a break, or a walk around the block?

Jim: I could do this all day! In my view, what’s missing in the movement is an opportunity to have just these kinds of conversations.

Mark: So, my question is this: We are two guys who devoted their lives to community work. But unlike past Presidents, we’re unlikely to be spending our later years planning our national libraries. What’s our role, what’s our work at this stage in our lives?

Jim. As elders, we have experienced seven decades of life. Our work is to synthesize our past and the past work of others, and then to share that synthesis. To help future generations develop a more integrated view, one that will allow them to look forward and backwards at the same time. We need to have a vision based on a synthesis of past, present, and future, like the West African bird whose head is facing to the rear to know where he’s come from. Like I said, to exploit people, the plantation and factory owners needed to give them a diminished view of the past. They accomplished those ends with stolen land, stolen people, and enforced their work with violence. As H. Rap Brown said, “Violence is as American as Cherry pie.”

Mark: How appropriate for today! That could be the NRA’s motto.

Jim: Yes, the Second Amendment is used as a way for capital and power to control others through guns and violence.

But what’s our work? Synthesis. I was blessed in my life to be in the presence of elders who themselves synthesized for me and others. Generational disconnect is real. Part of our work as elders is to reach out to younger generations. Whenever I can, I sit around over breakfast and have conversations; sit around over dinner and have conversations. My mantra is to bring light in and send light out. Real simple. That’s the work.

Humans are social beings but are suffering from a form of psychic hunger. Much of our episodic violence is a result of their isolation, of people wanting a sense of relationship but not getting it. There is a psychic hunger that results from dead Kentucky coal towns with their boarded-up buildings and the remaining people on opioids. If people don’t have access to creative outlets—if they can’t see beyond a set of diminished possibilities—that psychic hunger will lead to destructive behavior.

I’m some time referred to as that crazy-ass farmer from Kentucky, but our work is synthesizing, and to connect with young folks.

Mark: And to bring joy, which you have done for me tonight! Thank you.

 

Stop the Bully: Drive Less and Grow Food

I approached the planting of this year’s vegetable garden with an uncommon degree of ambivalence and lassitude. Usually, I’m fueled with an abundance of spring zeal to bring my backyard to life and shake off winter’s lethargy while demonstrating my horticultural chops. Maybe it was New Mexico’s perpetual drought or the beady-eyed varmints who evaded my defenses that had worn me down. Or, more worrisome yet, I wondered if fifty years of gardening had finally placed a damper on that fire in my belly? In a manner that would inspire no one, I did find an old bag of potting mix and reluctantly stuffed a few lettuce, kale, and basil seeds into some containers.

But then Putin invaded Ukraine, buildings in Kyiv crumbled, and the bodies of children lay across the streets of Mariupol. Places we’d never heard of with names we could not pronounce suddenly felt painfully close. Economic sanctions were imposed on the Russians, and the brave Ukrainians became everyone’s favorite underdog with their Alamo defense. First gas prices rose, then food prices, and finally my motivation.

When one friend complained about the high price of gas, it occurred to me that was the price you pay for freedom and democracy, a much smaller price than the one being paid by Ukrainians. When I saw the horror that the Russian military had inflicted, any remaining sympathy for those who complain about $5 per gallon gas dissipated like flared methane from a refinery tower. I told my friend that when we were teenagers filling up our gas guzzlers in 1968, gas was 34 cents a gallon. Inflation alone would bring that same gallon up to $2.80 today, but for cars whose gas mileage is nearly three times better than it was then. The pre-Ukraine war price in my neck of the woods was $3.39 per gallon. Even at $6 per gallon, our high-mileage cars still put us ahead of where we were in 1968.

Holding aside the impact of world events on my wallet, Putin’s actions reminded me of how much I’ve always been influenced by an intolerance for bullies. The one physical fight of my life was with Rickie D., our junior high school’s notorious miscreant who distinguished himself by starting fights with smaller kids. He picked on me one day shortly after I had spent two months at summer camp learning karate. Much to my surprise, I landed a solid kick to his solar plexus that sent Rickie reeling. He never bothered me again.

A few years later I would trade violent resistance for non-violent forms when I refused to submit to induction in the Army. In this case, it was my revulsion for the bullies in Washington who dropped napalm and Agent Orange on Vietnamese villages. McNamara and Nixon didn’t back down as quickly as Rickie, but I like to believe that my one piece of grit, when combined with that of millions of other resisting Americans, eventually ground the country’s war machine to a halt.

I would discover corporate bullies early in my community organizing years. They included supermarket executives who displayed contempt for lower-income neighborhoods by shuttering their long-established chain supermarkets, turning these places into food deserts overnight. My bully list would grow to include owners and operators of factory farms whose disregard for their workers, the air, the water, and of course the animals surpassed all understanding. All of these foes, of course, required more than a well-placed karate kick or acts of civil disobedience, but with the right set of tactics and persistence, even these bullies could be brought to heel.

When it is time for the warrior to oppose the one who harms others, they must avoid losing their own humanity by tarring those who innocently inhabit the bully’s universe.  I was reminded of this while viewing a 2003 video of Paul McCartney’s concert in Moscow’s Red Square (Paul McCartney – Back In The USSR (Live – Reprise) – YouTube). As the band and Paul, who was wearing a red t-shirt with “No More Land Mines” emblazoned on it, kicked into “Back in the USSR” every set of Russian hips were soon gyrating to their maximum capacity. Thousands of gleeful concert goers moved as a unified testament to the power of music to bring the world together. But, literally, the only sour puss among the joyful throngs that night was Putin’s. He sat in the VIP seats, expressionless and motionless, using the scenes around him, no doubt, as further confirmation of the West’s decadence.

When Paul sang, “Well those Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the West behind!” I saw in my mind the New York Times photos of uniformed, Ukrainian women, blonde braids dangling, learning how to fire an AK-47 to protect their homeland, families, children, husbands and lovers. If these warrior-princesses are willing to throw themselves into combat against the bully, then I could very well get off my sorry butt and plant a garden, to say nothing of paying a few bucks more for a tank of gas!

As the Red Square crowd made clear, we must separate the bully and his henchmen from the people. Thousands of courageous Russians have protested, resisted, and fled Russia to register their disgust with Putin’s war. And keep in mind that resistance and protest in Russia is not for the “sunshine patriot”—you don’t just get arrested and then released with the help of the nice legal aid lawyer in 24 hours. Speaking out against Putin can get you 15 years of hard time in the gulag.

What’s at stake? My pandemic post (Love in the Time of Corona | Mark Winne) of two years ago urged that we support our local farmers and plant more gardens—ones that we could regard as victory gardens—as insurance policies for the food system challenges that lay ahead. In a similar vein, let’s label this year’s gardens “democracy gardens,” not only to direct our attention to the growing depletion in the world’s food supply, but to acknowledge the dark anti-democratic storm clouds gathering across the globe, and now causing death and destruction in Ukraine.

