“sorry i kept you waiting!” said a slim man in a worn baseball cap, jeans, and a t-shirt, as i approached the gate. i was here to meet moses thompson, the director of the community school garden program (csgp) in tucson. his laid-back appearance and friendly demeanor was like a breath of fresh air. 

gardening + community + education = impact

the community school garden program, led by moses for the past two years, is run by the university of arizona’s school of geography. under his leadership and the guidance of the founding director sallie marston, it has become an internationally recognized program. its mission is to enable tucson teachers and the community to develop and sustain gardens at school and at home. focusing on the culture and politics of food, the program connects students to their communities and the world around them. it has trained more than 700 tucson unified school district k-12 educators and has produced over 8,500 hours of service. they estimate to have impacted over 600,000 students. 

moses is the heart of the program. his authenticity, humbleness, and kindness have cultivated a phenomenal csgp team, many of whom grew up in the communities they now serve. moses began his career as an elementary school counselor who integrated his love of nature into his counseling. he typically conducted sessions in an outdoor space at his school where the therapeutic qualities of nature made his students feel safe and at ease, allowing them to feel vulnerable and connect with him. 

what made moses — who had no previous gardening experience — take the leap from being an award-winning school counselor to running an equally awarded garden program?

“i knew close to zero about gardening before i started working with the csgp,” he said. the project’s founder sallie mentored him, and that expanded his idea of who he could be. her advice to him was, “what you want now might not be what you want in five years,” which opened his mind to the idea of leadership.

i asked him how he handles the mantle of leadership and he said, “it feels heavy at times and i doubt myself, but the garden has taught me that skill sets aren’t static and with support and persistence i can navigate challenges. and at the end of the day, my love for the work and my love for the people i work with tamps down the fears and anxiety.”

going for the mari-gold

walking around the garden beds, it was hard to miss the big bushes of marigolds that demanded attention. “we plant a lot of marigolds,” moses said, because the flowers prevent root pests, attract important pollinators, and deter caterpillars. these multitaskers are also beautiful.

reflecting on my time in the garden, i realized that the program is just like the marigolds. the program produces crops, addresses social injustice, and encourages connection with heritage. the garden program is a source of food security, community knowledge, and a safe place for students and teachers. it also has the magical beauty that green spaces provide. it is a multitasker — just like the marigolds. moses and the garden open doors to the most vulnerable among us and teach them to care for the earth and themselves.

“how did you build all this? what is moses thompson’s mission?” i asked.

“what gnarly questions,” he said. 

he leaned on his shovel and took a minute to think and then said, “i think when you get in a garden, something profound can happen. growing food and eating consciously can make you feel different physically, and make you feel different about yourself. there is an unmatched capacity for change in a garden and i want to harness that by making gardening accessible to as many people as possible.”

i couldn’t help but smile.

“that’s incredible. did you prepare all that in advance?”

“oh god no,” he said, with a humble and embarrassed chuckle.

a solution for a hungry nation

the community school garden program is not something that can only bloom in tucson. moses emphasized that this program is a framework, one whose frame can be copied, rebuilt, and placed in other food-insecure areas looking to reconnect with their cultural heritage. moses said the csgp’s methodology is “throwing gas on a grassroots fire.” if the program expanded, it would be seeded with the unique heritage of that new place. a foundational part of the program is that each garden is rooted in the community so that when it develops its fruits, they are useful and familiar to those local to that place.

what is abundantly clear about moses is that he cares deeply about our youngest generation. we talked about the climate crisis, how to fight it, and how to stay joyful doing it.

“having no agency and feeling hopeless can make you paralyzed,” he said. “here in the garden, you learn how to grow your own food, and sustain your own life, in harsh and demanding conditions. that gives you agency. it gives you self-confidence and self-worth. from a young age, you can see biodiversity and its benefits here, you can see ecosystem services.” 

moses’ philosophy seems to be working. many of his students have gardens at home, too. he believes that the physiological and community benefits of gardens will build resilience and fight climate change.

slideshow by halley hughes

moses also gave me one of the kindest gifts i’ve ever received: the csgp’s 2022 almanac. however, this is no normal farmer’s almanac. it is an anthology soaked in the heritage of the sonoran desert and community love. every page, every drawing, and every inclusion is so intentional in delivering cultural and ecological knowledge. moses and his team knew they didn’t want the almanac to be a top-down intellectual product from the university of arizona. he wanted kids to use the almanac, and to see their moms and other relatives in the pages. 

that beautiful almanac now sits on my coffee table so that my home’s visitors can soak up the beauty of sonoran heritage. what the csgp has accomplished can be accomplished anywhere. by connecting with their communities and food, the generation that will experience climate change more prevalently than any other will be the navigators who lead us toward a hopeful future. moses taught me that gardens are tools that can sow a generation of empowered children. 

thank you to kvgarlic for the background ambiance.

