{"id":20295,"date":"2020-05-04T05:25:52","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T09:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=20295"},"modified":"2020-05-30T11:04:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-30T15:04:32","slug":"usa-the-rebirth-of-the-food-sovereignty-movement-the-pandemic-is-reviving-the-push-for-locally-produced-foods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=20295","title":{"rendered":"USA: The Rebirth of the Food Sovereignty Movement: The pandemic is reviving the push for locally produced foods"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .<\/p>\n

An article by Jason Mark reproduced from a Sierra Club website<\/a> with permission of the Sierra Club (\u00a92020 Sierra Club. All Rights Reserved)<\/p>\n

As a veteran urban farmer, I often get questions from friends and family about best practices for backyard gardening. It wasn\u2019t a surprise when my buddy Martin texted some questions for how to get a vegetable scene started. \u201cIs it OK to start tomatoes outside now? Or better to start indoors?\u201d (Indoors, I told him, if you have seeds, and outside as long as you have well-developed plants for transplanting.) Martin is a chef and a longtime fixture of the Bay Area\u2019s farm-to-table scene. With his restaurant closed, he\u2019s got time on his hands, some of which he\u2019s using to make sure his family stays well fed. He has 10 pounds of rice and 15 pounds of split red lentils socked away (just in case) and thought he should also begin a little home-scale food production. Nothing unusual, he said\u2014just tomatoes and squash, beans along with some herbs. \u201cI\u2019m trying to ride the line between being prepared and being a prepper,\u201d he told me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPhoto by Lori Eanes<\/center><\/p>\n

Gardening seems to be\u00a0having a moment\u00a0<\/a> as the crisis pushes people to find constructive ways to use their time, reduce trips to the grocery stores, and benefit from its\u00a0therapeutic aspects<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Martin isn\u2019t alone in his sudden enthusiasm for backyard food production. As the pandemic settles into a new normal, many people have pivoted from panic buying to \u201cpanic planting.\u201d Seed companies are\u00a0reporting an unprecedented surge <\/a> in demand\u00a0from home gardeners. Johnny\u2019s Selected Seeds, an employee-owned company in Maine that is a favorite of organic growers, reported a 300 percent jump in orders since early March. Baker Creek Heirloom in Missouri had so many new orders that it had to shut down its website for three days to allow its staff to catch up. Some extension agencies\u2014the land grand universities\u2019 programs that provide research and educational support to farmers and hobbyist gardeners\u2014are seeing a skyrocketing interest in gardening education programs. The new passion for home food production has even extended to livestock. Poultry-raising operations and feed stores are\u00a0experiencing such a spike in interest for laying hens\u00a0<\/a> that they are nearly running out of young chicks.\u00a0As Katie Brimm wrote recently for\u00a0Civil Eats, \u201cWe may be on the verge of a resurgence of World War II\u2013style Victory Gardens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Searching for a silver lining to a deadly pandemic is dangerous business. But there are still glimmers in the dark. The renewed interest in local food production represents one positive consequence of this waking nightmare, among the other encouraging signs\u2014the countless examples of selfless service, generosity toward others, and mutual aid. The pandemic is forcing people to think hard\u2014and to feel deeply\u2014about their connection to food. There\u2019s nothing like the sight of stripped grocery store shelves to focus people\u2019s attention on where their food comes from.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This explosion of interest in food production can help create a new cultural landscape for long-term community and ecological resilience once the pandemic has passed. And the renewed passion for backyard agriculture couldn\u2019t have come soon enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the past 15 years, I\u2019ve been both a chronicler of and a partisan for the sustainable food movement. As a journalist, I have written about food safety regulations,\u00a0local food systems<\/a>, and the benefits (and limitations<\/a>) of organic certification. In 2005, I cofounded a nonprofit educational garden and orchard called\u00a0Alemany Farm\u00a0<\/a> along with some guerilla gardeners, public housing residents, and community activists. Today, Alemany Farm is the largest urban farm in San Francisco\u2014a 3.5-acre smidgen of soil tucked between eight lanes of Highway 280 and a public housing complex. Every year, we grow more than 25,000 pounds <\/a> of organic fruits and vegetables, all of which we give away for free while at the same time educating thousands of people annually in the basics of regenerative agriculture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My belief in the importance of urban agriculture as a social, cultural, and ecological good is as strong as it was when I first planted my spade at Alemany years ago. I\u2019ll admit, though, that in the past couple of years I\u2019ve begun to experience doubts about the long-term sustainability of the sustainable food movement. Organic and regenerative farmers are mostly focused on improving the ecological practices of our agriculture system; food justice activists focus on ensuring that everyone has basic access to healthy foods, while also putting a spotlight on the exploitative conditions faced by farmworkers and food service employees; some activists promote a broader goal of \u201cfood sovereignty\u201d\u2014the idea that everyone should have a measure of agency over what they eat. Call it what you will, the good food movement no longer has the cultural currency it enjoyed during the heady days of the mid-to-late-aughts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe you were there and remember what it was like. Michael Pollan\u2019s food writing reigned atop the bestseller lists. New farmers’ markets were popping up across the country and farm-to-table was the hot new thing at restaurants. Urban communities\u2014often led by people of color\u2014were\u00a0reclaiming asphalt and concrete to establish community gardens and neighborhood farms<\/a>; in San Francisco, we planted a big and beautiful (if temporary) Victory Garden in front of city hall. Young people were fleeing office jobs and flocking to farms. Michelle Obama planted a vegetable patch at the White House.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(Article continued on right side of page)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Question for this article:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