We pay that policy premium by buying and growing local food; we oppose the world’s slide toward authoritarianism by shoring up sustainable food resources at home and abroad. Autocracy doesn’t just prevail in Russia, it infects China, India, the Philippines, Brazil, and other countries, including our own.  Taking a page from the world’s most infamous 20th century dictator’s play book, Trump’s Munich beer hall putsch was January 6, 2021 and his “brown shirts” were his horned bumpkins assaulting the Nation’s capital. Stopping Putin’s rash seizure of Ukraine is the first step in ensuring that democracy’s slide is reversed, both globally and nationally. (If you want to explore the affinity between Trump and Putin, see Trump and Ukraine: Former Advisers Revisit What Happened – The New York Times (nytimes.com)).

How does my garden and your garden help? Just as we decrease our demand for gas by driving less, we can decrease the demand for food by growing more. As the world stares into the face of severe food shortages due to a decline in both Ukrainian and Russian food production this year, every seed and every row that we plant matter. Since Ukraine and Russia combined provide 30 percent of the world’s barley and wheat, disruptions this year could adversely affect “up to 1.7 billion people—a third of whom are already living in poverty,” said a recent United Nations report.

So, those Ukraine girls really knocked me off my couch. I’ve cast off my desultory approach to gardening; I invested in a drip irrigation system to conserve water; I bought chicken manure from my local egg farmer to enrich my soil; I started hundreds of vegetable plants indoors.

Easter weekend found me on my knees, not only to celebrate Christ’s ascension, but to set baby plants into my judiciously composed garden beds. I cradled each tiny stalk between my thumb and index finger, folding their delicate root threads into the soil, and pressing each one into place with just enough force to feel the earth’s spongey resistance. Normally, my rough prayers—more like threats—are for the damn pests to stay away long enough for the plants to reach edible size. But today, my prayers were for Ukraine’s soil to be free of blood and for democracy to be nurtured once again.

“I’m Full!” Fills Our Stress-Induced Void

For too long, I kept a bowl of potato chips, pretzels, and beer nuts on my kitchen counter. Every time I walked by, I scooped a handful of fatty, salty goodness into my mouth. On those occasions when the scoops became too many, and a wave of guilt washed over me, I simply told myself to add ten minutes to my daily bike ride. But my bathroom scale—I swear it must’ve been broken—told me I was losing the battle. An unfavorable “balance of trade” between calories in and calories out had developed. I was gaining weight.

A few weeks ago, I took the chip, pretzel, and nut bags and buried them deep in a bottom kitchen drawer. I filled what had previously been the “bowl of death” with apples, oranges, and bananas. A few days ago, I checked the scale—apparently it had been fixed—and I had already shed a pound or two. Had a grown man with approximately 19 years of formal education and many additional years of something less formal finally figured out how visibility affects eating behavior? No. I read it in Theresa Yosuico Stahl’s wonderful first book I’m Full! (Amazon.com: Theresa Yosuico Stahl: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle). The Kindle edition is available at half-price through March 31.

Yosuico Stahl, a registered and licensed dietitian (RDN, LDN) who holds a certification from the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, has practiced dietetics and nutrition counseling in Maryland for 40 years. During that time, she has worked with thousands of clients from all social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds who have presented an array of dietary and lifestyle health challenges. Not only has this consummate experience, supplemented by a lifetime of professional training, enabled Yosuico Stahl to assemble an impressive list of “lessons learned”—offered in I’m Full as 52 Tips—she brings a life fully lived to the table.

Woven into her very practical and entirely achievable tips for a healthier life are tales of her own dietary encounters. Whether we’re hearing about her fight with the “Freshman 15 [pounds] turning to 20,” or her mother telling her to eat everything on her plate because there are starving people in Europe, Yosuico Stahl establishes a bond with the reader because she’s played every eating game that you have. How many times have I said “I’m full!” but continued to eat fearing that wasted food is a federal offense. As a child, my mother brow beat me into “cleaning my plate” with her daily famine report. She would repeat so often, “You can’t waste food because there are starving children in (pick your country),” that I was convinced that the more I ate the more lives I saved.

How many of us have participated in the so-called “yo-yo diet?” Up and down we go, believing that the apple at lunch offsets breakfast’s jelly donut. How about that long walk we took from the shopping mall to our car that we parked some distance away, as justification for that second scoop of ice cream? Or my all time favorite, “My diet definitely starts tomorrow!” that most popular benediction following the evening’s food orgy.

But even smugly describing episodes of life’s “Diet Games” reveals my own cynicism. What you will find in I’m Full is none of that. Yosuico Stahl is uniquely devoid of wise-cracking, weight-shaming, or tongue-in-cheek references to Americans’ very serious diet-related health problems. Empathy and affirmation are her calling cards, not admonishments like “you ought to do this” or “you better do that.” As if she’s forged a solemn vow with her clients, from whom she has witnessed every human frailty that flesh is heir to, she offers concrete ways to “make peace with your plate,” and to “love your weight.”

People like me will rail against the satanic forces of Big Food’s marketing machine and the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the dietary misinformation highway. But Yosuico Stahl has sat earnestly and openly in the trenches with people like herself, decade after decade, one-on-one, eye-to-eye, to listen, to counsel, never to judge. From that patience and practice, she brings us a boon of nutritional and behavioral wisdom.

Raised Catholic, Yosuico Stahl’s tips sometimes have the tone of the kindly priest’s homilies. Indeed, a gentle ripple of spirituality runs through the pages reminding us that it’s perfectly alright during our struggles to find sanctuary with a force greater than ourselves. But the sacred never trumps science as she is well acquainted with the ever-evolving chapter and verse of nutritional health. Where I’m Full draws its greatest strength is the integrative fashion with which it connects the dots of psychology, food, habits, stress, physical activity, and physiology. Citing the work of Dr. David Katz, a lifestyle and preventive medicine physician, Yosuico Stahl describes how she works with clients on “taste bud rehab.” Our taste buds become the victims of our own bad habits, she tells us, making it easy to fall prey to fat, sugar, and salt, and equally difficult to shake those habits. According to research, it can take from 21 to 254 days to fully suppress those addictions.

While taking up to two-thirds of a year to kick a bad dietary habit may seem like a formidable mountain to climb, Yosuico Stahl offers a balanced, mindful path to healthy eating that casts out any thoughts of self-imposed deprivation. As a lover of onion rings, for instance, I can still satisfy that occasional craving by sharing one, 400-calorie order among four people, thus seeing to my “fix” at the price of only 100 calories.

