Posted by Greg Bloom | July 29th, 2010

Yesterday I posted the statement presented by the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice at the US Social Forum in Detroit last month. The statement is a collective declaration — of the shared principles and intentions (“…re-building local food economies in our own communities, dismantling structural racism, democratizing land access, building opportunities for the leadership of our youth, and working towards food sovereignty in partnership with social movements around the world…”).

As I reported during the Social Forum, many of these principles and intentions can be seen in practice in Detroit. My reporting there only scratched the surface of the work that’s been done — and one of the things I learned was how much discussion and collective self-reflection had come before (and in the course of) meaningful action.

In the particular case of Detroit, the local food movement engaged in a series of workshops (facilitated by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond) focused on confronting and dismantling racism in both the industrial food system and the movement itself. Participants analyzed race and power dynamics, and emerged with a shared set of ideas and vocabulary with which they can collaboratively work to restructure those dynamics.

During the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice at the Social Forum, participants formed a breakout group to focus specifically on this process of dismantling racism in the food system. As a white person of privilege working towards food justice in low-income, largely black communities in DC, I was grateful for the opportunity to join this group and learn more about my own role. Several leaders of Detroit’s movement helped facilitate the conversation, and we worked hard to consider what broad lessons could be drawn from their experience. The need (and desire) for greater dialogue was shared by all at the table, but many local food movements might not yet be at a point where it’s possible to gather the right set of people together in a room for a deep analysis of race, power, and white supremacy.

Yet we have to start the process somewhere (and, like it or not, that process is really best started in a place–not on a blog).

Fortunately, one promising answer can be found within the very stuff of this movement: food itself. More specifically, the way that social capital is generated by the growing, preparing, and eating of food. Several participants of the subgroup shared insights into how simple, deliberate community meals are used in their community to create spaces for dialogue and relationship-building. The Detroit folks recalled that their community’s dismantling racism workshops were, in fact, an idea that germinated in the course of a series of dinners among the movement’s leaders.

And so our Dismantling Racism subgroup of the Food Justice People’s Movement Assembly at the 2010 US Social Forum concluded with the presentation of what some may consider a “radical notion”: that we should gather people together in our communities to collaboratively prepare food, eat the food, and talk about the food.

Personally, I was energized and encouraged by this experience; after all, the DC Food For All launched 9 months ago in this very way. Relationships forged in the course of these early meals continue to bear fruit today. So I’m sharing the text of the proposal forged in Detroit here in hopes that we can experiment with these accessible, social, and political community-building meals here in DC.

A proposal for dismantling racism: Let’s eat together

We affirmed the radical notion of sitting down and eating together as a starting point for building relationships, gaining historical perspective, sharing culture, learning from each other, offering practical tips for healthy cooking/eating, supplying food for those is need, discussing future action, recognizing who is missing from the table, and action to bring them into the circle next time. Many of the key ingredients to dismantling racism.

Building on the example of the People’s Kitchen Collective in Oakland we see endless potential in this model. Here are some ideas:

• Work to raise $$ so the meal can be free to all or on a sliding scale
• This example was a meal for 200 people
• Invite 20 people to come help prepare the meal
• Invite 4 people to teach one dish each
• Set up 4 stations and have each cook discuss the role this dish plays in their culture, where the ingredients come from (work to include the growers whenever possible), and how food can be used for organizing in their community
• Have the 20 cooks report back what they learned to the larger group
• Collectively say grace/thanks for the food!
• Offer discussion questions for each table
• Send each guest home with the recipes and whatever ingredients you can provide (especially cultural spices or things harder to find)
• Discuss who is missing from the table and what collectively can be done to include them next time
• Set a date for next meal!

Posted by Greg Bloom | July 28th, 2010

The Social Forum — which convened in Detroit just last month — “is a movement building process… [that] provides spaces to learn 
from each other’s experiences and struggles, share our analysis of the problems 
our communities face, build relationships, and align with our international 
brothers and sisters to strategize how to reclaim our world.” It’ll be another three years before the US Social Forum convenes again, but in the meantime the process of the Social Forum is ongoing — as people from different movements, backgrounds and regions continue to deliberate and act upon solutions to the 
economic and ecological crisis.