\n

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?<\/a> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

(article continued from left side of page)<\/p>\n

At some point, though, the momentum stalled. Despite the best efforts of \u201cag-tivists,\u201d it has proven impossible (so far, at least) to reform the perversities of a federal agricultural policy that sustains an unhealthful and even deadly American food system. Many beginning farmers found their dreams dashed on the hard realities of exorbitant land values and insultingly low prices for their product;\u00a0there were whispers that we were approaching \u201ca second farm crisis\u201d <\/a>\u00a0like the one that wiped out many family farmers in the 1980s.\u00a0A lack of critical infrastructure\u00a0<\/a> continued to bedevil the efforts to establish more regionalized food systems. Those of us in the nonprofit farm education sector saw philanthropies\u2019 interests move to other issues. The movement suffered sustained small-arms fire from\u00a0journalists<\/a> \u00a0and\u00a0academics <\/a>\u00a0who argued that school gardens and urban farms were nothing more than a privileged affectation. And while it\u2019s true that the sale of organic foods continues to skyrocket, the food sovereignty movement remains far from its goal of transforming chemically intensive agriculture and addressing the poverty that grips farm owner-operators as well as farm laborers. It has felt to me\u2014along with some other farmers I know\u2014like the bloom is very much off the rose.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, the world has been turned upside down, and the winter of doubt has turned into a spring of guarded hope among food sovereignty activists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pandemic has allowed people to see the world with fresh eyes. It\u2019s as if the casing on the machinery of society has been opened up and, with a jolt, afforded us the opportunity to inspect the inner workings of things. Among other revelations, the pandemic has illustrated the fragility of our food system. The waves of panic buying and hoarding prove how totally dependent we are on global chains of production and distribution while also revealing a society-wide gut feeling that such a system might not be all that dependable: If people were confident there would be plenty of rice and pasta tomorrow, there wouldn\u2019t be any need to squirrel away staples today.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

No wonder people are finding a solace in reconnecting to their food via backyard planting. To feel grounded, folks are getting their hands in the dirt.<\/p>\n

