A recent article questions whether food deserts – areas with minimal access to fresh fruits and vegetables – are as pervasive as some policymakers claimed. We recap a 2009 story about an area of Brooklyn where locals grow their own vegetables due to a lack of supermarkets, then host Bruce Gellerman updates talks with food writer and activist Mark Winne to update that story.

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Mark Winne…says that after years of reporting, he concluded that guerrilla gardening is a way for people to feel like they’re taking control of their lives and their communities. “It’s simple, but it’s true: Guerrilla gardening is just making the most of the resources and tools at hand to give your community what it needs.”

Read more by downloading this file: Guerrilla_Villano.pdf

Millions of people compete for the same space. They pave over the prime agricultural soil, carve out quarter-acre house lots, and build “middle-class” homes that sell for $600,000 each. Droughts and wildfires alternate with floods and typhoons while the billions of people who inhabit your far northern flank covet your land and agricultural skills with a hungry lust.

Welcome to Australia.

I was invited to Melbourne – a delightful modern metropolis with a dazzling array of eclectic architecture – to render what meager wisdom I had on the subject of promoting local food security and national food sovereignty. A public lecture sponsored by a national philanthropy, a seminar at a city university, and a workshop for the State of Victoria Health Department, were my venues. The audiences were a composite of food system activists not atypical to the United States – academics, young urban food warriors, and mid-level public service professionals. Each event had its own air of excitement, leavened perhaps by a sense of anticipation and joy that playfully marks food audiences everywhere.

My message? You have a choice between the global industrial food system and a new, emerging food system that is undergirded by a respect for locality, sustainability, and equity. The only choice you don’t have is to not choose. You can be an obedient food consumer and eat what they hand out, or you can muscle up some moxie and set the table to your own specifications. What else could a “can do” Yankee say to a country which appears to be as dominated by Big Food and the global marketplace as the U.S?

The Aussies were ready to listen. The most recent drought had been so bad that the University of Melbourne had sent out teams of mental health professionals to help psychologically distressed farmers. As if incurring the wrath of God, Australia’s unrelenting dryness was soon followed by floods that caused $800 million in agricultural damage in New South Wales alone. A just-released government report revealed that 61% of Australian adults were obese or overweight (one in four high school students were obese). Mining and energy interests, housing development, and countries as far away as Qatar were devouring Oz farmland. And if farmers weren’t taking enough hits, the nation’s duopolistic supermarket giants, Coles and Woolworths, were, according to numerous analyses, using “predatory practices” to drive down farm prices.

But when the Australians are ready to change they get all their oars in the water at the same time. The Labor government headed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard was working on the development of a national food plan, and the State of Victoria Health Department had announced a commitment of millions of dollars for the development of numerous local health plans that included the development of 12 local food policy councils. The latter effort was labeled by the Herald Sun, Australia’s largest daily newspaper, as a “massive, multi-million-dollar pilot project for councils (larger municipal jurisdictions) to come up with local food policies.”

The National Food Plan is, in the words of National Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig, a response to the fact that Australia has “no overarching food policy framework.” If you live in Canada, the U.S. or the United Kingdom, that charge will sound familiar. Clearly we would all benefit from an “integration of the whole food supply chain from paddock to plate.”

Australia’s Green Party, though in a distinctly minority position, has vigorously stated that it wants food policies that promote “food sovereignty, sustainability, and ensure that the social conditions of the people who produce food are just and fair, and promote equal access to fresh, affordable food.” They fervently attack the country’s current policies that undermine food sovereignty by valuing short term mining and gas extraction over agricultural land and water. These policies, according to the Greens, devalue local food systems and communities, and sustain a distorted domestic food market dominated by a handful of large corps. Hmmm. Where have I heard these arguments before?

As a sign of where local food policy might be headed, I checked in with Cultivating Community, a 17-staff, not-for-profit located in Melbourne. They develop edible classrooms, start community gardens, organize composting and recycling projects, and conduct “food politics advocacy.” Their purpose is “to create a fair, secure and resilient food future.” Michael Gourlay, the recently appointed executive director, told me that since he was new to the community food field, he had already read my books (now being actively distributed in Australia) to prepare him for the job. I suspect he’ll go far.

