Projects to Finish

Tools for Food System Planners

2011-12-29T18:55:00.001-05:00

The food system is a complex beast. It involves the production, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food, ideally in an equitable, environmentally responsible way. The food system also plays an important role in a multitude of disciplines including public health, economic development, environmental stewardship, and urban planning, to name a few. With so many moving parts, how does one come to terms with the dynamic food system, and more importantly, how do you plan for it?

Numerous communities have undertaken this very task as of late, resulting in a lot of different approaches to the same complex set of issues. In a paper I co-authored recently published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development, my authors and I put together a list of tools at the disposal of practitioners in this emerging field, and briefly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each. You have to be a subscriber to gain access to the entire document, but here is the abstract:

Food system planning is an emerging field engaging planners and planning organizations, civic leaders, citizens, food policy councils, and others interested in creating more sustainable food systems. Planning practices are being developed to address the complex soil-to-soil food system, which spans production to consumption to reuse and recycling of waste. Community engagement is critical to fostering interactions within the full spectrum of food system stakeholders — from farmers and ranchers to planners and local officials to individual and institutional consumers. A growing body of assessment tools is being developed to inform this process. As most of these tools are relatively new, there is little research that addresses the different methodologies or evaluates their use as planning tools. This paper outlines a variety of approaches and suggests further research to evaluate their efficacy.

The tools we profile include foodshed assessments, comprehensive food system assessments and plans, community food security assessments, food asset maps, food desert assessments, land inventory food assessments, local food economy assessments, and food industry assessments. Check out page 5 for a table that spells out the purpose, methodology, limitations and a few examples of each assessment tool. This paper should be useful for any food policy council, regional planning agency or food-related organization that is thinking about studying/planning for their local food system.

I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Julia Freedgood of American Farmland Trust and Ken Meter of Crossroads Resource Center for all of their work as the other two co-authors on this paper. Also, thank you to Duncan Hilchey & Amy Christian of JAFSCD for allowing us to revise and resubmit 5 times.

The Importance of Networks in a Down Economy

2011-11-17T16:31:00.000-05:00

It goes without saying that the people that make up your community, both online and IRL matter. The success of a person, an idea or even a movement depend upon the number and quality of relationships between individuals. And if you're one of the 18.2% of Americans who is currently underemployed, your social networks could prove to be the most valuable asset you've got.

Connections on Facebook, visualized

Social networks, while hard to quantify, are themselves important economic drivers. Strong social networks encourage idea exchanges in In a recent piece for the Atlantic Richard Florida explains the role of social networks in the economy thusly: "jobs requiring the highest level of social skill are the most concentrated in the very largest metro areas--where, combined with the high prevalence of analytic skill, they underpin faster rates of innovation and growth." To put it more simply (and butcher the old cliche), in creative economies it's not just what you know, but who you know.

In his best-selling book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell acknowledges the importance of a personality type he calls "connectors." Connectors, (along with the other two types, Salesmen and Mavens), are responsible for creating social epidemics - the kinds of wide-scale changes that turn quirky styles in to trends, and causes in to movements. Gladwell defines a connector as someone who knows everyone in the world and how to bring those people together, but I would argue that everyone has a little bit of connector in them. Even if your network is small, it likely spans different social groups and incorporates people with different areas of expertise. Knowing who knows what can be just as valuable as knowing that information yourself.

NESAWG

Shifting gears from theory to action, I had the opportunity to attend the annual NESAWG conference in Albany this past weekend. NESAWG is a collection of food policy advocates, farmers, academics, and eaters that considers itself a social impact network. After a weekend full of mixers, working groups, and roundtables it's not surprising that my group's biggest action item was to create an online platform where we can continue to collaborate and share resources - i.e. network. (Stay tuned on this project -- I'm leading the charge and am quite excited about it)

On an even more personal note, my networks have helped me immensely over the past few years. Whether its a small thing like finding a specific article or something more important like introducing me to a prospective employer, I've been assisted in countless ways by my friends and professional contacts. And now that I've graduated and am facing some of the grimmest job prospects in recent history, I've found myself falling back on my networks. Over the past few weeks I've been excited and inspired by the creative ideas coming from my equally overeducated and underemployed friends. We know there is a lot of work to be done to make our communities more just and resilient, its just a matter of figuring out how to turn that work in to paying jobs. Both for ourselves and for others.

And perhaps this is all just an elaborate way to justify going out for a drink on a weeknight with a few friends and strangers. Call it socializing, call it networking, call it slightly reckless. Whatever you call it, if you're committed to social and environmental change its important to continuously build your network. You never know when you'll need to call back on that connection as a resource,

The Job Creating Potential of Local Food Systems

2011-09-20T23:33:00.002-04:00

Jobs, jobs, jobs. Although the recession is technically over, the (nonfarm) unemployment rate is holding constant at 9.1% and the American public are understandably nervous about their ability to find well-paying middle class jobs. On the federal front, both the President and a new crop of potential replacements are pitching their plans to get America working again. On the food front, Good Food advocates are shifting their focus to promote the job-creating potential of the local food movement. On the surface, this makes a lot of sense. Local food jobs cannot be outsourced, they are Green, the multiplier effect ensures that more money circulates in the region, and you don't need to have years of formal schooling to land one (although sometimes it doesn't hurt). However, often these jobs are low-paying, seasonal, and physically demanding. What follows are a few highlights of the local food system job boon, as well as a reminder that the slogan "will work for food" can be both a rallying cry and a disheartening sign of the times.

Researchers and Job Searchers Agree

from the Union of
Concerned Scientists

In recent months, several key reports have come out that highlight the prospects of a national strategy focused on food-related job creation. A summary report recently released by the Union of Concerned Scientists cites numerous studies to make the case that farmers markets create wealth in a number of ways. Regional studies such as the those conducted for Northeast Ohio or by Ken Meter at the Crossroads Research Center use input-output models to demonstrate where money in the food system is leaking out of the region. These analyses are helpful for policymakers to determine what areas of the food system need shoring up in order to ensure that food system jobs and money stay in the region.

And its not just the academics who are touting the food system as a job builder. A whole host of food-specific job sites have popped up, including Good Food Jobs and Sustainable Food Jobs (now defunct). Industry blogs like Food+Tech Connect and Grown in the City have also recently added job boards.

What are local food jobs?
Sustainable agriculture certainly requires more people-power than conventional farming methods, but despite the long hours a farmhand might work, they are exempt from overtime pay and are likely not paid at all during the off-season. Beyond the farm, much of the Good Food movement is being carried out by non-profits, who (especially in this economic climate) are increasingly relying on poorly-paid or unpaid interns rather than full-time staff.

Veritable Vegetable, a distributor of regionally
sourced, certified organic produce

But the real story behind local food system job creation may potentially lie in the promotion of jobs in the local distribution, processing, and wholesaling sectors. As the global agricultural system has taken over these sectors have declined in many parts of the country. While these jobs may be less sexy than the idea of a small-farmer, they are certainly still very necessary to truly scale up the impact of a regional food system.

Earlier this year, Green For All, a green collar job advocacy group released a report called "Green Jobs in a Sustainable Food System." The report outlines the workers employed in each sector of the food system and spotlights a few innovative approaches to employment in each section, including the fair-wage organic produce distributors Veritable Vegetable, and companies that include workforce training programs as a part of their business model, like Sweet Beginnings LLC. The value of this report is the reminder that a local food job is not inherently better than a regular old food system job. Good Food Jobs provide opportunities where they might not have existed otherwise, but also pay well enough to support a family, are conducted in safe working conditions, and provide ample space for personal autonomy and professional growth.

A pessimist might point out that if the economy keeps tanking we might end up creating a class of poorly paid farm and food-workers who provide edible treats for our increasingly wealthy elite overlords. Hyperbole aside, the food system world holds a lot of promise for job creation and community economic development, but it shouldn't be pursued blindly. Careful consideration needs to be paid to the quality of jobs we are advocating for, not just the quantity.

3 Things Farmers Markets Do Well, and 3 They Don't

2011-08-08T14:10:00.002-04:00

I've been working at two different farmers markets this summer, one in Copley Square in downtown Boston, and the other in Medford, a suburb just outside. In a lot of ways these markets have been the perfect summer job: I get to be outside, I get to meet interesting farmers and food entrepreneurs, I get to talk about food all day, and I get to take home A LOT of local organic produce. During my time at these two markets I've had an opportunity to think about the larger implications of farmers markets. I've come to realize that farmers markets are a dynamic space and do a lot of good, but they shouldn't be the linchpin of a local food or business movement. Here are my takeaways, starting with what works.