“summerinsectsjuly2017shawneenationalforest.wav” by kvgarlic is marked with cc0 1.0.

newman developed his farm with a vision to provide equitable access to fresh, nutritious food to residents of the washington metro area and other cities in maryland and virginia. it’s a tall order. while newman has access to nearly 2,000 acres, the farm currently operates on 120 acres with a team of 7 and is focused on the production of beef, pork, chicken, and eggs.

newman’s goal of accessible, sustainable food places him at odds with the dominant practices and intellectual framework of both industrial agriculture and small, sustainable farming. in contrast to the factory farms typical of industrial agriculture, his cattle are entirely grass-fed and his pigs forage in managed woodland—creating a double benefit that both minimizes the use of external grain feed and contributes to his development of a food forest. yet, unlike some organic suppliers, he prioritizes accessibility of his food; this year, he launched a food donation program to provide for the hungry in addition to his wealthier customer base. true to his twitter bio, newman’s approach to the business of sustainable farming is “something else”—something outside of existing models. 

broadly speaking, there have been two streams of alternative agriculture: one which seeks to reform the agribusiness industry from within, and one which seeks to challenge it from outside. gunsmoke farms is an example of the former. owned by general mills, gunsmoke’s 34,000 acres in fort pierre, south dakota, supply the needs of the company’s organic products, such as annie’s organic mac & cheese. besides avoiding the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, the initial plan for the farm included the use of cover cropping, no-till planting, and other practices aimed at building soil health and bolstering the surrounding ecosystem. three years later, however, these plans have failed to materialize, leading to the degradation and erosion of soil on the farm, and drawing public criticism.

the second stream of agricultural reform centers on a rejection of big business, and sees the solution as a myriad of small, individual farms serving the needs of their local communities. polyface farms, owned by virginia farmer joel salatin, is a quintessential example. salatin is something of a heavyweight in sustainable farming spheres: he has been hailed as america’s most famous farmer, his 550-acre livestock farm was named the mecca of sustainable agriculture, and he has published 11 books which teach his methods and philosophy.

salatin claims that a farm’s philosophy is just as important as its practices; if anything, it is more important since philosophy forms the root from which practice springs. at polyface, the cows are grass-fed, the pigs forage in the woods, and grain feed for the free-range chickens is locally sourced and non-gmo. according to salatin, “[polyface’s] goals are not about sales; they are about quality.” he writes that the organic label is not comprehensive enough and “does not incentivize anyone to do better than the minimum standards,” leading to what he calls “industrial junk organics.” 

salatin said his vision is “to see a million polyfaces displace all the monsanto and usda demons.” at the same time, he proudly claimed that “polyface has never had a sales target, marketing plan, or business plan,” which reek far too much of profit-oriented farming to him. instead, expansion of his model depends on a two-tiered value shift. first, farmers must make quality their priority. if they do, “customers will come and sales will increase automatically,” he said. at the same time, consumers must consciously choose ethical and environmentally responsible farms. in his words, “get your nose out of people magazine and research and then patronize food and farm organizations that treat their folks with the values you value.”

as a single entity, it is impossible to deny the success of polyface. the farm pulls hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in revenue and is proof that regenerative farming can be financially viable. yet, polyface faces a number of problems when it comes to salatin’s goal of mass replication, problems which are representative of small-farm sustainability as a movement––problems like affordability.

food from polyface is prohibitively expensive. a dozen eggs sell for $6.75; milk at $11.30 to a gallon. for a purely profit-oriented farm, these prices are not a problem. there are a sufficient number of customers willing and wealthy enough to pay a premium for salatin’s “beyond organic” food that his farm can not only survive, but thrive.

yet, newman of sylvanaqua said that the success of sustainable farming in business does not necessarily translate to its success as a movement. if the goal of sustainable farming is to reform the food system entirely, sustainably sourced food must be accessible to everybody, not just a wealthy portion of the market. 

salatin is not alone in naming consumer values as the battlefield of sustainable agriculture. he is joined by figures such as alice waters, champion of slow food, who censured the nation’s “fast food values,” and wendell berry, author and farmer, whose essay the pleasures of eating argued that “[eating] is inescapably an agricultural act, and how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.” in other words, it is consumers who are responsible for the growth of sustainable farming while producers are free from scrutiny.

newman is skeptical of this shame-and-blame tactic. he said that a critique of behavior may change the habits of an audience which can afford to listen, but $11 milk is simply beyond the reach of a minimum or low-wage worker, no matter how strong the “value shift.” newman believes any solution that is centered on altering consumer behavior is doomed to fail—and is either unaware of the realities of poverty and lower-middle income or chooses not to engage with them.

at sylvanaqua, newman is trying to take the best of both small sustainable farms and industrial agribusiness by pairing commitment to ethical and environmental responsibility with efficiency and productivity. he said that only through this balance can sustainable agriculture be successful, and suggested that many of sustainable agriculture’s shortcomings stem from a reactionary mindset.

