Mark Winne's Blog, page 7

Where I’ll Be Winter and Spring 2020

Before I share my upcoming appearances, let me note that Food Town USA has been receiving a respectable about of media attention – almost 70 “hits” since its release in October. These include radio interviews, podcasts, reviews, excerpts, and social media posts. I’m especially pleased with the recent podcast Feast Yr Ears with Harry Rosenblum that broadcasts on the Heritage Radio Network. You can listen to it here https://heritageradionetwork.org/podcast/food-town-usa-with-mark-winne/.

But “Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road” where we “do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes/We convince by our presence.” And this is where the open road will take me from January to June:

January 23 and 24 – Little Rock, Arkansas where I’ll be conducting a workshop with my colleagues from the Center for a Livable Future at the 2020 Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) annual conference.

January 25 – Santa Fe, New Mexico where I’ll be attending the Edible Institute, a national gathering of the Edible Communities magazines at the La Fonda Hotel. I’m honored to conduct a conference interview with farmer and writer Stanley Crawford, author of the Garlic Testament and Mayordomo.

February 2-4 – San Diego, California where I’ll be presenting at this year’s In Tents: The Farmers’ Market Conference, a North American convocation of local farmers’ market leaders. For more information contact Catt Field White at catt@farmersmarketpros.com.

February 17 and 20 – Santa Fe, New Mexico where I’ll be speaking at two events. The first is the Santa Fe Slow Food Chapter book club (contact Elisabeth at slowfoodsantafe@gmail.com), and the second is the Friends of the Santa Fe Library book club (contact Leslie Levin at lesliealevin@gmail.com).

March 26-28 – Boise, Idaho where I’ll be sharing my thoughts on food, equity, sustainability and public policy with participants of that city’s annual TreeFort shindig. For more information contact Susan Medlin at ssmedlin@gmail.com.

April 23 and 24 – Baltimore, Maryland where I’ll be working with food policy network colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

April 28 – 30 – University of Maine at Fort Kent where I’ll be giving a keynote address as part of the University’s Scholars’ Symposium. For more information contact Jeff Dubis at jdubis@maine.edu.

June 3-5 – Kansas City, Missouri where I’ll be addressing the 2020 Urban Food Systems Symposium. For more information contact Heather Woods at hlwoods@ksu.edu.

 

 

Washington, DC

Washington, DC is where I’ll be next week, and it’s also most of the name of the paper – The Washington Post – where I was 12 years ago. Thanks to the superbly quirky and timelessly perfect Tabard Inn, I’ll be speaking about and signing my book Food Town, USA there on Thursday, December 12, at 6:00 PM. Of course, this very free event will be entirely more reachable for people living in the Greater Metro-DC area, but if you just happen to be in town, perhaps to watch the fireworks exploding over Capitol Hill or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, stop on by for a little hope and inspiration. And like its namesake in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The Tabard is also the place where you’ll find a healthy helping of hospitality served up side-by-side with good stories. The Tabard is just a few blocks south of Dupont Circle at 1739 N Street, NW. To RSVP (the room only holds 60) send a note to my kind and thoroughly knowledgeable sponsor Marsha Weiner at marsha@foodmusemedia.com.

On the following day, Friday, December 13 at 12 noon, I’ll be speaking at the University of the District of Columbia at a seminar sponsored by the CAUSE graduate program and Professor Sabine O’Hara. In addition to students and faculty, the event is open to the general public. UDC is located at 4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW in Washington, DC. We’ll be in building 32, 2nd floor, suite 200. My book will be on sale in the UDC bookstore, and I certainly can sign it at the event. For more information please contact sabine.ohara@udc.edu or tyisha.henderson@udc.edu.

Washington Post

Now, if you dial back the clock almost exactly 12 years and stop on Sunday, November 16, 2007, you’ll find a full front-page op-ed piece by yours truly in the Washington Post’s Outlook section. Called “When the Handouts Keep Coming, the Food Lines Never End,” I shared some of our food system’s conundrums, especially with regard to food banks, from my first book Closing the Food Gap. You can read the whole piece here if you want a little refresher on where we were 12 years ago with respect to hunger, justice, and food banks. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/16/AR2007111601213.html.

The reason I’m resurrecting this article from the archives is because of the continuing discussion about the role of food banks in addressing the underlying causes of food insecurity, including social and economic injustice. Andy Fisher’s book Big Hunger raised cutting issues on this subject including the complicity of many food banks with big food corporations. Recent articles by Adele Peters https://www.fastcompany.com/90430262/can-food-banks-put-an-end-to-hunger-if-their-biggest-donors-are-the-cause-of-the-hunger and Chris Moller’s “Does Every Can Help?” about the rise of food banks in the United Kingdom speak to the continuing problem – one that’s migrating from the US to Europe – of treating the symptoms, not the sickness.

One could argue that the food banking world hasn’t made much progress in getting beyond their fixation on receiving and distributing more donated food while turning a blind eye to poverty and racial inequity. But on the other hand, we see the emergence of food bank networks like Closing the Hunger Gap (I happily gave permission to the group to adapt my book’s title for their purposes) https://thehungergap.org/ that are raising up numerous strategies to address hunger’s root causes. Focusing on securing healthy food and even rejecting unhealthy food donations, running gardening programs, and advocating for their clients to secure SNAP benefits and health insurance are just some of the hallmarks of today’s new and improved food bank.

Maybe a little back story on my 2007 Washington Post piece might provide some context for this continuing debate. Within minutes of my op-ed appearing early that Sunday morning, my email inbox started filling up (I made two mistakes: letting the piece run the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and including my email address). With a little help from my friends, I was able to sort through all the emails which totaled over 300 in 24 hours. Close to two-thirds either totally or substantially agreed with me that food banks were not solving the problem or, worse, were a part of the problem. Of the remaining one-third, about half strongly and politely disagreed with me, saying in effect that without food banks hunger across America would be rampant. The other half (10 to 15 percent of the total) were, frankly, of the looney-tune variety – many of their remarks not fit for Christian ears, of which most of them claimed to be.