What's Good

A pop-up community space in Medford

1. Enlivening public spaces - At their most basic level, farmers markets are a temporary creative use of a public space. They provide a festival atmosphere and encourage people to stop and stay a while in an otherwise banal or previously explored place. The Medford Farmers Market is like a lot of other markets in that it takes place in a parking lot - a place that normally no one would be interested in visiting on its own. Most market-goers stop to chat with friends and acquaintances they see there, or make small-talk with strangers about tonight's meal plans. The farmers market builds connections between people by engaging them in this public space, and the community is stronger because of it.

2. New food business incubators - Farmers markets have a very low barrier to entry. If you make a stellar set of salsas, all you need is a tent, some tables, health permits and the registration fees to start bringing your salsa to market. You don't need to start a marketing campaign to get your item into the grocery stores, and you don't need to plop down thousands to open up a brick-and-mortar facility of your own. A handfull of the vendors at the Medford Farmers Market just started business less than a year ago and view the market as a way to sell their product, but also as a way to get the word out and continue to build their brand from there.

Copley Square Farmers Market, photo by Atlas Farm

3. Increasing food literacy - farmers markets are fun in part because there are so many odd vegetables you don't catch at the grocery store. Kohlrabi! Currants! Pattypan Squash! These guys have disappeared from shelves in favor of the more standard broccoli, grapes and zucchini, but they are a treat to encounter at markets. If you don't already know what to do with them, you've got the farmer on hand to answer questions and give tips about how to turn them in to a meal. Recipe sharing is a big part of farmers markets. Ideas getting sent out through newsletters, websites, painted signs, and between customers. A fully different form of food literacy is also improved through the very existence of the market in and of itself. One could consider it a 10,000 sq ft billboard for healthy fruits and vegetables. Farmers markets are a great reminder that you can still eat healthy and locally, even if you're in a bustling urban center like downtown Boston.

What's not so good

A farmers market can't compete with this.
image from How Stuff Works.

1. Combatting food insecurity - There is a lot of rhetoric about food deserts lately, and some see farmers markets as a tool to combat them. Despite the potent vision and good feelings surrounding the idea of a farmers market setting up shop in an underserved community, they aren't enough to fully grapple with the problem. Markets are open one day a week (two if you're lucky), meaning that unless you do all your shopping then, the rest of the week you're stuck with the regular offerings. Moreover, imagine an entire neighborhood all shopping at the same place during the same 4 to 6 hour window. Not going to happen. Sure, it's a step forward (certainly the additional food literacy helps matters), but other, more consistent healthy food options need to be the main priority.

2. Changing the food economy - Direct to consumer sales get a lot of press for decreasing the number of middlemen between farm and plate and increasing the amount of money that goes directly back to the farmer. However, in Massachusetts only 8.6% of the $489 million in agricultural sales came from direct to consumer sales (The totals for the whole US are $297 billion in sales, $1.2 billion of which are direct). One could argue that this means that there should be more market opportunities so that more farms could participate in direct-to-consumer sales, but from an economic standpoint I'm not convinced. Farmers markets take time away from the farmer to do what they're good at - farming, to spend time doing something that they're not as good at - marketing. Add that to the amount of time that it takes to set-up and break-down the market each day (3 hours at Copley for only a 7 hour market day), the time it takes to drive from farm to market, and the additional staff hours surrounding the market stand, its easy to conclude that farmers markets aren't a pinnacle of economic efficiency. In terms of promoting local foods, I like Food Hubs a lot better, and to decrease the amount of farm and staff time CSAs are better. This is all a matter of opinion, of course, and I'd welcome your critique.

3. Diversifying the food movement - I've heard a number of people timidly approach my market stand and mention to their friends that they've avoided farmers markets because they are overwhelming and intimidating. The rush of people, the unusual atmosphere of the locale and the perception that organic and local food is for white, upper-middle class people, my markets can sometime lack the diversity I'd want to see in a truly thriving communal space. Some attempts to appeal to more diverse audiences have been made, such as making traditional crops like calalloo and tsoi sim available, which is definitely a start. I'd like to congratulate both farmers markets for going through the process to be able to accept food stamps, as well. However, farmers markets don't seem to be the point that grabs people to the cause - they are a place for pocketbook activism rather than movement building.

In the end, farmers markets certainly hold a lot of merit, but will not revolutionize the food movement on their own. And no one ever claimed that farmers markets were the be-all-end-all in local food procurement, but its been great to be able to come to these conclusions on my own. If you've got an observation of your own about them, or would like to dispute something above that I said, please do! I'd love to start a healthy dialogue.

A few things I've been up to

2011-06-29T13:28:00.002-04:00

Hello friends and readers,
I haven't been updating as frequently as I'd like. As a way of apologizing, here are some of the things that I've been doing that have kept me from posting.

Vegetable garden in front of the Tufts library. I participated in a work-day with Tufts New Entry Sustainable Farming Project to install vegetables on campus in a space usually occupied by ornamentals. Check out a twitpic from earlier this month (courtesy of @TuftsUniversity) to the right. This coincides with a library display that I was peripherally involved with as well. Check it out if you're in the area. New Entry does some great work training young and immigrant farmers to have a profitable farm business in New England. Go peruse their website, and sign up for their CSA next year. It's great.
I am now the manager of the Medford Farmers Market. I'm working part-time this summer and its been a great experience to learn the nuts and bolts of setting up a temporary marketplace. I've met a lot of great, dedicated people and am excited to see where the season takes us.
Tufts Research Day on Sustainability.
My friend Jeff Hake and I put together a poster on our work for a new proposal, the Tufts Community Agriculture Project. Check out a smaller version of our poster to the right (click for a bigger view). Tufts owns a 3 acre parcel of land in the city of Medford. We want to see part of that land turned in to an organic farm. There are lots of hurdles to jump between now and breaking ground and we will be continuing our work over the summer and hope to recruit a few current Tufts students to continue the cause in the upcoming year.
I've changed around my blog design. And although I'm still not happy with it I think its a step in the right direction. Less flowery, more plannerly. A bit too militaristic for now, but with a few tweaks it could be right.
And lastly, I've got a few publications in the works. If all goes according to plan I'll have something in print in both a journal and a book this fall. Hopefully one/both works out. Fingers crossed.

I've had to turn down a number of exciting opportunities to finish up my thesis and finally get my masters degrees (which still isn't done). Hopefully soon I'll be able to get back on a regular schedule of sorts and try to finish all those projects I've started.

Turnips in the City: Edward Glaeser Hates Urban Farms

2011-06-27T15:55:00.001-04:00

Edward Glaeser is well-respected amongst urban thinkers - his book Triumph of the City earned him both a keynote speaker spot at this year's APA conference and a spot on the Daily Show. Glaeser combines historical evidence and academic theory to point policymakers towards the current and future success of our cities. For the most part, he hits the nail on the head and pats us urban planners on the back for a job well done. However, his recent attack on urban farms has this Boston-area blogger up in arms.

The article begins with a straw-man of an argument: "large-scale metropolitan farming will do more harm than good to the environment." The bulk of the article boils down to the fact that land devoted to urban farming decreases density levels, and that the carbon emissions saved by growing local are more than outweighed by the additional carbon emitted by people commuting longer distances. I say it's a straw-man argument because the only major city that is pursuing "large-scale" farming as a development strategy is Detroit. Sure, other rust-belt cities have one or more organizations turning old factories into farms, but Detroit is the only one with enough vacant land to make a major difference in commute times. And there's the problem with the argument: there aren't new commercial or residential developments in Detroit that are being displaced by farms. Farms are moving in because there is no other industries want to take up 40 square miles of vacant space.

Glaeser's urban farms are unsustainable. Also unrealistic.

Another problem with Glaeser's argument is that it relies on the traditional notion of a farm - one in which a guy and a tractor can maintain 100 acres in a few hours (check out the little picture that accompanies the article - he didn't create it, but it definitely illustrates his point well). If this were the case it would indeed be misguided to allow farmland to stand between people and their jobs. However, urban farms are themselves also jobs. Two farms in the city of Boston, ReVision Urban Farm and the Food Project both hold job-training and youth development as key parts of their mission. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and suggest that maybe this is what he meant in his brief acknowledgement of the educational value of urban farms.

A great counter-argument to this narrowly focused article came my way. Union Park Press points out that the same argument could be made for parks, zoos, and swimming pools as these public amenities also decrease density. I'd like to add urban windfarms and solar panels to the mix. These alternative energy strategies are not going to get us off coal and oil by themselves, but they do decrease densities. Is there a place for green energy in Glaeser's triumphant cities?

Boston is currently embroiled in a revision of the zoning code to let three more large-ish farms get built in a historically disinvested part of town. Its curious that as this article appeared in the Boston Globe the zoning revisions didn't get mentioned. There was certainly a lot of opposition to the idea of farms moving in to two of the most historically disinvested communities in the city, but none of it had to do with carbon emissions.