An essential component of this process are People’s Movement Assemblies (PMA). PMAs are gatherings of people (25, 250 or more) that come together to collectively identify community issues, discuss solutions, and commit to actions.

Before the USSF2010 in Detroit, the Greater DC Social Forum (organized largely by attendees of USSF2007  in Atlanta) convened a DC People’s Movement Assembly. The Greater DC Social Forum will now convene another DC-area People’s Movement Assembly on August 7th, at 11AM at Plymouth Congregational UCC (5301 N Capitol Street NE). Attendees of USSF2010 will share the experience and ideas that they brought back from Detroit — however, this event is open to anyone who wants to work towards a better greater DC. (You can RSVP on Facebook here.)

At the pre-Detroit People’s Movement Assembly here in DC, some attendees had conversations about food justice issues—but there was not yet a PMA group self-organized around the subject. Well I am pleased to report that the signs of food justice movements across the country are strong! The challenges we face are great, but so are our opportunities. (I previously blogged about food sovereignty in Detroit here.)  The USSF2010 Food Justice PMA assembled a diverse and exciting set of people, ideas, and proposals — consolidating it all into one statement to be shared with the broader Social Forum.

So, with hope that food justice/sovereignty will become an active thread of the Greater DC Social Forum process, I’m happy to share the Food Sovereignty People’s Movement Assembly resolution below. Let’s consider this document as we continue our conversation on August 7th and beyond.

Statement from the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty, US Social Forum 2010

Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt—in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain’s rule over India. The act of “making salt” has since been repeated many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement— one that spans the globe—seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.

A movement for food sovereignty – the people’s democratic control of the food system, the right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems - is building from every corner of the globe.

We find that our work to build a better food system in the Unites States is inextricably linked to the struggle for workers’ rights, immigrant’s rights, women’s rights, the fight to dismantle racism in our communities, and the struggle for sovereignty in indigenous communities. We find that in order to create a better food system, we must break up the corporate control of our seeds, land, water and natural resources.

Because at a time of record harvests and record profits we have over one billion hungry people on the planet; because poverty is the root cause of hunger; because the world’s oceans are being polluted and plundered, because industrial agriculture contributes one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, because increasing inequality, poverty, hunger, a global land grab, and environmental destruction are threatening the livelihoods of family farmers, farmworkers, fisherfolk, and marginalized communities worldwide; and because community based food systems and agroecological farming can cool the planet, build resilience to climate change, and eliminate poverty;

We therefore commit to re-building local food economies in our own communities, to dismantling structural racism, to democratizing land access, to building opportunities for the leadership of our youth, and to working towards food sovereignty in partnership with social movements around the world;

We call on others in the US to demand an end to the global land grab, to end both corporate and military land occupations, to demand fairer trade, aid and investment policies, land reform, and support for sustainable peasant and community agriculture and sustainable community fisheries;

We endorse actions that include: the liberation of land and water resources for the production of food and sustainable livelihoods; the creation of new structures for cooperative ownership of land and food production, processing and distribution; the integration of labor rights, immigrant’s rights and food justice; the valuing of women as primary food providers, and the denouncement of false solutions and false partnerships addressing climate change, hunger and economic development;

We demand a world in which everyone has control over their food and no one has to put food in their mouth that hurts people or the environment.
Organizations and individuals among us have therefore committed to the following actions:

