‘I identified gratitude as the major virtue of a food leader, and love for your little corner of the world, and a desire to make it better, as the ideal motivation for food activism.’
—Wayne Roberts
| I’ve lived next door to Michigan for most of my life, but its reputation (or my own simplistic stereotypes) kept me from getting to know my neighbor until recently. This issue of my newsletter, which, as always, features my reports from the field, is my apology for being such a bad neighbor all this time. About a month ago, Lesli Hoey, a promising scholar, respected activist and beloved teacher of food planning at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, organized a mini speaking and meeting tour for me in the communities near Detroit and Ann Arbor. I went thinking I could teach Michiganders a thing or two about how food activists could reach out to the community-at-large and use food to build social cohesion and overcome polarization. I left Michigan with a deep respect not only for the extraordinary diversity of what farmers grow there, but also the outgoing, imaginative and entrepreneurial energy of Michigan’s grassroots food scene — not to mention what Hoey calls the plain old “Midwest niceness” of its population. I want to describe nine projects I saw there. If you don’t come away with at least eight new ideas you didn’t realize were practical before, that’s not Michigan’s fault. If you want to see the longer form article, as well as pictures of people and places, please visit my blog at https://medium.com/@wayneroberts/food-can-make-michigan-great-again-504cd0423f35. But stay with the newsletter for the time being, so you can see the Hungry for More section, which leads you to all the other blogs I’ve written over the last 6 weeks. These blogs are all good reads (IMHO) and my time writing them explains why I’m so behind schedule with this newsletter. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN My tour started in Ann Arbor, home to a highly respected university and a leading hospital, both of which account for the city’s relative affluence – a powerful case for the argument I make about the central importance of anchor institutions in cities. University of Michigan, among other things, hosts free public lectures for food studies courses and all city residents on topics related to food literacy — a great form of community outreach that sets a standard all universities should meet in terms of giving back to their host communities. (See here for more info to apply to the university in your community.) You can see the videotape of the evening, including my talk, here – and also see me using their great teaching device, a clicker that makes sure people pay attention. (See the variety of things they do here.) ARGUS FOOD STOP Unlike Canada, a much larger proportion of the US population lives in small and medium-sized cities. I think Canada and the world can learn from this settlement pattern. An even sprinkling of small (under 50,000) and medium-sized (under 900,000) cities also makes it easier to provide affordable housing, to make a wider range of land accessible to beginning farmers, and to support local farmers who can sell to local markets without relying on monopoly-sized distributors and retailers. Ann Arbor is a prime example of this trend. Aside from serving as a harbor for a score of top-rate mid-priced restaurants featuring local and sustainable meals, Ann Arbor hosts Argus Food Stop, the most unusual farmers market – or is it a grocery store and coffee shop??? — I’ve yet seen. Basically, the Argus Food Stop takes a wide range of direct-from-the-farm goods on consignment from about 200 farmers. The farmers choose whatever price they want to sell their goods at, and the store keeps 20 per cent of whatever is sold to cover the costs of the store and the staff time providing consumer education on behalf of the farmers. The store pays nothing if the food doesn’t sell, which encourages farmers to be careful about how much they supply, thereby drastically reducing in-store waste. The owners of the store, Bill Brinkerhoff and Kathy Sample, guess that Argus pays a million dollars a year to local farmers. FAIR FOOD NETWORK Ann Arbor also hosts a major national food organization, the Fair Food Network. Founded by veteran gardening and food activist Oran Hesterman, the Fair Food Network may well become one of the few progressive civil society organizations in the US to have a successful impact on the upcoming Farm Bill. Oran describes the food system as foundational. He uses the term to talk about the “outsize impact” food has because of its physical and symbolic significance, and its impact on everything from personal health to social justice to climate change. “The food system is the basic system we have to get right,” he says. The Fair Food Network’s featured project supports the campaign to double down on food insecurity by doubling up the value of food stamps used by people on low income. The ask is that farmers markets and supermarkets kick in two dollars of fruits and vegetables for every two dollars paid for with food stamps, used by people on lower incomes throughout the US. Oran argues that this boosts sales at farmers markets, builds loyalty at supermarkets, improves the diet of people on low income, and provides a way “to pay the farmer upfront in order to avoid paying the doctor later.” The program is now up and running in 20 US states, and pays out $8 million a year to local farmers. The Network is campaigning to build a non-polarizing coalition of all the people who favor healthier food choices for people on low income, and all the people who favor stable incomes for local fruit and vegetable farmers. Such bridge-building may carry the day during Farm Bill talks in 2018, he hopes. (For info on what they accomplished through the Farm Bill, see here) That’s exactly the same kind of coalition-building behind unifying win-win-win objectives that food policy councils and Food Secure Canada champion North of the Border – our antidote to the toxic and divisive politics that have become the norm over the last decades, and one of the most positive contributions food campaigns can make to political discourse everywhere. YIPSIPLANTING IN YPSILANTI I’ve known some terrific mayors in my day, but they could all learn from the green thumb and common touch of Amanda Edmonds, mayor of Ypsilanti and founder and leader of a non-profit gardening group called Growing Hope, which she manages for the first 50 hours of a long workweek. In my book looking back at the time I managed the Toronto Food Policy Council, I identified gratitude as the major virtue of a food leader, and love for your little corner of the world, and a desire to make it better, as the ideal motivation for food activism. I think Amanda brings the same spirit to what she does. She says food and place-making (making places welcoming and special) go together. I would say a better description of her core belief is that food policy must be people-centered. Either way, she’s an exciting-to-be-around “people person,” which is the way most people in the region explain her political success. Slight as she is, lean as is her organization, the backyard garden behind her office is where the state of