Update from the West Coast

I hope this overdue post finds you all well.  In the past three weeks, California has been blessed with lots of sunshine.  While I’ve had a little downtime visiting friends and family and earning a little income working the land in California, I’ve been finalizing the itinerary for the research trip that I am about to embark on by making contact and establishing visit times and dates.  Currently I have scheduled visits through the 9^th of December with sites stops in Canada, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

For five days last week I attended the Community Food Security Coalitions (CFSC) Annual Conference in Oakland.  I participated in two field trips, one to the Salina’s Valley where much of our nation’s fresh vegetables are produced, and another to the central coast region to visit several different food based programs.  I co-presented one workshop and co-facilitated a networking session.  The conference was attended by more than 1,000 individuals from all sectors of the food access, food security, food justice, and food sovereignty movements nationally and was dotted with some international representatives.

Both Friday and Saturday were filed with several site visits.  Below is just a sampling:

ALBA, “The Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association generates opportunities for farm workers and limited-resource, aspiring farmers to grow and sell crops from two organic farms in Monterey County.”  Located in Salinas, established in 1972, ALBA was the first farmer incubation center in America.  In addition to the education and land provided to participating farmers, ALBA also houses a farmer cooperative that helps beginning farmers get their produce into the market place.

Swanton Berry Farm, established almost 30 years ago, set out to produce organic strawberries against the idea that it could not be done.

This was the first large scale production farm in California to produce these delicious berry using only organic practices.  With some production fields stretching across bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, this farm produces all of its crops on rented land, an impressive 200 acres in total. 

A rustic farm stand, located on scenic route 1 just north of Santa Cruz, serves up fresh delectable goodies picked and prepared daily on site; a must stop if you are passing through.  In 1998 the farm was the first organic farm to sign a contract with the 

United Farm Workers, AFL-CIO.  Way to go Swanton Berry Farm!

Pie Ranch, located just north of Swanton Berry Farm, is a non-profit farm who’s “farming practices emphasize soil fertility, biological diversity, growing for local markets, and creating a relationship-based food system.”  The farm uses pie as a metaphor for what a healthy community and farm organism should be.  Pie requires a balanced combination of ingredients as does a healthy community and ecosystem.  At Pie Ranch they grow wheat for crust, fruit for filling, raise chickens for eggs, and pasture goats and cows for milk and butter.  The ranch incorporates, in addition to its pie production and crop marketing, a component that engages the community, specifically youth, in educational opportunities based around food and farming.

For three days following the field trips I attended plenaries, workshops and networking sessions all focused on creating a more just and equitable food system in America and beyond. My favorite session focused on using “alternative populations” in land and agricultural based projects. These spanned from engaging inmates in the production of endangered frogs for release to wild lands in Oregon and ex-cons building community garden spaces throughout Chicago.  In addition to this session, I really enjoyed a forum that recognized a small panel of food sovereignty leaders from countries around the world for the struggles that they face and the momentum that they have created to combat the food system injustices in their homeland.

Both of the sessions I co-lead seemed to be great successes. As community food security initiatives and efforts to increase food justice and equality tend to build from the grassroots throughout our country, food banks around America are increasingly becoming interested in the idea of community based food security. Food banks tend to address the symptoms of hunger, addressing the daily needs of our nations hungry – this effort is very important.  Community food security measures tend to look at building solutions based initiatives that can create greater food resilience at the community and regional level.  In both of these sessions we were able to provide a safe space for food bankers and community food security advocates/activists to talk about how these two sectors of addressing food insecurity can work together to decrease food insecurity in our nation and what is the role for each of these segments serving the needs of some of our nation’s most vulnerable.  These sessions where full of conversation where many perspectives were given the avenue to present.  I want to thank both Why Hunger and the Vermont Foodbank for making my participation in these sessions and this conference possible.

In addition to all that I’ve shared above about the conference, I found it particularly interesting to have been just two blocks away from the Occupy Oakland Camp.  I spent very little time there but did visit on a few occasions.  During one of my visits, I found myself speaking with one very educated, dedicated and passionate occupier who had been camping in the park in front of city hall for the last month.  On the last day of the conference many attendees went to this camp and spoke over the loud speaker, spreading our message of food justice, food equality and food sovereignty.  One young woman asked us all to occupy our food system, to think about the power we have with our collective purchasing power as it pertains to creating a food system that serves our best interest.  We can fight with our forks to take back our food supply from the massive corporations that currently dominate what most of us eat on a daily basis.