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Posted by Jonna McKone | September 3rd, 2010

[Cross-posted from The City Fix DC.]

The Yes! Organic Market, part of a mixed used development project in the Fairlawn neighborhood of SE DC. Photo courtesy of http://www.anacostianow.com

The first organic market to open east of the Anacostia is certainly a milestone – but is it accessible?

According to a press release announcing the new supermarket:

“… Yes! Organic Market is committed to making fresh produce and healthy food affordable to the diverse demographic of families in the surrounding neighborhoods. The store is accepting supplemental nutrition assistance benefits (SNAP) and Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program vouchers.”

Mayor Adrian Fenty is certainly excited about the store’s opening two weeks before the mayoral primary election. The store was funded through the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED).  The Department oversees a program called the Great Streets Initiative, a multi-agency effort to “transform nine under-served and under-invested corridors” throughout the district.  DMPED is working with the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT) and the Office of Planning (OP) to design “mixed use development projects, storefront improvements, transportation, streetscapes, and transit improvements along these corridors.”  Yes! was awarded a $900,000 Great Streets grant as part of this program.ACCESS TO FOOD

The grocery store is located in a new building with more than 100 rental units of affordable housing. The development is on Pennsylvania Avenue in the Fairlawn neighborhood of Southeast D.C. The building itself opened in June and “the units are slated for residents who earn 60 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) or less.”

However, accessibility is a key concern, as it is in much of the District east of the Anacostia River. The closest metro is on the other side of the river – the Potomac Avenue Metro station, which is about 1.2 miles away. And east of the river, there is the Blue Line’s Benning Road Metro stop, 2.3 miles from the store, and on the Green Line, it’s Naylor Road, 1.8 miles from the store.

Posted by Jonna McKone | July 22nd, 2010

Freelance food educator and writer Ibti Vincent recently returned to DC following a 14-month bicycle trip around the country to learn about sustainable food and community building.  She attended an Ecolocity workshop on seed saving at the Emergence Community Arts Collective.

The process is a little more sophisticated than simply smearing a hunk of tomato on a paper bag (which was all of the guidance I’d previously acquired on the subject), but I am happy to say that saving seeds from open pollinating fruits and vegetables wasn’t as difficult or mysterious a process as I’d feared. In fact, it was pretty fun.

On Tuesday evening, I attended my first seed saving workshop, courtesy of Ecolocity — a group dedicated to making DC a “transition town” (i.e. not dependent on unsustainable fossil fuels and able to support its needs through local community partnerships). Most of the folks attending were fellow amateur gardeners and community activists, though there were a few local celebrities as well, including a woman from Washington Gardener magazine and a gentleman from Southern Exposure Seed Company. Regardless of our backgrounds, all of us were drawn toward a common purpose: saving seeds to share with others and plant during future growing seasons. Our world is rapidly losing its plant diversity, and one way I have learned the average person can help is by continuing to grow a variety of food crops in a home garden. Yes, farmers and gardeners can save the world.

I like hands-on learning, and this was exactly the kind of practical experience I was hoping for. Slice, scoop, ferment, rinse, dry, store. I made the rounds, ultimately departing with a jar of fermenting tomato seeds, a baggie of freshly harvested pepper seeds, and a bellyful of watermelon. I was now a novice seedsaver, the world was my watermelon….

Want to learn more about seed saving? Read the full blog post on the seed saving workshop here.

Posted by Jonna McKone | July 8th, 2010

Samuel Fromartz is a journalist, writer, gardener and baker. He moved from New York City (where he’s from) to Washington, D.C. in the mid 1990’s. In 2006, he wrote the book, Organic, Inc, on the seeming contradictions of the organic food industry.

I asked him a few questions about his work. Fromartz also had lots of advice on small-scale farming (what I do part-time) and how to make organic agriculture viable from a business perspective.

How did you become involved in food politics? What sparked your interest?

I came at [food politics] as a consumer and I tell the story in my book. I was living in New York and working there and eating out a lot. When I moved to D.C., I moved in with my wife to be and we started cooking at home. At that time in D.C. – 1996 before a lot of the revitalization had gone on – there weren’t very good supermarkets in Capital Hill. We had Eastern Market – not like what it is today – so we began shopping at the Whole Foods in Clarendon, VA. The quality of the food was so high compared to other supermarkets.

I began buying more organic produce and noticed the store was full of people.  My instincts as a business journalist began kicking in. I actually ended up buying stock in Whole Foods and held it until I started my research on my book in 2002. At that point, I sold the stock to avoid conflict and used the proceeds to help fund my research. The company and the stock had done well. I was interested in a business and cultural perspective of what was driving this movement and interest in organic food.

I was in my late 30’s and I hadn’t ever grown anything. I had no interest in gardening, but after I wrote the book, I met so many farmers and talked to them about what they were doing.  I joined a community garden and grew my first vegetables. I knew some farmers in the area and was calling and emailing them for tips and advice. I kind of had this little team of experts in my back pocket  – that was my entry point into it. It was a personal story in terms of my own evolution as a consumer, eater, as a cook and then, as a gardener.

And what was happening in D.C. at the time you were writing your book and the interest in organic food was growing?

The Fresh Farmers Markets started in mid 90’s. At that time, it was one market and now there are half-dozen markets. The farmers’ market scene exploded.  I was seeing the growth of farmers’ markets around the country. The Ferry Plaza market in San Francisco opened up, and I was sort of wowed by the quality of organic produce. It used to have this reputation of being bug eaten and wilted.  It still amazes me in California that you can get so much produce that’s organic.