“part of (the problem) i think is a certain degree of intellectual laziness…big ag is big, so (people think) the solution must be small,” he said. “big ag is integrated, so (people think) the solution must be to not integrate, to disperse, to only focus on the farming. big ag is all about business, so (people think) sustainable ag must be decidedly non-business.”

the issue with this response, newman explained, is that it’s simplistic. in rejecting large agribusiness across-the-board, small farmers may reject not only the flaws, but the traits that made industrial agriculture successful—traits like scale. 

according to the usda, the class of farms making $100,000-$250,000 per year and the class making $500,000 to $1 million each work about 15% of u.s. farmland. the only difference between the two groups is that the average farm in the former category is about 1,000 acres large, while the average in the latter is just short of 2,000. in other words, fewer, larger farms are able to produce more on the same amount of land than smaller, more numerous ones, thus enabling them to sell at cheaper prices. newman believes that in order to compete, sustainable agriculture must embrace the efficiencies of scale rather than salatin’s million-polyface dream.

while newman said that farmers need to adopt business models that boost affordability, he said that price is only one part of a larger problem of accessibility. in his estimation, the strategies that small farmers use for selling and distributing their food are fantastically impractical.

“people use farmers markets which only operate one or two days a week, and usually during the day, when people are working…and god help you if it rains,” he said. pickup programs for community supported agriculture shares often fall victim to the same critique, with the added hurdle that the farmer, not the customer, picks the produce, meaning people may not get either what they need or know how to use. even if farm food is affordable, it may not be available. a local, all-hours supermarket is an easier, more accessible way to get food than the intermittent, and sometimes distant options that farmers have on offer.

acting alone, farmers don’t have the time to sell their food every day of the week, much less for extended hours. and until they do, farmers are limited in the customers they can reach. this problem calls to another tactic from industrial food: vertical integration. not only does this lower the cost of the end product by eliminating middlemen, newman said, it also allows farmers to focus on what they do best, rather than stretching themselves thin and doing everything inadequately. the farm is only one part of the food system, and any successful attempt at reform will have to work on broader scales, he said.

sylvanaqua does not yet embody all of newman’s ideals. yes, the chickens are free-range, the cattle grass-fed, and the pigs forage in silvopasture-managed woodland with trees whose fruit and nuts supplement the pigs’ diets. yet, in terms of scale, sylvanaqua is a far cry from gunsmoke farms, operating at just 120 acres, which is all that current demand warrants. the prices for his products are high—$5.50 for a dozen eggs, $15 for a pound of bacon. not content to remain this way, newman is aggressively pursuing expansion, most recently through sylvanaqua’s mutual aid program.

newman created the program this summer in response to the farm’s shortcomings in affordability and accessibility. the process is this: sylvanaqua’s customers are encouraged to buy mutual aid shares along with their other purchases. the shares are also advertised to the tens of thousands of followers of newman’s social media accounts. this money is used to pay for meat and eggs that go to food aid organizations who provide meals in washington, d.c. and other cities in the region.

“not everybody has a stove, or cookware, or the expertise, or time to cook the food we have,” newman said. “[these] organizations know how to turn our food into something accessible for people.” 

while these organizations are not owned by sylvanaqua, these collaborations demonstrate the benefits of vertical integration. the program is also helping newman to expand his business. 

“it’s really hard and really expensive to break into new geographic markets,” he said, “because it usually starts with three or four people, or it starts with doing a farmer’s market, which are both ways to lose lots of money really quickly. what mutual aid allows us to do is show up to annapolis with $1,000 worth of paid food donations, and… deliver to three or four regular customers in annapolis without losing money [on transportation and time].” the program has provided over $35,000 in food donations since its inception in late june.

yet, newman is by no means blind to the shortcomings of agribusiness. like salatin, he sees the problem as one of philosophy and worldview, something evident in his writing.

“xàskwim (corn) monocultures are not a white invention,” newman wrote. “in fact, my own ancestors planted them. first-contact colonizer accounts describe in detail cornfields that stretched for miles and miles…but these fields weren’t planted every year…(but) with a careful ethic of not taking too much even when a vast monoculture was involved.” 

as newman sees it, big agriculture is not inherently antithetical to sustainability. while the environmental and social problems surrounding the current agricultural system are numerous, it is also necessary to recognize the ways in which it has been successful in bringing food to people. improving food systems requires coupling the best that agribusiness has to offer with people, organizations, and businesses that center people and environment over profit. to reform food, sustainable farming needs to be the new “big ag.”

