“Sustainable food is about farmers being good to the land, making sure that the land is useful and rich for future generations,” says Anthony Chang, founder and Executive Director of Kitchen Table Advisors in Mountain View, CA. However, the chances of survival for small, sustainable farms in the U.S. can look pretty bleak. According to USDA research, 50% of small farms fail in the first 5 years and only 25% will survive for 15 years. Kitchen Table Advisors, a 2012 RSF Seed Fund grantee, is working to improve those percentages, helping sustainable farms become sustainable businesses by providing them with in-depth financial management support and the tools needed to stay viable for the long term.
Catching up with Chang on their progress since receiving the Seed Fund grant, he reported that Kitchen Table Advisors officially launched their pilot project last month, featuring a small group of sustainable farmers in Northern California who are working to create a better food system. Chang will sit down at the kitchen table with these farmers, one-on-one, to discuss business planning, record keeping and strategies for using business and financial data to achieve long term goals and objectives on their farms.
Among the pilot group are Caleb Barron and Jonathan [Johnny] Wilson of Fogline Farm, an integrated organic farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Chang says “After going through UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Agroecology and Food Systems program, Johnny started Fogline Farm in his late 20s as a way to make the world a better place through growing good food and taking care of the land with regular crop rotations, animals roaming in the orchards, minimal inputs and waste.” Fogline Farms strives to grow the highest quality fruits, vegetables and meats for their community. Kitchen Table Advisors seeks to empower Johnny and Caleb, and all the farmers in their pilot project, with the business tools, resources and knowledge they need to ensure their long term economic viability.
You can join Kitchen Table Advisors in their effort to build a healthier regional food system by becoming an advocate, volunteering or making a financial contribution. Follow Kitchen Table Advisors on Facebook or LinkedIn for the latest news and opportunities to support the economic viability of sustainable small farms. Email info@kitchentableadvisors.org if you’re interested in volunteer opportunities related to marketing & communications, business development, events or fundraising. Or donate here to Kitchen Table Advisors through their fiscal sponsor, the Trust for Conservation Innovation.
Click here for more information about the Seed Fund and how you can provide support.
Ellie Lanphier is Program Assistant, Philanthropic Services at RSF Social Finance.
This is the second post in a series by John Bloom on money (global) and land-based (local) economic systems. While we are largely accustomed to the former, this historical analysis makes the argument for a new kind of economy, one which raises the profile of land-based systems to benefit and balance the global economy as we know it.
In my last post, I described the development of Paterson Great Falls into the first industrial park under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton’s economic vision became essentially the American version of economic life. Consistent with the pattern of the wider Industrial Revolution beginning in England, his approach created the conditions that drew labor from the countryside to urban industry while diminishing the agrarian foundation that had sustained the American colonists. But, there was another imagination articulated and fought for by Thomas Jefferson as Hamilton was carrying the day. That vision was less sympathetic to the manufacturing and money economy than it was to the deep value of agriculture as the primary driver for American economic life. Jefferson’s view was grounded in an ever-expanding land base that could support regional economic subsistence and produce plant-based products such as tobacco and cotton for foreign markets, especially Europe. Jefferson, a farmer himself, reaped economic benefit from agriculture aided by slave labor, and also celebrated the pedagogical value of tillage for the development of character. He understood that a good farmer is also a land steward; soil fertility and economic productivity are entwined.
Jefferson saw the expansion of the American land base as essential for more farming and agricultural product growth, access to markets, and ever-wider distribution—thus the Louisiana Purchase and the implementation of the doctrine of manifest destiny. This “destiny” was used to justify the merciless destruction of the Native American peoples, and their way of life that was reverently open land based. When the US government granted significant land tracts to soldiers who had fought in the Revolutionary war in lieu of pay (the government had no money), that land had to be parceled into ownership, measured, fenced, and priced—anathema to the ethos of land as shared commons. Those fences enclosed land and brought an end to the dynamic, reciprocal flow between man and nature that had long marked the economic life of Native America.