Another organization key to Australia’s food rebellion is the Food Alliance, a kind of academic and government hybrid that was established to “analyze and advocate for evidence-informed politics and regulatory reform that enable food security and healthy eating in the [State of] Victorian Population.” While not language that makes me grab my pitchfork and storm the barricades, it does represent the kind of initiative that can build the necessary bridges between research, change agents, and government. Their strategic plan is painstakingly outlined and bulleted, and every word shows evidence of hours of deep meditation, but it does vibrate with a restrained urgency that shows promise of promoting long-term food system change.

The threats to Australia’s food security are both internal and external. The symptoms are the same as those in every other industrialized nation. And the Aussies are taking a good long look in the mirror for the answers as they cultivate their inner food rebel.

Forward by Mark Winne

As a kid growing up in northern New Jersey, I acutely felt the tension between urban development and the fleeting remnants of a pastoral landscape. Living at the retreating edge of the Garden State’s former agrarian glory, I often wondered how Mother Earth could survive the onslaught of macadam, concrete, plastic, steel, and rubber. I would eventually find a kind of perverse solace in those hearty blades of grass and indefatigable dandelion shoots that muscled their way through the fissures in roadways and parking lots. They told me better than any science textbook could that no matter what abuse humankind may heap upon our planet, nature will not only survive, it will one day triumph.

But rather than wait (or in our bleaker moments hope) for some kind of Armageddon to wash away our mess, the satisfying and edifying stories told in Breaking Through Concrete make it abundantly clear that not only is it nature’s will to survive that matters, it’s humanity’s need to allow nature to flourish that may matter more. Urban farming, gardening, and growing – or whatever you want to call the phenomenon that is turning conventional food production on its head – is catching on faster than veggie wraps. Turning over manicured sod at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, removing rubble and covering old parking lots with compost in rust-belt Detroit, or raising growing beds on Brooklyn rooftops the way a community used to raise barns are the stories of the day.

Skeptics of course abound. Spokespersons for Big Farming and Big Food have turned their noses up at these so-called “urban aesthetes” and “utopian farmers” whose acreage is so small it can barely support a rototiller.  But with a billion of the globe’s people hungry, a billion undernourished, and another billion obese, conventional and industrial forms of agriculture have hardly earned bragging rights. Urban food production may not feed a hungry world, but as Breaking Through Concrete amply demonstrates, it certainly can feed a hungry spirit and a hunger for both nature and human connection. And as the world becomes less food secure every day, growing food in unconventional places will no longer be thought of as a nicety, like a flowerbox of petunias slung from a brownstone’s windowsill, but as a necessity born out of the looming realization that there will be 9 billion of us to feed by 2050. At the very least, one can think of urban farming as an insurance policy with a very small monthly premium  or a hedge fund with no downside risk.

As a child of the sixties, my world view was shaped as much by the devastation of the moment as it was by a wild, fantastical notion of the future. While Joni Mitchell may have told us, “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” Breaking Through Concrete reminds us that we can also rip up the parking lot and liberate paradise.

January 11&12 – Birmingham, Alabama – training for Alabama food policy council (1/11) and Birmingham-Jefferson County Food Policy Council. For more information contact Jennifer Ropa at bhamfoodsecurity@gmail.com.

January 21 – Santa Fe, New Mexico – 12:30 PM – Il Piatto Restaurant, 95 West Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM – Slow Food Santa Fe Luncheon and book talk.

January 31 – February 2 – Louisville, Kentucky – Presentation to the Louisville Food Policy Forum – 3:30 PM on 1/31. For more information contact Josh Jennings at joshua.jennings@louisvilleky.gov. Public lecture at the University of Louisville – 6:00 PM. For more information contact Dr. Lisa Markowitz at lisam@louisville.edu.

February 7&8 – Seattle, Washington – 7:00 PM – 2/8: Third Place Books (Ravenna location; www.ravenna.thirdplacebooks.com/contact.html). Book talk by Mark Winne. For more information contact Rita Weinstein at metermaid@q.com. 2/7 Sunset Hill Community Association – 5:30 PM – 3003 NW 66th St., Seattle. For more information see www.sunsethillcommunity.com. Sponsored by Sustainable Ballard www.sustainableballard.org.