Foodshed Analyses Determine Capacity for Local Foods

2011-06-07T12:06:00.000-04:00

As the local food movement continues to grow, more and more policymakers are starting to ask, "just how much food can be grown locally?" Direct-to-consumer sales through CSAs, farm stands and farmers markets are credited with keeping money in the local economy, preserving working landscapes, and promoting healthier eating habits.

Map of local food sources from Local Harvest

Local foods give policymakers a lot to love and justify determining how far they can stretch. Despite skyrocketting CSA enrollment and an exponential increase in the number of farmers markets, direct-to-consumer sales made up only 6% of all agricultural sales in 2007. It would seem that there is a lot of room to grow. But how much food can actually be sourced locally? Interested parties are using GIS to determine the answer to this question through foodshed analyses.

The idea of a "foodshed" is based on the concept of a watershed. It is defined as the geographic area of food that feeds a specific population. Since food currently comes from all over the world, some people analyze the global foodshed while others choose to focus on a local foodshed. As we all know, "local" has its own problems with definitions, and can be defined arbitrarily as within a certain radius (say, 100 miles) or a political boundary (the State of California).

Foodshed analyses make maps of farmland by clipping out non-farm areas as determined by land use data or through remote sensing. They then overlay crop and soils data from the USDA to estimate average yields. This makes up the production side of the equation. Determining the amount of food a population consumes is much more difficult because no one keeps tabs on how much Americans actually eat. Some foodshed analyses use loss-adjusted food availability data, while others think that the Continuing Food Survey is more accurate. Barring an Orwelian investigation into the plate waste of every American household we may never get accurate consumption data.

The San Francisco 100 Mile Foodshed

On of the first reports of this kind was conducted by American Farmland Trust for the city of San Francisco. Researchers attempted to find out if it was possible to feed the City of San Francisco exclusively from the food grown within a 100 mile radius of the city. Unfortunately the findings provided more questions than answers, but the study nevertheless opened the gates to other researchers attempting to address the same question. Newer reports have more shades of grey: some map the foodshed based on consumption patterns rather than physical or political boundaries (like Cornell's Foodshed Mapping Tool), while others push for 25% of food purchasing to come from the local foodshed.

So once you have the foodshed analysis, what do you do with this info? Sure, it's certainly pretty cool to be able to say, my city can feed X number of people from the food grown in the area, but how useful is this information? I would argue that it's not only useful, its essential. Hydrologists and water policymakers alike know how much water flows in and around their jurisdiction, and use this information to plan water-related infrastructure and management policy. Food System professionals should be able to do the same. If there is a vast local supply and an equally vast local demand and yet direct-sales are still only making up 6%, we know there needs to be a new processing facility, a distribution hub, or some other infrastructural advancement that will facilitate local buying and selling.

National Foodshed Model
Produced by the Urban Design Lab

The science behind Foodshed Analyses might not be 100% beyond critique, but nevertheless it provides valuable insight into the lay of the land. Maps and tables outlining local food capacity are also good tools to convince state and federal officials that local foods have enormous potential, and that with a little bit of seed money they could flourish into an invaluable piece of a thriving local economy.

USDA Reveals New MyPlate, Nutritionists and Designers Groan

2011-06-03T13:29:00.001-04:00

Yesterday the USDA replaced the food pyramid with a new design called MyPlate. Reactions have been mixed, with nutrition blogger Small Bites calling it the same old story, while Parke Wilde of the Friedman school gave it an A+. My own opinion lies somewhere between the two. The recommendations in and of themselves don't differ substantially from what we've been told for the last two decades, but we've come a long way in the way we convey those recommendations. Here's what's changed, and what I wish had changed.

There are seven key points that the USDA wishes to convey through this new graphic. The first two deal with balancing calories: enjoy your food but eat less, and avoid oversized portions. These two are meant to deal with the calamatous increase in obesity rates head on, and are a great statement to make. However, I don't believe that this image adequately addresses them. Eating Rules points out that there is a little fork on the side, perhaps to convey scale. But if this is the case, this is a monstrous plate of food. The plate is filled to the brim! Check out what this looks like below if this was real food.

These meals look like MyPlate but definitely contain
more calories than they should.

The next set of recommendations gives guidance on foods to increase. The USDA recommends to make half your plate fruits and vegetables, half your grains whole grains, and to switch to fat free or low-fat milk. MyPlate expertly displays a plate half-full of fruits and vegetables, and may be it's one great triumph. This is a great improvement over the food pyramid, which made it look like a healthy diet depended on a base of starchy grains and fruits and veggies were more of an afterthought. And in MyPyramid it was nearly impossible to compare the food group triangles, which means that if there was a recommendation to eat more fruits and vegetables it was certainly lost.

Previous Versions of USDA food icons

The other two recommendations in the "foods to increase" category aren't as apparent in this icon. The USDA has produced an icon that is increasingly more abstract, and gone are any visual cues or explanatory text about the types or qualities of foods we should be eating. In the words of Robert Venturi, we've gone from the decorated shed back to the duck. The colorfully coded food groups could really represent anything, and for someone who is in the business of helping American's pick the right types of foods, this new icon leaves a lot open for interpretation. A few of the colorful icons from MyPyramid could have been included to provide some qualitative context without breaking with the graphic scheme.

The last two recommendations pertain to "foods to reduce." The USDA would like us to choose food with lower sodium and drink water instead of sugary drinks. The fact that they are asking you to reduce foods to begin with is certainly a step in the right direction, but there is still room for improvement in their icon. I'll admit, graphically representing "reduce your sodium intake" is difficult, but part of this is due to the wording. Sodium is an element - and unless you've already been told that you have hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease, you may not even know what it is. But even if you don't know what it is (salt), it is used as a seasoning in preserved foods and Americans consume almost twice the recommended daily allowance of 1.5 grams. Therefore, a clearer description of what it means to "limit sodium intake" might be, "cook from home" or "avoid overly processed foods." This, of course, is politically contentious and can't be declared by a government agency without the heavyweights in the processed food world (Kraft, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Tyson, Cargill) agreeing.

That brings me to the last recommendation, drink water instead of sugary drinks. The icon clearly shows a GLASS OF MILK, not water. The dairy lobby is a powerful one, and they've been milking their influence for years (sorry). In most nutritionist circles dairy would be included in the section reserved for protein, as many of the same nutrients and amino acids are present in both. However, the dairy industry always wins, and their exalted status has ensured a continued place at the table.

I also have a few general critiques of the design. If the purpose of this new icon is to demonstrate the proportions of food you should be eating, why did they deliberately make it more difficult? Its hard to tell which is the biggest segment just by looking at the plate. When you break it out, veggies and grains are actually the same size, as are fruits and protein. They could have aligned the plate to make this clear. Also, the circular dairy icon looks smaller than the rest of the segments, but is it? The choice to differentiate it from the rest makes it hard to tell. This could have been solved by including it in the plate (or better yet, in the protein category).

All in all, this is a pretty decent revision to the obtuse MyPyramid, and certainly prettier to look at than the Food Pyramid of 1992. Its not something that I would necessarily want to bring to a classroom to teach kids about nutrition, though, and its certainly not something that would fare well in a critique at any graphic design 101 class.

Graphic Designers Pitch in to Fix the Food System

2011-06-01T11:03:00.001-04:00

There are a couple of exciting design happenings in the food world these days. The New York Times recently reported that the food pyramid, that iconic food group image from elementary school, is undergoing a major revision to appear in the shape of a plate. This is the second time in less than a decade that the pyramid is being revised. Will these design changes make the USDA's Dietary Guidelines more relevant to our daily lives? Let's take a look.

The food pyramid undergoes another revision.

The USDA has been releasing visual guides to the types of food you should be eating for over half a century, but the one most of us are familiar with appeared in 1992 to coincide with their highly touted and rarely followed Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Critics of this food pyramid pointed out that some people (especially children) thought that the lower levels were more important than the others, and thus the government was encouraging the consumption of starchy cereals and grains at the expense of fruit and vegetables. In 2005 the pyramid was flipped so that no one food group was favored over another to form MyPyramid. The streamlined design is more colorful, and gone are the suggested number of servings. Instead, a stylized little person walks up steps that signify physical activity and serving suggestions according to your individual caloric needs. But I didn't need to tell you that, you totally got that from the graphic, didn't you!

The next step of visual food representations is presenting it in the form of a plate. Marion Nestle has a great rundown of graphic plates from other countries and food advocacy organizations, and a few guesses on what our might look like.

It is difficult to tell if Rick Astley is more likely to
"give you up" or "run around and desert you."

