March 19, 2008
The weekend before last, March 15th in fact, spring sprung in my garden in Santa Rosa. It was near 70 degrees and the sun was bright. The volunteer grasses were out of control and I was harvesting them, roots intact, for my compost pile, which at last look was up to 120 degrees. The daffodils were about finished, the peach tree was about to pop, and the first iris blooms were 2 weeks away. I knew spring had begun because, front and back, my yard was full of tiny white, fragrant and spade shaped blooms that had me sniffing around on my knees. They are the violets, viola odorata, that mark the start of spring for me. Despite the fact that humans have cultivated them for over 2 thousand years, my annual bloom lasts maybe ten days; so I must savor their existence. And what an existence it is.
Roots of Change, like the garden, is beginning to see a beautiful bloom. Holly King, Charlene Orszag, Anya Fernald (all 2007 ROC Planning Fellows) and Joseph McIntyre from ROC’s Coordinating Team will share some exciting work underway within the ROC Network. Here is my brief rundown on other developments since mid-February when the Stewardship Council met to review ROC’s 2008 plans and budget. The Coordinating Team’s proposals, with Council refinements, were adopted and we are off and running to towards important milestones.
I will begin here in ROC’s backyard. ROC will seed a long percolating
effort to assist the City of San Francisco to create what we think will
be the nation’s first food shed management plan with a planning grant
that will model much of our funding activity this year. Mayor Gavin
Newsom will form a roundtable of urban and rural leaders who share a
commitment to sustain San Francisco’s food system in perpetuity. With
this initial grant, roundtable members will begin by defining the
system and outlining the plan.
Most of us know what a watershed management plan is, but what is a food
shed management plan? Like for a watershed, the food shed plan will
identify the source of food, specify the required quality, clarify
conveyance systems, and determine ways that the City can invest in the
continuous maintenance and enhancement of it’s food shed, which,
according to Larry Bain (2007 ROC Planning Fellow) and Paula Jones,
Director of San Francisco Food Systems, arcs approximately 200 miles
out in all directions from the City’s center. Perhaps this is what Dave
Henson at The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center and Sibella Kraus at
Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAGE) have called the Bay Area’s
fertile crescent. We hope to link Sibella and Ed Thompson from American
Farmland Trust to Larry and Paula to form the dream team that will
guide the San Francisco Urban-Rural Roundtable in its work. ROC aims to
offer similar planning grants for Fresno and San Diego this year. We
will offer up to three more food shed management plan grants in 2009.
On February 27, at the invitation of the State Board of Food and
Agriculture, several ROC leaders presented the 5-year strategy,
California’s Campaign for a New Mainstream in Food, Farming &
Fisheries (Campaign Strategy) and suggested the value of joining forces
with the State. The outcome of the invitation is only now beginning to
come clear. For example, ROC is assisting California Department of Food
and Agriculture (CDFA) and the State Board as they apply for money from
some foundations involved in ROC. The money would be used to commence a
series of listening sessions up and down the State aimed to help CDFA
create its own strategic vision for the year 2030.
Some might ask, doesn’t this strategy already exist? Yes and no. It is
one thing for private sector NGOs to create a strategy; it is quite
another for a government agency to do so, where the pressures of the
State’s most powerful forces come to bear. What came clear from the
meeting on February 27th is that Richard Rominger (Stewardship Council
member), Jennifer Moffitt (2007 Planning Fellow), Christi Heintz (2007
Planning Fellow), and Maricela Morales (Stewardship Council member and
Ventura AFA member) had a tremendous impact on the State Board.
Following their eloquent 20-minute presentation, members of the Board
stated that the Campaign Strategy must be used in their own process to
help frame the CDFA strategy. They praised the work of the 2007
Planning Fellows and the six ROC-funded roundtables at work at the
grass roots and grass tops up and down the state. We are now working
with CDFA to develop further common goals.
On a related note, volunteer members from the ROC community (Martha
Guzman, Edith Jessup, Pietro Parravano, Karen Ross, Richard Rominger,
Petrea Marchand, Paula Jones, and Craig McNamara) helped to draft
legislation that would spark a series of hearings designed to prepare
the Legislature to support the work of CDFA and ROC as these two
complimentary efforts move forward. We await word from the Governor on
the draft. If he buys in, CDFA and community leaders will seek
bipartisan co-sponsors for the bill. As we learn more, we will keep you
informed.
Last week, ROC Staff member Daniel Kramer and I traveled to Washington
DC to work with, August Schumacher, former Deputy Secretary, USDA,
1994-2001. Gus has been helping ROC devise its strategy for inviting
USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services to join the ROC
effort. We met with eight entities within these two departments (USDA
Risk Management Agency, USDA Agriculture Marketing Service, USDA NRCS,
USDA CSREES, USDA Office of Outreach, USDA Rural Development, HHS Office of Refugee
Resettlement, and HHS Community Development/Asset Building). We shared
the vision, strategy and logic model that clarifies the Campaign
activities so far defined for the 2008-11 period. We were well received
and encouraged to apply for funds. We also met with Ralph Grossi, President of American Farmland Trust, to
learn his views on the Farm Bill. He, like the rest of us, hopes that
our leaders in Congress will make intelligent decisions based on the
needs of the future not the past. I would say that he remains guardedly
optimistic. The exciting news from that meeting is that Ralph is coming
back to California to retire to a Marin County vineyard and we hope to
enlist his expertise and wisdom in ROC’s work.
As a consequence of the DC trip and some great meetings with
foundations in February, the ROC Coordinating Team is now working on
grant proposals to grow our funding base. Some of you have already
heard from us on these applications and many others will soon. And
everybody will hear more in the future.
Finally, as inferred above, ROC will be launching a series of
Workgroups this year with planning grants to collaborative teams. These
teams will be tasked with developing plans and budgets for the period
2007-11. Of course the plans must seek to achieve objectives within the
Campaign Strategy. We will be reaching out to invite your
participation. So stay tuned, ROC is rockin!
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