Fortunately for her readers, and I suspect her clients as well, Yosuico Stahl loves to eat. You’ll find absolutely nothing “skinny” about her advice, nor would I expect otherwise from someone who is half Filipino and half Italian, where an enjoyment of food is deeply rooted in culture. But knowing when you’ve had enough, when you’re full, is the “trick” that must be learned, one that results from the practice of mindful eating. To that end, Yosuico Stahl remains the caring coach whose advice contains the contours of a smile, not the kick-ass, “no pain, no gain” scowl of the personal trainer. Her accessible style, easy grace, and empathetic understanding feels more like a gentle stroll through a summer garden where you are invited to sniff a flower blossom or taste an unfamiliar herb.

If we as a nation share one common denominator these days, it’s stress, which sends us running for the shelter of a double bacon cheeseburger. Whether it’s our omnipresent political divisiveness, the pandemic, or the doomsday clock recently ticking several seconds closer to nuclear annihilation, who among us doesn’t feel totally justified in “taking out” a whole cheesecake in one sitting. While I’m Full will do little to unwind these threats to our existence, it will at least prevent food from being another source of consternation. And more importantly, it will sharpen the existential tools we need to build a house of health, hope, and happiness out of the abounding chaos.

Let Food Democracy Flourish—Put Community Food Projects Back on Track

(This is the last of five posts highlighting the history and work of USDA’s Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program, or “CFP.” This post uses portions of previous posts that started last June as well as a more recent “Viewpoint” article at the Center for a Livable Future)

The state of New Mexico has endured some of the worst food insecurity rates in the United States in spite of a large but often struggling agriculture sector. For years, anti-poverty advocates would keep hunger at bay with food banks and food stamps, while small farmer activists would fight for higher farm prices by organizing farmers’ markets.

But as the 20th century drew to a close, the state’s food system stakeholders began asking themselves if there wasn’t a better way. Could they benefit lower-income households at the same time they helped farmers? Going further, could they possibly find common cause with government agencies around a shared vision for a just and sustainable food system?

They found their answers in the relatively new USDA Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program (“CFP”). According to Pam Roy, executive director of the New Mexico-based non-profit Farm to Table, “CFP became the launching pad for all our community food initiatives. With a 3-year, $300,000 CFP grant in 2001, we planted the food system seed and its never stopped growing!” During that time, the grant enabled Farm to Table to start a new farmers’ market that served Santa Fe’s low- and middle-income communities, develop the state’s first farm-to-school program, and create the New Mexico Food and Agriculture Policy Council.

CFP celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2021. Authorized by Congress as part of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 (the farm bill), the program has awarded about 650 grants worth nearly $100 million to hundreds of communities in almost every state and U.S. territory (More information about the distribution of CFP grants from 2002 to 2021 can be found at Community Food Projects Program Dashboard (arcgis.com)). The program’s Congressional language clearly set it apart from previous Federal food and farm initiatives by stating that funded projects will “meet the food needs of low-income people…increase the self-reliance of communities…promote comprehensive responses to food, farm, and nutrition issues.”

Looking ahead, the lessons learned and impacts achieved strongly suggest that CFP should not only be reauthorized in the next farm bill (2023), but at a funding level considerably higher than its current $5 million per year.

No one can attest to CFP’s significance better than Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Tuckermanty.  As USDA’s National Program Leader for CFP from its inception to her retirement in 2012, Liz developed much of the superstructure and nuance that gave the program its most distinguishing features. She told me that when she first took the position, she thought, “Now we can finally talk about food systems because every time I had brought up the subject in USDA, I would get push back.” She also emphasized how the program “was innovative; grants could run for three years (now four), and funded projects were required to have multiple partners. This gave communities a chance to look at a much longer horizon, and even dream a little.”

As Liz saw it, CFP enabled grassroots groups to develop food projects for the first time. In close collaboration with the emerging network of community food system stakeholders, she carved out small pots of money for training and technical assistance. These additional resources nurtured a culture of mutual support between new and “veteran” community food security and justice organizations that strengthened everybody’s work. In 2002 with the advent of one-year, $35,000 planning grants, CFP enabled even more “first-timers” to prepare projects that might become eligible for the maximum $300,000 (later to become $400,000) grants.

Through growth in their confidence and competence, Farm to Table and their partners leveraged their CFP grant to the hilt. Over the past 20 years, they secured tens of millions of dollars from the New Mexico state legislature and other sources to support farm-to-school and farm-to-senior meal initiatives, “Double-up Bucks” programs for SNAP recipients at farmers’ markets, and local produce incentive programs for WIC. Summing up two decades of progress, Pam Roy said, “CFP’s multiplier effect has been massive!”

Even in California with its advanced food culture, CFP catalyzed food projects and policies that would set the pace for the Nation’s food movement. Reflecting on her time as the Food System Project manager at the Berkeley, California non-profit Center for Ecoliteracy, Janet Brown credits a 1998 Community Food Project grant of $186,000 for revolutionizing school food, not only in Berkeley but across America. “The grant gave us the chance to develop and implement the Berkeley Unified School District School Food Policy,” Janet told me. Over 50 community agencies along with Alice Waters and Berkeley’s Mayor signed onto the policy that made an end to student hunger and the procurement of local and sustainably produced food in the school cafeterias district-wide goals. Not only did the policy impact Berkeley’s 9,400 students in 15 schools, but the school district was also, according to USDA, the “the first in the United States to adopt a school food policy that encourages [local] food purchases…and implements a curriculum that [connects] the cafeteria, gardens, and classrooms.”

Over time, the policy and an accompanying Ecoliteracy report “Rethinking School Lunch” produced a slew of then cutting-edge food initiatives: free meals for all low-income children; breakfast and snack programs for all schools; salad bars, vegetarian options, organic fruit and snacks for all after-school programs; gardens in 14 of the district’s 15 schools. The people of Berkeley were so taken with these actions that they would pass a school bond issue that included $7 million for 3 new school kitchens and the renovation of 12 others by an overwhelming margin of 83 percent.

Yes, Janet Brown noted, people would sometimes poke fun at their work, saying it was easy to get such programs started there because, “after all, it’s Berkeley!” Having been immersed in the work for 8 years, she dismisses the “easy” part out of hand, and adds with a hint of irony, “As they say, ‘so goes Berkeley, so goes California, and so goes the Nation!” She’s right—tens of millions of U.S. school children have been eating better and learning about food, gardening, and health because of the ground that was first tilled in Berkeley. “And in a larger sense,” Janet added, “I was reminded of something Wendell Berry once wrote, ‘If I started an institute, I would call it the Institute of Better Ways of Thinking and Doing.’ That’s what the CFP grants were.”

The good news is that it doesn’t take a decade or more to change a community’s food environment. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, Green Village Initiative (GVI), a 2018 CFP grant recipient, has turned vacant urban lots in this struggling post-industrial city into 12 community gardens including a two-acre urban farm. Seven farmers’ markets are also bringing fresh, local food to the city’s low-access food areas while Black-owned, private urban farms collaborate with GVI to operate Connecticut’s only all-Bridgeport grown farmers’ market.