Both Hamilton and Jefferson knew the need for natural resources of all kinds would increase continually to support economic and national development. From their place in time, both could see no limits to the kind of economic growth they were imagining. And both contributed to what would become the industrialization of everything, including agriculture. The value of a human being would be measured by his or her capacity to produce economically; land itself became a store of value as well as a source of production. Land and labor were commoditized in a way that was material to all economic matters. In essence, with the emergence of property rights granted to individuals and corporations by the government, the mutuality of “ownership” in common gave way to the self-interest described so ably by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, first published 1776, the same year as the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Nothing in Adam Smith’s text would have predicted the level of greed and manipulation that have pervaded our current financial system. Smith assumed a standard of morality in the economic sphere that was guided by the dominant religious principles of his time. But much has changed in the human psyche since then. Wealth has become a game of never enough, of winners and losers. Greed is not a modern invention, it is one of the seven deadly sins; neither is manipulation of the market for private benefit. But the scale and affects of recent events indicate an extreme disconnect between money and land to the extent that land itself accrued economic value as a store-place for money. Land is a treasury unto itself measured in ever-rising prices, which, in turn, present insurmountable barriers to access, especially for farmers.
John Bloom is Senior Director, Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance.
In the photo above, a student of Rose Rock School waters the plants that surround her school in the Norman, Oklahoma sunshine. Her school believes that a child’s development is enhanced by taking part in daily tasks and caring for his or her learning space.
The photo captures the spirit of Rose Rock, a school serving 2-6 year olds that strives to offer innovative education in a nurturing environment. A quick glance at the wonderful photos found on Norman resident Sarah Warmker’s photography page provides a glimpse into the caring, safe and creative setting founder Shanah Admadi and her team has created for their young learning community.
“Our long-term goal is to help lead children toward conscious adulthood, in which they respect diversity, interact harmoniously with all people, nurture and protect the natural world, and give joyfully to the communities in which they live.” – Rose Rock School website
Rose Rock School is a Life Ways North America Representative Site. LifeWays Child Care proposes that childcare programs can closely resemble the warm, relaxed atmosphere of a home, and that children can benefit from forming strong bonds with consistent caregivers. An emphasis on creative play rather than structured lessons is a hallmark of the LifeWays school of thought. Every day at Rose Rock the children care for the garden, play outside, and participate in the preparation and clean-up of home cooked organic meals enjoyed family style around a small table or outside on a picnic blanket.
In May 2012, The Rose Rock School Foundation received a grant from the RSF Seed Fund to establish a biodynamic garden and apiary on the school’s new site, a historic home in central Norman. Shanah provided an update on the progress they had made on this project:
“Since Rose Rock School received the grant last May, we have utilized the money to help in us tending our new 4-acre plot of land (in the center of town) with biodynamic field sprays.We have had many Rose Rock community work days, spent trimming trees, removing trash and brush, and envisioning our future at this site. Until the rezoning and construction is finished, the bees we purchased will continue to live at an off-site location outside of town. We chose to keep them at a quieter location, while they organized themselves and recovered from their journey through the mail. Since their arrival, they have established a healthy hive, foraged on local wildflowers, and endured their first Oklahoma summer. We look forward to bringing them to their new home when it is ready.”
Shanah and team plan to build fencing to surround the apiary, for the protection of the children and the bees, while planting a variety of plants on the school grounds to serve as a nectar source. The school will benefit from the produce grown and honey harvested while also facilitating critical learning about the importance and value of sustainable agriculture. Remaining honey will be sold locally, to provide a revenue stream to help support the school.
For more information about the RSF Seed Fund, please visit our website. To make a donation, please visit our donations page.
Ellie Lanphier is Program Assisstant, Philanthropic Services at RSF Social Finance.
It’s heartening to see RSF borrowers supporting one another. The San Francisco Chronicle recently published this article about Oakland School for the Arts and Revolution Foods working together to offer healthier school lunches. In addition, Revolution Foods has nabbed a major contract with the San Francisco Unified School District. Congrats to Rev Foods and bon appétit to students!
By Jill Tucker
Ajna Singh, 12, nibbled on the cheese enchilada with a side of rice served in the Oakland School for the Arts cafeteria, using fingers instead of a fork.
In between bites and balancing the meal’s recyclable tray in one hand, she said she liked the school food, which included rice, packaged grapes, milk, dinner rolls and a self-serve tray of broccoli.
“It’s especially better than my mom’s cooking,” Ajna said. “I’m appreciative.”
photo courtesy Revolution Foods
Not all of the sixth-grader’s classmates at the Oakland charter school were as enamored with the offerings, provided by Oakland’s Revolution Foods, with one seventh-grader describing the meals as “like, nasty.”
The indiscriminate tastes of preteens notwithstanding, the Oakland students are getting what many parents and school officials across the country consider the top-shelf version of school lunches.