• Launching a campaign for food sovereignty as a right of the people
• Growing and harvesting as much food as we possibly can everywhere
• Liberating land through reclaiming urban and rural spaces for the production of food for communities; demanding the use of public lands for food production
• Participating in a global campaign against land grabs, in which corporations and governments grab up the lands of communities
• Carrying forward the people’s agenda coming out of the Cochabamba climate summit — including popular education around food and climate justice and promoting sustainable agriculture as a solution to climate change
• Standing with the people of Haiti, Palestine, Honduras, and other countries whose food sovereignty is threatened by political, military, and/or corporate occupation
• Hosting collective meals in our communities as a way of connecting people across generations and cultural backgrounds and as a tool for dismantling racism in the food system
• Forging new models of collective control of land and waterways; assuring legal protection of the commons
• Building the leadership of the next generation; providing opportunities for urban and rural youth to have a future in food and farming
• Rejecting GMOs and other forms of the corporate takeover of our food systems
• Creatively and strategically working to dismantle the corporations who have hijacked the world’s food systems
• Affirming the sovereignty of indigenous peoples in North America and throughout the globe
• Committing our food movements in the US to be active participants in the global movement for food sovereignty and to work to stop our government and corporations from practices that undermine food sovereignty globally.
• Challenging US food and agricultural aid and development policy (e.g., Monsanto and USAID’s recent “donation” of seeds to Haiti)
• Working towards a people’s food and farm bill based on principles of food sovereignty
• Hosting community seed exchanges
• Engaging communities in popular education on GMOs and the role of corporations in our food system
• Engaging communities in popular education on community nutrition and public health
• Creating more community farmers markets that are accessible and affordable to all; affirming everyone’s right to food that is good, safe, healthy, and fair
• Helping everyone understand where their food comes from and who helped bring it to their table
• Highlighting the common struggles between farmers and farmworkers in the US and their counterparts throughout the world

See the official page for this document here. And join us on August 7th to discuss what comes next.

Posted by Maureen Linke | July 26th, 2010

[DC Food For All featured the Ward 8 Farmers Market last week, and this week bring you Maureen Linke's multimedia slideshow. See more at her website. —ed]

The Ward 8 Farmers Market (1310 Southern Avenue SE) is a community and local farmer-based grassroots market formed as a response to inadequate healthy food choices in Southeast D.C. and as a self-empowerment tool. The goal of the market is to help members of the community eat fresher, more natural and nutritious foods, and adopt healthier lifestyles for their long-term benefit as well as their children, families, and society. Organizers John Gloster and Virginia Major discuss how the market got started and its community impact. Click here to view a map of the market’s location.

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 Michael Segal | July 22nd, 2010

[Pictures courtesy of Maurice Fitzgerald.]

Ward 8 Farmers Market opened its first ever Tuesday market at United Medical Center last month.  Part of the excitement of a market is always that transformation of a little bit of city real estate into something very different.  The transition is not always simple, as we learned at about an hour before  opening when a few drivers rolled their vehicles right between the tents during setup, seeking the elusive parking space. Our first lesson was to abandon a wide-open, welcoming look and get some cones into place.

The first market of the year, especially in a new location, always has a bit of a party feeling for the market manager and vendors, including a nervous stomach flutter as you wonder if the guests are actually going to show up.

The team at the United Medical Center (UMC) Foundation did a tremendous job of generating excitement within the building.  Starting when the market opened at 3, a steady stream of staff in scrubs and suits ran out of the building to shop. In a sign of UMC’s commitment, hospital CEO Frank Delisi was on hand. Calvin Smith, head of the foundation, was a major presence all afternoon.

When the morning shift got off work at 3:30, to our delight, many in the throng stopped by to visit the tents before they headed for home.  Although many of them had seen the posters, ads, signs, and emails, there is nothing more enticing than glancing out the window and seeing that our farmers have really brought their produce, baked goods, potted plants, and even lemonade out to the heart of Southeast.

The connection between access to fresh food and access to medical services is big at this location.  It is the site of several clinics, including a WIC mobile clinic.  The National Children’s Medical Center will be establishing an outpost of their emergency department there later this summer. This location not only makes fresh food more convenient to buy, but links people who have food access issues to medical professionals who are also produce enthusiasts.

Perhaps the biggest factor in bringing fresh food to the residents of Southeast is affordability. The Ward 8 Farmers market accepts all forms of nutrition assistance that apply, including EBT, and the Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) for WIC and Commodity Supplemental Food Program for senior citizens. The very first customer I handled paid with a coupon from the Senior FMNP, in fact. By the time the market closed at 7, we had only seen a couple more of those, but we know there are several housing developments catering to seniors in that stretch of Southern Avenue.