To fill another urban community with good food and to provide incubator space for BIPOC-owned food businesses, the Lexington, Kentucky North Limestone Development Corporation (NoLi) developed the Julietta Public Market. Housed in a beautifully remodeled interior space of a former bus garage, 90, mostly minority and start-up food vendors sell their wares. One of the anchor vendors is Black Soil, an organization dedicated to assisting Kentucky’s Black farmers. In addition to operating several market stalls that only sell Kentucky-grown produce, Black Soil provides an array of educational, outreach, and aggregating services for the state’s Black farmers.

A 2020 CFP grant is supporting the development of this neighborhood economic development engine. According to Lexington City Councilman James Brown, “Julietta Market is filling the food gap with lots of healthy food and educational opportunities. The Market is heaven sent, and the Community Food Projects grant made it happen!”

While CFP has spawned hundreds of similar community food stories across the country, it doesn’t come without flaws. Federal grant administrative requirements have been so onerous as to deter many smaller, lower capacity organizations from applying. As Eleanor Angerame of GVI told me, she almost didn’t accept the executive director job when she discovered how difficult CFP’s administrative requirements were. The loss of a CFP grant would have been a serious blow to resource-thin Bridgeport.

Writing CFP grants requires skill and lots of time, as well as a Congressionally mandated dollar-for-dollar match. Various disruptions at USDA since Tuckermanty’s departure have also led to a decline in training and technical assistance. All of this has contributed to an inequitable distribution of CFP funds. As the CFP grant distribution map makes clear, less than 10 percent of grants went to the 13 southern states which have 36% of the country’s population, and most importantly, higher rates of poverty, food insecurity, obesity, and diabetes.

To correct these problems, USDA must:

Reinvigorate CFP’s training and technical assistance servicesReduce the match to one dollar in non-Federal support for every two dollars of Federal fundsSet aside funding for states and regions with the greatest food security needs and lowest resource capabilitiesAnd, based on the number of high-quality CFP applications received every year, increase annual funding to $15 million.

CFP holds a special place in the pantheon of small but mighty USDA grant programs. Not only is it the first of what became many Federal initiatives to shore up long-neglected local food systems, it redefined the context for solutions that must come from the community. In other words, CFP gave life and voice to what we now call food democracy.

When Congress established CFP 25 years ago, former Texas Congressman Eligio “Kika” de la Garza referred to it as “…a comprehensive strategy…that incorporates the participation of the community and encourages a greater role for the entire food system.” Letting people determine their community’s needs and devise their own solutions is what CFP has been doing since its inception. It’s time to make those strengths and achievements more prevalent.

 

Want to Help Get CFP Back on Track?

Members of Congress need to hear from you about CFP—its challenges and its benefits. To both improve and expand CFP, contact members of your state’s congressional delegation and ask them to consider the above bullet points. Additionally,

If you are part of a currently funded or recently funded CFP grant, invite your district’s members of congress—senators as well as representatives—to your project site, or schedule an appointment to meet with them to share the news of your good work.Op-ed pieces and letters to the editor as well as social media posts about your CFP project and the impacts are another good way to spread the word.If you are not part of a current CFP project, sending a letter to your members about the grant program’s benefits and urging them to support CFP during the upcoming Farm Bill discussions will be very helpful. Ask your local food policy councils to do the same.After November 2022, repeat steps 1 through 3—people and power will change!

Kansas City, Kansas City Here I Come

Anton’s Taproom and Restaurant on Kansas City’s Main Street was where I accidentally found myself two days after Christmas. The Amtrak train that was supposed to take me from Albuquerque to Chicago was terminated at the Kansas City train station by an eastbound derailment. Rather than take an eight-hour bus ride to Chicago (Amtrak’s only option), I decided to enjoy the City of Fountains instead.

I worked up an appetite strolling the galleries of the outstanding Nelson-Atkins Art Museum and, later, searching for my grandfather’s name at the National World War I Museum. I had picked Anton’s for its website’s assertion that it had 75 beer taps and a zealous commitment to sustainability. The copy read: “Anton’s offerings are pork and poultry raised hormone free, without antibiotics and certified organic grass fed beef. All from farms that care about and practice the humane treatment of animals[sic].”

While I occasionally find an association between mediocre food and suspect syntax, I let this pitch pass given that it was Monday night, and no other open restaurant claimed a higher food consciousness. Besides, I found Anton’s filled with young, hip couples and families who mirrored its fit and friendly staff, all of whom were set tableau-like against the restaurant’s rustic brick walls. Give me brews and bricks, and I’m likely to let a lot of stuff slide. That is, until I discovered Kenneth.

Over the course of my meal, I had noticed an older Black man handling waist-high containers at the perimeter of the bar and dining area. He was partially stooped, moving slowly and deliberately, lifting and resettling the bins noiselessly. While the wait staff would occasionally slump in the shadows to check their cell phones, he would maintain constant motion, never stopping to talk to anyone. Finally, my curiosity got the better of me, and I said, “You look like the hardest working guy here!” to which he smiled and replied, “I’m just moving the compost outside. We can’t keep it in here for very long.” With some encouragement from me, he paused at my table for a few minutes to explain his job. It consisted of collecting the restaurant’s compostable food scraps, glass and plastic containers, and non-recyclable waste.

We introduced ourselves, and he told me his name was Kenneth. When I asked him where all this material ended up, he pointed outside and said, “across the parking lot and up a hill.” Kenneth then became animated when he explained how he got it there. “I carry each bin the whole way.” I must have registered some shock at the amount of work involved, especially seeing how many empty wine and liquor bottles were generated. But he told me, with considerable pride, “I learned that if I put it in small bins and make more trips, they’re not so heavy.” Even my limited command of physics told me this was not a solution. Barely able to contain my incredulity, I asked, “Won’t the restaurant give you a cart with wheels?” He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “Not likely.”

Kenneth currently lives at the City Union Mission, a Kansas City homeless facility. He was working this job because he wanted to buy a house, “on the Eastside, because places are cheaper there.” Kenneth, whom I judged to be in his late fifties, volunteered that he worked four nights a week at Anton’s and made $11.15 per hour, which, even with “free” room and board at the Mission, meant a very long stretch before he could afford such a purchase. He remained optimistic, however, since he was hoping to get a raise to $12 per hour.

When it comes to pay, simply put, low-wage workers like Kenneth are hamstrung by living in Missouri. In 2017, Kansas City passed a referendum by an overwhelming 68 percent of the voters that would have raised the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2022 (St. Louis also passed a similar measure). But fearing that the poisonous cloud of socialism would force the state’s suffocating businesses to flee for safety to Texas, Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a pre-emption law that barred cities from independently raising the minimum wage.