Basically, it will look like a pie chart that shows the proportion each food group should make up of your meals. I like this idea in theory, but lots of data visualizers agree that pie charts are notoriously bad at displaying data effectively. Pie charts are good at displaying simple information such as a single variable's proportion to the whole, rather than the difference between variables. It is difficult for our brains to recognize the different sizes of pie pieces, which means that we might not comprehend that the USDA recommends more vegetables than meat.

However, the plate already signifies more to the average reader than a pyramid. While people might not perfectly duplicate the food guide plate on their own dining room tables, it might at least be in the back of their minds while they dish out their meals. Which is more than you can say for the previous pyramids. The new design is officially released tomorrow, we'll see how they do!

Promo from UC Berkeley's News21 design contest.

On the more fun front, UC Berkeley and GOOD Magazine are conducting a design contest to redesign that other nutrition mainstay, the nutrition facts panel. Designers from all over the country are being asked to think about what a nutrition label might look like in the 21st century. I'm excited to see what get submitted, and am brainstorming what my submission might look like. It seems unlikely that the winner will be adopted in to practice, but it will be interested to see if there is something more useful than the cut and dry nutrition facts panel.

There is a lot of room for graphic designers wishing to make an impact on the food system. Designers can use their background in color theory and data visualization to create food and nutrition labels that are easier to use, more recognizable, and more fun. The last part is possibly the most important. Nutrition and dieting is usually seen as the opposite of fun, and this perception is undoubtedly contributing to the tempestuous relationship Americans currently have with food. Bringing nutrition information back in line with the types of images we see in the rest of the media could be a piece of the solution to this problem.

Compost: The Forgotten Link in the Food System Chain

2011-05-05T12:10:00.001-04:00

International Compost Awareness Week is officially going on this week, so I thought I'd remind all my fellow food system planners to think about this important part of the food system. The USDA estimates that in 2008, 80.4 lbs of vegetables and 79.4 lbs of fruit are lost per person at the consumer or retail level. This accounts for non-edible food like apple cores and broccoli stems, but also uneaten food and plate waste. Nationwide, this means that we are wasting 24.3 million tons of food each year. What happens to this food? In an ideal food system it would be composted and returned to the soil to replenish some of the nutrients that were extracted. But too often, this isn't the case and it ends up in a landfill, left to anaerobically digest into methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. Here are a few solutions to this conundrum.

The winner of the 2011 US composting
council poster competition.

The best choice for a wide-scale composting scheme is to get your town or city to enact municipal compost collection. The City of San Francisco was one of the first out of the gates to do this, and now keeps 400 tons of food from going to landfills every day. They've enacted this as part of their Zero Waste campaign, and sell the finished compost to farms and vineyards in the fertile regions outside of the city.

If your city doesn't have curbside compost pickup (and you don't have time to advocate for it), you can compost on your own at home. Most cities offer discounted outdoor compost bins that you can place in your yard to compost yard waste and food scraps. Check with your local department of sustainability, waste or parks. Here is the information for my own town of Somerville. Urban composters should avoid throwing in meat, dairy and eggs because it attracts unwelcome critters.

If you're without a backyard another option is vermicomposting, or composting with worms. Red Wiggler worms eat half their body weight of food scraps per week, and can be kept indoors in a small bin. You can purchase bins and worms online, but the best way to do it is to DIY a worm bin and harvest worms from a friend. Within a matter of months a thriving worm bin can turn all your food waste into nutrient rich worm castings and worm tea.

By composing our waste we close the food system loop and help to decrease the amount of chemical fertilizers being used in agriculture. There are lots of options to turn food waste back in to soil, and with a little bit of time and energy it can be easy for individuals to do their part. Municipalities might need an extra push, however. For more information on municipal composting, check out COOL 2012, a grassroots campaign to decrease organic waste from going to landfills, and the US Composting Council, a professional organization that promotes composting.

Information Technology: Coming to a Food Policy Near You

2011-05-03T18:01:00.002-04:00

Food and technology are often considered antithetical. Whether you’re scarfing down a locally grown arugula salad or a big beefy burger, you’re probably more likely to think of the bucolic scene from which it came than the technological advances that brought it to your plate. When food and technology are brought together in the same thought, phrases like techno-food get used pejoratively to signify all of the modern food advances filling our plates with slightly more nutritious junkfood. However, simultaneously and much more quietly, a modern tech movement has arisen that is building a network to make good food more affordable and accessible from the individual to the national scale.

Find Fruit iPhone App

There are currently dozens of smartphone and internet apps designed to bring good food to tech-savvy consumers. You can now type in your location, the type of food you want and immediately get both directions to the best restaurant to go and the story behind the food they’re serving. If buying food in bulk to cook at home is more your thing, beta versions of a wholesale purchasing app is now available by invitation. Or if you want to grow your own, there are applications to aid you in planning your garden, sites to find a yard if you don’t already have one, and mobile apps with maps to fruit-bearing trees on public property. But the food system is more than foodies finding their next fix: the modern tech-movement goes beyond consumer-oriented apps. Food advocates and academics are using technology to connect the food system dots and are making good food policy decisions easier.

On the local policy scale, more regions are recognizing the importance of a regionalized food system and are using technology to help them pursue this goal. Social media platforms allow local food policy groups to set up their own sites to bring together policymakers, practitioners and eaters into an online community. Local Food Cleveland has built a strong network of advocates around their site and acts as a hub for local food policy action. These platforms have the ability to crowdsource food policy: good ideas are picked up by other users on the network and can start to gain political traction. Regions can also quickly learn what else is going on in the world of food policy, as Grown in the City’s open-source interactive maps highlight a few different aspects of food policy in an easily accessible format. And just yesterday the USDA released an interactive tool that helps communities identify food deserts.

Detroit Foodshed Analysis

New technologies are also allowing policymakers to access large amounts of interdisciplinary data at the same time, which enables them to make decisions that take the entire food system into account, rather than individual parts. Foodshed analysis, a strategy being pioneered here at Tufts under Chris Peters, uses GIS to spatially demonstrate the land requirements of city/metropolitan region diets. Right now the technology only exists for New York and Michigan, but this information enables policymakers to quickly understand how much and what type of food is currently being produced in their area. This has significant ramifications for local food resiliency planning and can influence recommendations for food system infrastructure.

In the past, federal policymakers kept track of their own program-specific data: how many acres of farmland they had preserved, the nutrition status of the US population, the amount of vitamin D available in a particular type of milk. By moving everything online and opening this data up to everyone, all sorts of sophisticated policy recommendations can be made. The USDA’s Food Environment Atlas was released last year to much fanfare for the interactive maps that could show the state of the national food system. Much more exciting was the fact that this data was all available for download, and the site continues to act as a datahub for food policy advocates. Advocates and technophiles are using this data to produce reports and visualizations that help rally support as they begin to mobilize around the 2012 farm bill.

So what will this techno future mean for food policy? Predicting future technological trends is useless – just ask the flip camera. However, the volume of open data and technical cloud computations currently available bode well for the future of data-driven interdisciplinary food policy. Resources like Food + Tech Connect exist to build bridges between the food policy and tech-savvy worlds, but as more and more data sources become available, it might even take a new class of food policy advocates to sort through it all. Future food system advocates will be well-versed in the political mechanics of local/state/federal policy, but also in where valuable data is collected and how to translate it in to good policy suggestions. Now if only we could get that internet fridge up and running.

Urban Agriculture: Reinventing the Food System

2011-04-27T15:11:00.002-04:00

This past Friday I presented my theories on the future of urban agriculture to the Boston Chapter of the Planners Network. I've posted my slides on slideshare and considered adding an mp3 of me talking (since most of the slides are just single pictures). However, I decided that I sounded super goofy sitting in my bedroom recording myself, so I've skipped it this time. You can read the blog post that this presentation was based on here, flip through the slides as you're reading it over to get the almost-full effect.

Urban Agriculture: Reinventing the Food System

View more presentations from Mari Pierce-Quinonez

Death to Planning (Long Live Planning)

2011-04-25T18:05:00.003-04:00

A lengthy piece in the Design Observer Group written by Thomas Campanella, a faculty member of UNC Chapel Hill, decries the "trivial" nature of the planning profession. In "Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning," Campanella blames Jacobs for removing the god-like aura surrounding the city planner, and sending the planner back to the "hot and crowded city street" to have the same amount of input as regular residents. It caught my interest because of the healthy dose of skeptical introspection offered up by its author (and because it mimicked a post title I came up with about a month ago). However, I'm not convinced that we should return to the days of making Big Plans.

A Moses era planner scopes out his work.

Campanella argues that planners should take back some of the rights we have bestowed upon the communities we plan for: we are the experts, after all. However, his argument is misguided. Campanella uses examples from other fields to demonstrate the folly in our ways, such as in the case of food: "Imagine public health officials giving equal weight to the nutritional wisdom of teenagers — they are stakeholders, after all!" I can indeed imagine it. Without input from the grassroots and community at large, an intervention is bound to fail, be it a new highway or a soda tax. Perhaps it is my naive optimism that encourages me to hold on to the belief that a community can plan for itself, our roll is simply to guide the process.

