Food Open Space Discussion: Collaborating/Combining Efforts With Existing Organizations/Businesses, and Community Food Education in Schools

Part 1: Collaborating and combining efforts to create synergistic outcomes with organizations, individuals, and businesses already doing “transition” work with food
- There is not enough cohesion between the people who are currently doing work in the realm of food security/sovereignty and food re-localization.
- Dangers of this work: wasting time, not being effective, creating things that already exist.
- Too much talk, not enough action.
- We need to network, communicate, and organize for more efficiency and synergy
- “Who is already working in food?”
o Bountiful Cities Project: replicable model, 10 years old, doing good work
o Churches and schools in the area that already have gardens/garden clubs
o Manna Food Bank
o Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP)
o Burton Street Community: created a replicable template with the Asheville Design Center. The template designs for neighborhood food security, as well as green-collar jobs.
o Asheville HUB: tackles the “big picture” questions for sustainable community development
o Pisgah View Peace Garden
o Localfood.com (and Jim Gordon)
o Master Gardeners and the Agriculture Extension Office
o Tailgate Markets
o And many, many more organizations
- Thorough mapping of this topic is needed in order to make the best of what is already being done, and what has yet to begin.
- Transition Asheville’s greatest task: Networking and including Everyone.
o Which organizations are willing to collaborate?
o Crowd Sourcing: Creating a mapping project that can be edited/added to by everyone, the way Wikipedia.org can be added to.
Part 2: Community Education and Food in Schools
- School grounds have excess grass and unused land-space which is costly to maintain and serves little purpose to the students and the community.
- The students/teachers leave for the summer, thus no one is present to take advantage of the growing season even in the schools that do have gardens.
- North Carolina State policy prohibits the food grown on school grounds from being served in the cafeteria.
- In New Orleans, virtually every school has a garden, and the students actually eat the food.
- Problem largely results from a lack of vision and holistic, big-picture thinking.
- Many families are on food stamps, and free/reduced lunch is a burdening expense in the education system. So: Why not feed the economically disadvantaged families/students with school gardens?
- Problems often start at the top: State Policy, school boards and school administration don’t want school gardens.
o Question of perspective: Is a garden beautiful, or messy and hard to maintain?
o Strong organization between parents and teachers is needed
o A top-down strategy starting by getting the principle engaged has proven to be very effective in some past cases
o Educating the educators: “What is a 21st century learner? A 21st century learner is technologically savvy and environmentally savvy and possesses food skills and other practical skills.
o We need to organize classes in how to navigate bureaucracy, (although we don’t have much time to do the navigating)
o Where is the money allotted for schools going?
- Using the school to grow food over the summer: children and their families gardening together
- Michelle Obama has a good model, but it can’t be replicated where state policy interferes.
- ASAP’s Farm to Schools Program: A lot of effort from a lot of people, with very little real gain because the existing policy/infrastructure is slow to change
o Cafeterias don’t have pots and pans, are not set up to actually cook anything, only to heat pre-made food.
- Get the kids to say that this is what they want
- Could income and/or free food gained from school gardens offset the cost of free/reduced lunch? Knowing the numbers and potential production would be helpful.
- Asheville could create the locally replicable model and lead the way, doing outreach education and field trips.
- Connecting with health/obesity related organizations (i.e. the American Diabetes Association) to collaborate on efforts
- Most important: Stronger community engagement
o Get the policy-makers to step out of the way and let the community do the work it wants to take care of itself.
o Push for policy allowing kids to eat what they grow.
- Determining individual next steps for members of the discussion:
o Developing Permaculture curriculum for Asheville City Schools, Buncombe County Schools, suitable for NC statewide curriculum.
o Teaching cooking classes
o Teaching Permaculture at Asheville FreeSkool.
o Volunteering at MANNA Food Bank
o Collaborating with others to research the economic potential of school gardens