February 16 – 18 – Dallas and Mesquite, Texas – Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association Annual Conference at the Mesquite Conference Center in Mesquite, TX. Food Policy Council workshop on 2/17, 8:30 to 11:30 AM; Dinner keynote address on 2/18 at 6:00 PM. For more information contact Lee McKay at info@tofga.org. February 16 – 7:00 Pm – First Unitarian Church of Dallas – 4015 Normandy, Dallas. Book talk and lecture by Mark Winne. For more information contact Charles McMullen at (214) 884-1221 or Susie Marshall at susie@gleantexas.org.

February 23 – Albuquerque, New Mexico – 7:00 PM at Bookworks on Rio Grande Ave. Talk by Mark Winne. For more information contact Bookworks.

March 2 – Washington, DC – presentation to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Board of Directors. For more information contact Maggie Biscarr at MBiscarr@aarp.org.

March 20 – Omaha, Nebraska – training for Douglas County Food Policy Council. For more information contact Amy Yaroch at ayaroch@centerfornutrition.org.

March 13 & 14 – San Diego, CA – The Association of American Indian Physicians Annual Conference – Plenary talk and workshop by Mark Winne. For more information contact Noelle Kleszynski at nkleszynski@aaip.org.

March 22 – 24 – Lexington, Kentucky – Bluegrass Local Food Summit – Keynote address on March 22; food policy workshop on March 23. For more information contact Jim Embry at embryjim@gmail.com.

March - 28- 30 – Melbourne, Australia – Several appearances on behalf of hunger and policy organizations. For more information contact Laurie Staub at staublaurie12@hotmail.com.

April 24-25 – Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – Pennsylvania Nutrition Education Network 2012 Annual Conference. Keynote address at dinner on April 24; food policy workshop on April 25. For more information contact Rose Pallotta-Cleland at rcleland@phmc.org.

April 26 – Columbus, Ohio – Food policy council training and campus/community lecture – Sponsored by Ohio State University. For more information contact Nick Benson at benson.229@osu.edu.

May 8 – Washington, DC – National Healthy Food Financing Initiative Convening – Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health – 700 Second St. NE, Washington, DC – Mark Winne presents as part of a panel on community engagement and food access. For more information contact  Allison Hagey at allison@policylink.org.

May 9 – New Orleans, LA – Presentation at NeighborWorks Conference. For more information contact Michael Brown at mjbrown246@gmail.com.

May 10 & 11 – San Antonio, Texas – various appearances and keynote address for regional food summit. For more information contact Leslie Provence at lprovence@sbcglobal.net.

May 22 – 24 – Asheville, NC – Kellogg Food and Community Conference.

June 5 & 6 – Camden, New Jersey – training with City of Camden Food Security Advisory Board and presenting at a fundraiser for the Camden’s Children Garden. For more information contact Michael Devlin at mdevlin@camdenchildrensgarden.org.

June 19 & 20 – Macon, Georgia – presentation to the Central GA Food Policy Council Regional Meeting on June 19. Presentation to the Georgia Food Policy Council on June 20. Both events at the Macon Marriott City Center Hotel. For more information contact Debra Kibbe at dkibbe@gsu.edu.

I have to put documentary food films in the same category. Like food books, there are way too many food films, many of which I willingly and unwillingly have sat through because I’ve become an obedient slave to the notion that pictures are the only way to get people to act or eat differently. Unfortunately, like many books out there, too many food flicks just don’t satisfy my hunger for wisdom, insight, or entertainment. That is until I saw ”Food Stamped,” a tale of the charming Potash husband/wife filmmaking couple who turn the camera on themselves while taking on the challenge of eating healthfully and locally on a food stamp budget. They are funny, self-deprecating, and delightfully human in the way they stroll through the supermarket aisle, past farmers’ market stands, and stand shoulder to shoulder in their own kitchen trying to make it all work.

So before this blog turns into a film review, let me urge you to give “Food Stamped” a chance. I think it will help you end up in a better place. Enjoy!

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD! FOOD STAMPED is a first-person documentary on the challenge of eating healthy on a food stamp budget. Called ENTERTAINING, EDUCATIONAL, and INSPIRING by the San Francisco Chronicle, the film won the Grand Jury Prize at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, has been featured on CNN Money, and was a recommended film for the first annual Food Day. Order your DVD today! http://www.facebook.com/l/ZAQGnOxElAQEt7xVyPV-SNwsUO7cowLDOFXLDsZbvTKTcKg/www.foodstamped.com/buy-the-dvd

Maryland’s eastern shore is the heart of Big Chicken country. Here, Perdue and Tyson manage the devil’s workshop where chickens come off the factory line looking like McNuggets with legs. Sharing a pulpit with Baltimore public radio host Marc Steiner, two local farmers, and another journalist, we showed Food, Inc. to a SRO crowd at Salisbury University. As someone who has seen the flick a dozen times, I was surprised that this was its first showing on the Eastern Shore. But I soon learned why. Not only were half the buildings and streets named after members of the Perdue family, rumor was that Perdue executives had asked the University to not screen the documentary. Not only do animals sometimes suffer at the hands of Big Ag, so does the First Amendment.