Revolution Foods never serves reheated tater tots, greasy pizza or mystery meat. The meals are prepared by chefs using local ingredients, no high-fructose corn syrup, and nothing is ever fried or frozen. They are in the hands of students 24 hours after coming out of the oven.
Starting Monday, those fresh meals will be in San Francisco schools.
While Revolution Foods has been around since 2006, few large school districts have signed up, despite parental pleas for higher quality cafeteria food, because of the higher cost.
But over the last few years, Revolution has been among the fastest-growing urban companies, with production centers in California, Colorado, Texas and the East Coast, serving more than 200,000 meals every day to children in private, public and nonprofit school programs.
Cost savings came with the growth, allowing Revolution Foods to compete for bigger contracts, going up against national school lunch providers offering frozen meals shipped to school sites all over the country.
The company, created by two moms as part of a business school project, nabbed its biggest client yet in December, when it beat out bigger companies to get a $9 million contract with San Francisco Unified.
“We’re really excited,” said co-founder Kristin Groos Richmond. “I feel like it’s such an honor for us.”
Adding workers
In less than a month, Revolution has had to prepare for serving 33,000 meals to 114 schools in San Francisco and has added 40 workers to the Oakland site, bringing the company’s total to 965 employees nationwide.
In addition, the company often uses local suppliers, including meat from Diestel Turkey Ranch in Sonora and rice from family-owned Massa Organics in the Chico area.
To meet the increasing demand, Revolution Foods has shifts going 24 hours a day, prepping, cooking, refrigerating and packaging the meals.
“There are so many school organizations out there who want good food for kids,” Richmond said.
Richmond started the company with UC Berkeley classmate Kirsten Tobey, creating the equivalent of a high-tech Silicon Valley startup in the food industry.
At the time, small, parent-driven movements were kicking soda and junk food out of schools, and Berkeley chef Alice Waters was making sure that children knew what kale looked like through school garden programs.
Richmond was pregnant at the time, and she was advised to wait to kick off such an ambitious endeavor.
She refused to listen.
“I remember thinking at the time, no way,” she said. “This is the right time for this movement in the country.”
The company has had some growing pains in recent years, including tangles with labor unions in New Orleans.
The new contract in San Francisco will require working closely with union cafeteria workers who will reheat and serve the food. School board members reiterated their support for the union workers before unanimously approving the Revolution Foods contract.
Cost increase
Despite the concerns raised by labor organizations, district officials and parents celebrated the new contract, which will cost $1.95 per lunch, up from $1.79 charged by the previous provider, Preferred Meal Systems. The 18-month contract caps the costs at $9 million annually.
Students not eligible for free or reduced-price meals will be charged $3 for lunch and $1.50 for breakfast.
District officials hope that more students will buy the meals, helping to offset the higher costs.
At Oakland School for the Arts, which serves about 50 Revolution Foods lunches each day, several students are willing to pay the $4.50 the school charges.
Sure, some of the veggies – squash, beans and carrots – are sometimes a hard sell, said Kai Johnson, who monitors the cafeteria during lunch.
“It’s just like at home, when you’re sitting at the table saying ‘eat your vegetables,’ ” she said. But with Revolution Foods, “it’s not an option. They’re going to eat healthy no matter what.”
This article was originally published by Jill Tucker at sfgate.com and is republished with permission of the author.
As we enjoy time to reflect on the year past, it has been an honor to share inspiring stories with you, like those of Viva Farms and Hawthorne Valley, and to announce some of the new work in food and agriculture that our community is financing — including Organic Trade Association, Common Market Philadelphia and Farmigo. These organizations exemplify the link between agriculture and community. They also make clear how important long-term access to land is for fulfilling their intentions.
Fortunately many people are waking up to the importance of organic food—not just because it may be better for them to eat, but also for the healing benefit it brings to farmers and the environment. However, less than 4% of all sales of food and beverage products in the U.S. are certified organic and less than 1% of all land used for crops and livestock in the U.S. is certified organic. This represents a tremendous opportunity and challenge in the coming decades. Imagine when each of these numbers reaches 25%, or 50%!
photo courtesy Common Market
The most powerful shift will occur when we go “beyond organic”—Local, Biodynamic. These are the keywords for a truly community-based approach to food. We know that organic can be done at industrial scale, which carries with it many of the same economic problems we see in other large-scale or globalized businesses.