The rest of his article seems to be caught up in the planning follies of his older, more established peers than reflecting the reality of the young planners I know. He points to a "lack of speculative courage and vision" and a myopic strategy that emphasizes the local to the detriment of large-scale infrastructure projects like high-speed rail, which simpy isn't true. The planners around me recognize the sorry state that his generation left us with, and we're working with the tools we're given to change it. The interests of my fellow Tufts planners run the gamut, but all of them hold the larger issues of CO2 emissions, spatial justice, and economic sustainability clearly in view as they formulate their ideas.

I do however, agree with the conclusions Campanella makes later in the article. He recognizes that young planners have limitless ideas and ambition, and asks, "How can we ensure that the idealism of our students is not extinguished as they move into practice?" Eventually he concludes, "planners today need not a close-up lens or a wide-angle lens but a wide-angle zoom lens. They need to be able to see the big picture as well as the parts close up; and even if not trained to design the parts themselves, they need to know how all those parts fit together." He calls for three years of planning education as opposed to two, and I would agree that this is a good proposition. As a student pursuing a dual degree with the school of Nutrition Science and Policy, I'm wrapping up my third year in planning school. I've been equipped with the wide-angle lens of federal food and agricultural policy, as well as the zoom lens of community planning. I've had time to explore some of the larger theoretical underpinnings that provide a historical background to the city, as well as the economic and physical specifics of some of the systems that make the city what it is today.

If Jane Jacobs brought problems that are now "trivilizing" the planning profession, it might actually be those same trivialities that end up saving it. Big ideas and sustainable visioning are not exclusive to those young planners attracted to the profession. In fact, these traits are symptom of a generation. It will take a new workforce of planners to turn our youth's vision of a just and sustainable future in to reality. The skills we've picked up as consensus builders and mediators will come in handy when we're trying to help a community decide between a farm and a solar power facility.

Crowdsourcing the Planning Profession

2011-04-20T17:56:00.001-04:00

A crowd, possibly sourcing.
From crowdsourceplacemaking.com

I'm currently doing a bit of research into the expanding role of web technology into the food policy world, and came across this site and just had to share. Crowdsourceplacemaking lab is a web tool designed to get users excited about creating new places in their communities. People create groups devoted to the community they live in, and start asking for ideas from the community on what it needs to be a truly great place. If a group attracts enough users the site sets them up with an investor to help make their idea a reality. Ideas range from building a coworking site to bringing green jobs in to a neighborhood in Chicago. So far there aren't too many users and its hard to tell if any of these ideas have successfully been paired with investors, but it seems like an interesting way to bring more people in to the decision-making process.

On the for-profit side of things, crowdsourced placemaking is one of the strategies employed by a real estate company by the name of Renaissance Downtowns. They focus on creating an "Urban Suburbia" through the comprehensive planning of downtown redevelopment. Current projects include Bristol Rising for Bristol, CT. Bristol Rising has 586 members, and for a city of only 61,000 that's a decent turnout for a comprehensive planning initiative. It's not substantially better than what your standard community outreach approach might bring in though, so the jury is still out on whether or not throwing in the term "crowdsourcing" will actually result in a higher level of participation.

Crowdsourceplacemaking has the ability to bypass professional planning routes by engaging the community without the planner to act as mediator. It is a way to have the community plan for itself, but could potentially be short-sighted if larger development patterns aren't taken in to account: what happens if every single neighborhood decides that what they really need is upscale boutiques? I suppose the developer has final say in this situation because they have the real estate knowledge to separate the good ideas from the bad. In any case, crowdsourcing the planning process is an interesting direction that could potentially limit the role of planners in future placemaking. This is the second post in a row in which I call my degree in to question. Dang.

A Fresh Crop of Food System Thinkers

2011-04-18T10:52:00.000-04:00

Last week four young food system planners presented our work in an early-morning session to a sleepy audience of eager listeners. The panel consisted of myself, Shawn Legendre of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Victoria Harris of Southeast Pennsylvania's Transportation Authority, and Christina Dilisio a friend and colleague from Tufts who interned with the American Planning Association over the summer.
My own presentation was about my ongoing work on food system assessments. Thinking about food as a system is a relatively new discipline, and thus there are relatively few attempts to address the entire thing at once. Food system assessments are valuable for cities and regions looking to determine what exactly is going on in their region, and how they can increase the amount of local/sustainable/regionally produced goods bought and sold. There is no set framework for these assessments, meaning each region has had to reinvent the wheel as they've undertaken the report. Assessments end up defining the food system very differently than one another and do not end up taking as comprehensive of a view as intended. Thus the usefulness of the document as a tool for policy change is limited. I concluded by calling for a toolkit to be developed so that less time is spent figuring out what types of data to collect and more time is spent analyzing the data and making recommendations. The slides that I presented are at the end of this post.

Shawn Legendre, a student at Penn and part-time food system planner with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission presented the recently released Food System Plan for the Greater Philadelphia region. The DVRPC is at the forefront of food system planning, so it was interesting to hear about their process. I was also quite impressed by the quality of the graphics. The DVRPC's graphics person should be proud.
Victoria Harris, another student from Penn, came up with a new map of Philly's food access that took into account bus routes and ride times to full-service grocery stores. This was something that I hadn't seen in the standard food access map, so it was interesting to hear about her methodology. One critique that I had was that her map didn't take into account economic information. Thus the three or four areas that she singled out as the most lacking in healthy food access could also be the areas that are the most well-off and likely to have a car. It would be interesting to see how income might change her map's conclusions. It also touches back to a point I plagiarized from another presenter in an earlier post: data-driven planning does not necessarily mean equitable planning. (ed's note: I couldn't find Victoria's maps anywhere online, so my descriptions will have to suffice. Sorry)
Christina DiLisio, a respected friend and colleague of mine from Tufts presented on the role of planners on food policy councils. Christina found that many food policy councils hold their urban planning members in very high regard (even likening them to superheroes). Planners' tendency to think about systems, their ability to bring together different groups of people (often translating between the two), and their knowledge of the political process make them tremendous assets to food policy advocates. She also found that planners don't necessarily have to have knowledge about the food system to be helpful; the skills they use in their everyday practice is just as valuable as an encyclopedic knowledge of food and farming. Hmmm... not sure how I feel about this. I'd like to believe that my extra degree in agricultural policy is helpful, but....
Overall the session was an excellent example of the diverse work in food systems taking place in colleges and universities across the country. After attending numerous sessions devoted to the food system at this year's APA conference, I left with the impression that the cutting edge work is all happening on college campuses. I definitely look forward to hearing about the work that my fellow school-bound food system planners are undertaking in the future.

Food System Assessments as a tool for Sustainability

View more presentations from Mari Pierce-Quinonez

Food Systems, Planning, Tech at the APA National Conference

2011-04-12T20:04:00.001-04:00

If you were wandering around Boston this past weekend you might have noticed an excessive number of people scoping out bollards, marveling at streetlight banners and snapping pictures of bike lanes. These street-freaks were not your usual tourists, in fact the planners had descended. This year the American Planning Association's National Conference was held in Boston for four days of workshops, discussions, guided tours and powerpoints. 6,000 planners poured through our city looking for a good idea to bring back home, or at the very least a good time. I'm still recovering. I mostly split my time between the food and technology sessions and even managed to present a session of my own on some of the research I've been working on. Below is a rundown of some of my impressions.

Preventing Health Disparities: An Evening Roundtable Dinner Discussion
This event kicked off the conference for me, and was a welcome introduction to some of the ideas I'd be hearing over and over again for the rest of the event. Following some opening remarks by Kim Hodgson of the APA's Planning and Community Health Research Center, Mark Draisen took to the stage to discuss what the MAPC has been doing to decrease health inequity. Draisen has capped off an illustrious career as an affordable housing advocate and state representative to become the Executive Director of the MAPC. Draisen made a strong case for a regional planning agency's involvement in health issues by appealing to the planner's sense of justice, and then pragmatically reminded us that "regions which are more equitable will be more successful than regions that are unequal." When asked how planners might address concerns that they are unfairly awarding underserved communities with the lion's share of bike lanes and other health-related infrastructure, Mark replied "fairness is one of those ironies why people don't deal with equity," and that sometimes it really does take a bit of "putting your thumb on the scale" to ensure that historically neglected communities are prioritized for green infrastructure development. I had no idea that MAPC was considering these issues in such depth (despite the fact that I recently noticed they are hiring a public health planner), so I was rather impressed by the level of ethic that Mr. Draisen seems to be committed to.