Keeping in mind that the dawn was just barely breaking on the social media era – there were no tweets, retweets, or likes to measure the public’s response – the following comment I received a few days later about the op-ed from Zofia Smardz, The Washington Post’s Outlook Editor, was revealing:

“Yours was definitely one of our breakout pieces. One big measure we use is hits on the Web — you got 85,779 as of yesterday, so that’s only three days since the story was posted on Saturday — it’ll continue to get views all week, I’m sure. Most of our big pieces average somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 in that same time period, so anything over that is huge. It’s obviously a subject that touches a nerve…”

In other words, not only did I stir up a hornet’s nest, I may have beat out Henry Kissinger for readers. But aside from that, the most important question is how America, nearing the end of this century’s first quarter, is going to make economic and social justice a reality rather than just a tagline in political debates. Most of the nation’s big food banks have or will soon celebrate their 40th anniversaries. I’m more sanguine now than I was in 2007 that they are using the occasion for some thoughtful reflection and analysis rather than toasting the one-billionth pound of food they gave away. Let’s hope that they continue to grow into the important and necessary role that only institutions of their size and purpose can play, which is to lock arms with others who are dedicated to closing the hunger gap, closing the income and wealth gap, and closing the race gap.

Food Town Updates and Other News

U.S. News and World Report, the online magazine whose annual rankings have sent more than one college president to an early retirement, posted a “slide show” version of Food Town, USA. With photos of the seven cities accompanied by a brief descriptive commentary for each one, the piece provides a nice overview of the book’s themes and places. Check it out at https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/slideshows/author-of-food-town-usa-says-food-may-bring-back-struggling-us-cities?onepage.

Collected Works, the literary hub and cultural Mecca of Santa Fe, New Mexico, will be hosting a reading and discussion by me of Food Town, USA. I will be joined by conversant extraordinaire, Rebecca Baran-Rees, the director of the highly acclaimed northern New Mexico mobile grocery project, known as Mogro to those in the know. Collected Works, an independent book store, is located at 202 Galisteo Street in charming downtown Santa Fe. The event begins at 6:00 PM on November 14. If you already have plans for that evening, cancel them. If you live within 300 miles of Santa Fe, it’s only a day’s drive. The Santa Fe Airport is providing overflow parking for private jets.

I had the good fortune to spend a few days last week in Jacksonville, Florida, one of my “seven unlikely cities,” to promote my book and help launch the First Coast Food Network, a brand-new food coalition dedicated to raising up a sustainable and just food system for everybody. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/groups/613270859203183/?tn-str=*F. And if you happen to wander into Jacksonville, I would strongly recommend a stop at 1748 Bakehouse, a recently opened café and bakery that I referenced in my book. Their “breakfast sandwich” packs so much wallop that it will inspire average people to rise early every morning, run 10 miles, and pen stirring prose for hours!

Looming on the appearance horizon is this year’s Community Food System conference on December 9-11 in Savannah, Georgia. I’ll be conducting a food policy council workshop with several colleagues from Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. I also hope to be signing and selling books! For more information go to https://cfsconference.nutrition.tufts.edu/join/register.

Be prepared! Pop-up book talks could occur anywhere – NYC subway stations, Chicago Transit stops, fishing boats in the Gulf of Alaska – so stay tuned and I will try to give at least 24-hour notice.

One of the most consistent and dedicated voices in the U.S. food movement is Melinda Hemmelgarn, whose Food Sleuth Radio comes at ya soft and slow from the caverns of KOPN in partly sunny downtown Columbia, Missouri. Her broadcasts are picked up by over 50 public and community radio stations across the country. She was kind enough to interview me not just once but twice (it took me two takes to get it right)! You can hear the interview on November 21 and 28 (no better way to celebrate Thanksgiving!) at 5:00 PM Central Time, and a week later on Food Sleuth’s various partner stations. For more information, including podcasts, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/336205368377/

Rural food policy councils and the needs and issues they address have not received the attention they deserve, except when demagogues exploit people’s fears and woes for their own political gain. In an attempt to better understand the opportunities and challenges of rural life, I spent a few days touring northwest Kansas and then writing about the awesome work of the Western Prairie Food, Farm, and Community Alliance. You can read the whole story right here https://assets.jhsph.edu/clf/mod_clfResource/doc/WINNE_Rural%20Kansas%20FPCs.pdf

Wayne Roberts, former director of the Toronto Food Policy Council, is a cool and crackling Canadian dude whose food system and policy competencies are as vast as North America itself. I’ve enjoyed his nearly every word – books, blogs, tweets, newsletters – over the years as he slices and dices his way through the good, the bad, and the ugly of the global food scene. He’s serving up some tasty morsels on his new newsletter that you can check out and sign up for at https://wayneroberts.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ab7cd2414816e2a28f3b35792&id=1373397df7. I give it my five chile rating – smokie and hot, with a velvety finish!

Food Town, USA

Good food is the new normal, taking care of our own is the new ethic, community-sanctioned entrepreneurship is the new model for growth, and the rise of the individual is the new old story. Those are the conclusions I reached after immersing myself in the food scenes and systems of seven American cities over the course of 18 months. And their tales are the ones I tell in my new book Food Town, USA (Island Press).