—

about this series: the planet forward-fao summer storytelling fellows work was sponsored by the north america office of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), and the fellows were mentored by lisa palmer, gw’s national geographic professor of science communication and author of “hot, hungry planet.”

one of our neighbors here at gw, the north america office of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations, has long been a supporter of this mission.

together, we’ve taken exceptional students to report from the world food prize in iowa, and to fao headquarters in rome for world food day at the committee on world food security. since the pandemic limited our ability to offer these travel-based experiential learning opportunities, we had to get creative.

now, i am thrilled to announce our first ever planet forward-fao storytelling summer fellowship, through which four students will produce stories in any medium at the nexus of food security, agriculture, and nutrition, and work under the guidance of gw’s national geographic professor of science communication, lisa palmer.

allow me to introduce our 2021 storytelling summer fellows:

• sejal govindarao is a rising sophomore studying political communication at george washington university. sejal is based in the san francisco bay area and will be reporting on minority communities there.

• terrius harris, who is currently pursuing his master’s of legal studies for indigenous peoples law at university of oklahoma, is a previous storyfest winner, a past senior planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 , and previously traveled with planet forward to the committee on world food security in 2018. terrius will be reporting from oahu, hawaii, on indigenous population’s access to food.

• jules struck, from emerson college and who is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism, will be reporting from the boston, massachusetts, area.

• benjamin thomas, a junior studying environmental studies at franklin & marshall college, will be reporting from a sustainable farm in havre de grace, maryland.

our fellows begin june 7, and while stories will be completed this summer, the fellowship will culminate with events surrounding world food day in october. keep an eye on planetforward.org and our social media accounts for more from and about these amazing students!

that powerful idea is none other than the green bronx machine, but rest assured it is not your typical machine. the green bronx machine is powered by none other than students with a passion for gardening healthy greens, as well as educators who spark that passion in their students.

planted in the bronx

the green bronx machine’s most notable educator is also its founder: stephen ritz. ritz is a bronx native and can easily be identified by his exuberant energy both in and out of the classroom. teaching at schools with some of the worst dropout rates in the country, ritz has always been deeply committed to his students and has worked tirelessly to keep them engaged in school. 

nearly a decade ago, ritz had a lightbulb moment that would change the trajectory of his career and students’ lives forever. when his middle schoolers accidentally stumbled upon a box of flower bulbs in his classroom, they were fascinated by their discovery and were eager to learn how to plant.

pleasantly surprised by his students’ reaction, stephen realized that he could better engage his students by making gardening the center of the classroom experience. 

“i could teach children to read and write and do math if i put this magical garden in the middle of the classroom and built school around it,” ritz said.

in 2013, ritz became the first teacher in the u.s. to implement tower gardens in the classroom. 

sprouting local solutions

since the introduction of tower gardens, the green bronx machine has flourished into an educational and community-based organization that teaches students how to garden and consume healthier foods. under its model, students still learn core subjects like science and math, but gardening is put at the center of teaching so that students have a more engaging and hands-on learning experience. while unconventional, the green bronx machine education model has proven to be effective in training and empowering students.

“we’ve taken a formerly failing, slated-to-be-closed school that now outperforms city and statewide benchmarks in all areas,” ritz said.

notably, the green bronx machine has not only closed education gaps in the bronx but has also expanded to address local food insecurity as well. today, the organization runs classroom and community gardens all throughout the bronx, serving as a production hub for healthy greens around the bronx community. cory gamble, a former student of ritz’s and the green bronx machine’s farm technician, has witnessed how the green bronx machine fills an incredibly important food access gap in his community.

“that’s the main thing in the bronx: lack of food,” gamble said. “the bronx doesn’t really have food like that. it’s mostly junk food around here than anything else.”

ritz’s vision for the green bronx machine is rooted in community empowerment and self-sufficiency. instead of waiting for outsiders to fix the bronx’s food deserts, ritz is eager to make change from within, empowering the bronx’s youth to be farmers who change the trajectory of local food insecurity.

“we at green bronx machine are determined to be the light inside of our tunnel, instead of seeking light at the end of the tunnel,” ritz said.

rooted in resilience

when the covid-19 pandemic took the world by surprise, the green bronx machine was already prepared to address the exacerbated food crisis in the bronx.

“once the covid-19 crisis started, it was amazing that nothing fell off, and green bronx machine didn’t have to readjust,” said michaela, ritz’s daughter who had been helping the organization deliver meals to families during the pandemic.

according to michaela, the green bronx machine worked hard to “fill in the cracks that became even more glaringly apparent in society.” with schools shutting down and healthy meals becoming more difficult to access, the green bronx machine went above and beyond to ensure that their students were still learning and families were still eating. ritz and his team hosted frequent cooking classes, even delivering ingredients to students to make sure they could participate. they also transformed their national health and wellness center into a food pick-up station, in addition to hand-delivering more than 100,000 pounds of food to locals in their community.

