True Community Supported Agriculture

I'm currently part of a group of researchers here at UCD that's doing a study on CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture programs on farms here in the Central Valley of California. CSAs, for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, are subscription contracts between community members and farmers, basically consumers pay up front for goods (which can be produce, meat, eggs, dairy, processed farm goods) and the farmer, or CSA manager grows or procures that product and gives the consumer a weekly or bi-monthy portion of that product for a season. Now, as I'm learning doing this research, there are a lot of ways to run a CSA. Large and small, communities and farms are redefining the meaning of the traditional CSA.

As I've been driving to and fro in the Valley, hearing the trials and tribulations of farmer after farmer, I've been thinking-- what would true community support for agriculture look like. I'm not talking about the CSA- which, don't get me wrong, is revolutionary, definitely an exceptional way to turn traditional capitalist relationships of consumers and producers on it's head -- I'm talking beyond the CSA. What can whole communities- not just well meaning individuals in a community-- but entire municipalities, states, and dare I say- the feds, do to support agriculture.

Much of this thinking has been prompted by my Masters program in Community Development, witnessing the tangible ways that communities choose to support education, housing, healthcare-- why not agriculture? Again and again I speak to farmers who are struggling, who, despite their creativity, wit, and sheer physical force feel like they are fighting a loosing battle. In the midst of the most expansive time in the public history of alternative food systems, they feel unsupported.

I don't pretend to have the answer yet. My thinking lately has been towards securing land tenure for farms, renewing the Williamson Act (at least in California), increasing market access for beginning farmers, and increasing the willingness of the public to pay the true cost of food-- but I know there must be other more pragmatic ways that communities can truly support agriculture.

Back on the Farm

It's April again. A year ago I was moving into a tent at the top of the world, cutting down cover crop, and introducing myself to fifty new friends.

I'm a year older. And, just like the generations of 'farmies' before us, my partner and I returned to the farm last week to cook for the new apprentices. No longer am I part of the buzzing crowd entering the farm center. Instead I am behind the scenes, supporting them as they adjust to their new life. Supporting them as they move onto the top of the world, and introduce themselves to fifty new friends.

Life coming full circle. The passage of time marked by almost familiar faces, home-like spaces, and love shown through the simple act of cooking food.

Round House

Reflecting back, I've oft writen about the want to build a home. Most times, I've written about my passion for tiny houses, small victorians on wheels, built by ordinary people, with sensible ecological design.

Two weeks ago, and a short search on craigslist, brought a different sort of home into my life- a round house.

My partner lived in a yurt for most of his doctoral program. I loved staying over, surrounded by canvas and lattice, a simple pleasing design. A nest. He has suggested before that were it up to him to decide, he would remain a yurt dweller permanently. As this school year draws to a close, and we are looking to return to Santa Cruz, our hometown, and we had been discussing housing options. Enter craigslist. (A foot note here: craigslist is a splendidly dangerous adventure of a website, where I've bought, bartered and sold everything from chickens to cars. Browsers Beware! ) Anyway, enter craiglist. Thursday afternoon I was eating lunch, browsing the sale items on Bay Area list. There it appeared, a twenty food diameter, three year old (off-gassed), well kept yurt, minutes from down town Santa Cruz. I told D and less than 24 hours later, we were shaking hands with its now former owner. Within 48 hours, we had it on the back of a rental truck bound for its new home. Within a week, it was back up at its new site.

And what proud new round home owners we are...

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Health Care, A Small Sign of Reason.

It's 10:43 eastern standard time.

C-span is live streaming the health care debate into the kitchen here in Richmond Virginia. Yesterday, we spent the day in DC, observing angry picketers with signs that read 'Kill the Bill' and 'Stop Obama', proud confederate flags steaming over the crowd of thousands of white middle aged people on the capitol steps.

Damian and his mom infiltrated. Armed with a small sign of protest, protesting the protest, they waded through the crowd. Unnoticed. A small sign of reason.

As I write this, back in Richmond, C-span has erupted in applause. 219 votes, have passed the first of the three bills that spell

H-E-A-L-H C-A-R-E R-E-F-O-R-M.

Finally.

Finally a small sign of reason.