While Kansas City valiantly tried to break free of the state-imposed straight jacket (e.g., requiring government and non-profit organizations that receive city funds to pay more than the Missouri minimum wage), there is little it can do to help Kenneth and others who work in the for-profit world. The city established a “Living Wage Registry” which is a voluntary program that gives those businesses that subscribe to its conditions an emblem that reads, “Our business voluntarily pays our employees a living wage.” One of the conditions is that the registrant must pay employees at least $13.75 in 2021 and $15.00 in 2022. However, a none-too-robust subscription rate of 27 Kansas City businesses (presumably out of thousands of eligible businesses) and an anemic monitoring process have not made the program a raving success.

A case in point is Anton’s which has been in the registry since its inception in 2018. Why then would Kenneth only be making $11.15 when he should have been making $13.75 in December, and $15.00 now? (Over the course of researching this article, I made four separate attempts to speak to either the owner or a management-level person at Anton’s Taproom. No one responded to me.).

The driving force behind Anton’s is Anton Kotar. He invested over decade ago in this part of Kansas City when many of Main Street’s storefronts were covered in plywood. His commitment to sustainability and local sourcing has earned him the title in some quarters as the “hero of Kansas City.” On the surface, based on the amount of grass-fed beef and antibiotic-free offerings on the menu, as well as the aquaponics facility he installed in the restaurant’s basement, Anton’s Taproom certainly appears to be a green machine.

But just as there are gaps in the restaurant’s claims for wage justice, there are inconsistencies in its sustainability contentions. In March of 2021, an animal slaughter facility owned by Mr. Kotar in Jackson, Missouri, and apparently the major source of supply for his restaurant, had its USDA inspection suspended due to the inhumane treatment of animals. A USDA letter dated March 11, 2021, referred to an incident of an “egregious nature”—described in graphic detail by the inspector on duty—that resulted in the plant’s immediate closure. Given that Anton’s website states that the farms he purchases livestock from “practice the humane treatment of animals,” are we to presume that he has granted himself an exemption for his own slaughter business? Or, perhaps, the slaughter facility misunderstood the meaning of “practice,” as in “we thought we were only practicing killing animals.” Try explaining that to the cows!

Mr. Kotar is also known for championing a change in a state regulation that restricts the activity of convicted felons who work in establishments that sell liquor or lottery tickets. He freely admits that hiring those who’ve served time would ease some of his labor shortage problems. But in the course of praising the 25 or more ex-felons he’s hired, Mr. Kotar notes that they are among the hardest workers he has because “they don’t want to go back to where they came from.” He has described how this semi-captive workforce is willing to scrub pots and pans into the wee hours, and then, in some cases, walk home at 2:00 in the morning.

As much as society’s prevailing sentiment toward ex-felons is to give them a second chance (Florida’s recent action to remove voting prohibitions on ex-felons, and Alaska’s to end the life-time ban on food stamp eligibility for its ex-felons were both a very long time coming), the idea raises interesting ethical and moral questions. For instance, at what point does the “opportunity” that society affords the former felon benefit the employer more than him? In other words, at one point does a restaurant’s use of cheap, hard-working, low-skilled older men and women who are desperate to stay out of prison constitute exploitation? In Anton’s case, not only is he reaping economic benefits, one can also assume, based on the media attention he’s received, that he is making considerable public relations hay from his dubious charitable gestures.

Food and farming establishments have a long and ugly history of labor abuse. From the landed gentry to large corporate operations to the hard-driving entrepreneurial class, the noblesse-oblige card is often played to camouflage poor working conditions and low wages. By “granting” our toughest jobs to the hungry, the hurting, and the hunted, we are presumably giving them a chance to work their way free of the Inferno’s fiery rings at the same that their employers are paving their own path into Paradise. Or, instead, are we simply constructing better optics for businesses to lard up their bottom lines? The games we play beneath the umbrella of piety could be suspended if Congress, legislatures, and businesses of all sizes would embrace the $15 minimum wage for all workers, regardless of their histories.

As I left Anton’s that night, I unwittingly found myself walking about ten strides behind Kenneth as he was carrying a full bin of waste across the nearly empty, poorly lit parking lot. He was shuffling his feet and taking small steps as any older person would who was carrying some heavy weight. His pace slowed as he ascended the rise at the lot’s end, where, even in the dim light, I could tell he was exerting himself even more to reach the point where the larger waste receptacles were stored.

Humility and contrition are what Kenneth displays because he knows that’s what society expects. Restaurants and other employers will often exploit those expectations in a manner that harkens back to nineteenth century notions of workhouse justice. But just as today’s demands for a sustainable food system require the humane treatment of animals—an area where Anton’s has not walked it like it talks it—so, too, do our demands for the humane and just treatment of workers. Any business that doesn’t pay it workers at least $15 per hour shouldn’t be in business. And any business that doesn’t give its workers the equipment they need to do their job safely and with dignity should be cited for inhumane treatment. So, for God’s sake, give Kenneth $15 and a set of wheels!

2021’s Most Righteous Food Enterprise Is…

In my never-ending quest for the holy grail of righteous food, I may have finally come as close as I’m going to get. What’s included in the holy grail? Well, we used to call it the triple-bottom line—food that is sustainably produced, pays the producer fairly, and gives the consumer healthy choices at affordable prices.

But the food movement is comprised of many restless souls. Bottom lines don’t remain static and are often subject to continuous elongation and re-articulation in an effort to address a longer list of society’s ills. Now, for instance, all the workers in the food chain should be treated justly and have a voice in their food system’s decision-making activities. Additionally, “sticking it to the man” earns bonus points. That is, an enterprise’s ability to navigate its way through the choppy waters of Big Food without succumbing to its compromising influences. In some of the more conflicted parts of world, righteousness may consist of the courage of food and farm groups to make a political statement directed at violent, oppressive power.

Achieving a state of exalted righteousness, even if only in one’s eyes, is a tall order. As conscientious food buyers and eaters, it sometimes feels as if we’re playing a game of whack-a-mole. Just when you think a state of food system nirvana is at hand, an unvetted ingredient appears, a company scandal plays out in the media, or a link to a shady corporate entity is disclosed.

But righteousness must also take into account one of the more cherished—but often ignored—sacraments of our food choices: appearance and deliciousness! Speaking for myself (because no one else will let me speak for them), I’m beyond insulting my taste buds with substandard ingredients. Sorry, but I’m not going to buy a mealy apple just for the sake of supporting a local farmer, and I’m not going to eat worm-riddled cabbage because it’s organic (unless I grew it myself). And lastly, there is the question of scale and impact. While I do reserve a large room in my heart for small projects that make a local difference, I’m hoping to see a bigger bang take place in our food system before my remains are shoveled into the compost pile.

