Food Summit Recap

We've recently returned from the 2009 Alabama Food Summit and have some exciting things to share with you in case you missed out. The conference, presented by the Alabama Sustainable Agricultural Network and Greater Birmingham Community Food Partners, brought together a host of farmers, food activists, chefs, community organizations, and concerned citizens, to share their vision of a new food system. Through a series of lectures, workshops, and panel discussions, the gathering provoked conversation, and encouraged and empowered attendees to keep on fighting the good fight. The East Lake United Methodist Church was full of believers - renegades of the industrial agricultural system, who were armed with passion and a penchant for growing food and engaging their communities in healthy living and eating.

The conference line-up was dense. Packed with a veritable who's who of the food advocacy community, I had trouble deciding which sessions to participate in, and of course I could not visit them all. Here are a few highlights of talks that I thought noteworthy and found personally inspiring:

1. The Town that Food Saved - Founder Tom Stearns, spoke to us of his successful Vermont-based organic seed company High Mowing Seeds, and the unlikely transformation of a small Vermont town into a bellwether for a local foods economy. Agricultural entrepreneurs and community business leaders like Stearns, banded together, becoming a cooperative of businesses that grew and fed off each other, and in the process created jobs. Theirs was a spirit of collaboration. They lent each other capital and farm equipment and bought each others' vegetables. Community members invested in a local restaurant that in turn bought produce from area farmers and local producers (the C.S.R. - community-supported-restaurant). Once plagued by unemployment and empty store-fronts, Hardick, VT was reimagined, and rebuilt into a healthy, vibrant community.

2. Food Bank of North Alabama- Great things are happening in the realm of food advocacy in the Huntsville area, thanks to the efforts of Kathyrn Strickland and the Food Bank of North Alabama. The group has been working for the last couple of years to set up a workers-cooperative grocery store in a low income neighorhood on Pulaski Pike. Although this model is in use in other parts of the country, the Pulaski Pike Market would be the state's first worker-cooperative business. The store would offer the area's economically disadvantaged residents access to fresh, locally grown produce, while also creating jobs and generating revenue for a struggling community. The group plans to use the Clean Food Network to source it's inventory of farm fresh produce and other products, and in doing so will improve the level of economic viability for this network of North Alabama farmers. The City of Huntsville will lease the land for the market at a cost of just $10/yr; however, the group is still waiting on more financing to begin construction of the business space.

3. P.E.E.R and the East Lake Farmers Market - It was no coincidence that this year's Food Summit was held at East Lake United Methodist Church. Pastor Sally Allocca and the local non-profit P.E.E.R. (Promoting Empowerment and Enrichment Resources) are doing some inspiring outreach work within Birmingham's South East Lake neighborhood, much of it centering around community health and nutrition. East Lake UMC is home to the East Lake Farmers Market, which operates every Saturday from May-October. Unlike many other farmers markets in the state, this market directly serves a low-income neighborhood, offers regular health screenings for residents, and also runs a "market basket" program that provides a subsidized box of produce to area seniors in need. In addition, P.E.E.R. is also working on aquiring some community garden space to grow supplemental produce for their market basket program, and have already begun to replace some of the church's green space with vegetables. They also hope that community garden plots within the neighborhood will encourage community members to grow some of their own food.