“without green bronx machine, i don’t know if half of these kids would be eating due to covid,”  gamble said.

when schools started opening back up again in the bronx, the green bronx machine also resumed their classroom gardening projects in a socially distant manner. in this way, the green bronx machine improved students’ lives during the pandemic through three main avenues: an academic need for learning, a material need for nutritious food, and a social need for human connection.

harvesting a movement

the systemic issues of food insecurity and school dropout rates are not unique to the bronx, and so the green bronx machine strives to replicate these positive impacts in other communities that struggle with their same issues. with expansive success in the bronx education system, the green bronx machine has developed a curriculum model now implemented in over 500 classrooms around the u.s. and world. 

what makes the green bronx machine model so powerful, though, is that it isn’t just an education success story. it’s a societal success story. the green bronx machine’s journey to make the bronx a greener and healthier community shows that societal transformation is most effective and sustainable when it starts from within. instead of employing outside food delivery to feed the bronx, the green bronx machine placed the seeds in the hands of those with the most power to change the bronx for the better: the local youth. 

ultimately, food is the key ingredient that powers the green bronx machine model, bringing together students, educators, and community members alike because nutritious food is a universal necessity of life. food is what we all have in common, and so what the green bronx machine brings to the bronx can be brought to any community in need of healthy food.

according to ritz, “food is the language in which society reveals itself.” and in the bronx, the success of the green bronx machine reveals that youth and education are two of the most powerful channels to bring healthy food access to some of the country’s poorest communities.

a seed of an idea planted in the bronx, the green bronx machine model now has the potential to be harvested around the world. 

right around the corner from the apartment i moved into happened to be a small cooperative grocery store where i applied for a part-time job, mostly for the sake of paying for rent and food. i started at the tail end of september that year, and just over three years later to date, i’ve moved up from part-time cashier to full-time produce manager.

while a community may crop up out of any situation where a group of people are inherently intertwined, there is something particularly special, potentially revolutionary, about adding a co-op to a community. it brings with it awareness and advocacy, and it acts as a needle weaving the threads of the community together.

the first co-op was started in 1844 by a working class group in england dissatisfied with hazardous working conditions and inadequate pay. they had little access to food and household essentials as individual families, but they realized banding together could afford them more communally than they could afford separately. in the 1960s, similar plans for food access along the west coast of the united states were known as food conspiracies. the strategy continued to metamorphosize, but always remained primarily focused on community support.

nowadays, co-ops remain a counterattack against inequality and social injustice. a modern day cooperative, or co-op for short, is a member-owned business. no one entity owns the building or any of the rest of its assets: the co-op members own it all, cooperatively. there is also a list of 7 co-op principles guiding co-op creation and operation:

1. open and voluntary membership: anyone is allowed to become a member.
2. democratic member control: decisions regarding how the co-op operates are made taking all members’ input into equal consideration.
3. members’ economic participation: capital of the co-op comes from but also belongs to the members, who decide how it is reallocated (store renovations, patronage dividends, donations, etc.).
4. autonomy and independence: co-ops are controlled solely by their members; any collaboration with other entities is approved by members and allowed continued autonomy.
5. education, training, and information: co-ops spread information and make it accessible to the general public.
6. cooperation among cooperatives: co-ops work together with and help sustain other co-ops.
7. concern for community: co-ops support their communities by listening to local members’ needs and desires and working alongside local residents to satisfy them.

all co-ops have their different methods for exercising these principles. some have a board of directors elected by members who make decisions for the store on behalf of the members. some require volunteer work hours as a condition of membership. some have guidelines for the percent of locally-made products they carry.

at syracuse cooperative market, we put all of these co-op principles into practice in a way our members have agreed upon and signed up for. sustainability, buying local, and supporting the community help us fulfill our role. 

as a community resource dedicated to fostering a healthy society, we practice sustainability throughout the store, from food waste management to supporting the community. our food waste management system keeps edible and compostable food out of landfills. expired and damaged grocery and produce goods are donated weekly to assumption church food pantry on the northside of syracuse. any non-edible food, excluding meat and dairy, is thrown into compost bins, which are picked up by a local farmer who uses them to feed her animals. we throw out as little food as we can, so as to waste as little as possible of resources that can be salvaged and made use of.

our selection of bulk food provides opportunities for customers to use minimal disposable plastic when shopping and instead reuse containers they’ve brought from home. we have sections for dry and liquid goods, as well as a separate spice and herbs section.  customers have gotten creative and reused plastic bread bags and plastic yogurt containers, influencing each other to follow suit.

buying local is a function of sustainability at the co-op, as well. by sourcing products from local businesses, we keep money within the community and cut down on co2 emissions from food transport, supporting small-scale farmers over industrial farms and avoiding contributing to air pollution. 