Instead, we think we’ll see tens of thousands of small, diversified farms sprout up over the next 10-20 years whether motivated by community resilience or business innovation. And we are aware of at least one new program, the Center for Diversified Farming Systems at UC Berkeley that calls into question the dominant paradigm of 20th century agricultural development with an approach to diversification on the farm that can be the key to feeding the world and practicing ecological stewardship.
So how does a diversified approach to farming connect with money and finance? Just as we’ve seen big developments in how people think about their food, we are also beginning to witness a huge parallel shift in how people think about their money. There has been significant growth in sustainable and responsible investments (SRI) over the past 30 years. 12% of all assets in the U.S. ($3 trillion out of $25 trillion total) are invested in SRI funds. Imagine when this percentage goes to 25%, or 50%!
photo courtesy Viva Farms
Even more encouraging is that the fastest growing segment of SRI is Community Investing, defined as funds “that serve communities overlooked by traditional lenders.” Over the past three years, Community Investing has grown over 60%, from $25.0 billion to $41.7 billion in assets, and local food systems are a part of it.
Just as local has gathered as much interest as organic, we are seeing direct community investments capturing people’s imagination in a way that socially screened mutual funds do not. People are no longer satisfied with cutting out what’s bad; they want to invest in what’s good.
As always, we hope that you will enjoy these thoughts and stories, and we also hope that you will think about how your money is working to bring about change in our food systems, whether that is buying organic or biodynamic food at the farmer’s market, joining CSAs, investing in organizations that support diversification in food production, or supporting social enterprises such as Viva Farms. It will take investing, lending and giving in concert to bring about the change we want to see. Please consider RSF as your partner in this effort.
All my best,
Don
Don Shaffer is President & CEO at RSF Social Finance.
Modern consumers want and expect sustainable, local seafood. Restaurants need to be able to tell their customers where their food is coming from and how it got to their plate. Fishermen hope for better prices and more realistic expectations in a volatile, unpredictable industry. Recognizing that all of these parties really desired the same dream, Stephanie Mutz, Sarah Rathbone and Kim Selkoe launched the first season of Community Seafood, a community supported fishery (CSF) in Santa Barbara, California which connects residents directly to the local catch.
This past April, RSF made a grant from the Seed Fund to Commercial Fisherman of Santa Barbara, to launch season one of their CSF. Much like a CSA, a CSF share eliminates the intermediaries between the producer and the consumer, ensuring that the subscriber pays a fair price while their money goes directly to the fishermen that caught their dinner.
Mutz, commercial fisherman and co-founder, caught up with us for an update on their first season and beyond:
“We are now in our second season of our CSF. Our customers are having a lot of fun knowing where and how their seafood is caught, who caught it and how to prepare it. We are taking the confusion out of seafood by doing the homework for our customers, and they know they are doing their share in preserving the local marine resource while supporting local fishermen. We really are accomplishing our goal of building community when our customers start talking to each other when they pick up their seafood, and before you know it, they are inviting each other over for dinner!”
Steve Escobar with a trap of spot prawns
Their subscribers benefit from the plentiful waters of the Santa Barbara Channel, and share in the fluctuations inherent to the trade. They buy a share and receive the “catch of the week,” of whatever is fresh and in season. Increased variety for customers equates to healthier ecosystems, allowing time for species recoup.
California-caught seafood is some of the most environmentally friendly available, due to stringent fishing regulations such as setting aside protected areas and seasonal closures. However, currently 90-95% of local seafood landed in Santa Barbara Harbor is exported overseas, leaving local fishermen at the mercy of volatile foreign markets and bound to the unsustainable practice of catching a lot of one kind of fish to sell at low wholesale prices. The frustration is compounded by local consumers who, at the same time, are demanding sustainable healthy seafood right off the boat.
This small group of fisherman and scientists has been able to see the connection between the wants and needs of the community and those of the producers. While they still have adjustments and improvements to address as they make headway into the second season, Santa Barbara fishermen say Community Seafood provides a connection to their community that they wouldn’t have otherwise, and valuable feedback about their work. Some say it has granted a greater sense of purpose in their day-to-day activities. While it’s yet a small portion of their overall business, all parties involved hope to see it grow.
This grant was made possible by the RSF Seed Fund. Every spring, RSF provides small gifts (between $500 and $5,000) to seed new initiatives that offer innovative solutions in the field of social finance, or address issues in one of our three focus areas (Food & Agriculture, Education & the Arts, and Ecological Stewardship). Individual gifts to the RSF Seed Fund can help germinate the next generation of restorative projects. Click here to donate to the RSF Seed Fund today.