Though the holy grail will probably remain an elusive goal in a volatile world, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. After extensive research and rigorous review by an esteemed panel of one, this year’s choice for the highly coveted Mark Winne’s Most Righteous Food Enterprise is Equal Exchange.

Founded in 1986 by three visionary food activists—Michael Rozyne, Rink Dickinson, and Jonathan Rosenthal—Equal Exchange jumped into the still-emerging world of fair trade, and over time, came to raise the bar to its highest elevation. They developed the most direct, perhaps the most intimate connections possible between growers, consumers, and eventually workers, particularly in some of the most vulnerable parts of the world. Their founding principles, always a work in progress, still hold true today. They are a:

social change organization that helps farmers and their families gain more control over their economic futuresgroup that educates consumers about trade issues affecting farmersprovider of high-quality foods that nourish the body and the soulcompany controlled by the people who do the actual work (they became a worker coop in 1994)community of dedicated individuals who believe that honesty, respect, and mutual benefit are integral to any worthwhile endeavor.

Right from the get-go, the founders displayed the kind of moxie that remains woven into Equal Exchange’s collective fiber to this day. Realizing that coffee had a universality in terms of both production and consumption, they began by importing unroasted coffee beans from producers in Nicaragua. But politically, they couldn’t have chosen a more difficult path in 1986. The Reagan administration had imposed an embargo on all products from Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Undeterred, Equal Exchange saw an opportunity demonstrate solidarity with the fledgling people’s movement while challenging unfair U.S. trade policies at the same time. Through a loophole in the embargo regulations, they eventually found a way to import the coffee, but only after two years of legal wrangling that included U.S. Customs officials seizing the coffee in the Port of Boston.

Today, coffee remains Equal Exchange’s signature product. Beans are imported from farmer coops in Central America, Latin America, and Africa to Equal Exchange’s main warehouse and headquarters in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts where they are roasted, packaged, and distributed. In 2019, enough coffee from small holders was purchased to fill 180 ocean freight containers (due to the pandemic, this number fell to 140 containers in 2020).

Among the farmer-controlled organizations they purchase coffee from is Manos Campesinas in Guatemala. Listening to Miguel Mateo, the 1400-farmer member organization’s lead organizer, describe the relationship with Equal Exchange is both a glimpse into the world’s coffee economy and the immigration crisis. “Equal Exchange has strong values of justice [which is why] they pay a better price for coffee than the conventional buyers,” Miguel said. “A better price was the motivation for farmers to invest in their farms and organic practices, which also increased their coffee yields and quality. When they make enough money as a small holder, they don’t need to migrate to America.”

Miguel tells listeners on an Equal Exchange webinar about Hugo, one of Manos Campesinas’ members, who started coffee farming with only one-quarter hectare of land. By learning new practices, including organic production techniques, Hugo doubled his yields. He also became a trainer to help his fellow farmer/members improve their agricultural practices. With his income from training and the higher prices Equal Exchange was paying for his coffee (about double that of conventional buyers), Hugo increased his land holdings to 3 hectares. This gave him yet more income which has removed the need he once felt to migrate north to escape poverty. Empowering small holders like Hugo is the key to rural economic development which, in turn, will stem migration. And in a country like Guatemala, where 92 percent of the farmers only control 22 percent of the land, compared to 8 percent of the farmers who control 78 percent, there is nothing more empowering than land.

But coffee didn’t remain Equal Exchange’s only story. They started working with tea producers in India and Sri Lanka, followed some years later by cocoa growers in the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Togo. While I have been a confirmed buyer of their beverages for over 20 years, I was thrilled when they expanded their line to include some domestic food products, especially from local grower and producer co-ops. For the last year or so I’ve been loving the robust marinara sauce from New Jersey tomato growers, some hard-core salami from food makers in Vermont, and melt-in-your-mouth pecans from a Black farmer co-op in Georgia. But what really lit my fire was the discovery that Equal Exchange was buying olive oil and Medjool dates from Palestinian grower co-ops.

Harkening back to their solidarity with small Nicaraguan farmers in the Reagan era, Equal Exchange engaged with the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC) and Al-Reef Fair Trade, which is owned by PARC. The intent of the relationship is to build market opportunities for existing agricultural co-ops located on the West Bank where farmers are struggling against a host of insults visited upon them by the Israeli occupation. Land seizures by the Israeli government have deprived farmers of not only their land but also water rights, which are precious in the Middle East’s arid climate. The Palestinians also lost control of their former seaport, Jaffa, to Israel in the twentieth century which now makes them dependent on costly arrangements with that state to ship their agricultural products worldwide. Perhaps most tragically, as many as 19,000 olives trees—a tree that is a sacred Palestinian symbol of peace, many of which were planted in Roman times—were uprooted by Israel.

This past November, about 75 Equal Exchange “citizen-consumers” gathered at their home computer screens listening to talks by Saleem Abu Ghazaleh, the general manager of Al-Reef, and Izzat Zeidan, a rural development specialist for PARC. Reminding me of Edward R. Murrow’s CBS-TV broadcasts from the 1950s, both men were enveloped in a continuous haze of tobacco smoke produced by their omnipresent cigarettes. Aside from this habit that would have set us into coughing fits had we been in the same room, the tale that Saleem and Izzat told us was compelling for anyone concerned about food justice and sovereignty.

PARC assists 41 farmer co-ops through organizing, agricultural education and training (much of which is focused on women and youth), marketing (such as the relationship with Equal Exchange), processing of olives and dates, and holding both the Palestinian Authority and Israeli government accountable (Saleem notes “there are extremists on both sides” of the Israeli and Palestinian question). With one eye on the occupation and the constant threat of land confiscation, and one eye on growing the agricultural economy, PARC moves forward with the idea that “organizing farmers into co-ops helps civil society, families, communities, and democracy.” Through its 280 olive presses and olive oil distribution to 25 countries—aided by both organic and fair-trade certifications—olive oil is contributing $180 million to the Palestinian GDP. And as a person who religiously starts his day with two Equal Exchange/PARC Medjool dates cut up on his granola, and only uses “Palestinian Small Farmers” olive oil for all his cooking, I can firmly assert that my smart, snooty palate will now accept no other!

For 35 years, Equal Exchange has been at the forefront of the fair-trade movement. Its work across the globe with farmers, and with a growing list of agricultural products, has opened up never-before-imagined opportunities for small holders, especially through farmer-controlled cooperatives. But it wasn’t content to apply the principles of fairness, democracy, and worker control to only the producer side of the food system. So, in 1994, with its then 20 employees, it became a worker cooperative and fair-trade organization buying from farmer cooperatives. Today, the organization is owned by 110 employees (“worker owners”) who work out of their West Bridgewater facility as well as sites in Portland, Oregon; Cleveland, Ohio; and St. Paul Minnesota. Not only does every worker have one vote, the highest paid worker, which includes some people who have been with Equal Exchange from its inception, doesn’t make more than four times the wage of the lowest paid worker.

