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.

Images c/o Jessica Beaumont of the NYC Food Justice Delegation

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).

I was using that mobile device to take notes -- swear!

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.

Diners at the DC Food For All's launch: the Great Harvest

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!

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.

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.

By: Bella Herold

At 6:30am on Tuesday June 1^st, I sat in a van with Andrea Northup, Coordinator of the D.C. Farm to School Network, and her colleague Scott Lewis, Director of Food Services for a school food service provider, mesmerized as the D.C. highway slowly transitioned into a beautiful countryside: rolling hills and lots and lots of green.  Within two hours, we saw plots of farmland, barns, cows, horses, and rows of crops fill the landscape.  We passed a horse-drawn carriage and Mennonite women in long dresses and bonnets going about their day.

By the time we arrived at the produce auction, the open-air marketplace was already filled with yards of fresh fruit and vegetables, hanging plants, carts of melons, lines of herbs and various plant varieties.  Farmers unloaded and stood by the fruits of their labor, jubilant, smiling, and eager to engage in conversation about their crops.  Our mission was to purchase about 200 heads of lettuce for the D.C. Farm to School Network’s upcoming Strawberries and Salad Greens event.  The greens would be served as part of school lunches in cafeterias across the District.

The auctioneer spoke into his microphone, quickly describing each item for sale, how many boxes of it you could buy, and starting bids.  Individuals signaled if they were interested in making a purchase, and, just as quickly as each sale began, it ended and the auctioneer moved onto the next item.  A crowd of people gathered around the products and the auctioneer and we followed him from product to product.  Andrea purchased Romaine, curly leaf, and red leaf lettuce, a few boxes of yellow squash, and several green cucumbers for a few schools.  After some fresh pie and ice cream from the small food stand, we left and loaded up with boxes upon boxes of fresh produce in tow.

The next day was the Strawberry and Salad Greens Event.  I volunteered at the E.W. Stokes Public Charter School, one of the schools that received lettuce from the Auction.  I worked with two other volunteers to set up a table in the cafeteria before the first students arrived for lunch.  We displayed a blossoming strawberry plant, a photograph of a strawberry farm and a lettuce farm, lettuce seeds, a small lettuce plant, a large head of lettuce, gardening tools, and a map of the local farms where the strawberries and lettuce from the kids’ lunch had traveled from with respect to the District.  The students were served lettuce we had just bought from the auction and strawberries from a West Virginia farmer.

After eating their meals, students and teachers approached us and were pleasantly surprised by the small green strawberries growing on the strawberry plant.  Some kids told us that their families had just started vegetable gardens at home and others stared in awe at the baby lettuce plant and tiny lettuce seeds.  Enticed by their friends’ excitement and the promise of Strawberry and Salad Greens event stickers, more students approached us as we inquired how their salads tasted and explained where the food came from. Kindergarteners came to play with the gardening gloves and watering can, but stayed to examine lettuce seeds and the petals on the strawberry plant.  One student ate her strawberries while peering at the strawberry plant in front of her.  The students tasted the freshness and crispness that resulted from the hard work, effort, and motivation the farmers put into their crops.

I will continue to volunteer with the D.C. Farm to School Network regularly in the upcoming months, and look forward to making events like this one successful.  One thing I learned from the whole experience–hard work, effort, and motivation tastes pretty good.

The workshop will start with a short film about seed saving, include a bit of an introduction about its history, and then go into a practical, hands-on workshop. If all goes well, you should be bringing some seeds home to plant in the future. If you already have experience with seed saving, come along as well. We’d love for you to share your expertise.

Date: Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Time: 7-9 PM
Location: Emergence Community Arts Collective, 2nd floor, 733 Euclid Street NW, Washington DC

Please contact ecolocitydc@gmail.com for questions or visit our website at ecolocity.ning.com. We hope to see you there!

Local lettuce and berries for school lunch being prepared at CentroNIA

If you walked into a D.C. school cafeteria on June 3^rd 2010, you may have been surprised at what you saw on students’ trays!  Over 150 schools in DC featured fresh, locally-grown strawberries and salad greens as a part of their school lunches.  This was part of an event called Strawberries & Salad Greens, organized by the D.C. Farm to School Network and in partnership with participating schools and food service providers.  For a medley of pictures from the event in DCist, click here.

Breakfast on the line at Thurgood Marshall Academy – blueberry muffin and local strawberries!

About 40,000 students in all 8 wards of the District gobbled up juicy, red berries and bright green lettuce in their lunches.  Approximately 7,300 pounds of local strawberries and 2,400 pounds of greens were purchased and served for the event, contributing about $20,000 to our local food economy.  The produce was grown on farms in Virgina, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania (visit dcfarmtoschool.org/strawberries for more information about the local growers).

Westmoreland Berry Farm, which supplied berries for DCPS meals on June 3^rd

In addition to helping schools find sources of fresh, local produce, the D.C. Farm to School Network coordinated “Where Food Comes From” tables in 16 school cafeterias.  At these tables, volunteers and parents displayed plants, posters, pictures, and gardening tools.  As students enjoyed their meals, they were able to see, touch, and smell where their food came from!