Ellie Lanphier is Program Assistant, Philanthropic Services at RSF Social Finance.
What does it mean to live sustainably, particularly in regards to stewardship of land? 2012 RSF Seed Fund Grantee stone circles has made this question central to its work. stone circles, located in the small town of Mebane, NC, has a mission to strengthen and sustain people committed to transformation and justice, and its mission comes alive through spiritual practice and principles, a sustainable relationship with the land, radical hospitality, and strategic collaboration.
Photo courtesy: stone circles
stone circles was founded in 1995 and has continually been at the forefront of the national movement to transform social change work by creating strong and explicit links between individual and social transformation. It does so by working at the local, statewide, and national level and provides trainings, workshops and retreats that offer transformative experiences that link commitment to sustainability and practice with frameworks for strategic action.
Since 2008, stone circles has been working to create a more equitable and just food system in central North Carolina. In 2011 the organization began researching ways to directly support local sustainable agriculture. One major discovery was the barriers that young adults of color face when trying to enter the farming profession. In addition to training and mentoring, farmers of color oftentimes lack the access to the resources and the decision-making groups that are fueling the growing movement around local food sustainability. The RSF Seed Fund grant is specifically intended to support a 10-day residential training program for young farmers of color at The Stone House, stone circles’ 70-acre rural retreat and training center. The program will include practical farm skills training in organic agriculture practices, food systems education, and personal practices for self-renewal that focus on the experience of deeply resting and replenishing the body and spirit.
Photo courtesy: stone circles
In preparation for the upcoming training, stone circles has put on a number of food justice workshops. According to evaluation summaries, beyond increasing their knowledge of food justice, participants also reported a deepened ability to relate across lines of difference. One of the highlights for many people was the opportunity to share personal stories of race, ethnicity, and class backgrounds, as it connected them to each other and to the larger framework being presented.
To learn more about the RSF Seed Fund and how you can help support new and inspirational projects like this one, click here.
Catherine Covington is Senior Program Associate, Philanthropic Services at RSF Social Finance.
“What we are founding here is a seed—the seed of a living organism. The organism is essentially threefold—pedagogical, artistic, and agricultural—as reflections of thought, feeling and will. Each needs the others if the whole is to flourish. All are interrelated… for young and old alike, this work together will create a place in which to become, in the true sense, a full human being.”
~Karl Ege, Hawthorne Valley Founder
On July 30, 2012, Hawthorne Valley Association marked the 40th anniversary of working the soil of agri-culture on its land in the Hudson Valley of New York. In all that time it has been Hawthorne Valley’s mission to inspire by example social and cultural renewal through the integration of education, agriculture, and the arts. The significance of place and the ability to connect intimately to and through place provide compelling evidence as to why our localized agriculture can be understood as a foundational activity upon which all humanity depends—not just for producing food.
Hawthorne Valley does produce its share of food. Situated on 400 acres and leasing another 400 from neighboring landowners, Hawthorne Valley Farm is a diversified biodynamic farm with dairy herd, on-site dairy processing and creamery, 14-acres of vegetables, four CSA groups, five Greenmarkets, an organic bakery, a vegetable processing kitchen, and the Farm Store, which is a full-line organic grocery store featuring Hawthorne Valley products along with many local and regional artisanal food and value-added offerings.
Acknowledging the challenges facing small independent farms in the late 1960s and early 70s, a group of pioneering biodynamic farmers in the U.S. were looking for a viable way to keep land in agriculture without having to rely on family succession as the sole alternative to a monolithic agri-business model. Valuing land as more than commodity and de-coupling it from market forces that clamor for “best use” (i.e. most profitable) was viewed as a healthy and necessary step towards reshaping the future of farming.
Fortunately, a group of Waldorf teachers spent summer vacations on one of these biodynamic farms. They were concerned about children’s meaningful interaction
with the natural world. As the forces of materialism, mechanization, and technology infiltrated childhood at increasingly earlier stages of development, they wanted to be sure the possibility would remain for these young people to form a living connection to the earth they would one day be called upon to steward.
Hawthorne Valley came into being as a response to these emerging issues. By purchasing property with the intention of making it a viable, working biodynamic farm providing hands-on, practical learning opportunities for children and adults, the founders of Hawthorne Valley set the stage for what would develop over the next forty years, touching the lives of thousands along the way.