The Femivore’s Dilemma

This recent article in the New York Times speaks to the contradictions I feel often. As a feminist, my more reactionary political instincts often trigger when I talk about some of my favorite activities. Canning, gardening, baking pies from scratch, keeping chickens... for first wave feminists, all of these activities were things they were trying to escape, for me and many young women farmers that I know, we've come full circle, we're third wave femivores. Reclaiming the very activities that our mothers rejected. Ornstein speaks to grappling with that paradox in her article The Femivore's Dilemma below.

By PEGGY ORENSTEIN

Published: March 11, 2010

New York Times

Four women I know — none of whom know one another — are building chicken coops in their backyards. It goes without saying that they already raise organic produce: my town, Berkeley, Calif., is theVatican of locavorism, the high church of Alice Waters. Kitchen gardens are as much a given here as indoor plumbing. But chickens? That ups the ante. Apparently it is no longer enough to know the name of the farm your eggs came from; now you need to know the name of the actual bird.

All of these gals — these chicks with chicks — are stay-at-home moms, highly educated women who left the work force to care for kith and kin. I don’t think that’s a coincidence: the omnivore’s dilemma has provided an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming Betty Draper. “Prior to this, I felt like my choices were either to break the glass ceiling or to accept the gilded cage,” says Shannon Hayes, a grass-fed-livestock farmer in upstate New York and author of “Radical Homemakers,” a manifesto for “tomato-canning feminists,” which was published last month
Hayes pointed out that the original “problem that had no name” was as much spiritual as economic: a malaise that overtook middle-class housewives trapped in a life of schlepping and shopping. A generation and many lawsuits later, some women found meaning and power through paid employment. Others merely found a new source of alienation. What to do? The wages of housewifery had not changed — an increased risk of depression, a niggling purposelessness, economic dependence on your husband — only now, bearing them was considered a “choice”: if you felt stuck, it was your own fault. What’s more, though today’s soccer moms may argue, quite rightly, that caretaking is undervalued in a society that measures success by a paycheck, their role is made possible by the size of their husband’s. In that way, they’ve been more of a pendulum swing than true game changers.
Enter the chicken coop.
Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?
There is even an economic argument for choosing a literal nest egg over a figurative one. Conventional feminist wisdom held that two incomes were necessary to provide a family’s basic needs — not to mention to guard against job loss, catastrophic illness, divorce or the death of a spouse. Femivores suggest that knowing how to feed and clothe yourself regardless of circumstance, to turn paucity into plenty, is an equal — possibly greater — safety net. After all, who is better equipped to weather this economy, the high-earning woman who loses her job or the frugal homemaker who can count her chickens?
Hayes would consider my friends’ efforts admirable if transitional. Her goal is larger: a renunciation of consumer culture, a return (or maybe an advance) to a kind of modern preindustrialism in which the home is self-sustaining, the center of labor and livelihood for both sexes. She interviewed more than a dozen families who were pursuing this way of life. They earned an average of $40,000 for a family of four. They canned peaches, stuffed sausages, grew kale, made soap. Some eschewed health insurance, and most home-schooled their kids. That, I suspect, is a little further than most of us are willing to go: it sounds a bit like being Amish, except with a car (no more than one, naturally) and a green political agenda.
After talking to Hayes, I rushed to pick up my daughter from school. As I rustled up a quick dinner of whole-wheat quesadillas and frozen organic peas, I found my thoughts drifting back to our conversation, to the questions she raised about the nature of success, satisfaction, sustenance, fulfillment, community. What constitutes “enough”? What is my obligation to others? What do I want for my child? Is my home the engine of materialism or a refuge from it?
I understand the passion for a life that is made, not bought. And who doesn’t get the appeal of working the land? It’s as integral to this country’s character as, in its own way, Wal-Mart. My femivore friends may never do more than dabble in backyard farming — keeping a couple of chickens, some rabbits, maybe a beehive or two — but they’re still transforming the definition of homemaker to one that’s more about soil than dirt, fresh air than air freshener. Their vehicle for children’s enrichment goes well beyond a ride to the next math tutoring session.
I am tempted to call that “precious,” but that word has variegations of meaning. Then again, that may be appropriate. Hayes found that without a larger purpose — activism, teaching, creating a business or otherwise moving outside the home — women’s enthusiasm for the domestic arts eventually flagged, especially if their husbands weren’t equally involved. “If you don’t go into this as a genuinely egalitarian relationship,” she warned, “you’re creating a dangerous situation. There can be loss of self-esteem, loss of soul and an inability to return to the world and get your bearings. You can start to wonder, What’s this all for?” It was an unnervingly familiar litany: if a woman is not careful, it seems, chicken wire can coop her up as surely as any gilded cage.