community support is another part of our co-op’s mission. we table at events to reach out to people who may not know they have a local grocery store within walking or biking distance. we make donations to local non-profits, businesses, and other projects contributing to the same mission of sustainable community reformation. we also buy local products as much as possible. gabe, the grocery manager, places local orders through distributors such as regional access, headwater, and fingerlakes farms, which source products from businesses in central new york, the finger lakes, and sometimes other regions of new york. as the produce manager, i place local produce orders through regional access and headwater, too, as well as several other individual farms that deliver directly like gillie brook, wyllie fox farm, and frosty morning farm.

our previous produce manager, stephanie, is in charge of the co-op share, which is another way we support local farmers. from mid spring to late fall, steph puts together boxes of local produce every friday. the share operates like a community supported agriculture program, but instead of coming directly from one farm, the variety of fruits and vegetables we put in the boxes are sourced from a selection of farms every week. the system allows us to put together a diverse assortment of produce, which encourages more hesitant customers to get on board with supporting local farmers.

in march of 2020, our co-op’s mission was tested by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. the food system was dealt a blow, along with a threat to the stability of community resources. in grocery and department stores, entire paper product aisles were empty from panicked toilet-paper purchases, canned food was wiped out from fear of not being able to shop for weeks or months. even perishable and produce coolers were full of empty spots of out-of-stocks.

at our co-op, keeping the shelves stocked was a feat. our distributors were low on product, due to other clients over-ordering. for a couple weeks, entire sections of our shelves were cleaned out almost every other day, if not daily. members and non-members worried, asking questions we couldn’t provide definitive answers for. the choice was either to give up and let our community down, or work hard and fast to bring stability back. as if there wasn’t a choice at all, we did the latter.

while big grocery stores panicked, with employees being harassed by scared customers and customers feeling uncomfortable in crowded shopping areas, the co-op remained calm and acted with swift precautionary measures to assure the safety of our staff and customers before state or federal guidelines and systems were put into place or demonstrated elsewhere. we started providing curbside pick-up orders, for which we’d take shopping lists and payment from people over the phone and allow them to pick up their groceries contact-free. jen, our social media manager, streamlined this service, creating an organized process for how to take and shop orders, as well as formatting tags to label grocery bags. customers asked regularly showed concern and gratitude toward employees, and employees reciprocated it. a board member and a few other residents within the syracuse community made masks for us. later on, hazard pay was added to payroll for all staff. the sudden disorder was challenging, but we sorted through it with teamwork and dedication.

our co-op community’s response to the pandemic provides a perfect example of co-ops’ influence on communities. we were unified and supported, and there was a sense of social responsibility to maintain that. not only did i find a sense of purpose in my community by being classified as an essential worker during a crisis, but the additional responsibility of being in charge of ordering produce at a co-op made me feel all the more connected. i felt so grateful to go to work every day with a team of people who weren’t just going to work to pay their bills; all of us felt some level of commitment to each other and the community.

now — months deep into the same crisis we’re still living with and supporting our community through — sitting at my computer in the office putting together orders, prepping lettuce and cilantro in the kitchen, stocking local apples and squash on the sales floor, talking with regular customers in the aisles, i never cease to feel a deep-rooted connection to a community i have a place in.

our general manager, jeremy, told me that once, in a coaching session, he was asked: “what do you do to celebrate a job well done?” a little thrown off, he responded: “do more work.” it’s become a joke amongst the staff at the co-op, but in all seriousness, it feels like a summary of our co-op’s and other co-ops’ mission statements. improvement may be a cause for celebration, but improvement doesn’t have a ceiling. that’s the whole point of working toward a better and more just society. there’s always more work to do — and co-ops help rally their communities together and encourage participation in that work. co-ops don’t stop at enough food security, enough community resources, enough education; we continue to expand and improve without bound, tirelessly working for social betterment.

—

works cited:

co-op cathy. (2016, november 30). how cooperative grocery stores are bringing food access to low-income neighborhoods. retrieved september 10, 2020, from https://cdi.coop/food-coops-food-deserts-low-income-communities/ 
cotterill, r. (1983). retail food cooperatives: testing the “small is beautiful” hypothesis. american journal of agricultural economics, 65(1), 125-130. doi:10.2307/1240347
hudspeth, b. & josephy, m. (2013, august). building on a legacy of food security. retrieved september 10, 2020, from https://www.grocer.coop/articles/building-legacy-food-security 
jochnowitz, e. (2001). edible activism: food, commerce, and the moral order at the park slope food coop. gastronomica, 1(4), 56-63. doi:10.1525/gfc.2001.1.4.5
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marc d. brown. (2011). building an alternative: people’s food cooperative in southeast portland. oregon historical quarterly, 112(3), 298-321. doi:10.5403/oregonhistq.112.3.0298
matthiessen, c., & hamersky, a. (2006, november). produce to the people. sierra, 41-45. (https://vault.sierraclub.org/sierra/200611/produce.asp)
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severson, k. (2020, september 8). 7 ways the pandemic has changed how we shop for food. new york times. retrieved september 9, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/dining/grocery-shopping-coronavirus.html?referringsource=articleshare 
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i sat down with powers to discuss how groups are addressing the ​effects​ of the covid-19 pandemic on food insecurity, as well as how sustainability can be prioritized in the country’s response. 