Urban Agriculture: Growing Healthy Sustainable Places.

This panel was made up of some of the authors of the APA's new PAS report on urban agriculture. As someone who has written a good deal of my own reports on the topic it didn't really shed any new light on the subject for me, but it definitely shored up my long-held belief that Cleveland rocks. Robert Brown, the director of Cleveland's City Planning Department, delivered a peppery speech about all the planning measures his city has undertaken to make sure that agriculture has enough space to thrive in his city. Two points to note: there are A LOT of measures, and that guy is solid. I look forward to the day when I can pull off using a powerpoint filled with animated gifs.

Regional Food Systems Planning

I walked in to this room and was pleasantly surprised to see that my professor, Tim Griffin, was on this panel. He was seated next to other heavy-hitters like Samina Raja, Fred Kirschenmann, and the Urban Design Lab's Michael Conard. Kirschenmann gave a talk on agriculture that spanned pre-history to present (no joke), while Raja spoke about her work in Buffalo and gave some useful pointers on how planners can get out of the way so that the food system can thrive. These included changing zoning codes, simplifying the permitting process for food producers/processors, and conducting food system plans. Conard spoke about the work the UDL is doing on New York's food system. And Tim gave a rousing talk on what a regional food system might look like in New England (spoiler alert: there is no way in heck we can feed ourselves). All in all it was a great session and I was glad to see that it was so well-attended.

Technology Infrastructure and Planning

This session was about the use of Big Data to streamline city services and create cities that are responsive to their inhabitants in both the real and virtual world. The three presenters in this talk discussed how the "internet of things" can be harnessed so that all of the data being generated by cell phones, utility meters, traffic lights etc. can become a useful tool for planners and policymakers. Urban Ecomap seems like a pretty cool toy, as does City Forward. John Tolva of IBM was a veritable wordsmith crafting such gems as "updating, tweeting and texting is a pointilistic view of city life" and used the concept of urban highways to brilliantly illuminate the difference between throughway and connectivity for today's technology. Benjamin de La Pena brought the concept of equity back in to the discussion and cautioned planners to remember that there are "lies, more lies, and statistics" and just because we can now make data-driven decisions doesn't mean they are inherently any smarter nor are they more just. One of the other panelists recommended subscribing to his twitter feed. I shall do the same.

What's Next for Urban Planning Technology?

I was worried that this session was going to be one of those, "hey old folks: young people use the facebook and tweet and like video games!" type of sessions, and unfortunately I was right. I spent most of my time during this panel using the facebook and tweeting. I did manage to stay away from Angry Birds though, so maybe it wasn't all bad. These guys used a lot of the same examples as the guys in the previous talk, but with less force. They did tell me about Slideshare, though, and I'm excited about that.

Now you might be thinking, "this conference was four days long and you only went to four sessions?" Well, that may be true, but let me tell you I got in to more than enough amazing discussions to make my money worth it. Planners are a great bunch of folks. My next post will be a rundown of the session that I participated in. This was definitely the highlight of the conference for me, and maybe it was for the handful of people that were there, too. I know, 9am sessions are hard. I don't blame you for not coming. Just promise me you'll read my next blog post.

Food System Assessments in the US

2011-04-04T15:04:00.002-04:00

Much of my work this past year has been devoted to an analysis of food system assessments. Briefly, food system assessments are a way for a community organization, government body or academic institution to gather more information about the state of their regional food system and make recommendations on ways for it to improve. They cover the production, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food, and how each sector can maximize the economic return, social responsibility and environmental benefit of each. It's a lot to consider in one small report, and with no official framework to follow some have done it more successfully than others. Over the coming months I will complete a full-blown investigation in to the strengths and weaknesses of existing assessments.

For now here is a map I made of all of the assessments I have found to date. By clicking on each marker you will see the name of the report and a link to a pdf. Perhaps my map will be useful to organizations out there that are interested in undertaking their own food system assessment, or to community food advocates that were unaware that someone has already completed an assessment of their region. If you're aware of an FSA that I haven't included on this map, please let me know!

View Food System Assessments in a larger map

The New American Farming Movement, and Why It's Here to Stay

2011-04-01T08:54:00.001-04:00

Originally published in The Friedman Sprout on March 31st, 2011, in collaboration Jeff Hake

Still from The Greenhorns, a feature-length
documentary about Young Farmers

The burgeoning new farmer movement in the US is characterized by a bevy of young farmers, craftspeople, homesteaders and combinations thereof. It has been labeled by some as a trendy flash in the pan, as a path for hipsters that “don’t know what to do with their lives.” Critics declare that the frivolity of youth combined with twentysomethings’ inability to grow upmakes for a horrible match with the laborious commitment required of farmers. Indeed, it is fair to wonder if the current farming fixation will die out in a year or two in favor of the Next Big Thing, given a strong precedent of dissolution of such movements. While it is difficult to imagine the movement’s heightened level of media attention as a permanent feature, an analysis of historical ebbs and flows can be used to show us what will happen to the current wave of food and farming fanaticism. By this measure, your CSA next door is likely there to stay.

An agrarian spirit comes and goes
America has a strong agrarian tradition with roots in the principles of its founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson, a farmer himself, famously believed that a nation of self-sufficient small farmers was the purest route to a functioning democracy. This belief was carried out in future policy through the Homestead Act, a law that granted 160 acres to individuals willing to farm it. Early agricultural policy was aimed at developing farms’ production power, but as the economic might of the manufacturing industry began to eclipse agriculture in the late 19^th century, policy aimed at agricultural development lost popularity and the number of farmers began to drop. The number of farmers and farmworkers in the US has continued to drop over the course of the 20^th century, from 41% in 1900 to under 2% by 2007. Meanwhile, farmers’ average age has risen close to that of retirement, with the fastest growing age group being those 65 and older. Despite this grim assessment periodic surges have thrown the curve and brought agriculture and gardening back into the public consciousness.

One of these periods was during the early 20^th century when World Wars I and II called for contributions from all Americans, including those on the homefront. World War I saw the cautious birth of the War Gardens movement. The successful implementation of these gardens of service lead to a national-scale revival of the movement just 12 days after America entered the Second World War in 1941. Rebranded as Victory Gardens, these plots and small farms grew about 40% of the vegetable needs of the US in 1944. This massive effort was a patriotic response to crisis, and with the end of the war, the gardens became unanchored and slowly declined. Although a few Victory Gardens remain today (including one here in Boston), the post-war economic and technological boom increased the
industrialization of agriculture and America no longer needed an army of patriotic farmers and gardeners.

In the late 1960s and 70s, farming again took the role of cause as many young people dropped out of mainstream society to join farming communes and intentional communities. The idea of forsaking society in favor of a simpler life was not a new idea [i], but in this instance fuel shortages, continuing wars, the corporatization of the American way of life, and a general dissatisfaction with the options available in cities and suburbs pushed young people to the countryside to pick up a pitchfork. Communes attempted to be self-sustaining and to live off the grid. However, when interpersonal relationships soured or convictions faltered, the communities often failed. Several of these attempts live on today [ii] but still more hippie farmers left their attempts at utopian ideals and reengaged with mainstream society.

Critics of the modern farming movement often point to the dissolution of hippie homesteading and the disappearance of victory gardens as evidence that the modern iteration of back-to-the-landism is fleeting. However, there are a few marked contrasts that distinguish today’s movement beyond a mere reaction to crisis. Instead, it has strived to learn from the missteps of the past and now bases itself on the principles of sustainability. This is understood as the triple-bottom line of “people, profits and planet”. A sustainable world means one should not only look out for the health and well-being of ourselves and our environment, but that one should strive to make a living at it at the same time.

Transforming economy…
Much of the new farmer movement has intended to create profitable farms. Mission-driven farms have sprung up as a part of the modern movement as well, but even many of these are focused on education of the public or of those who wish to become farmers (the Friedman School’s own New Entry Sustainable Farming Project is a perfect example of this). Farming has become an option for young people who are interested in becoming stewards of the land while also earning a living.

It should not be surprising that people are attempting to build a career in farming: present economic conditions are ugly and show little sign of recovery. The national unemployment rate rose as high as 10.6% in January 2010 and is currently hovering at 9.5%. The unemployment rate for youth aged 16 to 19 is even worse, at 23.9% as of February. In the past a decent education offered a clear path to career success, but a recent report published by GOOD Magazine last fall details the plight of well-educated young Americans who are now finding that Masters and Doctoral degrees are sometimes little more than a Ponzi scheme of escalating investment. [iii] Today’s youth have not found success in the modern economic system and are increasingly turning to food and farming to find work.