Peggy Orenstein, a contributing writer, is the author of “Waiting for Daisy,” a memoir.

Rally to Save Public Education

I was in the state Capitol last Thursday, March Fourth, along with thousands of my fellow students, faculty, administrators and allies to support the refunding of Public Education. (That's me in the hat, holding up the N in a giant sign that read SAVE PUBLIC EDUCATION.) We were supporting the states return to California's Master Plan- whereby the state pledged support for free higher education for California's students. They have strayed from that plan. Constricted in part by a deadlock in the state senate, California has cut funding for public education, and people came out in mass Thursday to speak out against the trend. One of the best speakers at the Rally was George Lakoff, a professor at Berkeley, who began the drive that has resulted in the Californian's For Democracy Act- a ballot initiative that will change the votes needed by the state senate to raise taxes and/or pass the budget from the currently needed 2/3 majority, to a simple majority of 1/2. I encourage everyone to sign the petition for the ballot initiative. Currently, the initiative needs just over 550,000 more signatures before April 1st to make it onto the next election cycle. Click the title of the post to be taken to the website.

Hope

Perhaps it's the winter, or perhaps it's living in an antagonizing environment- maybe it's graduate school, an experience filled to the brim with facts and figures about how and why the world has gone mad- but I've felt overwhelmed lately. Definitely not the embodiment of the witty pollyanna I've always considered myself. My lack of self-reflection was allowing me to pass judgment, as I remarked to myself that perhaps 'cynicism is just a mark of getting older'.

However, spring is upon us, and I am creating the new possibility of hope. Hope that even though it seems as if the world is upside-down, that capitalism, sexism, racism, classism, globalization, and privatization of the commons are coming together in one giant convergence to tear apart everything that is right and good in the world- change is happening.

I see my friends growing vegetables, the proliferation of farmers markets, I see campaigns against obesity, for the refunding of public education, for local economies, slow money, community infrastructure, and movements that seek to redefine society into something that favors community support rather than surrender.

I need to remember, in all of my studies and passions, to focus on the positive. Pick myself up. Look in the mirror, assure myself that positive change is possible, and that I will be a part in its happening.

Are Academics Relevant?

A question I've been asking myself recently. Good to self-reflect, as I currently identify as one. I came across a journal article of the same title in a class recently. Randy Stoeker, and academic, community organizer, and participatory action researcher came up with this list for academic guidance. Love it. Especially the last one.

Another grey day in Davis but,

Daffodils.

Tulips.

Almond blossoms.

Allergies.

Harbingers of spring.

Not Voting with My Fork

The sustainable agriculture catch phrase "vote with your fork" has always plagued me. I understand its sentiment. The idea that we, as consumers, have the right to choose the type of business practices that we want to support with the 'vote' of our dollar is powerful. Originally it made me feel elated, like I had a voice in a decision and therefore could create a shift in the market towards what I value. I liked the idea that there was an alternative to what at the time seemed like an ineffectual process of voting in US elections, (which has continually landed us with appointed representatives who favor and fund the support of large scale industrial agriculture- save Kathleen Merrigan.) Voting with my fork (or dollar) seemed like a clear and easy way to encourage people to participate in choosing the type of agriculture they would like to support.

However, recently, the idea of 'voting' with my fork has rubbed me wrong. You see, we in the sustainable agriculture movement are conflating basic democratic principles, such as the concept of voting, with the tenets of free market capitalism, like the market will determine which enterprises succeed and which fail. And by encouraging people to 'vote with their fork' we will squander the limited attention of our audience on a method of 'voting' that at the end of the day will mean nothing in the face of the hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies, corporate write offs and contracts, and favorable legislation toward large agribusiness.

Instead of encouraging people to be better consumers, we should be encouraging them to be better citizens. We should instead be encouraging people to become increasingly active in civil society, to change the laws that make it rare for a small scale farmer, a beginning farmer, a sustainable farmer to be viable in todays economy. Yes we need to continue to support those enterprises economically, but until we change the political climate in which they operate, we'll all have to increase our appetites exponentially to change our food system.