These are seven cities generally not found in the Who’s Who or What’s What of Food in America. Which cities, you ask? I could tell you but then you might not buy the book; or I won’t tell you and you’ll find out soon enough from readily accessible sources who just can’t keep a secret. With the exception of one place known fairly well to East Coast foodies, these cities won’t appear on anyone’s “Great Places to Eat” radar. That’s the point, because even in the relatively well-known food city, you’ll discover that it’s not really about the great farm-to-table meal or IPA or latte you’ll indulge in when visiting, it’s more about the unique ways that food is used to fight opioid addiction, give refugees a leg up, build community wealth, and heal the racial pain that still divides America. In other words, I wanted to write about the infinitely creative ways that food strengthens our quality of life, but I also wanted to make manifest how food mends the hurts that inflame our communities. The stories are idiosyncratic to these seven cities, but the lessons are universal.

With those thoughts in mind, I am proud to announce that Food Town, USA Seven Unlikely Cities That are Changing the Way We Eat (978-1-61091-944-9/$28.00) is finally available! Many of you already know that healthy, sustainable food is changing communities across this country and revitalizing towns that have been ravaged by disappearing industries and decades of inequity. Chances are you are one of those responsible, with lots of comrades no doubt, for embedding these transformations into your community. In Food Town, USA, I explore seven unlikely places where the local food revolution is alive and well. From brew masters and city council members, to farmers and philanthropists, to chefs and fisherman, I learned from those on the ground how food is causing remarkable transitions.

If you’d like to purchase a copy from Island Press, use the code WINNE, which is good for a 20% discount. You can also order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local independent bookseller.

I hope you will consider sharing the book with your own networks. You can help in a few ways:

Forward this message to your own contacts or share the news on your social media networks. Feel free to include the discount code, WINNE.
If you’d like to review it for a publication or website, you can request a review copy from press@islandpress.org.
Share my recent podcast interview from The Tidbit. Go to: https://thetidbit.simplecast.com/epis...
If you’d like to use it in a class, you can request an exam copy at islandpress.org/request-exam-copy.
Encourage your organization to ask info@islandpress.org for details about a discounted bulk purchase.
Review the book on Amazon, Goodreads, or another review site.

If you have any questions or ideas for how to use the book in your own work, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.

In case I haven’t been personal enough, let me add a personal note. To quote from the endorsement I received from Mark Bittman, “[Food Town, USA] reminds us that when we devote ourselves to people and places we care about, wonderful and unexpected things seem to happen.” Researching and writing this book caused me to not only fall in love with all seven towns, I also fell in love with the good works that the over 100 people I interviewed were doing. My experiences of these places and people reminded me again, as it has so many times over the course of my life, that when we turn our attention to food – its sources, its preparation, and the impact it has on others – not only are we individually more fulfilled, our communities become more meaningful places to live.

I hope you enjoy the book.

Return to Sender, Address Unknown

Don’t try mailing anything to USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) after September 30th. There won’t be anybody at the Washington, DC-based agency to open the mail. In fact, there may not be a forwarding address either since NIFA, which conducts critical scientific research and manages dozens of important grant programs, still doesn’t have a new home.

Trump and his hatchet man, USDA Secretary Sonny “Side-up” Perdue, exiled the agency to either Kansas or Kansas City, Missouri, depending on which place offers them the cheapest rent. But as things stand now, it may not matter where they go since NIFA’s likely staffing levels won’t require more than a few cubicles. According to the Washington Post, 151 of 224 NIFA staff chose to discontinue their employment rather than relocate, a number that might increase as evacuation day draws near (99 of NIFA’s sister agency, the Economic Research Service’s 171 employees also declined the new posting).

The Administration’s reasons for kicking them out of Washington are legion, as one might expect from political leadership that is both feckless and fact-less. The Secretary says the move will save the Federal government money; a claim, according to the Post, that has been refuted by numerous economists familiar with the agency’s budget. But the song that Sonny sings the most is that NIFA will be closer to its target audience, namely farmers. By the same logic, I suppose, we should move the Pentagon to the Aleutian Islands to be closer to North Korea and Russia. But all kidding aside, the audience for NIFA’s work is the American people: commodity farmers in the Midwest, yes, but also growers striving for organic and sustainable food production everywhere, lower income families looking for healthy and affordable food in urban and rural communities, and researchers working to unravel the mysteries of the food system.

The real reason for the move is that Trump doesn’t like cheeky scientists who have a nasty habit of reminding us that the Emperor has no clothes (in this case, an image sure to provoke anyone’s gag reflex). As Bob Martin, Director of Food System Policy at the Center for a Livable Future, said, “The goal of the Trump Administration is to force out the professional workforce at NIFA and ERS…because their independence and integrity regularly angers the agro-industrial folks.”

There are at least two likely categories of casualties from this imprudent and politically motivated action: the programs and the people. NIFA administers $1.7 billion in research funding including the Organic Agriculture and Extension Initiative, Tribal College Education Equity Grants, and 1890 Facilities Grants for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Because staff are disappearing, the work can’t get done in a timely fashion. For instance, Sonny Ramaswamy, the NIFA Director from 2012 to 2018, said grants that funded crop and bee research are on hold.

Other key grant programs could suffer similar fates including the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (formerly FINI) with $41 million at stake and the Community Food Project (CFP) grants worth $4.8 million. Requesting and reviewing applications and awarding grants are difficult and time-consuming functions laden with legal and financial requirements. Unless qualified and experienced staff are in place, delays in distributing the funds – or even worse – are likely, if not in this fiscal year, then certainly by the next.

And it’s not just the experience of government staff that counts, it’s also their commitment and institutional memory. As an outside reviewer of CFP grant applications over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some extraordinary public servants at NIFA including Dr. Jane Clary, Dr. Pascale Jean, and Dr. Paul Cotton, all of whom are most likely leaving NIFA. They have been responsible for receiving thousands of applications, distributing millions of dollars, and managing hundreds of expert non-Federal reviewers who bring a remarkable range of technical, racial, and geographic diversity to the review process. Not only have Jane, Pascale, and Paul infused otherwise bloodless bureaucratic functions with humanity and fairness, they have done what public servants rarely get thanked for – redistributed a small portion of this nation’s riches for the public good, especially the health and well-being of the most food insecure. As an expression of Trump’s gratitude, they are summarily told to go West or get out. The message is clear: Federal workers lives don’t matter.