she explained that after the 2007-08 recession, it took the united states 10 years to reach​ pre-recession numbers. as we are now seeing a “tremendous ​uptick​” due to the pandemic it will, at minimum, take government programs, good agricultural practices, and the work of charitable organizations to respond to the nation’s current level of need, she said.  

over the past year, immigrants and minorities who already were experiencing food insecurity or on the brink of becoming food insecure, were barred from necessary governmental supports during the pandemic. immigrants recently were denied access to federally funded programs with the implementation of the “public charge” rule. this rule states that visas and green cards can be denied to those who use or may eventually be in need of federally funded services. this caused fear for many immigrants and forced them to struggle through the pandemic without using government supports.

haley truan, farm-to-school and community interim directory at reap food group, explains that they recognized the consequences that the covid-19 pandemic would have on the latino/indigenous communities during a zoom meeting with roots4change, a cooperative led by immigrant women. “ninety-two percent of latino families with at least one child are food insecure…so many families are on the brink,” truan said. this plus the implementation of the “charge rule” put latino communities at immense risk of malnutrition during the pandemic. reap food group and roots4change knew that something needed to be done, so they went to the community for answers. their teamwork and open communication allowed them to come up with a solution that has fed 200 families each week and created several jobs during a time when food access and jobs are increasingly limited.

“it’s mind-blowing that our government didn’t respond to (this) crisis,” truan said about the food access epidemic among latino and indigenous communities. “we have not created a sustainable food system, and it will take community-led initiatives to combat shocks like the covid-19 pandemic or climate change.” recognizing that something had to be done about this crisis immediately, reap food group and roots4 change started the farms to families initiative with hopes to alleviate the burden on the latino and indigenous community, create new jobs, and support local farmers and businesses during the covid-19 pandemic.

roots4change, being members of the latino/indigenous community themselves, wanted to ensure that the recipients got the food and resources that they needed. they asked other members of the community what would be most helpful, and the response was unanimous. “we don’t have a voice,” shared one woman, and many others agreed.

roots4change and reap food group needed to make sure that the community they were hoping to help were a part of the conversation.

“we want to help create a better community,” truan said. this means that the food distributed must be culturally appropriate, ethically sourced, and packaged and delivered by members within the community.

another group that has historically been more prone to food insecurity is college students, and students at the university of wisconsin-madison are no exception to this trend. unfortunately, the pandemic left many students unemployed, hungry, and with little support. while much of the u.s. population received governmental support during the pandemic, most college students were left empty-handed. many college students were deprived access to the stimulus checks that came from the cares act due to being claimed as a dependent and being over the age of 17. luckily, students at uw-madison have several resources to help them access healthy and nutritious food, including the uw campus food shed.

the uw campus food shed was started in 2017 by undergraduate hayden porter and professor irwin goldman. this student-professor duo realized that so many vegetables used in research projects were being wasted, while at the same time, so many students at the university weren’t getting a balanced diet.

raven hall, a senior at uw-madison and co-president of the uw campus food shed explains why food insecurity on a college campus is such a big deal. “how are we, as future leaders of the world, supposed to reach our academic potential when we’re not receiving the nutrition that we need for brain function?” hall said.

the pandemic caused even more students to wonder where their next nutritious meal would come from. consequently, it also posed challenges for the distribution of food. “it’s been hard to get us up and running again,” hall said. she noted that many of the food shed’s regular volunteers are now spread throughout the world, taking classes online. additionally, hall said, “it’s particularly difficult being a student organization involved in food redistribution, because with covid, people are being really, really careful and need to be careful about what they’re touching…” she goes on to explain that this has put students in a vulnerable position and has caused the uw campus food shed to find creative solutions.

hall and others want to unify the food community to raise awareness and tackle problems together. “…how can we connect our resources and actually solve these problems?” hall said. she explains that there is a disconnect among professors, students, and organizations that are all working on the same issues. “we’re not getting anywhere because everybody is stepping on each other’s toes trying to solve the same problem.” hall believes this can be solved by creating a space where everyone can come together as a community to enact change.

while truan and hall are working to improve different areas of food security in madison, their approach is the same. both women understand that the solution to improving our food system is to come together as a community. we are all working on these issues, so why not work on them together?

