The hacks you see here come from blending my 55 years of experience as a social change leader with my ongoing learnings as a consultant, coach, speaker and writer.

Skill up to scale up, out and deep!

In these challenging times of Climate Emergency, we need to grow our influence by scaling up, out and deep.  My colleague, Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer, emphasizes each of these words: up means institutional change; out means replicating change in other locations; deep means changing social and cultural norms and power structures.  

This kind of transformative change won’t happen unless we increase our skills and knowledge – which give us know-how and know-what. The skills for transformational change don’t just drop from the sky. They have to be produced and learned. This newsletter focuses on skills and knowledges (there are many kinds of food knowledge) that win  notice, respect, and implementation.

I prioritize this investment in skills in my sunset years because I have learned from life’s ups and downs that skill level is one of the few things we can control. Skills and knowledge help us make the best of some situations and prevent the worse from others. 

HOW CAN WE MAKE A FEDERAL CASE OF FOOD IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS?

Can there be any better time than a national election to make a strong case to the general public for good food policy? Or any worse time?

The skill of food activists can make the difference. That’s why I’m doing this second issue of my newsletter about food skills and knowledge needed during national elections, such as the ones happening or about to happen in Canada, USA and UK.

Elections are an acid test of food movement skills. They reveal if we do or don’t have the right stuff to intervene in the thick of a major political event.  

Here are three Canadian successes worth learning from:

Nourish provides resources for anyone wanting to promote a Canada-wide school meal program. 

Food Secure Canada works to coordinates a Canada-wide campaign to orchestrate a national food policy dialogue during the election

The Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security recently launched a campaign aimed at raising awareness and further political action to provide food security for all Canadians.

Few people have had my close-up view of how stressed, stretched and strapped food movements are. But I want to table a few suggestions of small and doable measures that need to be put into action if we want to up our game.

HASHTAGIFY FOOD

Hashtags are key soft infrastructure for social movements. They provide a virtual meeting place where likeminded people can share and amplify each other’s information. They create so many opportunities for people to meet that they inevitably create a synergetic whole that’s greater than the sum of the parts. That makes them very efficient for hard-strapped groups.

Movements can’t move without infrastructure. If there’s no farmers market, no road to it, and no road sign for it, the local and sustainable apple pie that could have been sold at a farmers market won’t be sold. Same thing for food causes and the social media — no meeting place, no pathway, no hashtagged signpost, no visitors. 

Where I live, people who want to check out regional or national politics automatically go to #onpoli or #cdnpoli. We need the same thing for food.

But there’s no #foodCanada or #foodUSA or #foodUK where birds of a feather can flock together. Nothing much bounces off  #foodpolicy (where I come in first on Hashtagify me) or #foodsystem (where I come in second). 

Hashtags don’t just happen. They take agency! Someone has to start and populate a hashtag with good stuff, and then others need to to join in.  

In the process of writing this, I motivated myself to take this on. I will start using those hashtags whenever they’re appropriate at @wrobertsfood. Let’s hash this out and get ready for the next national campaign!!   

PRO TIPS

Mike Schreiner is the first and only Green Party member in the Ontario legislature. Do you think he has any chance to be a media darling? Well, he gets more media than any other single member of the legislature outside the cabinet.

Mike suggests three tips for getting food topics into the news section of the  mainstream media, and I’ll add one more that he practices.

1. Develop relationships with journalists so they know you know your stuff and their needs.
2. Be known for short, crisp answers (electronic reporters call it “the clip.”). “You’ll never be criticized for being too clear, “ he says.
3. Find an angle that “segways” into your issue. Climate change is hot; there are lots of food stories that can fit into that.  Tree planting is hot; talk up food-bearing trees, and the connection between forests and pollinators. 

A report on the huge medical costs of food insecurity came out the day I talked to Mike. 

Someone can turn that story into an election issue, he says.

I’ll add one ingredient to Mike’s media sauce. He doesn’t rely on conventional media to get his story out. He has almost 54000 followers on Twitter, and enjoys lots of retweets.

MORE PRO TIPS

Alex Kollo is a freelance communications consultant who is unusually successful in getting great media coverage for good food organizations. She gave me four top-secret tips.

First, echoing Mike, she says “you have to establish personal relationships with reporters early, not during the election cycle.” Find out which reporters and columnists “get it,” and start a conversation with them. 

I second the motion. Check out Trevor Hancock, a prominent health commentator who gives lots of profile to food. Do you think he’s worth a call to talk about a column idea?

Second, Alex urges people to partner on a joint op-ed with other organizations that are more established, or organizations that have a natural constituency. You and a union leader could do an op-ed on why the treatment of migrant farm labor should be an election issue, for example.

Third, Alex says, you have to do something that stands out – something on top of a media release. Maybe a panel with a newsworthy speaker or moderator? Maybe a stunt that’s a bit fun or dramatic?

Fourth, she says, “cleverness is important.” Meet with young people,  and ask them to brainstorm an event that will capture imagination and command attention.

MY FAVE READ OF THE WEEK
 

I really enjoyed this brief review by Bill McKibben of a new book on environmentally-damaging consumer products. McKibben, an acclaimed climate campaigner and nature writer, applies a systems perspective to consumer habits many of us feel guilty about. Although he doesn’t use food examples, his approach is long-overdue in analysis of the food sector. We can all contribute by mending our individual ways, but we need to focus on systems that need an overhaul.

WHAT’S WAYNE UP TO?

When I started at the Toronto Food Policy Council 19 years ago, there were 3 food councils in the world. Now, there are 350. An entire issue of the latest issue of  Urban Agriculture is devoted to this movement. An article by me and my wife, Lori Stahlbrand, looks at the need to change our understanding of food policy. 

Request for Action