We live in an era where the past is a distant congregation of shadows, and the good that people do today only earns them the sneers of cynical politicians. Why worry about the loss of institutional memory or helping people eat healthfully when a craven, short-sighted gain is all that’s at stake? Jack Payne, the University of Florida’s vice president for agriculture and natural resources, warned that the hemorrhage of employees will devastate ERS and NIFA. “This is the brain drain we all feared, possibly a destruction of the agencies.”

NIFA and ERS conduct research and manage grants that are mandated by Congress. These initiatives and the appropriations that support them are not going away anytime soon, unless, of course, this Administration disposes of all the bodies that make government work. Like the Mafia that can engineer the disappearance of those who cross them, Sonny and the Don can come up with numerous semi-legal, constitutionally suspect ways to make the lives of Federal workers nasty, brutish, and short.

What can we do to protect the integrity of this scientific process and to rebuild NIFA’s professional capabilities? Stand up for those NIFA employees (and other Federal workers) who are becoming Trump’s sacrificial lambs. Reach out to them when you can – they are working under considerable stress, so please be kind and helpful. Share your concerns with your members of Congress. If you see something suspicious – delays in Request for Applications (RFAs), sluggishness in grant distributions – say something! If you’re in a position to do so, make CFP and Nutrition Incentive Program grants work really well! By that I mean go the extra mile to meet goals, exceed your performance measures, and tell the community and elected officials about your work and achievements. Finally, get ready for the 2020 election. This one will really matter!

So You Want to Change the World? Go Home!

About a year and a half ago, my son, Peter, told me he was leaving Brooklyn to move back to Hartford, Connecticut where he was born and raised. Having lived in New York for a while and recently completed a graduate degree at N.Y.U., he had soaked up enough of the Big Apple vibe to know that the struggle to be heard above the din was no longer worth the effort. The noise he’d have to make to even get an audition, in a manner of speaking, would break eardrums and what was left of his bank account. He told me, “You have to work so hard to meet the rent for that fourth-floor walk-up that you share with a virtual stranger, that you have no time to be creative or find fulfillment.”

His choice seemed odd to me. Wasn’t Brooklyn the hippest place on earth? And why Hartford, which perpetually teeters on the brink of bankruptcy and whose glory days are long gone? But as I made the rounds to seven U.S. cities researching my new book (Food Town, USA, https://islandpress.org/books/food-town-usa-0)*, I was surprised by how often I heard similar versions of Peter’s views echoed by other Millennials and even Gen-Xers.

While these cities were fine, unique places unto themselves, a hypothetical instrument capable of measuring “hipness” would probably show their combined scores to be less than that of one Brooklyn neighborhood. Why, I asked, would talented people voluntarily move from Portland to Boise, Seattle to Sitka, or Boston to Jacksonville? Is there some kind of reverse diaspora underway whereby the migratory herds that drove up rents in Seattle and packed cafes in Bushwick are disbursing themselves “back home?” While these trends may still be small, my interviews indicated these “homing instincts”—an earnest desire to set down roots on smaller and familiar ground–offered ample benefits for all concerned. Cumulatively, they were good for smaller cities struggling to reinvent themselves, good for emerging food scenes and the cause of food justice, and certainly good for a generation searching for meaning.

One of the cities I visited is Youngstown, Ohio which has a Rust Belt rap sheet a mile long. Closed steel mills, laid-off auto workers, and one of the highest black infant mortality rates in the country have been the city’s most distinguishing legacies for too long. But Dionne and Daniel Dowdy, who head up a project called United Returning Citizens, are trying to mobilize the energy and ideas of those who left Youngstown to come home and contribute to its rebirth.

According to Dionne, anybody who could get out of Youngstown in the 1980s and 1990s did. That included both Dionne and Daniel, African Americans who found the city’s conditions deteriorating so badly they had to leave. “The steel industry was the first domino to fall,” Daniel told me, and that was followed by “crack time,” the period when the crack cocaine epidemic swept across the country and took an extra big bite out of Youngstown. “This is when families fell apart; children were taking care of children; nobody could buy a home and the city started tearing down the empty ones.”

Each of them made changing Youngstown’s food environment a priority, largely because of their past experiences with farming and breastfeeding. Daniel is managing a three-lot vegetable production site and has a commitment for eight additional lots (there’s no lack of vacant land in Youngstown). He also operates a produce distribution system, which among other locations, takes food to a 146-unit senior housing complex in the city’s downtown.

Dionne is helping black men who are returning to the community from prison. Her vision is one of numerous black-owned businesses that become a path to self-reliance and serve as an alternative to what she refers to as the “social service dependency industry.” She said, “Our goal is to have a farm in the city because we believe in our community and children. And that’s how we hope to end this food desert,” referring to the complete absence of supermarkets in Youngstown.

The resettling of America’s under-forties may be the pendulum swinging back against the country’s moving mania. The U.S. Census Bureau says the average person will move over 11 times in her lifetime, and the average 30-year-old will have moved six times. I heard a note of weariness in the voices of returnees; after all, how many times can you gather up cardboard boxes from the local liquor store for packing and borrow your friend’s pick-up truck. Rootlessness breeds alienation and thwarts the formation of social capital, a necessary ingredient for healthy communities. The chance to stay put, give something back to your hometown, and even buy an affordable home in a reviving neighborhood (picking up a house for under $20,000 was common in Youngstown) is starting to sound more attractive to our gypsy children.