The audience was roughly divided between benighted representatives of the poultry industry and outspoken numbers of sustainable food advocates.  When the house lights came up, the feathers flew. The poultry people gave as good as they got, and absolutely nobody turned the other cheek. While I may rain fire and brimstone down on factory farming, there is a part of me that prays for a way to heal communities like Salisbury.

There was far less conflict in the liberal bastions of Bethesda and Boston. At the Cedar Lane Unitarian-Universalist Church I delivered a lecture to a large audience of metro-Washingtonian alternative food believers whose national denomination had recently adopted a statement of ethical eating. Though I was clearly preaching to the choir, it was heartening to know that hundreds of thousands of Unitarian-Universalists are united in the good food cause.

In Boston (more precisely Cambridge), I stood nervously before an assemblage of Harvard Law School students who had invited me to speak on local and state food policy. While addressing the future masters of the universe can be intimidating, they are just like students I encounter everywhere, in thrall to food and food issues. They have established the Harvard Food Law Clinic which is sending the best and the brightest to places like the Mississippi Delta to unravel ancient local food codes to better serve a bourgeoning local food movement.

Moving from the blue states to the red, I arrived in Oklahoma. My mission: enable 50 people who had been invited to a full-day workshop to establish a state food policy council. While not exactly a mission impossible, my hope for a positive outcome were severely shaken by some chilling remarks. One farmer complained about those “lazy housing project residents who won’t work on my farm.” I then overheard one redneck farmer warn a state legislator that the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) was the only way to deal with “invasive gov’mint regulations.”  And I was firmly upbraided by one Oklahoma State University economics professor who told me that it was capitalism that should be thanked for making so much cheap, safe food available to Americans.

Iowa proved to be more fertile ground for progressive thinking. There, I had the opportunity to share some words at the one year anniversary meeting of the Iowa Food System’s Council. The group is a newly formed non-profit organization that wants to ensure “that Iowa has a just and diverse food system, which supports healthier people, communities, economies and the environment.” As I was signing books, however, I was confronted by a plant science professor from Iowa State University who wanted to make sure that I understood that GMOs, CAFOs, and agro-chemicals shouldn’t be blamed for anything. I smiled, listened, and wondered to myself why, with all the energy across this great land of ours to build a new food system out of the shell of the old that the old guard continues to fight a rearguard action.

Admittedly, food justice and sustainability are still but a distant glow on the horizon for many. Those with a vested interest in the industrial food system retain a tenacious and sometimes hostile grip on the status quo. As the numbers of advocates for sustainable, local, and healthy food grow, so it seems does the gulf between us and them. Though this preacher has not yet found the words to mend the rift, I’m not ready to wall myself off from the world in my organic garden. Keep the faith!

If anything, the industrial food system has become as ornery as an old mule and angry as a penned up bull. We see it in the American Farm Bureau that has assembled a $30 million war chest to persuade our fellow citizens that factory farmed, genetically modified, and antibiotic-infused food is not only good for us, but necessary to feed a hungry world. We see it in the food industry’s attempts to preempt local regulations (Cleveland) to ban trans-fats by reserving that right exclusively for the state (Ohio). And we see it in the actions of Wal-Mart and Pepsi who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars on food charities to use them in the same way that terrorists use women and children to shield them from their attackers. The battle, in other words, is no longer only for healthy food, clean air and water, and a just and sustainable food system; it’s now a fight for freedom and democracy.

Karla Cook, editor of The Food Times, said it well in a new blurb that adorns the paperback’s backcover: “Mark Winne lays out the battle lines for democracy itself….Reasserting our control in the face of power, relearning skills that have atrophied, and rediscovering a triumphant kind of individualism that embraces both the self and community are the goals.”