That first day, about five percent of our sales were paid using food assistance.  As June turned into July, that percentage rose, as we got the word out in the community and became less dependent on the doctors and nurses, who tend not to be eligible—despite their student loan obligations.  Sure enough, at the July 20 market, 40 percent of our business was from customers receiving help.  As the summer goes on, we hope to see new faces turning into regulars.

Michael Segal is the market manager for the Ward 8 Farmers Market.

Posted by Richard Layman | July 21st, 2010

[By Richard Layman, cross-posted from Urban Places and Spaces.]

In the round of the zoning update on food issues, I didn’t see fit to submit comments about urban agriculture, even though I guess I should have. Evidently, it’s still gonna be close to impossible to have poultry, not to mention there is little discussion of urban orchards, urban forestry, and other issues, even though people are concerned about “food deserts” and access to fresh foods.

According to the Washington Business Journal, in Cheh introduces “grocery ambassador” bill, Councilmember Mary Cheh has introduced legislation on the topic, calling for a grocery czar amongst other steps, but I think the legislation is somewhat narrowly conceived because this issue is about more than just trying to attract some grocery stores.

The real issue is a comprehensive plan for food security and foodways in the city. Grocery stores are but one piece.

The Community Food Security Coalition is an organization broadly focused on food access. Toronto and a number of other communities across North America have created “Food Policy Councils” to focus on food access at the local level, especially in urban places, and work to make more direct links between urban and rural food policy. (The bookThe Edible City looks broadly at Toronto’s foodways, food policies, and food industries. This paper, Food Policy Councils: The experience of five cities and one county, from 1994 discusses the disconnection of cities from foodways policymaking.)

Food Trust in Philadelphia has pushed food security and initiatives to increase the availability of fresh foods and supermarkets in underserved areas in the city and state.

Finally, the Economic Research Service of the USDA has created aCommunity Food Security Assessment Toolkit which provides a more systematic method for evaluating community food security and a planning framework for improvements.

The issue is tricky.

First, there is a conceptual problem with the food desert issue, because of how new urbanists and such are defining the need for access–a grocery store within easy walking distance–and the reality of how the supermarket industry is organized and focused on providing stores of 50,000+ square feet, serving retail trade areas of 50,000+ residents in a retail trade area five miles in diameter.

The reality is that not every neighborhood is large enough to support a full line grocery store the way that the grocery industry is set up to “deliver” supermarkets. Plus, many people are cost-conscious and end up patronizing stores where prices are lower (as opposed to smaller neighborhood-based stores). And the industry has worked hard at closing smaller, neighborhood stores in favor of larger single stores serving many neighborhoods.

Second, there are many grocery stores accessible to DC residents in neighborhoods that are seemingly understored, but the stores happen to be located just outside of the city in Maryland.

Washington Post image from the 2007 article “Signs of Change Line the Shelves.”

Third, we need to look at farmers markets and public markets more systematicaly as a way to deliver fresh foods to residents, not so much in the higher-income areas of the city, but in the “food desert” areas. Although these areas are hard places to make such markets work if their prices are higher than typical supermarket prices.

Fourth, plus working with store sizes significantly smaller than 50,000 s.f. and with extant companies, from corner stores to affiliates of Murray’s stores, and companies that aren’t necessarily the region’s largest supermarket chains, and independents–finding companies that are innovative and able to understand the center city as a market that is distinct and different from the suburbs.

I don’t know why it is so hard in the U.S. to find a company like Sobey’s, one of Canada’s more innovative suprmarket companies, with a couple divisions focused on center city locations. See “How Sobey’s is taking on Loblaws” from the Toronto Globe & Mail and “Grocery chains develop a taste for urban living” from the Toronto Star.

Fifth, related to both 3 and 4 concerns how such entities are organized. A faux “public market” with 10-15 different vendors, along the lines of how Baltimore’s Belvedere Square is organized, is a way to assist the development of retail entrepreneurialism as well as extend food access by working with smaller entities to offer “departments” within a common space, where the overall effect is the creation of a complete array of food offerings, but through multiple businesses rather than only one.

Sixth, not to mention nutrition education. The issue isn’t merely access to nutritious food, but actually purchasing and eating such food. For a number of years, I have recommended that demonstration-teaching kitchens be incorporated into Eastern Market and Florida Market, as a way to teach better nutrition.