Millennials and Gen-Xers are also fueling a from-the-ground-up economy. In Sitka, Alaska, a town whose physical isolation gives it some of the highest food prices in America, young women like farmer Andrea Fraga, restauranteur Renee Trafton, and seaweed diva Amelia Mosher are infusing this town of 9,000 with imagination and entrepreneurism. Andrea grew up in Washington state but was drawn to the rugged independence of Alaska’s coast. As one of Sitka’s handful of farmers, she’s keeping the local farmers’ market well-stocked with her organic produce. Trained at some of New York City’s better restaurants, Renee Trafton opened and chefs the excellent Beak Restaurant that buys as much Alaska-grown and caught food as possible and employs a staff of 10. Amelia, born and raised in Sitka, returned home after a rather disappointing time in the Northwest to start Inspired by the Wild, a business which combines art and natural, local items like seaweed, to make jewelry and beauty products.

Wendell Berry once said that one of the cheapest things you can do to develop a struggling community is “get to know your neighbors [because] there is an economic value from such intangibles as getting to know a place and its people.” That kind of “native knowledge” was very much on display in Jacksonville, Florida, where a bevy of enterprising back-from-elsewhere folks were spinning a web of new connections. One of its exemplars is Nathan Ballentine, a.k.a. Man in Overalls, a modern-day Johnny Appleseed who hires himself out to homeowners, schools, and anybody who wants help installing or maintaining a vegetable garden. “My mission in life,” Nathan told me, “is to reconnect people with gardening.” His father, who grew up in Jacksonville’s Springfield neighborhood, where Nathan moved back to a few years ago with his family, told him that there used to be several nearby grocery stores where now there are none. So, as Nathan sees it, he wants to teach people to “grow their own groceries,” and to that end he’s “developing community networks which are flexible and fast ways of delivering information and getting stuff done.” 

One of the feistiest people I met during the course of my research was Chef Amadeus, an African American culinary wizard who grew up in Jacksonville, was a private chef, had a specialty spice business, but moved away to become a part of the Seattle food scene, where he said, “food is a religion!” He came back, however, to take on the food deserts of the city’s predominantly African American Northside, where “there’s a fast-food place on every corner, and the healthiest food available is at Subway.” In addition to trying to bring healthy food to his community, Chef Amadeus is a one-man cheerleading squad for the city’s African American culinary scene, which in his opinion has been over looked and underappreciated by the city’s predominantly white media.

My journey clearly revealed the impact that under-forties are having on local food systems. As the USDA has noted, “Millennials will be an important driver in the economy for years to come.” They demand healthier and fresher food, and they eat out more often. While their presence in my seven cities wasn’t always large enough to create a food tsunami comparable to the one that engulfed Brooklyn, the fact that small numbers were showing up in all these places was a trend that should be encouraged by local officials who are looking for ways to raise the quality of community life. And what better pool to draw on than those who once lived there, and who, in their younger days may have said, “I’m never going back there again!”

Even when the “explosion” they cause in their respective food scenes is more like a “pop,” millennials and those a little older are causing an outsize ripple when they assume leadership roles as they are doing in all the cities I visited. The business and social entrepreneurs I met were generally under forty, but their energy and ideas were having an impact far beyond their relatively young years. And when those young people are returning to their hometowns “to make a difference,” “to give back,” or rediscover their roots–or as Amanda Mosher put it, “like salmon returning to their home streams” –those towns should do everything they can just short of a ticker-tape parade to welcome them back.

*When ordering directly from Island Press, use the code WINNE to receive a 20% discount.

Doing Food Summits Right

“Let’s do a food summit!” proclaimed the food policy council member, whose moving motion was immediately seconded and thirded by the council’s other members. “We can invite everybody!” suggested one member. “Michelle Obama can be our keynote!” chimed in another. “I can do a workshop on hemp production,” offered a fourth. And, so it went for all of ten minutes during which time the Uptown Food Policy Council had the day-long event completely lined out. Then the trouble began.

“Who’s going to organize this and how are we going pay for it?” quietly asked one person. “How does a summit relate to all the other things we currently have on our plate?” meekly queried another. “And why are we doing this?” incredulously intoned a third. Just as form is supposed to follow function and the second inning follows the first, planning any event, especially a food summit, should begin with the end in mind. The first questions should include how would a community (local, regional, or state) gathering serve your mission, what outcomes would be produced that will guide your work in the years to come, what will it cost and what are the opportunity costs (e.g., other projects or campaigns you will forgo to pull this off), and do you really believe that Michelle Obama will return your phone calls?

Having been a part of many food summits over the years–-as a participant, planner, and presenter-–I have seen sufficient energy mustered that people regard those occasions as part of their organization’s creation story. Unfortunately, I have also witnessed summits where social capital was spent recklessly and a critical opportunity for bringing the community together was squandered. With the intent of encouraging food system activists to make the most of these oh-so rare “big moments,” let me offer a few thoughts.

First, let me be clear about what I mean by a food summit. I am referring to those events of no more than one day in length that are focused on a wide variety of food issues and concerns unique to a specific place and geography. It can be a city, county, region (multiple counties), or a state (I am not including national, multi-day food conferences in this discussion). The number of participants might vary from 50 to 300, keeping in mind that the more people, the more logistical and facilitation challenges you will face. For reasons I can’t fully justify, attendance in the 100 to 200 range feels right – it allows for a manageable number as well as a diverse representation of the community’s food interests.

Just to be repetitive, let me repeat that your summit must be the beginning of something bigger than you are now, and not merely the stepping stone to the next summit. Think about your community’s food system and all the ways that people get, grow, and learn about food. How do those parts – projects, businesses, farms, government and non-profit services – relate (or don’t) to each other. Ideally, you want them all at your summit, you want them to understand how they are linked to each other, and you want them to “own” a vision for a sustainable, equitable, and prosperous food system. And lastly, you want to end the day with a clear idea of where you’re going, and a sense of shared responsibility for how you will get there. If you are a food policy council or similar coalition, you are effectively looking for that charge from the community on how to move forward. Unlike Moses ascending Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God, you want a tablet of “dos and don’ts” generated by your constituents.