The natural landscape at Hawthorne Valley has provided a living classroom for the numerous agricultural, educational, and cultural offerings that take place on the farm. The Farm Learning Center administers training and education for biodynamic farmers, including a two week biodynamic intensive and an apprenticeship program. Just across the road, in the heart of Harlemville, sits Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School, an independent day school serving students from pre-K through Grade 12. The Alkion Center for Adult Education provides Foundation Studies in Anthroposophy, Waldorf Teacher Training, and intensives in the arts. It is the integration of these initiatives (and more) under one umbrella that contributes to the vitality of the Association. The humble seed planted 40 years ago has now grown to 160 co-workers manifesting a common vision through this variety of activities.
Hawthorne Valley Association’s service is to a broader constituency than local residents. Visitors come from across the region to experience Hawthorne Valley Farm. In the fall of 1972, the first group of visiting students came from the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City. Since then, over 600 children each year have spent a week or more on the farm as visiting students or summer campers. Comments like “Wow, food comes out of the ground?!” are not uncommon when children set to work in the fields. The joy and satisfaction with which a nine-year old mucks out a cow stall is always gratifying to witness. And, to see the reverence with which a child carries a warm egg in the palm of their hand, as if they had just wrested the golden egg from the giant’s goose, is telling of the deep resonance we can all feel when connecting with the source of life.
This connecting, or re-membering, is at the heart and soul of Hawthorne Valley’s work. Restoring the possibility of nourishing relationships is essential to our mission of social and cultural renewal. By engaging with the natural environment and all that it provides, students, co-workers, and visitors can explore critical pathways toward connecting with each other in new social forms, and at the same time for each one to sense her or his own purpose and highest sense of self. Through direct experience with nature we are given an open invitation to reclaiming our full humanity. The resulting wholeness is the foundation of health, both individually and societally. By honoring the interdependence of all, we build the bridge to a consciousness which includes the well-being of everyone.
With many activities and initiatives, Hawthorne Valley Association is a constant work in progress as it responds to the needs of the community and region. What began with a gift from three individuals to purchase the land has grown into an economic enterprise rooted in place. From the beginning, as cows were introduced and milk began to flow, the possibility was there for economic relationships to develop—one could ladle milk into one’s own bottle or slice off a piece of cheese. Direct sales and on-farm value-added processing immediately emerged as the center of Hawthorne Valley’s financial stability. Since the early days, the farm and the Association have largely operated on an earned income model. This has made it possible for the delivery of goods, education, and other cultural experiences to grow with the broader community.
The surrounding area of Columbia County, which was once one of the poorest in New York State, is growing into a vibrant local living economy. Most notably, a number of the 60 new farms that have started up in the county in the last decade can trace their lineage to Hawthorne Valley, along with cultural initiatives like the Nature Institute. Although tucked away in a little hamlet in upstate New York, Hawthorne Valley recognizes its work in a larger context and is connected to many individuals and organizations nationally and globally. We feel an especially deep affinity for RSF Social finance, which was housed on the northern edge of Hawthorne Valley Farm until 1998. While the focus of our work may be local, the consequences of our actions can be global.
Hawthorne Valley is called an Association because of the intention to consciously weave the very distinct yet integral parts of agriculture, education, and the arts into a holistic thriving organism. This means that a governing board of trustees stays in close touch with the varying needs of each of the Association member organizations as well as understands what and how each participant contributes to the health of the others. From an operational standpoint for example, a transactional value chain is created as the farm sells fresh milk to creamery for processing. Through a number of other transfers, the cheese arrives at the Farm Store, to be purchased by the local community or denizens of New York City in the case of the Greenmarkets. This creates one beneficial financial cycle that supports the larger associative economy.
Through this diversity of activities, and through conscious collaboration with the wider community, Hawthorne Valley hopes to expand its contribution as a farm and food hub, and generative cultural engine, towards co-creating a resilient, local living economy. Though it can often be a challenge to balance the more commercially-oriented production enterprises with the learning and research programming, this inherent tension zone, when navigated gracefully and with good will, provides the creative spark that enlivens the being of Hawthorne Valley and spawns the experiences that comprise her rich biography.
It is a high honor and privilege to walk to work each morning to a learning community that is committed to creating a place in which it is possible to become, in a true sense, a full human being. Where people heal through the experience of working with land and each other, working with animals, preparing meals together, hearing the joyful noise of a thriving school community, all in this very special place. That is the primary intention of the Hawthorne Valley Association—to participate in the birth of a new consciousness story, one that tells the human story and the earth’s story in a way that strives to set an example of some of the highest ideals of community.