Not content to only give farmers and workers a real seat at the table, Equal Exchange also instituted a citizen/consumer component within their corporate structure a few years back. This is where individuals and buying groups can not only learn more about the nitty-gritties of fair-trade and Equal Exchange, but they can also support the coops outreach and marketing efforts. In addition, they are given a seat—actually three seats—on the board of directors. With this kind of full-spectrum, food system representation, Equal Exchange comes as close as any entity I know to embodying food-chain democracy.

In the early 1990s, the scruffy bunch of New Age idealist founders hit their first financial milestone with $1 million in sales. In 2020, sales topped $88 million*. Though this figure is indeed impressive, especially for those of us who are committed co-op, farmers’ market, and unconventional food buyers, it is still, in comparison to the “Big Boys,” like that crystal speck of salt left on your windshield after a day at the beach.

By now, most of us are familiar with how consolidation and vertical integration in the global food system have come to dominate consumer choice. Whether it’s the four firms that control 80 percent of beef processing and distribution, or the four banana companies that control 40 percent of the world’s banana supply, or the four conglomerates that control 54 percent of that most precious of all commodities, beer, we often feel boxed in with few buying alternatives.

As consumers, we tend to be loyal to brands, and as alternative consumers, we try to buy those products that align with our principles, until we discover that a particular food or beverage business “sold out” by letting itself be hoovered up by Unilever or Budweiser. For instance, according to Phil Howard, a Professor at Michigan State University who has studied consolidation in the food and beverage industry, 40 percent of so-called “craft beers” are not—the brands are bottled by major beer firms.

How many times have I heard these lines from the Clash ringing in my ears, “I’m all lost in the supermarket/I can no longer shop happily,” as I lethargically troll the chain grocery store aisles for something righteous. Yes, I garden actively, buy local food, including beef, at the farmers’ market, and support local breweries. But now that Equal Exchange has a much wider range of online products to choose from, especially ones that can’t be produced in my region, a special kind of satisfaction washes over me when I hit the send button—I feel the frustration drain from my body; I’m seized by a kind of giddiness knowing that a blow against the Empire has been struck; a lightness returns to my step now that I can “shop happily.”

One further ratification—perhaps more of a sanctification—of Equal Exchange’s overall goodness comes from its association with the sacred community. While I stopped believing a long time ago that the side God was on was the winning side, I’ve come to deepen my respect for those who pray regularly. One of Equal Exchange’s very first partners were the Interfaith community that came to represent over 10,000 separate U.S. congregations buying their products. In recent years, this has added up to about $7 to $9 million in annual sales. And as one who has sat through his share of sermons by liberal Protestant preachers, drinking a robust cup of Equal Exchange coffee during the church’s social hour gives you a chance to walk it like you talk it.

Call me weird, but I have those days when I count my riches by how many boxes I can check off when I inventory my larder. Are the food items in stock grown by me and small farmers (locally or globally)? Were they sustainably or organically produced? Did the purchase of that food substantially benefit the grower and the community of that grower? Was that grower and all the others along the food chain treated fairly? Did they have an opportunity to have their voices heard when important decisions are made? And, last but not least, do most of those items taste really good? When all those conditions can be met, no billionaire has anything on me!

So, congratulations Equal Exchange on winning the 2021 Mark Winne Most Righteous Food Enterprise Award! Your trophy is in the mail.

*Over the past few years, Equal Exchange absorbed the operations of three smaller fair-trade organizations. Because there is some organizational and financial overlap between the companies, the annual sales are reported here as one.

Taking Back a City the Green Way

Green Village Initiative – Reservoir Farm – Bridgeport, CT

During my 25 years of community food organizing in Connecticut, I developed a special place in my heart for the city of Bridgeport. Squatting on the state’s coastline at the narrow end of Long Island Sound within shouting distance of New York City, how could I not love a place that never gave me a satisfactory explanation for its existence. Lacking anything that one might call an urban plan, it felt like every major state thoroughfare—train tracks, highways, even old wagon trails—were required to pass through Bridgeport. If I wasn’t on an off-ramp, I was probably off an on-ramp struggling to find reason and direction through a brutalized landscape of institutional architecture.

It seems only fitting that the master of make believe, P.T. Barnum, was Bridgeport’s most famous citizen. That is until its former mayor, Joe Ganim, became its current mayor after serving some hard federal time for political corruption during his first term. Running for his post-prison term in 2016, his slogan was “Give me a second chance.” Like much of Connecticut’s sympathetic electorate, Bridgeport’s can’t help but grant redemption to fallen politicians. Too often, that’s all there are.

Whether it was sympathy for the underdog or the devil, I found myself once again drawn to the hardscrabble neighborhoods of Connecticut’s most populous city (145,000 est.). The lure was a particular urban food project called Green Village Initiative (GVI) that, according to a former Connecticut colleague, was “doing everything right.” After getting off a wrong highway ramp, I finally found myself sitting with a dozen young people, all well south of 40 years of age, at picnic tables shaded by pop-up tents in the middle of a gorgeous urban farm.

Unlike me 20 years ago when I struggled to help a few food activists in Bridgeport organize one farmers’ market and an isolated community garden or two, these youthful food warriors and their partners have established seven farmers’ markets, a dozen community gardens, including the large Reservoir Community Farm where we’re sitting, 23 school gardens, several food and farm businesses, and a host of education and training programs. The nonprofit GVI and its wider collaborative of local organizations have accomplished much of this with support from a four-year, $400,000 USDA Community Food Project (CFP) grant that is now entering its last year of funding.

But “outputs” like these only tell part of the story. The rest of the narrative can be heard in the participants’ laughter that rolls across the garden with enough force to drown out the din of passing traffic. It’s also evident in the pride they have in their place and their sense of purpose. Tokina Pollock Shafer is a twenty-something woman who manages the farmers’ markets and grew up in Bridgeport. She told me that, “When I was young, I wanted to live anywhere but Bridgeport. But now, there’s a lot of life here and more people are choosing to stay.”  And contrary to some notions that farming has little attraction to urban youth, another staff member, Elisha Brockenberry, said, “People think of me as a farmer; they even call me ‘Farmer.’ Seeing yourself as a farmer is great and if others see me that way, that makes me feel good!”

Today’s community food project creation stories often begin with an acknowledgement of whose stolen land they are working or living on. In the case of this Reservoir Farm—whose surrounding neighborhood is also known as Whiskey Hill for its nefarious goings-on during Prohibition—Farm Manager Catherine Lindsay tells me that these are the ancestral lands of the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian tribe. The site’s more recent history tells a tale common to many U.S. cities that fell victim to deindustrialization, growing income inequality, racism, and white flight. As Bridgeport’s wealthier classes abandoned the city in the 1970s and 80s, building vacancies and demolitions increased, leaving behind orphaned pieces of land such as the one we’re standing on. Relegated to an underutilized city-owned parking lot, GVI took over the site in 2012. With substantial assistance from USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), they installed irrigation lines, covered the tarmac, and constructed raised beds.