Set the stage for these outcomes prior to your event with a website, a summit title, and a program that tells people what to expect and how to prepare. “Setting the Course for Franklin County’s Food Future,” “Imagining a Healthy Harrison City Food System,” or “Our Food, Our Future” are a few of my favorite summit titles. Be bold and imaginative. Don’t pussyfoot around the reason for this convening or hedge your bets to avoid offending the Evil Empire. This is not the time to be timid.

Frame the day with three or four questions that will guide the presenters and the participants. Answers to these questions will close the day and set the course for future action. By way of example, a recent food summit in western Maryland used the following questions: “What are the major challenges facing our food system? What would be an effective response? What type of projects or policies are needed? How can we improve food system coordination in our region, and what should the role of our food council be in doing that?”

Your speakers and workshop presenters should be thoroughly prepped with these questions and understand that their task is to provide enough information so that participants can answer them. This is not Show ‘n Tell – that was great when I brought my new puppy to third grade; this is time for you as an expert and/or participant in one or more facets of your food system to tell the rest of us what’s working, what’s not, and how we can improve things. Don’t be afraid to dream big or speak up, even if you don’t have all the details. The day is essentially a time for brainstorming with some rough attempts to prioritize (using those good old colored dots for people to express their top choices of ideas still works pretty well). The food policy council, staff, and summit’s core group members will vet the lists and flesh out the details in the weeks to come.

Here are a few more tips to help you stay on track:

Keynote: Assuming that Michelle Obama is not available, find someone who can provide a little inspiration as well as clearly and accurately frame the day. You don’t need someone to dump reams of statistics on you. To avoid that, put together a one to two-page briefing sheet that goes into everyone’s conference packet that contains the major facts about your food system: obesity and health, hunger and poverty, numbers of farmers, farmland, and other facts and figures that explain the depth and breadth of your food system. Use a little social math, as in “Franklin County lost 100 football fields worth of farmland over the last five years,” and “Harrison City wastes enough food each year to feed our entire population for three months.”

Sessions: Remember, these are designed to help you answer your questions. Don’t do too many; don’t give all your friends a chance to have a session on their pet topic. You need just enough to represent your food system’s diversity. In western Maryland they did that with six sessions – three in the morning and three in the afternoon. Each one had about 40 participants. You should be able to cover the topic with no more than two presenters. A good moderator should be more than a bio-reader and timekeeper; she should keep things on track and facilitate the discussion of the questions.

Budget: This can vary considerably, but if you’re using a community facility or have access to a friendly college, facility costs can be reasonable. Such institutions would also have the ability to handle lunch and snack service. Other costs such as promotion can be kept low if you’re using social media and existing community media outlets and food system networks. Western Maryland put on their summit for around $6,000 (not counting staff, many of which were made available in-kind). A small grant, sponsorships from local institutions, and a $25 per person registration fee (I wouldn’t recommend much higher) covered all their costs and produced a modest profit.

Staff, Volunteers, and Timing: Planning a food summit does take time, knowledgeable people, and some institutional capacity. With a small but dedicated planning committee and one or two people working part time to handle the nuts and bolts, 6 to 8 months is a reasonable amount of time to allow from conception to the day of the summit. Establishing subcommittees such as marketing and promotion, facilities and food, and program and presenters is a good way to distribute the work load. Having perhaps 10 people working mostly as volunteers on a very part-time basis should be enough until the day of the summit when you’ll need to conscript several friends and colleagues to help with miscellaneous tasks.

Managing “Troublemakers:” It seems like every convening attracts a couple of people who think their issue is the only one in the world. The outraged earth mother who sincerely believes that her two darlings, Sky and Luna, are being poisoned by the carcinogenic dreck served by the evil lunch ladies can derail and dominate an otherwise productive discussion. Taking a firm but respectful position that lets everyone be heard, but not so much so that others can’t be heard, sets a tone of civility and fairness. Carefully stating this as a summit ground rule right from the beginning sets the stage for a good community participation process.

Participants: I have attended summits where the majority of the participants were invited, and I’ve attended others where registration was open to anyone. Strive for a balance that ensures that your community’s significant food system stakeholders participate, that the larger community feels welcome, and that you don’t have so many people that the day’s work becomes unmanageable. Determine in advance who the right people are, what the right number of participants is, and if necessary, impose a cap on the total registrations. And lastly, always invite your local elected officials and give one or two the opportunity to say something at the beginning of the summit.

Food: Well, it is a food summit so you’re not likely to leave a memorable impression if you give people a brown bag filled with a bologna and cheese sandwich, green banana, and chocolate chip cookie with the diameter of a frisbee. This is a rare opportunity to make a statement about local food–-farmers, food businesses, and social programs. You should go the extra mile to use lunch–-its preparation, ingredients, service–-to highlight the richness of your local food system.

Follow up: Short evaluations of the event are always helpful. Harvest the day’s outcomes, sort and organize them as quickly as possible, and disseminate the results to the participants. That is the best way to honor everyone’s time investment and to encourage their involvement in future work. Capping the day off with an informal reception at a local brew pub is a nice way to put a finishing touch on things.

Lastly, and most importantly, celebrate! You’ve worked hard, you’ve brought the community together, and your vision and goals should now be sharper. Yes, much work lies ahead and there may even be another summit in the offing, but for now bask in the glory of food democracy and the knowledge that you did the best you could to hear everyone’s voices.

Food Democracy’s Long, Hard Slog

          I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me. 

