This was written as a response paper for a course on social networks. We were asked to write three essays critiquing network research in our area of interest at the micro (people), meso (organization/community/infrastructure), and macro (nation scale) levels.

Generally, we chose essays that used structural network analysis themselves; in this case, I chose a paper that adopted a network (or relational) way of looking at the world, but didn’t use these formal methods. Structural network methods are a set of (mostly) quantitative approaches that (as their name implies)  describe the structure of relationships (ties) between different actors (nodes) or the position of a particular actor within this structure.

For more on network analysis, here’s a pretty good simple overview of some basic concepts.

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Unraveling Agro-food Network(s)

Drawing inspiration from Granovetter’s (1985) seminal work on embeddedness, food systems researchers in the late 1990s began to integrate economic, social, and political approaches to food systems into a network-based ontology.  Rather than look at global food systems as structurally ossified “regimes,” linear commodity chains, or markets made up of rational, disconnected actors, researchers re-imagined food systems as complex webs of actors linked by social, political, economic, and physical ties. Despite the popularity of the network metaphor, there are still few examples of researchers employing formal network methods to describe the structure of agro-food networks.

Raynolds’ (2004) is no exception. Her study of organic agro-food networks falls within a family of research that has blossomed in the last decade, which focuses on “alternative” agrifood networks (e.g. local and regional, fair trade, artisanal, etc).  She employs commodity network analysis to examine consolidation in global organic networks focusing on network governance, or the mechanisms that underlie the development of network ties. She demonstrates that certification standards play a major role in determining and maintaining an inequitable structure of relations between organic food actors in periphery and core (South-North) nations, but stops short of explicitly specifying and measuring this structure. Finally she observes that there is a “bifurcation” in organic agro-food networks between this “globalized system of formally regulated trade” and networks based in “alternative movement conventions,” and suggests that these alternative networks may offer opportunity to upend the reproduction of traditional South-North inequities, as well as inequities between large and smaller scale firms (Raynolds, 2004:725).

By design, the commodity network approach looks at multiple dimensions of global organic networks simultaneously. It describes social, political, cultural, and economic ties. Nodes aren’t limited to one type, but at times are hemispheres, at times, nations, firms, and individual consumers. The boundaries of analysis shift at times from a North-centered organic processing and distribution network to a movement network of consumers directly connected to local farmers to a global exchange between North-South nations.  What might we might learn by focusing in and using formal network methods to measure the observable interactions between a specified set of actors? In the following paragraphs, I unravel three of the many networks that Raynolds (2004) invokes, specify the nodes, ties, and boundaries, and use her analysis to make guesses at network measures like degree, density, and centrality. Then I describe how network analysis might be used specifically to add depth to Raynolds’ final conclusion about the “bifurcation” between mainstream and alternative organic agro-food networks.

The main thrust of the argument takes place at the macro-level, looking at the relationships between periphery-core nations, specifically between Southern countries (especially in Latin America) and Northern markets (especially in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan). In this network, the nodes are countries, the ties are imports and exports, and the boundaries are (mostly) limited to Latin America and the major markets described above. From this, we can infer that Northern countries will tend to have higher in-degree centrality than Southern countries (hence their “core” status).  Raynolds also describes a robust “inter-core” trade “dominated by US exports to Europe and Japan, trade between European nations, and exports from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to the top markets” (p. 725). Considering this, and that products might flow more than one step (e.g. organic tomatoes produced in Chile, processed and canned in the US, and sold in Japan; peanuts grown and shelled in Canada, included in mueslix in Germany, shipped to the UK), we might meaningfully measure betweenness and closeness centrality. This might help to identify particular Latin American countries as “bridges” that are serving as a gateway between Southern producers and Northern markets; certain Northern countries (the US, for example) with high betweenness scores might also be brokers with more power to set the global organic agenda. These measures would require data measuring the flow of some subset of organic products (all edible organic products, organic fruits and vegetables, all processed products etc.) between each country dyad. With this data, we could also compare a network of actual trade with a network of trade that we might estimate based on a gravity model based on “distance” as measured by cost of transport between countries, and “size” as measured by number of organic hectares, length of growing season, and total population. The differences between the actual and estimated networks would shed light on political, social, and cultural structures that intervene in the network. Though the data required for this analysis would not be easy to compile, it might be possible to get at by combining a variety of sources and using estimates, and the result could a more nuanced view of North-South organic agro-food trade dynamics.