As I say in Food Rebels, the time has come to get our hands in the soil, our veggies on the chopping block, and our voices down at city hall. The time has come as well to occupy Wall Street, but you’d be remiss if you didn’t also occupy your bookshelf with a copy of Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’ Mamas.

September 13 – Passaic County, New Jersey – half-day food policy council training (by invitation only) in Passaic County New Jersey. Exact location TBA. For more information contact Ucheoma Akobundu at ucheoma@unitedwaypassaic.org.

September 15 – Bloomington, Indiana – “America’s Food System – A Cause for Concern, A Time for Action,” a community lecture by Mark Winne at the Bloomington/Monroe County Convention Center – 7:00 PM. For more information contact Michael Simmons at simmonsm@bloomington.in.gov

September 20 – Buffalo, New York – food policy training workshop as part of local food summit followed by evening Food Rebels book event. For more information contact Jessie Hersher at jhersher@bnmc.org.

October 1 – New Orleans, Louisiana – “Hunger, Factory Farms, and GMOs: Where’s the Rage?” a community lecture by Mark Winne. 5:00 PM. First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, 2930 Jefferson Ave. (corner of South Claiborne). For more information contact Jyaphia Christos-Rodgers at jyaphia@aol.com or Cathy Cohen at cathynola@earthlink.net.

October 4 – Silver City, New Mexico – Evening talk by Mark Winne in conjunction with Grant County Food Policy Council Awards Banquet. For more information contact Andrea Sauer at asauer@grmc.org.

October 6 – Chicago, Illinois – Food Policy Council training and book signing with Mark Winne. For more information contact Lara Jaskiewicz at lara.jaskiewicz@phimc.org.

October 11 – Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut – afternoon panel on food, hunger, and sustainable farming with Mark Winne and Connecticut food system experts. For more information contact Caitlin Aylward at caylward@wesleyan.edu.

October 12 – Hartford, Connecticut – keynote for Hartford Food Policy Council awards banquet – For more information contact Gloria McAdam at gmcadam@foodshare.org.

October 13 – Old Saybrook, Connecticut – Keynote for food security forum at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. This event is sponsored by the Rockfall Foundation. For more information contact Claire Rusowicz at crusowicz@rockfallfoundation.org.

October 14 – Olympia, Washington – 7:00 PM – Community lecture as part of community-wide food summit. For more information contact TJ Johnson at tjjohnson@scattercreek.com.

October 21 – University of Montana, Missoula, Montana – Keynote presentation as part of “Beyond the Breadbowl: Hunger, Excess, and the American Appetite.” For more information contact Valerie Coulter at v.coultermt@gmail.com.

October 24 – Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana – 1:00 PM – public lecture by Mark Winne. For more information contact Alison Harmon at harmon@montana.edu.

October 27 – Peterborough, Ontario – 7:00 PM – lecture and panel discussion by Mark Winne for the Bring Food Home conference. For more information contact Ravenna Nuaimy-Barker at 641-348-0235

November 8 – Cape Charles, Virginia – 6:00 PM – The Palace Theater – Panel presentation with Mark Winne, David Kirby, Carole Morison, and Ted Wycall. Moderated by Marc Steiner. Sponsored by Food and Water Watch and Virginia Eastern Shorekeeper. For more information contact Kathy Phillips at coastkeeper@actforbays.org.

November 9 – Salisbury, Maryland – 6:30 PM – Henson Hall, Salisbury University. Same panel and contact information as the Cape Charles, VA event.

November 10 – Chambersburg, Pennsylvania – Wilson College – Regional food system conference – Keynote address by Mark Winne. For more information contact Cheryl Burns at cburns@capitalrcd.org.

November 12 – Bethesda, Maryland – 2:00 PM – Mark Winne will deliver the Kiplinger Lecture at the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church, 9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, Maryland. For more information contact Kenneth Jones at Kenneth.a.jones162.civ@mail.mil.

November 15 – Harvard Law School – Cambridge, Massachusetts – 12:00 noon – Mark Winne will address the Harvard Food Law Society. For more information contact Nate Rosenberg at nrosenberg@jd11.law.harvard.edu.

November 17 – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – Food Policy Council training for the State of Oklahoma. For more information contact Jason Harvey at Jason.harvey@ag.ok.gov.

November 18 – Des Moines, Iowa – Keynote for Iowa Food System Council annual meeting. For more information contact Angie Tagtow or go to www.iowafoodsystemcouncil.org.