By choosing both pitchfork and spreadsheet as their tools, young farmers are finding that they can not only fend for themselves, if modestly, but that their actions can have a transformative effect on the local economy. Two of the most common marketing outlets for small-scale farmers today are farmers’ markets and community-support agriculture programs (CSAs). The number of markets in the US has steadily risen from 1,755 in 1994 to over 6,100 last year, and there are now over 4,200 CSA farms in the US. These market outlets allow farmers to keep dollars circulating within their neighborhoods. What more, organizations like Red Tomato and the Real Food Challenge are working with small- and mid-scale farms to optimize distribution networks and to encourage institutions like schools and hospitals to source food from local growers and processors.

…and transforming agricultural practice…
Of course, today’s young farmers recognize that earning a living and supporting local economies is an important goal, but environmental concerns are a major component of daily farm operations. We are now at a critical point that some describe as “peak everything”, where the resource drivers of the global economy are approaching their finite capacities. Modern industrial agriculture is powered by and structured around cheap supplies of oil, phosphorus, nitrogen and water. The underlying objective of most new farmers in the US today is to maximize productivity of limited acreage while reducing the amount of inputs (such as fertilizers and fuel for machinery) brought onto the farm.

Burlap coffee bags used for mulching, via farmhack.

Resource limitations encourage a spirit of innovation that is particularly attractive to young farmers. For educated and underprivileged young Americans alike, existing employment opportunities often lack an intellectual outlet and the rewards for creativity are few or unseen. Agriculture, while rife with failures and hard times, also offers visible returns to intellectual input. Craftsmanship and decades of experience and knowledge are also required on conventional farms, but among the new generation of farms and farmers, knowledge can be considered the single most important input [iv]. The returns to this input are the literal fruits of her labor feeding hungry people. And this may be the most fundamental reason why more young people are embracing agrarianism: pride in work. Today’s new generation of farmers embraces this pride as readily as the previous one. More than that, they are quietly leading the way to a sustainable future.

…to transform how the world is fed

Beyond creating gainful and rewarding employment, the new agricultural movement has an important mission, and in this it perhaps cannot afford to fail. Faced with depleted non-renewable resources, hunger, economic failure, and wildly unstable political regimes, the leadership of the next generation of farmers is vital. In practice, of course, much is yet to be done to assure their ascension. Tom Philpott notes that the revival of the mid-sized farm is required in order for the impact of sustainable agriculture to be felt on a meaningful scale, and while the importance of young farmers is beginning to be recognized in US federal policy, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack acknowledges that “we need to be even more creative than we’ve been to create strategies so that young people can access operations of all sizes.” Among these strategies would likely be a restructuring of farm subsidy programs, as Mark Bittman and others have suggested, and changing how the less-endowed gain access to prime farmland.

Regarded as a flash in the pan and destined to fade, the new farming movement indeed has a superficial likeness to other resurgences of interest in farming and gardening over the past century. Of course, some who are joining the movement today may indeed slough off and follow other career paths, just as will happen in any job field. However, the world, and the agriculture that feeds it, is at a crossroads. The youngest working generation of Americans, the people who are coming into adulthood today, are finding no jobs awaiting them and little value in the status quo. Some of them are looking to agriculture as both an outlet for their energy and intelligence and as a part of the solution to the problems around them. As these problems continue to mount, the young farmers of today may be viewed not as starry-eyed ideologues who will soon enough grow up, but instead as farmer-citizens, leaders for a sustainable future.

[i] Communes have existed in this country for centuries. For instance, a notable uptick occurred in the late 19^th century in response to industrialization after the American Civil War and the town of Hopedale, MA was originally founded on Christian and socialist ideologies in 1842), but the burgeoning back-to-the-land movement inspired the creation of rural utopian communities all across the country.
[ii] Maine provides excellent examples of sustained agrarian lifestyles. In 1952, after 20 years of homesteading in the Green Mountains of Vermont, Helen and Scott Nearing, a collective bedrock of the back-to-the-land movement, moved to Harborside, Maine and established what would become The Good Life Center. In 1968, Eliot Coleman, purchased 60 acres from the Nearings and set out to be an organic farmer. Today, he and his wife, Barbara Damrosch, run a highly successful year-round organic farm on the naturally rocky shallow soils of coastal Maine. Coleman’s example and his seminal writings,Four Season Harvest and The New Organic Grower, have become an inspiration to a nation of market farmers. In addition, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association was founded in 1971 and is the “largest and oldest state organic organization in the country”. It currently provides support and services to a quickly growing amount of organic farmers and other farmers who wish to incorporate organic practices throughout the state. Farmers elsewhere in the country, like Fred Kirschenmann in North Dakota and Joel Salatin in Virginia, show by example and by education how sustainable and organic practices can be applied on a large scale and at a profit.
[iii] A recent New York Times op-ed sagely warns of the many dangers of a neglected class of young, educated Americans, equating it to similar conditions in the now-revolting countries of North Africa and the Middle East.
[iv] A report recently published by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food describes this new breed of agriculture as “knowledge-based”, which enables it to be passed from farmer to farmer without need for farm-level transportation or regular capital investment. However, the report also has a more important point: this new breed of agriculture, given many names but here called “agroecology”, can in fact grow enough nutritious food to feed the world into the foreseeable future, and even produce higher yields than conventional agriculture.

Food System Mapping Roundup

2011-03-30T10:58:00.002-04:00

Renewing America's Food Traditions

A couple of my strongest obsessions/interests, maps and food, have collided in a few fantastic ways lately and I thought I'd do a little roundup while I procrastinate writing a paper for class. Here are a few of the most interesting ones I've found.

Global
Worldwide map of food spending as a percentage of total spending. Data from the world bank, map by UC Berkeley journalism students.
UN Food and Agriculture Organization Agro Maps - "A global spatial database of subnational agricultural land-use statistics." aka data about growing food.
Source Map - Open source supply chain mapping for everything, not just food. User generated and submitted so not very comprehensive... yet.

National
Food Environment Atlas - USDA project showing all sorts of interesting tidbits of data like food assistance rates, number farmers markets and diet-related illnesses. Data available for download at the county level.
Food Industry Market Maker - Not yet live for the entire country, but intended to provide farmers "greater access to regional markets by linking them with processors, retailers, consumers and other food supply chain participants."
Local Harvest real food map - Map of wholesale, retail and processing facilities for local and organic fruits, vegetables and meats.
The Greenhorns - Map of young farmers and the number of bicycles they own, farm service providers, and senate agricultural committee members (interesting choice!)
The Center for Disease Control houses the ubiquitous obesity map and other diet-related illness maps. If you haven't seen these yet, go look because the data is shocking.
Grown in the City maps on Food Sovereignty, Urban Agriculture Ordinances, and Food Policy Councils - these maps don't win any points for style (showing me that California has the most urban ag zoning ordinances isn't very useful data to visualize), but I'm looking forward to see what comes out of Grown in the City in the future.
Renewing America's Food Traditions - Cute visualization of a "historic" representation of American Terrior. (pictured to above)
Regional Distribution models - a google map of regional distributors.

Regional
NYC Regional Foodshed Initiative - I already blogged about this here, but its still worth a mention.
Food System Map of Baltimore, Maryland - Several different maps including healthy food availability and food deserts. Really just a focus on the city, not the region, but still interesting.
Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission Food System Study - These guys do some premo work mapping a lot of the elements of the Philadelphia regional food system. Go look at it. Now.
Maine Food Map - Interactive map using the google map platform. Difficult to read but a wealth of information.
Community Food System Explorer - web-based tool for exploring the food system of Virginia and North Carolina

If you've got suggestions on maps that should be added to the list, leave a comment below! I'd love to continue to make this as comprehensive as possible.

The Death and Life of Great American Agriculture

2011-03-01T15:18:00.002-05:00

Will Allen (Growing Power) and urban aquaponics

As the obesity epidemic rages and the gap between local haute cuisine and SNAP supported meals widens, many are turning to urban agriculture as a means to rectify some of the wrongs in our food system. Advocates credit urban agriculture with reducing food miles, improving food deserts, promoting green jobs, and revitalizing vacant land. However, urban agriculture programs are expensive to operate and the overall contribution to the domestic food supply remains small. If healthy, local foods are the ultimate goal, one might argue that funds devoted to urban agriculture programs are better spent elsewhere. However, revered urban theorist Jane Jacobs would probably argue exactly the opposite: to fix the food system, agriculture must start in the cities.

Jane Jacobs is best known for her avid support of mixed-use urban neighborhoods, masterfully explicated in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She also published an almost equally important work entitled The Economy of Cities in 1968. This book describes her thoughts on how new jobs are created and makes a bold hypothesis: the types of employment that we usually consider rural, including agriculture, originated in cities. The first chapter is filled with anecdotes about agricultural development within cities and villages, and correctly supposes that, “to our descendents, it may seem almost incredible that the ‘country industry’ of slaughtering and packing meat for city consumers… was formerly city work – as strange as it seems to us that growing alfalfa was once city work.”