Carl Rollins with Common Good City Farm shows a strawberry plant to a group of pre-K students at Simon Elementary School

In twelve schools, local chefs performed interactive cooking demonstrations using local strawberries and salad greens.  Kids were able to help professionals prepare recipes, taste samples, discuss the importance of eating fresh, local, healthy foods, and bring home recipes to try with their families.

Chef Oliver Friendly of Eat and Smile Foods makes home-made granola and local strawberry parfaits at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter School

The D.C. Farm to School Network is a program of the Capital Area Food Bank that works to get more healthy, local foods into Washington, DC school meals.  Learn more at www.dcfarmtoschool.org.

Kacie Warner from the Washington Youth Garden prepares a strawberry arugula salad with students at Center City Public Charter School

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.

June is short, so let’s seize the moment!

DC Food For All Workshop
Thursday June 3rd
6:00 – 8:00pm
Bread for the City
1525 7th St NW

Come be a part of the dialogue around food systems, justice, and access to healthy & affordable food in the DC metro area. Workshop discussion topics range (everything and anything from policy to community potlucks, from urban ag to culture) and are shaped by the participants. Tell us what interests you! Explore the blog for more info. RSVP or send questions to DCFoodforAll@gmail.com. When you do so, please let us know if you can bring something for potluck dinner and also share a bit about what interests you. And bring a friend, spread the word to other folks who might dig what we’re doing! Varying levels of experience always welcome.

Report from the April Crop Mob: Mountain View Farm

Nearly 30 mobbers converged at Mountain View Farm in April to spend the day working outdoors, learning about farming and getting to know other good food lovers.  The day’s tasks included planting onions and leeks, spreading compost, weeding garlic and peas, and transplanting beets – just to name a few! With so many hands, we accomplished days’ worth of work in just a few hours, to the sincere appreciation of farmers Shawna Dewitt and Attila Agoston.


Shawna and Attila grow vegetables and free-range eggs on 3 acres of land leased from the Blue Ridge Center, a private nature preserve in Loudon County, VA.  They have been working that land for four years, farming from the start without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. Their two year old daughter, Ruby, accompanied us in the fields and around the farm, totally at home amongst the peas and the goats!

Our mid-day lunch break was a delicious spread of veggie and venison chilis, rice, quinoa salad, artisan breads and several homemade desserts. There are few things better than sitting down to a homemade meal after putting in a morning’s worth of good hard work!

Everyone brought a different level of farming experience. For many mobbers, this was their first or second time just being on a farm – others were former farm workers and returned Peace Corps volunteers. The only requirement to be a mobber is an interest in agriculture and willingness to get your hands dirty. No special skills are needed – we were taught how to do everything as we went along.

After our work was done, Shawna and Attila took us on a tour of the farm, the highlight of which was the small menagerie of livestock they keep mainly for their own use. We walked through the pasture with nanny goats and kids, the dairy cow and her calf, and the flock of laying hens. The farm is also home to a pair of rare heritage breed pigs – Guinea Hogs – who had just recently had a batch of adorable piglets.

One of the more unique items on the farm is a portable poultry processing unit – that is, a trailer that contains all the equipment you need to slaughter and process broiler chickens. They received it through a grant and rent it out at a very low cost to any other farmers that need to use it. Because slaughter facilities and equipment can be a limiting factor for many small livestock producers, this is a great asset to the local farming community.

We were even joined by a reporter from the Lancaster Farming News, who did a story on the day’s events. Check it out! All in all, it was a fabulous day. Be sure to stop and say hello at Mountain View Farm’s two farmers market stands in DC: at Penn Quarter on Thursday afternoons and at 14th & U St. on Saturday mornings.

This month’s Mob: Saturday, May 15th!

This month’s Mob is at Blueberry Gardens, an established pick-your-own organic blueberry farm in Ashton, MD. In addition to working with the berry plants, we’ll be helping with a new vegetable farm that is starting up on the same property. You’ll have the opportunity to see an established perennial fruit farm and a startup vegetable farm, all in one day.

Carpools will leave from various spots around DC at about 8:30am. We’ll be working from 9:30 to 2:30, with a lunch break in between. No experience necessary – just curiousity and willingness to help!

If you’d like to attend, email info@cropmobdc.com with your name, location and phone number, and whether you can drive or need a ride.

If you can’t make it this week, but want to stay in the loop, join the Facebook group!

Thursday May 13, 5-8pm
425 Second Street NW

We’ll kick things off with a short discussion about DCCK’s efforts to source local produce from 5-5:30. Then we’ll get to prepping!

During co-op shifts, volunteers help prep fresh produce from local farms for use in the 4,500 meals that the Kitchen distributes each day to clients at shelters and other social-service areas.

DC Central Kitchen has made great strides in recent years in sourcing local produce whenever possible. To supplement donations, DCCK purchased more than 50,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms last summer and fall – and saved money while doing so.

In addition to prepping produce for the next day’s meals, evening volunteers vacuum seal vegetables to freeze and use in the winter and help make homemade healthy snacks for clients at after-school programs. The staff members who supervise our evening volunteers graduated from DCCK’s Culinary Job Training program, which prepares men and women in transition for careers in the culinary industry.

RSVP to dcfoodforall@gmail.com.