projections estimate that more than 54.3 million americans may experience food insecurity in 2020, according to a report by feeding america. before the covid-19 crisis began, that number was 37 million. as of the first week of july, more than one in ten americans had trouble putting food on the table, while a 2012 pew research report says nearly one in five adults in the u.s. have received food stamps at one point in their lives.

food insecurity is the inability to purchase enough nutritional food for a whole household. in developed nations such as the united states, food insecurity is a result of numerous factors, including poverty and lack of financial resources, as well as inadequate access to nutritious food. 

why do people continue to go hungry in one of the wealthiest nations in the world?  

to understand the problem, and the repercussions of these disruptions to our food system, it is important to know a bit about how our food supply chain works.

a food supply chain refers to various actors that produce, process, transport, distribute and sell to the public. lancaster central market in lancaster county, pennsylvania, serves as a local intermediary for a regional food economy that supports small-to-medium scale farms, fisheries, and other producers.

“pre-covid-19 numbers were around 5,000-6,000 customers a day,” said lancaster central market manager of operations mary goss. “but between march and may it would barely break 1,000.”

food waste was another problem during the early days of covid-19, as much of our impressive agricultural output was going to waste — even before the pandemic. recycle track systems, a sustainable waste advising organization, has explained the bottom line: 80 billion tons of food – or roughly 30-40% of the american food supply – is wasted in landfills, contributing to an astounding loss of $161 billion in revenue each year. 

for producers, particularly small-scale, sustainable agricultural operations, their success is both reliant on and a product of local community support. community-supported agriculture is so successful because local members collectively pay for the production capacity ahead of the growing season, ensuring financial security, higher returns on goods and reliable consumers moving forward, according to a 2003 cornell university report.

lancaster central market and several of its local, sustainable partners, such as barr’s farms and horse shoe ranch, have depended on the local community to get through the uncertainty. could this be a necessary step in the right direction to eradicate american food insecurity?

the food system amidst covid-19

there are numerous concerns for safety assurance in the current food supply chain amidst the covid-19 pandemic, largely due to the scale at which factory farms operate in the united states, as vox reports. 

self-sufficient family farms like horse shoe ranch in lancaster county have managed to overcome public health concerns and weathered the economic struggles that came with the pandemic. 

the ranch is run by bryan and brittany donovan, a married couple who represent a new generation of young farmers, and who produce 100% pasture-raised chickens and hens (outside 24 hours a day) for eggs, as well as varieties of non-gmo produce. 

even though community members ensured their existence in the short term, many restaurants had to cut business arrangements due to the pandemic. as of september, the ranch noted, “business…is not the same as it was pre-covid and our sales to lancaster restaurants have all but disappeared.”

meanwhile, the trump administration ordered that meat processing plants could not shut down that are not structured to accommodate safety concerns as covid-19 cases surged and fears of the food supply chain rose.

the third phase of the federal government’s relief program, the cares (coronavirus aid, relief and economic security) act, included $450 million to emergency food assistance programs (such as food banks), $300 million to the supplemental relief assistance program (snap), and $100 million to indigenous communities. 

the century foundation, which identifies as a “progressive, independent think tank,” said in a commentary published earlier this year that “it is clear that these efforts, while an excellent start, are not sufficient” to having 100% food security in this country. if the cares act allocated specific funds for farms that reached certain sustainability standards, then there could have been more assistance for small-scale farmers like the donovans. 

“we have applied for various grants and loans through(out the pandemic) and we have not been chosen for any,” brittany donovan said. “there are still a few that we are waiting on but there are very little grants out there that give to small, diversified farms like ours.”

some larger brands, such as annie’s, are supporting small-scale, conventional farms to transition to non-chemical, organic methods. last year, general mills pledged to transition 1 million acres of farmland to a model based on regenerative agriculture by 2030, but this is not the norm in agribusiness. instead, agricultural funding continues to be allocated to conventional farming methods rather than investing in organic methods for pest-removal, production efficiency, and expertise training programs. 

 

 

 

 

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it’s that time of year again, the extraordinary give! a day of giving back to our community. the lancaster central market trust is one of the organizations available to donate to this friday. our very own, ben barr, serves as one of the two standholders on the board. we are honored to be a part of this organization! #extragive

a post shared by barr’s farms (@barrsfarms) on nov 19, 2019 at 6:09am pst

barr’s farms, a family farm that has been in operation since 1926 and grows fruits and vegetables in lancaster county, is facing a similar situation in terms of their reliance on the communities they operate in.

“we did not apply for any help,” owner and farmer benjamin barr said, when asked about applying for federal assistance. but he said he plans on learning more about potential opportunities as a second round of funding approaches this fall. 

barr said his family’s farm has invested in the local community for decades, and the community showed up in force when they most needed it.

“the local community is the best support hands down,” he said. “customers and other businesses were more than willing to help and partner up and get creative to come up with new ways of doing business. proud to live and be able to do business in lancaster.”