During the past week, I\u2019ve been talking with other urban farmers and food sovereignty activists here in California. In conversation after conversation, I\u2019ve heard many of the same things: a sense of gratification that mainstream society is finally heeding their calls for local and regional food systems, combined with a worry that, once the pandemic passes, people will abandon the newfound interest in where their food comes from.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is our 15th\u00a0anniversary, and for 15 years we\u2019ve been telling people, \u2018In times of crisis, we need to grow our own food.\u2019 Well, here we are,\u201d\u00a0Doria Robinson<\/a>, the founder of Urban Tilth in the Bay Area industrial city of Richmond, told me.\u00a0Urban Tilth\u00a0<\/a> operates a three-acre farm along with seven smaller community gardens and employs mostly local youths of color to grow and distribute the crops. Before the pandemic hit, the organization had about 50 members in its community supported agriculture (CSA) program, which provides households with a box of fruits and vegetables grown at the Richmond sites and supplemented with produce from farms on the edge of suburban Contra Costa County. In the past few weeks, the number of CSA members has more than tripled, to 170. \u201cHaving a local source of some portion of your food just seems like a no-brainer, as opposed to depending on really long supply lines and food coming from way, way, way away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For Robinson, the pandemic\u2019s effects on her staff have been just as profound as the effects on her customers. Urban Tilth\u2019s youth workers, Robinson told me, are experiencing a newfound sense of pride and importance in their work; their efforts, city and county officials agree, are quite literally\u00a0essential. \u201cIn this moment, they [Urban Tilth\u2019s youth workers] are stepping up like no one else. They are getting food to families every week. And they are hearing that all the work they have been doing matters. They\u2019re saying, \u2018I\u2019m going to be a farmer in the hood, and that matters, it really matters.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ron Finley, the self-described \u201cgangster gardener\u201d of South Central Los Angeles, expressed sentiments similar to mine. Since his\u00a02013 Ted Talk\u00a0<\/a> went viral, Finley has traveled the world like a sort of Paul Revere of the food sovereignty movement. He says this moment of crisis is finally bringing home the message he\u2019s been spreading for years. \u201cWe are in this dire hoarding, oh-my-god, the-sky-is-falling, the-world-is-ending mode, when we really don\u2019t have to be,\u201d said Finley, who has been keeping himself busy tending his home garden and his public garden at the corner of Exposition and Chesapeake in L.A. since he started sheltering in place on March 11. \u201cIt\u2019s like, are you listening now? Are any of you listening now? You can\u2019t eat fucking diamonds. You can\u2019t eat money. People have been valuing all of this dumb shit, and now they see how valuable food is. [The pandemic] has hit a values-system reset button.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Debbie Harris, a longtime organic grower who is now the farm manager at\u00a0Urban Adamah<\/a>, a two-acre urban farm in Berkeley inspired by Jewish ideals of service, agreed. \u201cMore than anything, this [new interest in food and farming] isn\u2019t intellectual; it\u2019s about connection,\u201d she told me. \u201cThat\u2019s the basis of a transformed food system, transformed planet, transformed way of living. . . . People are catalyzed on an emotional and personal level. Right now, people are being forced to think about how their food is grown and who their neighbors are.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Harris also worries that this passion for locally grown foods might evaporate once life returns to the status quo. \u201cI feel that once COVID is over, I fear people won\u2019t have the same fire to get involved in their community farm or to reform our food systems. . . . Because we have so much amnesia as a culture, because of the privileges that late capitalism has afforded us.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a concern Finley and Robinson both share. \u201cHow long is it going to last, and how long until we go back to how it was, with kids killing other kids over tennis shoes?\u201d Finley wondered. Robinson told me, \u201cPeople have that amnesia and [some of them] will go back to In-N-Out Burger, or whatever. I\u2019m not holding my breath for everyone starting a garden. Because it\u2019s a lot of work.\u201d Still, she maintains a measure of hope that some of this beneficial change might hold. \u201cWhen people get introduced to [gardening], they start to crave it. So I actually feel like a lot of folks are being introduced to us right now, and they will stay planted on the ground. Not all of them, but some of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will the people now swooping up seeds, vegetable starts, and baby chicks eventually decide to stick with their newfound passion? Will an emergency-fueled reaction deepen into a lasting way of life, or will people cast aside their gardens as relics of the germ-times? Those are just a few of the questions society will face as we come out of this dangerous moment. As Arundhati Roy wrote\u00a0in a recent commentary for the\u00a0Financial Times, the pandemic \u201cis a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am cautiously optimistic that backyard food production may sink down roots in that other world. I\u2019d like to imagine, as Robinson does, that once people get a taste of gardening and come to know their farmers, many of them won\u2019t want to return to \u201cnormal.\u201d Hopefully, people will keep their new gardens, not because backyard food production is an exercise in \u201cliving simply\u201d\u2014a home-scale back-to-the-land effort\u2014but because it\u2019s an example of living more resiliently. Home food production can teach habits of mind long after this crisis passes (as it will), when we find ourselves confronted by other crises like climate change (as we will).\u00a0<\/p>\n

For one thing, to be a home gardener creates a routine of attentiveness toward the natural world, if only because a gardener must become, by necessity, a meteorologist, hydrologist, soil scientist, and entomologist. This kind of attention to more-than-human nature is a necessity if we are to navigate this hot and crowded century with as few regrets as possible. Community gardening and backyard food cultivation also create bonds of neighborliness. At the very least, you need your friends and neighbors to eat all of those beans and summer squash you\u2019re going to be growing; at the very best, you find yourself relying on your community to share seeds and starts, gardening dos and don\u2019ts. Such bonds are what we need\u2014and will continue to need\u2014to get through tough times together.<\/p>\n

Finally, the plain physicality of gardening might help rebalance our lives away from the virtual and toward the real. As Finley said, you can\u2019t eat diamonds\u2014and you can\u2019t eat ones and zeroes either. When you wring your sustenance out of the soil, you can\u2019t help but understand that all life on land, the entirety of human civilization, depends on nothing more than the thin epidermis of the earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the past couple of weeks, I\u2019ve seen some of this in action. My next-door neighbor, Josie, is normally a flower grower, but this spring she\u2019s putting in a vast new vegetable garden. Our neighbor to the north, Brad, is doubling the size of his garden and building a hops trellis to fuel his home brewing hobby. They\u2019ve been exchanging vegetable starts, and they decided to go in together on a bulk delivery of topsoil. The whole thing has the feel of an old-fashioned barn-raising\u2014just with everybody dancing around each other at six feet apart. The scene of communal crop growing on my one little block gives me hope: A popular passion for food sovereignty might just be one unlooked-for harvest to come from this awful scourge.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . . An article by Jason Mark reproduced from a Sierra Club website with permission of the Sierra Club (\u00a92020 Sierra Club. All Rights Reserved) As a veteran urban farmer, I often get questions from friends and family about best practices for backyard gardening. It wasn\u2019t a surprise when my buddy … Continue reading USA: The Rebirth of the Food Sovereignty Movement: The pandemic is reviving the push for locally produced foods<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,10],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-20295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-america","category-sustainable","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}