                  – Langston Hughes

The walk on this sunny winter day from the Lexington and 125th Street subway station took me several blocks down Harlem’s main drag. In spite of the cold, the sidewalk and streets were packed with the hurry and fury that only New York City can muster. Emergency vehicle sirens screamed in vain attempts to part the sea of snarled traffic, hucksters hawked wares of dubious origins from the curbsides, and hundreds of bodies averted collisions in defiance of the laws of physics. But amidst this carnival crush of humanity, this three-ring circus of semi-managed mayhem, were the neighborhood’s walking wounded who at times visibly out-numbered the undamaged.  Men, virtually comatose, were propped against building walls, legs splayed onto the sidewalk; elderly people walked with their upper torsos bent parallel to the ground; and everywhere the exhausted, the poor, the addicted shuffled with no apparent purpose or destination.

The occasion of my passing through Harlem was to speak at a forum on food democracy at the City University of New York (CUNY) Urban Food Policy Institute. Sitting a few floors above 125th Street, the institute had convened a respectable number of faculty, students, and NYC food activists to put some common flesh on a term that, I must confess, often makes me grumpy. Depending on who you talk to or what you read, food democracy means nothing to most people and many things to a few. Variations run from the literalists who believe in a food system “by the people, of the people, and for the people” to marketplace arbiters who grudgingly allow consumers the food they want, provided that they ask politely. For instance, I’m reasonably certain that food democracy means little more to those New Yorkers I passed on 125th Street than a regular meal.

As a justification for food democracy, however, I’ve never needed anything more complicated than the Japanese Buddhist Constitution which says, “Decisions on important matters should not be made by one person alone. They should be made by many.” And what’s more important than food!

Much of the language around food democracy is coming from people who feel left out by the dominant food system. These can be people for whom a good, affordable grocery store is too-many bus stops away, or, in rural areas, a long hitchhike away. Food democracy is also especially relevant to those who imagine smaller scale, neighborhood-based food production and processing, or worker and cooperatively owned food enterprises; in other words, places where the work, the people, and the community come first. These are natural desires in the face of a food system that places market exigencies and corporate bottom lines ahead of human need.

In a recent CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute article, the case of a Pathmark Supermarket that was closed about three years ago at the corner of Lexington and 125th St. was cited. Coincidentally, the store’s opening in a hard-core food desert 20 years ago was the result of citizen mobilization, i.e., food democracy. Its closing was the result of the parent company’s bankruptcy. But that didn’t deter Whole Foods from opening a Harlem store not too far away in response to the neighborhood’s growing pockets of deep pockets. That might be nice for Harlem’s Second Renaissance, but the high-end store does nothing for the remaining sea of food insecure residents.

But it’s not just the food industry’s willful disregard of the people’s interests that challenges food democracy, it’s also sometimes the people’s lack of clarity about their own goals. When, for instance, the CUNY forum’s participants were asked what would improve food democracy in NYC, most of the answers were more worker coops, more money for community gardens, racial justice, and funding for someone’s commercial food business in Brooklyn. While each of these projects and concepts make their contribution to a more diverse, inclusive, and responsive food system, they don’t resolve the fundamental question of what is food democracy, nor do they help us to operationalize it in a unified fashion.

Beginning with the concept of food justice as a fundamental building block of food democracy, I would assert that everyone must be fed well before others are fed better. Operating within that ethical framework would have required that the Pathmark Supermarket be kept open or replaced with a comparable store before a Whole Foods is opened nearby. Placing one group higher on the food chain while a large group of my fellow citizens sinks even lower should be regarded as a moral challenge for public policy. A unified food community should hold both the public and private sectors accountable for resolving such moral challenges according to a strong ethical framework. The recent rebellion against Amazon in Queens may demonstrate that NYC, or any city for that matter, doesn’t yet have the intellectual and planning infrastructure necessary to prioritize its economic development choices which are generally controlled by an elite group of elected officials and marketplace representatives.

This leads us into another philosophical dilemma. Simply put, most food organizations, especially larger institutions, don’t practice democracy themselves, resorting instead to a traditional non-profit, executive/board governance structure whose members may occasionally represent diverse communities, but rarely communities of need. In many cases, they draw their members heavily from entrenched food sectors such as industry (see Big Hunger by Andy Fisher). If one were to rate them on the quality of their inclusiveness and democratic enterprise, their scores would probably fall into the same range as banana republics of yore. Their decisions, some of which can have a major impact on a community’s food system – are made by a very small number of people, and sometimes only one!

But the ethical dilemma stretches beyond the question of who’s calling the tune. As much as I might rail against elite policy advocates who inhabit the interior regions of the Washington, DC beltway, they deliver the goods in the form of tens of billions of dollars in SNAP and private food benefits every year. Ask the people struggling to make sense of their existence on 125th Street if they would prefer food democracy or a couple of hundred dollars in SNAP benefits every month and several bags of groceries from nearby food pantries, and I think you’ll know the answer.

Another bedeviling feature of food democracy is that sometimes, let’s face it, the people are fickle (the results of the 2016 presidential election perhaps being the 21st century’s testament to the alarming growth of EDS – Electorate Dysfunction Syndrome). The food system’s economic, health, and policy issues can be complicated even for an educated lay person, and on those rare occasions when important choices are subjected to a pure form of democracy, i.e., a voter referendum, the results can be perplexing. Why, for instance, in my home city of Santa Fe would the voters by a wide margin defeat a measure to impose a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages when the health and economic benefits were searingly obvious?

But in spite of these challenges and apparent contradictions, food democracy is on the rise at the local level, if the growth in food policy councils is any indication. According to the just-released Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future Food Policy Council Survey 2018, there are 284 food policy councils (they go by various names) in the U.S., a dramatic six-fold increase since 2007. The survey is just brimming with data, but most tellingly for me is the high priority that councils place on community engagement which, after all, is the road to food democracy. Well over 90 percent of all councils include community members, labor representatives, and youth in addition to the usual cast of public and private professionals, and nearly 60 percent make community engagement their highest organizational priority. While these measures don’t conclusively prove a commitment to food democracy – nor the competency to pull it off – they place food policy councils at the forefront of attempts to bring people’s voices to the table. The will is there, in other words, but as the survey indicates, the resources are not – here too only 26 percent of the councils report a budget greater than $25,000 annually.