Michigan launched its Cottage Food Act, one of the more advanced efforts across the continent to kickstart micro-entrepreneurship in the food sector. A tour of the new downtown market space with Amanda, when its year-round edition was just weeks from opening – it’s one of 300 in the state – reveals a showcase of how Ypsiplanti and its downtown will grow great, just like the Growing Hope gardens – inch by inch and row by row. CULTIVATE On the way to meet Mayor Edmonds, Lesli and I continued our quest to sample the range of local and independent craft beers Michigan has to offer – too many for one short trip, because Michigan is home to the fifth largest offering of craft brewers and brew pubs in the US, according to one source. You can sample some of them at Ypsilanti’s Cultivate, a welcoming non-profit tap house and coffee shop that donates any surplus revenues to good local causes. Cultivate looks like it was built to be a sprawling taphouse and coffee shop, with lots of space for people to set up their computers and a community garden out back. A short time ago, it was a garage. THE FARM AT ST JOE’S Lesli and I didn’t get tired out from exploring the area around Ann Arbor. We got inspired out. Just when we thought we couldn’t be more inspired, we turned up the driveway to Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, and found the trailer where Amanda Sweetman does her planning to create therapeutic joy for people healing and recovering after serious and disabling injuries. She does her work in a series of garden hoophouses that add an entire dimension to our understanding of food production as a growing experience. One of Sweetman’s aims is to use the gardens to promote the health of staff and patients so there are a minimum of return visits for medical treatment. One of the powerful measures in the Affordable Health Care Act was financial penalties for healthcare organizations that didn’t do follow-up work to patients mend their ways, and therefore had to come back for a repeat of medical treatment – a big risk for themselves and big expense for the medical system. Gardening was a way of avoiding such penalties by introducing people to some positive activities and habits that could prevent recurrence of chronic diseases. As much as Canadians like to celebrate the advantages of our public healthcare system, we could well take a leaf from the Affordable Health Care Act and institutionalize health promotion, as distinct from disease prevention, practices by healthcare professionals. It should be the mandate of hospitals to promote health, not just treat disease, and one practical way for hospitals to practice health promotion is with gardening, Sweetman also introduced us to the Cultivate Michigan Pledge, which left me in stunned silence, as I learned about its programs, supported by the Center for Regional Food Systems and Michigan Farm to Institutions Network, and compared them to the relatively empty and unfunded words of the Ontario Local Food Act in my neck of the woods. Michigan offers a model for anyone interested in promoting local food production and sales through purchases from public sector and public service institutions. DETROIT FOOD POLICY COUNCIL The Detroit Food Policy Council invited me to speak to members on the topic of “how to reach out beyond the choir.” I believe this is the most important challenge and opportunity facing the food movement. It is an opportunity because we have succeeded in making food, obesity, food insecurity, local food and organic food important topics of public, academic and policy nerd discussion. But reaching beyond the choir is also an important challenge because we have not yet been able to “get to first base” in terms of core funding of food programs, by governments, foundations, or investors; nor have we won the public support needed to move such an agenda. The fact that the Detroit Council understands this challenge is itself a major indicator of serious strategic thinking. My approach to this challenge of reaching out to a broader audience hinges on two factors. One factor hinges on the ability of a Council to identify the features of what I call a “quick start,” working with what are called “low-hanging fruit.” I’ll explain these two features quickly (they are explained in more detail in my e-book, Food for City Building). A quick start project is one that enjoys political consensus and is not divisive or polarizing + provides multiple benefits to the economy, community, health and environment + has low start-up costs but fast Return on Investment + has administration in place and does not require an entirely new budget line or department. Low-hanging fruit is a project waiting to happen because the costs of inaction are so high (think of the billions governments pay out now in order to landfill food waste) while the rewards for action are many and fast (think of all the benefits of a well-designed good school garden program). After identifying the quick start to launch with, attention has to turn to the second factor, which hinges on the reality that every successful food project requires a champion – a person who exudes positive energy and has no axe to grind + a person who goes above and beyond in terms of energy, commitment and ability + a person with connections and stick-to-it-iveness to make things happen and be a bridge to relationships that make a campaign viable. EARTHWORKS Lesli and I just had time to tour one project in Detroit – Earthworks, the hoophouse garden and bicycle repair shop hosted by Capuchin Soup Kitchen. Shane Bernardo was our guide, and he showed us how two abandoned house lots and one abandoned business had been transformed into two hoop houses for year-round growing of greens, a bike repair shop which repaired abandoned bikes and an office and storage facility. (Check out its history here) Everything was done in a mindful way. For example, the rain that fell on the hoophouse was funneled to a tank that irrigated the plants, machinery for which ran on solar-powered electricity. The soil used to nurse seedlings, many of which were produced to neighbors for use in their home gardens, was produced from compost made from food scraps from a nearby food bank and woodchips from tree branches cut down by the local utility. They provide 100,000 transplants a year to support 1400 members of a Garden Resource Program, which is dedicated to a food-sovereign Detroit. “Our purpose is to grow local leadership and ownership of the food system,” Shane told me. MICHIGAN LOCAL FOOD COUNCIL NETWORK I was surprised to learn that Michigan has more food policy councils than any state or province on the continent. Leaders of many of these councils, members of the Michigan Local Food Council Network, met the day before I left, and gave me a chance to speak with them. One feature of this Network, which others across the continent might do well to imitate, is that support for the Network is provided by the Center for Regional Food Systems and its director Rich Pirog. This is an example of one form of core funding that can be provided to food organizations by the government and public sector. Anything that I or anyone else said at the meeting was overshadowed by the good cheer and positive energy at that meeting. |