The transformation is stunning. Not only does GVI and its Youth Leadership cohort grow 3,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables on Whiskey Hill, it hosts 45 community garden plots used by surrounding neighborhood residents. A moderate size hoop house helps them with seedling production and season extension, but as Ellie Angerame, GVI’s executive director, points out, it’s a perfect experiential learning resource for the many Bridgeport school children who come to the farm. “They already know a lot about global warming, but when they step inside the greenhouse and feel the temperature difference, they have a major ‘aha!’ moment.”

The heartbeat of GVI and its many projects and collaborators, however, is the Reservoir Farmers’ Market, whose welcoming kiosk serves as the farm’s gateway. Operating seasonally on Saturdays, what distinguishes this market from any other one in the state of Connecticut is that it’s the only place where you can get “all Bridgeport-grown” produce. While that degree of hyper-locavorism may not excite everyone, it’s a source of pride for the wider community and the three Bridgeport-based farms that make up the collaboration.

Besides the nonprofit GVI/Reservoir Farm, Park City Harvest and Blissful Awakenings are for-profit, small-holder urban farms owned and operated by African-American farmers. GVI has contributed to their success not only by providing the marketing space (the market also accepts numerous incentive programs like doubling the value of SNAP purchases), but also through a wide range of business training services that assist with the development of new, local food enterprises.

“Poverty is real and hunger is at the door,” is how Ellie stakes out the reality facing a Bridgeport community whose poverty rate is 26 percent—over 150 percent higher than Connecticut’s. Standing in the middle of the farm, surrounded by an abundance of collards, okra, peppers and strawberries, you only have to cast your eyes a couple of blocks in any direction to see how close this food paradise is to a surrounding food purgatory. Reservoir Avenue is mostly a sidewalk-less road to the farm’s east that plunges steeply downhill through a working-class neighborhood for one mile before it reaches the Food Bazaar, the area’s closest supermarket. “Bridgeport was built for cars,” says Ellie, and describes harrowing scenes of elderly people negotiating the road in electric wheel chairs to go grocery shopping. If there’s a term “pedestrian-hostile” in city planners’ lexicon, this area is a textbook example.

Against this backdrop, GVI and its network of gardens, farmers’ markets, food businesses, and educational programs constitute a beachhead in the battle for a healthier and greener Bridgeport. But fighting your way off the beach is never easy. Ellie related a conversation she had recently with a member of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation who complimented her on GVI’s good work but then served up the familiar trope that “urban agriculture can’t feed a hungry world.” Similarly, in a kind of fastidiousness from public officials who rarely apply the same standards to other projects, urban gardens are sometimes criticized for being “untidy.” Nature can be unruly, yes, but the nearby road construction site adding yet another lane to the state highway system will neatly and invisibly pump more carbon emissions into the region’s already marginal air-space.

What GVI amply demonstrates—and what I’ve come to learn over the course of 50 years of community food work—is that urban agriculture should be recognized as both an insurance policy as well as for the many benefits it provides. If the pandemic has an upside, it’s that more of us have become aware of the vulnerabilities of the U.S. food chain. In light of those facts and past ones (e.g., catastrophic weather that knocked out transportation systems) and future ones that appear more likely as a result of climate change, wouldn’t every community want as many “Plan B’s” as possible? Given GVI’s numerous food production and distribution sites, current land resources, and the horticultural competency it is developing among its youth and other residents, Bridgeport should fare better than other comparable communities as disruption in the food system become more commonplace.

But that’s only the food production benefit. Urban agriculture serves numerous functions that don’t readily reveal themselves at the farm stand. Study after study affirm that community gardens, urban farms, and other green spaces reduce crime and mental health problems such as depression. When Briana Wahl, GVI’s operations director, says “It can get violent in Bridgeport, but this farm is a peaceful oasis,” she’s acknowledging urban living’s challenges and opportunities.

Urban agriculture also improves the environment due to better air quality, lower heat radiation, and better water filtration and absorption. The economic benefits include higher property values for homes near gardens as well as more income for those who pursue urban gardening as a small business venture. Though harder to measure but perhaps more importantly, the educational and cultural impact of gardening, especially in urban areas with limited places to engage nature, is immense. As the Jamaican gardener exchanges seeds and plants with the Japanese gardener who exchanges planting methods with the Puerto Rican gardener, and as each share information with younger generations (and vice versa), the world becomes a dramatically more interesting and richer place to dwell.

“Our CFP grant allowed us to promote business opportunities for Bridgeport people,” Ellie tells me. “It also made our farmers’ market more welcoming and inclusive, and kept them well-stocked with Bridgeport-grown food.” In a larger sense, as GVI and its partners claw their way off their beachhead with hopes of making the values of a local food system more prevalent, Ellie also noted that “the CFP gave us clout.” Perhaps that’s not surprising since respectable sums of money can make people pay attention to you, but it’s especially important in Bridgeport, where GVI has been slowly earning credibility among various city groups and institutions. Clout can equal real change.

Though the federal grant program can have a big impact on cities like Bridgeport, Ellie also echoed concerns about the CFP administration process that I’ve heard time and again from other grantees. The accounting process is unnecessarily detailed requiring an excessive amount of itemization which, at times, detracts from the larger purpose of the program. GVI doesn’t have a dedicated grant writer or development person. Raising money is just one of Ellie’s duties as well as managing the grant reporting process. Fortunately, GVI has also drawn support from other donors such as the Newman’s Own Foundation and the Fairfield County Foundation. But she shares with me, having taken the ED job a little over a year ago, that she almost didn’t accept the position because of CFP’s burdensome reporting requirements. That would have been a terrible loss for Bridgeport, which needs all the enthusiastic and talented young people it can get.

Bridgeport is one of those creaky old cities whose gears are turning once again with just enough speed to shed the rust. Born-again politicians are working with their more imaginative citizens to reinvent a city whose bones are strong but sorely in need of some healthy flesh. A robust local food system, inspired and shaped by hard-working and visionary young people, can build strong communities twelve-ways. In the case of Bridgeport, the Community Food Projects grant to GVI is providing essential nutrients for the process while building bridges between local change agents, city hall, and the community. The future is looking good.

*This is the fourth of five stories about USDA’s Community Food Project Grant Program (CFP). All four stories so far have focused on past and current grantees—Missoula, MT, New Mexico, Lexington, KY, and Bridgeport, CT—who have used these funds to reshape their respective food systems. To see previous stories, go to www.markwinne.com. The fifth and final story will look at the future of CFP.