At the CUNY forum, New York City Deputy Mayor Philip Thompson made it clear that democracy, in all of its expressions, desperately needs leadership training. He’s right. Democracy is a fragile institution that must be practiced every day, but it is one in which we have seriously underinvested. Given the arduous tasks that accompany democracy’s practice, it can sometimes seem to the sincere practitioner that it is less a privilege of our birthright than a life sentence to be served.

In the case of food democracy, its managers must often assess the opportunity costs. How much time and money do we spend on citizen participation and community engagement? How do we measure success – by the number of policies that are making a difference in people’s lives or the number of people sitting around a table talking about who’s not sitting around the table? With Earth in the balance, there is no doubt that more voices must be heard and orchestrated, which means a considerable investment in democracy training and mobilization. At the same time, substantive action cannot be deferred for long. To those who find the right mix, Nobel Prizes await.

 

Appearances – Winter and Spring 2019

It’s been cold just about everywhere this winter, even here in Santa Fe where the stingy Snow Gods have finally relented and answered our prayers for moisture. The mountains peaks in all directions are the whitest I’ve seen them in years, which is great for skiers now and for farmers later. As much as I enjoy their beauty, I have to steal away from time to time to do the work I love as much as the mountains – visiting with groups around the country.

I apologize for being a bit tardy posting my schedule (one of these events is now history, as you will see). My excuse is that I’ve been putting the finishing touches on a book for Island Press that should be released next fall (more on that in months to come). But there’s still plenty of action ahead, and more importantly, there’s still a lot of schedule to fill. Looking for a speaker on food issues or a workshop on food policy? I’ve even been known to take requests. Who knows, I just might be the right guy for the job. I hope to see you in your town!

2019

Little Rock, Arkansas – January 24 – Southern SAWG Conference. Workshop for food system leaders from the Southeast Region.  Sponsored by the Center for a Livable Future, Southern SAWG, and Community Food Strategies.

Buies Creek, North Carolina – February 9. Campbell University. Giving keynote at the Rural Food Access Summit sponsored by Campbell University. For more information contact Kate Thomas at kthomas@campbell.edu.

New York, New York – February 28. City University of New York Urban Food Policy Institute. Presenting at the Practicing Food Democracy public forum. For more information contact Dr. Rositsa Illieva at Rositsa.Ilieva@sph.cuny.edu.

Albany, Georgia – March 6 & 7 – Participating in a retreat to consider the intersection of food, art, culture, and equity.

Cumberland, Maryland – April 12 – Speaking at the Western Maryland Food Council Summit Our Food, Our Future. Allegheny College. For more information contact William Lantz at wlantz@umd.edu.

Warren Steals Winne’s Idea, But It’s Okay…

Last week Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts proposed a wealth tax on America’s 75,000 richest people. Not a higher income tax rate, but a tax on an individual’s fixed assets over $50 million – stuff like stocks, precious gems, and fancy baseball card collections. I said to myself, “What a cool idea!” but I could have sworn I’d heard it before. Wait a minute. I remember. That was my idea! In my November 18, 2015 blog post “Eat the Rich for Thanksgiving” http://www.markwinne.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=973&action=edit I said, “We need…a tax on capital itself, not just capital gains. The beauty of this approach is that a very small tax on capital, in the order of one percent of the assets held by the top ten percent… would yield about $400 billion annually for the public’s coffers. This isn’t even a financial haircut for the rich; think of it as a mere trimming of split ends.”

If truth be told, I was building off the ideas of Thomas Piketty whose economic analysis Capital in the 21st Century was the subject of my blog post. I used it to, among other things, imagine what the positive consequences of more public revenue would be for tens of millions of hungry Americans.

Politically, of course, Senator Warren couldn’t attribute this idea to a radical French economist like Piketty. It would sink faster than a batch of soggy freedom fries in a light cream sauce. But at least a shout out to me, a guy who earned a strong B-minus in the one college economics course he took would have been acceptable. Oh well…

To her credit, the Senator suggested that a portion of the $275 billion that her proposed wealth tax would raise annually (her lower revenue calculations relied on a more generous deduction for baseball card collections than mine did) could be used to pay down student debt. I love it! Fabulous! But wait, in an October 2016 blog post didn’t I rail against the need for college and university food banks http://www.markwinne.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1018&action=edit that were caused in part by skyrocketing student debt?

Drawing on Piketty’s key point that tremendous wealth begets tremendous wealth, I compared Yale University’s $24 billion endowment to nearby Norwalk (Conn.) Community College’s $27 million endowment. At Yale, the nation’s best financial managers that money can buy produce an astounding annual fund yield of 14 percent. Norwalk’s endowment probably earns them free checking at the Downtown First and Last Trust. As of 2016, one in five Norwalk students reported being hungry at least once in the last 30 days, and only 33 percent could afford to go to school full time. Let’s hope that endowments the size of Yale’s and Harvard’s are included in Warren’s wealth tax.

Why tax wealth? Voila! As Piketty made clear, a conservative rate of return of 4 to 5 percent per year on even a modest amount of wealth can keep you on easy street. If I had a million dollars in stocks and bonds that I didn’t need to use, I’d earn $50,000 a year – the amount the average American working schmo makes from a full-time job – simply by propping my feet up on the porch railing, sipping margaritas, and watching the Santa Fe sunset.

No hard feelings, of course, Senator Warren. You already have my vote for President. And as we say in New Mexico, mi idea es tu idea. Or. as I’m sure Piketty would encore, mon idee est votre idee.