In California, there’s this huge infrastructure of extension agencies, other farmers, and this knowledge and network of what to do about disease and organic growing. That knowledge is just so much more available there. In the East, we don’t really have organic fruit. Most farmers say you can’t do it.

I think the next wave is a rise in backyard gardens. There’s many more products and knowledge that’s spread about how to do it. I am kind of encouraged by that. I just got into this whole trajectory of looking at these issues and getting involved in the farmer community.

Posted by Jonna McKone | June 12th, 2010

DC Digital Capital Week began yesterday. The ten-day event is a series of workshops, demonstrations, networking events, public art pieces, talks and parties on all things technical. It aims to amplify D.C.’s creative, entrepreneurial, tech, govt/non-profit sectors, linking groups, inspiring projects and collaborations and identifying local and global opportunities for change.

And there’s a food specific event called, “The Food Revolution: One Byte at a Time.” Panelists  will include “individuals from organizations “who have sucessfully used social media to dissmeninate their pro-food/sustainable agriculture/nutrition advocates’ message…” According to the site, each speaker will provide examples and case studies. A  panel discussion will follow.  The panel occurs this Thursday, June 17th at 10:00 a.m. Full details are on the website.

Speakers include:

• Courtney Gray Haupt (@CourtneyGH), Vice President of Public Affairs and Health Policy at Spectrum, will moderate and discuss how she has helped her sustainable ag-focused clients navigate the digital sphere in a smart, strategic way.
• Ed Bruske (@theslowcook) began his writing career as a reporter for the Washington Post but has since started his own blog, The Slow Cook, and tends his “urban farm” about a mile from the White House in DC. Ed is a personal chef for clients with special needs, and teaches “food appreciation” to children enrolled in the after-school program at Georgetown Day School. He is a co-founder of the group DC Urban Gardeners and sits on the advisory board of the DC Farm to School Network. Ed believes in self-reliance, growing food close to home, and political freedom for District residents.
• Helena Bottemiller (@hbottemiller) is a Washington, DC-based reporter covering food policy, politics and regulation for food borne illness lawyer Bill Marler’s Food Safety News. After years of being a self-described food policy wonk, Helena delved into the food safety world for the first time while writing her thesis on the politics of food regulation at Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles, where she graduated with a degree in Government.
• Sarah Alexander (@sa4schoolmilk) is a senior food organizer at Food and Water Watch. She works to promote a healthy and independent food system and to improve public knowledge on food issues including factory farms, and country of origin labeling. Sarah led a successful grassroots campaign, Healthy School Milk or Bust Tour, using social media that helped put organic and rGBH-free milk in schools. Sarah previously worked with Green Corps, the White Earth Land Recovery Project, and the American Community Gardening Association.

Posted by Jonna McKone | May 8th, 2010

Passion for growing food is a marvelous site to behold. Its manifestations are endless: the varied ways to grow food, from heirlooms to hybrids, the timing, successions, and the organization of that growth. There’s traditional rows, cover crops, the square foot gardening technique, confusing patches, companion planting, and the entrepreneurial types who grow densely in [...]

Posted by Jonna McKone | April 20th, 2010

The sentiment repeatedly voiced by the speakers at Friday’s national panel on building local food security was “this is the best panel I’ve ever been on.” The statement held true for the audience as well, which included residents of DC, activists, gardeners, nutritionists, community leaders, and others. The panel drew points of connection and parallel themes between disparate initiatives in Washington, DC and some highly successful projects and movements in other regions of the country.

In the audience were quite a few leaders from Ward 8, where the event was being held – but they were outnumbered by predominately white people from other parts of the city. This, however, may reflect the cultural state of awareness of food issues, rather than shortcomings on behalf of the panel organizers, who outreached aggressively in the communities that lacked representation at the panel.

The panel represented several generations and fields of work. Maurice Small works in Cleveland, Ohio acting as the link between farmers and buyers. Malik Yakini is leading the urban agriculture movement in Detroit through a number of initiatives — in particular, he directs the Nsoroma Institute Public School Academy, an African-Centered elementary and middle school. He has also started a two-acre farm in downtown Detroit. Both are community organizers and farmers — but first and foremost, they reminded us, they are educators.

Michael Heller is a farmer who transformed a tobacco and corn farm into a 285-acre livestock and vegetable operation in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. He brought to the panel his perspective on scaling up urban farming as well as fostering community development within the framework of large scale agriculture in the U.S. He explained how Claggett Farm partners with Capital Area Food Bank to strengthen the link between farms and low-income communities. He also helped found Future Harvest, an organization integral to building the capacity of farmers in the Chesapeake reason.

Robert Egger, author of Begging for change, is currently doing research on food as a tactic for social change, and is president of DC Central Kitchen. During the talk he brought the work of food activists into the context of a movement – he called it “the currency of something different.” People want less money and instead people are seeking happiness and community, and food manifests just the tip of that change.

Carolina Valencia reseachers economic issues through her work for Social Compact, focusing on the informal cash economy, food access and small business development. She spoke to the market dynamics that underpin all of this work — and also reminded us that government officials themselves should be part of the conversation, as they can facilitate or obstruct so much of what’s possible.

The panel was moderated by a researcher from Michigan State University, Cheryl Danley, who was the technical assistant for the Kellogg-funded Food and Fitness Initiative. (She also went to kindergarden with Malik.)

The first question from the audience matched the tone of the panel: “What brings you to this work?”

Posted by Jonna McKone | April 1st, 2010

The DC Environment Film Fest ended its run of 155 films on Sunday. I had the opportunity to watch one of a number of films on food and agriculture. “24 Hours, 24   meals” is the third episode in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation series called “The Great Food Revolution.” However, this documentary isn’t about the revolutionary [...]