Seventh, plus urban agriculture, including community gardening, orchards, and forestry.

—–
I suppose I just put myself out of the running for the grocery ambassador position…

Posted by Vince Hill | July 20th, 2010

[Cross-posted from Beyond Bread.]

Aaaand we’re gleaning again!

On Saturday, more than a dozen Bread for the City volunteers drove down to Parker Farms in Colonial Beach, VA. Some of our volunteers were BFC donors; others found out about the project from an NPR story about it last year; and still others learned about it from the DC Food For All. All of them were ready to roll up their sleeves and come to the rescue of the farm’s surplus sweet corn.

There was more out there than we’d expected. We gleaned just one acre out of 100s that were available to us, and left at the end with more than 1,700lbs of corn in tow. Farmer Rod Parker met us in the fields, and at the end of the day he told me, “my only complaint is that you didn’t bring enough bins.”

Why is so much corn left in the farm’s field? Here are some reasons:

1) Human error: laborers inevitably miss a certain amount of corn that is market-ready and perfect. Farmers often opt not to pay for a second pass through the fields, but are happy for volunteers to come do it.

2) Undersized/under ripe: corn that is too small to sell is left behind, even if it is edible. Shoppers are so picky that almost every type of produce has size minimums and shape requirements. Under-ripe corn is also left behind. It’s not as tasty or filling, but still edible — and often ripened by the time we get to it.

3) Damaged: corn that has been eaten or broken. There wasn’t actually that much corn that was actually damaged, and we left it all behind too. There was way more of the good stuff to be had.

This successful trip marks the launch of the second year of Glean for the City, a project that already feels like a cherished tradition around here. Last year, we rescued 50,000 lbs. of fresh, surplus produce from farms and farmers markets, including apples, bell peppers, broccoli, and a plethora of other fruits and veggies — an average of 2,000 lbs. of fresh produce every week! All for free, all food that otherwise would have gone to waste, but instead went to the kitchen table of the DC residents who need it the most.

The farmers love it, our volunteers love it, our clients love it, and our community was so enthusiastic about it that you all helped us win a contest on the internet, ensuring that we had enough funding to cover the cost of a full-time coordinator to manage the program. (Speaking as this year’s new coordinator, I want to say thank you!)

You’ll be really excited by what we have in store this year. First of all, we’ve extended the gleaning season by one month, and connected with new farm partners to bring in more quantity and a healthier variety. We aim to bring in 3,000 lbs per week this time. And we’re even partnering with other local food pantries to run coordinated gleanings and share the bounty!

In fact, I hope to someday honor our Food Pantry Director Ted Pringle’s goal of ultimately replacing all canned vegetables in our pantry with farm-fresh produce.

If you’re interested in volunteering, or if your community group or organization might want to partner with us, please email me. In the meantime, if you’d like to support this work, you can help us cover the cost of transportation and other things like bins, bags, gloves, and so on, by making a donation to Glean for the City today.

Posted by Jody Tick | July 20th, 2010

Here’s a thought experiment:

How much food could you buy for $16 per month?  Furthermore, what could you buy for $16 that would be nutritious and didn’t involve fast food joints?  For too many individuals in our community, the $16 thought experiment is actually a reality.  As of April 2009, the minimum SNAP (formerly food stamps) benefit is $16 per month. Sadly, this is an increase from the previous minimum of $14 per month.

So, how are SNAP recipients to cope? The good news is that with a bit of planning, $16 can go a lot further at the grocery store than you might think!  Join the Capital Area Food Bank’s Director of Nutrition Education, Jodi Balis, on July 22nd as she facilitates an interactive workshop on how individuals can stretch their food budget–and still eat nutritious meals. This workshop is aimed at service providers as they seek to communicate healthy eating on a budget to clients.

The Nutritious $16 Food Bag
11am-1pm on Thursday, July 22^nd
George Mason Regional Library
7001 Little River Turnpike
Annandale, VA 22003

Click here to register for this free workshop.

If you are interested in other free workshops offered by the Capital Area Food Bank, check out this website or send an e-mail to aaa@capitalareafoodbank.org.