New kinds of employment have been invented and reinvented for decades. Heavy industries and office work alike begin in cities because they provide an amazing assortment of ideas and the capital to turn those ideas in to employment. Eventually jobs moves out to rural areas where land is cheaper and employees are willing to work for less money. In some cities like Detroit and Cleveland, the mass exodus to the suburbs has contributed to the decline of the city-center, leaving vast tracts of vacant land. Enter urban agriculture. Urban agriculture is a new type of employment for these cities in decline, and has the potential to improve their economic fortunes and provide a substantial amount of fresh, local produce to city residents.

Although there is not currently enough produce coming from urban agriculture to get anywhere close to feeding the American population, there are many potential benefits in relocating agriculture to urban areas. Cities are nexuses of information and ideas. When faced with the space limitations imposed by a dense urban fabric, innovations abound to encourage technologically advanced high-yielding techniques. Hydroponic rooftop gardens (nutrient solutions washed over plant roots without soil), aquaponics (hydroponics combined with aquaculture), window farms (crowd-sourced indoor growing project) and high-density vertical growing systems (stacked planters can grow 8 times more plants than traditional farmland) are all techniques that have been created as a response to cramped urban conditions. Preliminary yield reports on these techniques are promising. Even more exciting, however, is that these techniques are geared towards nutrient-dense fruits, vegetables and fish rather than energy-dense commodities.

As with other types of employment, urban agriculture will probably not stay urban forever. Once the technology is optimized for yield and profit it will likely follow its forbears and move back to rural areas on the urban periphery. If American agriculture adopts the technologies currently fomenting in cities en masse, the amount of fresh, local produce available on city shelves will dramatically increase. An array of fruits, vegetables and fish would be available at an affordable price, and America’s small farms will have new tools available to help them turn a profit.

Of course, this transition will not happen overnight. Urban agriculture is starting to catch the attention of innovators across the country, and with an investment of both time and money these programs have the potential to help overt the obesity crisis, enhance regional economies and revitalize communities. Were she still alive today, the efforts to bring agriculture back in to the city would have made Jane Jacobs proud.

Note: This article was originally written for the March issue of the Friedman Sprout. To subscribe, send an email to friedmansprout (at) gmail dot com.

Beware of Trolls

2011-02-27T17:35:00.000-05:00

Michelle Obama has taken a lot of heat for her personal habits lately, and the progressive food community has dropped everything to defend her. Last week Republican Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota and Sarah Palin both lambasted Michelle Obama for promoting tax breaks that encourage breastfeeding (calling it "the new definition of the nanny state." hyuk hyuk). The blogosphere rushed to her aide producing post after post of evidence in support of breastfeeding.

Also last week, Rush Limbaugh went on air and called Michelle Obama a fat hypocrite for eating ribs while on vacation even though she's been trying to get us all to eat eat "roots, berries and tree bark." This time the media went in to a frenzy, with reports popping up on the blogs, mainstream news outlets, and even Entertainment Weekly. Again the blogosphere responded with posts proclaiming that no, she isn't fat, and no, that's not all she wants us to eat.

Other vitriolic attacks have been leveled against the Obama's super bowl party menu, hyperbolic claims about the end of school bake sales have been made, and Massachusetts' own Mitt Romney likened Mrs. Obama's anti-obesity campaign to a modern Marie Antoinette in a "let them eat (organic) cake" jab. Conservative mouthpieces everywhere are trying to appeal to the hands-off-my-(fill in the blank) mentality, and seem to be gathering quite an audience. Which brings me, finally, to my point: THESE PEOPLE ARE TROLLS. STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a troll is someone whose primary purpose is to get a rise out of you. They aren't trying to engage in debate, nor are they even trying to add anything to the discussion. They just want to cause you grief and get a little attention in the process. These food-trolls are deliberately making inflammatory claims about the Obama's personal eating habits to draw attention away from the larger issues at hand: American obesity rates are hovering at 30% and diet-related illness is on the rise, while US farm policy makes it all possible. Devoting page space and airtime to these frivolous claims distracts us from our cause, thereby accomplishing the troll's mission. So the next time you read a headline that states Obama took the elevator instead of the stairs or that she ate a cupcake while visiting a school, do yourself and the entire food movement a favor: ignore it.

100 Post Milestone and a New Website

2011-02-21T12:12:00.002-05:00

My oh my, this is my 100th post! Its amazing that I've spent (wasted?) this much time and effort on my little blog. Over the years it has gone through several iterations and many different focuses, but I think I've finally landed on one that works. A big thank you to my readers for sticking with me for any and all of the past 100 posts. I love you both.

And now just a quick nod to some of the things that have been happening behind the scenes. I've switched over to my own domain which seems to be throwing RSS feeds off a little bit. I'll have this figured out soon. In the meantime, check out my new About Me page and an updated Links page. I hope to have a few more pages fleshed out over the coming months.

You may have noticed that I've also added an ad. Since I sold out ages ago the idea of advertising isn't really gnawing at my soul and I hope that you're fine with it too. Maybe someday the ads will be vaguely relevant to my topic area.

Who's Your City?

2011-02-16T21:21:00.000-05:00

OK, Richard Florida is not the most universally respected urban thinker of our time, but I just came across a nifty tool that he released in conjunction with his latest book, Who's Your City, and had to share. The book posits that choosing a city to live in is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. Florida claims that "place exerts powerful influence over the jobs and careers we have access to, the people meet and our “mating markets” and our ability to lead happy and fulfilled lives." As someone faced with impending graduation and career planning, this is not a statement that I necessarily want to hear. Luckily I've got a solution to this potentially overwhelming decision, and of course, it represents itself in the form of an infographic (more on this later). In the meantime, check out my Place Finder results above, and let Florida decide what city you should consider moving to by playing the Place Finder game yourself in the box below.

The Urban Design Lab and NYC's Regional Foodshed

2011-02-11T13:39:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine recently forwarded me a presentation from the NESAWG conference that took place this past November. Kubi Ackerman of the Urban Design Lab brought the house down with a collection of charts and graphs that clearly made the case that the food system is broken, and that a regional foodshed model is a potential way to fix it. The Urban Design Lab is currently working on a New York City Regional Foodshed Initiative that:

"incorporates localized land use, soil type, transportation infrastructure, and climatic conditions to assess production at several scales, as well as actual consumption data for New York City. Additionally, the Initiative allows for comparison of existing regional production and distribution with potential regional production and distribution to identify concrete possibilities for enhancing regional capacity."

The UDL is using GIS to visualize all of these data-heavy elements and demonstrate what a regional foodshed might look like. Pretty exciting stuff. They are also working with MIT Collaborative Initiatives to make a national model. The national model repeats the formula for the 25 largest cities in the country and could help make the case for a re-regionalization of food systems.

There are several reasons that I am inspired by this project. For one, it is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding a very complex problem. Both the UDL and the MIT Collaborative Initiative pride themselves on tearing down the barriers that have traditionally kept doctors from soil scientists and engineers from anti-poverty advocates. By recognizing food as a system rather than merely a good to be traded on the marketplace, the conflicting goals of environmental protection, hunger reduction and a strong local economy can all be considered at once.

Another reason the UDL has captured my heart is their heavy reliance on graphics and maps to make their case. You could definitely state that corn subsidies are shifting the American diet towards calorie-dense over-processed foods, or you could show it in a super-awesome graphic. The image to the right is a great summary of the misplaced priorities of the USDA and is a call-to-action for farm bill reform.

Basically, I love the UDL because they can take a complex problem like food and make it comprehensible through beautiful images filled with information. Their work will help make food policy decisions easier by accurately depicting both the stakes and the solutions in an inspired way.

New Census Data Mapping Tool

2011-02-09T11:11:00.001-05:00

In preparation for the 2010 Census data rollout, the government has shifted from the clunky American Factfinder to a newer, glossier Factfinder2. I did a little bit of playing around with it this morning, and it is so far much easier to use. (For instance, instead of making you hunt for data by slogging through drop-down menus differentiated by census type and table subject, the data is presented in an easy-to use interactive format.) After I selected my data topic it took me a little while to figure out how to actually access the data tables, but once I did it was easy to gather all sorts of information quickly. The best part is, you can even make an editable map! ArcGIS just got that much less useful.

I'm playing with data right now to come up with some supporting evidence for an argument I recently had with a few friends. Some of this data is represented in the map to the right. Pictured is the percent of people in the "arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media" occupations mapped out by metropolitan statistical areas. I'll probably post a follow-up on our discussion a little later; after the 2010 census data is fully released and I can vindicate my spurious claims. Stay tuned.