Martin Ping is the Executive Director of Hawthorne Valley Association and has been there for than 20 years. During that time he has taught practical arts in the High School served as director of facilities at Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School, and served as project manager on several million dollars of new construction projects. For the past nine years as Executive Director, he has focused his attention on developing the working relationships amongst the Association’s diverse enterprises, the 160 co-workers, and the broader community in the Upper Hudson/Berkshire region. He has been instrumental in initiating several new programs at Hawthorne Valley and supporting similar initiatives nationally and globally.
This article was originally published in the Fall 2012 RSF Quarterly.
Nikki Henderson (People’s Grocery, Shared Gifting grantee) and Cheryl Vasconcellos (Hana Health,borrower) are leading the charge to ensure healthy, quality food for all. Working in two very different locales, West Oakland and rural Hawaii, we decided to bring them together to share their experiences. Catch the podcast for more of our Clients in Conversation.
Ted: Can you both give us a brief introduction to your work?
Nikki: People’s Grocery has been around for 10 years now with a mission to improve the health and economy of West Oakland through the local food system. We do nutrition education, gardens, cooking classes and all of the typical individual behavior change activities. In the last couple of years, we’ve moved a bit more toward partnerships and leadership development to build the capacity of people in the community to solve their own problems around food and health.
Our main program now is called the Growing Justice Institute, a leadership development program where we work with people from West Oakland who are really interested in food and health, to co-design a local food project.
People’s Grocery teaches Oakland youth about healthy eating and delivers fresh food to underserved communities.
Our direct service programming really sits with our strategic partnerships. Two of our top programs include a garden at the California Hotel, which is a low-income housing structure in West Oakland and the “Bite to Balance program” at Highland Hospital in Oakland. Families who have children dealing with childhood obesity or diet-related disease get a free grub box with nutrition education for six months. The hospital tracks their health outcomes to record the changes in their health based on different nutrition behaviors. We’re about to start that up again this year with hopefully 100 families.
Cheryl: Hana Health is a non-profit, federally qualified health center that serves the unmet healthcare needs of the low-income Native population in Hana, which is a very small, isolated, rural community.
We’re trying to address the local social determinants of health — high rates of unemployment, lack of education, and lack of a stable, nutritious food supply. So we have several programs in addition to the medical center, which provides the full range of primary care services, dental and behavioral healthcare.
The Hana Fresh certified organic farm has grown from one acre to seven acres in full production. From this we run a daily farm market for the Hana community where we sell fresh produce and prepared foods.
Our approach to prevention has been on a stealth basis. We make sure we have good food that people will want to eat at the market. We don’t ever refer to it as healthy. We refer to it as really good. And it’s taken off—the community is really enjoying it.
We were operating the full service program in a 75-year-old, 100 square foot kitchen up until we were able to get the building permit for our new nutrition center, which, thanks to RSF, we were able to finish.
Ted: It’s hard to imagine two places that are more different than Hana, Hawaii, population – 2200 and Oakland at 400,000 with more than 10 times the density. However, both of you are working in the same space—the intersection of food, health, and economic development. Why focus on three things instead of one?
Nikki: In the community we work with in West Oakland, you can’t really talk about anything without talking about economic development. People aren’t going to take us seriously because times are just so hard. People need to have a good job to meet their basic needs.
If we’re talking about health without connecting it to the day-to-day realities, then we’re not going to be relevant. Bringing food into health is part of the inspiration that’s needed when people are living in survival mode. For example, in West Oakland, we just came off of a month of a lot of deaths of young people because when summer comes, temperatures rise, and that’s usually when there’s a rash of killing. August is always a somber time in West Oakland. When you have things like that, that you can anticipate, it helps to focus anything you do with an orientation towards celebration and healing of the spirit and the soul. It’s a way to stay relevant and to be a positive force in the community. Food is healing to the soul.
Ted: Cheryl, how does economic development manifest in the work you do?
Cheryl: Well definitely in job creation. We are able to provide good jobs to a community that has very few options just by virtue of its size. We know that good jobs are a key determinant of good health.
Our Nutrition Center as well as the Hana Fresh Farm are also economic drivers in this community because the money that’s generated through the programs are pretty much kept within the district. People work, get a paycheck, and spend their money at the local stores, which create additional jobs. That’s actually a big part of what we do.
Hana Health serves up fresh food along with education and care.
We also had to look at economic development initiatives out of necessity because the state was no longer willing to fully subsidize the medical center. How could we keep healthcare in the community, when the funds clearly were not going to be there? So, we looked at what we could do on our own that would be mission driven while at the same time creating a financial base to support the health center.
Ted: The Rand Corporation has said that there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in the neighborhood and obesity among children and adolescents. Is this your experience?
Cheryl: I don’t know that I fully accept that. From our experience in Hana, we know that in making fresh produce available to the community, the community’s eating habits are changing. We’re tracking how people are eating. And we’ve been able to document that they have increased their consumption of fresh produce by one serving a day.
That’s not a lot, but it’s a step in the right direction. We know that people are eating vegetables who never ate vegetables before.
Nikki: What I’ve seen is that if you drop a grocery store into the middle of the community, things don’t necessarily change. People are going to buy the same things in grocery stores that they bought at liquor stores if there’s not engagement around the types of food they’re eating.
We have found that if we just do a nutrition demonstration, that’s probably not enough to change behavior. But if there’s a cooking class in addition to ongoing engagement through the California Hotel, people’s behaviors are absolutely changing.
Ted: What can we do to make healthy food more affordable?
Nikki: The thing about affordable food is that objectively speaking, producing healthy food is incredibly labor and resource intensive. In the U.S., that incredibly resource-intensive thing that all societies must learn how to do was started the wrong way from the very beginning with the way that we subsidized agriculture using free labor, and we’ve never quite recovered from that.
One of the reasons why I go that far back is because I think the normal foodie’s answer to that is that the government subsidizes bad food, which is why it’s cheaper. That’s absolutely true. But the government has always subsidized agriculture in a way that hasn’t really been healthy for those producing the food or for those eating the food.
There’s a fundamental culture shift that has to happen with the way that our entire monetary system works around food. We need to create a system where everywhere on the food chain there will be monetary incentives to produce quality food as opposed to cheap, nasty food.
Ted: Why have you chosen to incorporate enterprise into your mission?
Cheryl: I wanted to approach our mission in a bigger way because it would have been very easy for me coming to Hana 15 years ago to just run a small medical clinic that provided decent medical care to the community.
But in a community of this size and nature, and given the native population here, I felt that if we couldn’t have a bigger impact than just operating a clinic in this small little community, there’s not a whole lot of hope for the rest of the world.
With Hana Health it really is more than just having a medical center. It’s about addressing the social and economic determinants of health. And of course, we need money to operate. So I think it was kind of natural to start looking at enterprise and economic development strategies for increasing wealth and creating jobs.
Nikki: We have to look at the sustainability of a community when it comes to how it’s going to get healthy food forever and not just right now.
It’s just so expensive to have a food system that subsidizes unhealthy food, and then an economic system that leaves a lot of people unemployed so that the emergency food system is totally overloaded.
Self-sustainability and financial sustainability was a conversation from the very beginning. That’s actually why I think enterprise has always been a focal point of what People’s Grocery has done, because we don’t want people to be relying heavily on emergency food systems forever. We want them to be able to sustainably get healthy food, so we had to try to figure out a way to do that. That’s why enterprise.
Ted: Thank you both.
Nikki Henderson is the Executive Director of People’s Grocery. Nikki began her work in social justice through the foster care system in Southern California, having been raised with seven older foster brothers. She has worked closely with Green for All, fighting for a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty and as part of Slow Food USA, in Brooklyn, NY. Nikki holds Master’s Degree in African American studies from UCLA. People’s Grocery is an RSF Shared Gifting and Donor Advised Fund grantee.
Cheryl Vasconcellos has been the Executive Director of Hana Health since 1997. She is the past CEO of Planned Parenthood of Hawaii and has worked in Hawaii’s non-profit sector for thirty years. Cheryl began her career working with non-profit organizations as a VISTA volunteer placed with the Maui United Way. She attended Wayne State University in Michigan, and Hilo College and Chaminade University in Hawaii, studying Sociology and Business. Hana Health is a borrower of the RSF Social Investment Fund.
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RSF provides critical access to capital for path-breaking social enterprises.
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You’ve probably heard of the “new economy,” which often refers to social media, sharing-based businesses, and sometimes socially responsible businesses. RSF Social Finance is working to build the next economy: one that’s rooted in community, considers everyone’s needs, and restores trust in financial relationships through transactions that are direct, transparent and personal.