Raynolds (2004) also considers a meso-level network of organic agro-food firms. In this case, the nodes are all organic firms (including farmers, aggregators, distribution companies, processors, and retailers) and the ties could be any type of business relationship (e.g. sales between firms). Raynolds describes a change from a “loosely coordinated local network of producers and consumers to a globalized system of formally regulated trade which links socially and spatially distant sites of production and consumption” (p. 725). The trend is towards greater spatial distance between nodes (which would not necessarily be captured in the network I specified above), and also towards consolidation: in network terms, a decrease in the overall size of the network and increased density. Howard (2009) documents this trend in his visualization of consolidation in the North American organic industry, but his study also does not employ formal network measures. Again, data is difficult to obtain on relationships between organic firms, especially given such a broad boundary; however, it is possible to limit the boundary to a particular commodity or limit the type of firm (e.g. only farmers and distributors) to get at a particular aspect of this broader network. This would make it possible to identify more “powerful” firms, not just in terms of endogenous characteristics like size, but also in terms of their position in the network.

Finally, operating beside the macro and meso-level networks is a micro/meso-level network of movement actors and industry groups that shape and challenge norms within the organic movement as well as certification standards. This network could be operationalized as a two-mode network of organic food movement organizations, industry groups and policy-making bodies like the USDA tied by common individuals (e.g. Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan of the USDA formerly staff at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, or former president of the Organic Farming Research Foundation currently head of an organic department at USDA); it could be a two-mode network of movement organizations tied by association with broader trade associations or participation in specific political campaigns; or it could be a network of social movement organizations tied by some other indicator of collaboration. Specifying and mapping these relationships would allow us to see more clearly which agencies, industry groups, and movement organizations occupy more influential positions in the network. If we notice particular clusters of groups, we might look to see if shared norms exist within these clusters and if they specific capacity for collective action. We might also be able to characterize more clearly the “conflict” that Raynolds (2004) describes between movement actors and industry groups in determining certification standards. If we were able to measure this over time, we might also see whether movement advocates like Fred Kirschenmann (2007), who have advocated for a more harmonious marriage between the organic industry and the organic movement into a more integrated organic community, have had any effect.

The article ends by reasserting this conflict between two parts of the organic agro-food network: the one that is governed by organic certification standards driven by commercial and industrial conventions that privilege economies of scale and efficiency, versus the one that is governed by domestic and civic conventions of trust, tradition, and overall good to society. Raynolds (2004) bases this on her observations of “alternatives” to “mainstream” organic networks that represent the “theoretically important […] contested terrain negotiated within and between commodity networks” (p. 738). This dichotomization of movement-based “alternative” networks versus “mainstream” or “industrial” networks is typical of contemporary food systems studies, yet little research has been done to examine these supposedly different networks systematically to compare their structures and ask whether they are really as “bifurcated” as theory assumes.

To systematically analyze this assumed separation, we might choose a particular organic product within a given geography that we believe has strong “mainstream” and “alternative” networks of production and consumption; say, for example, organic berries in the Pacific Northwest which might be produced by small local farms and sold at Farmers Markets and through Community Supported Agriculture schemes or produced in Latin American countries, imported, and sold at larger retailers. We could set the nodes as all firms that participate in production, aggregation, processing, and sale of the particular product, and stipulate ties as total volume of transactions between firms. The data could be collected through a mix of interviews, publicly available data, and estimates based on observations. With this data, we could do a better job answering questions like: Are “mainstream” and “alternative” networks really so bifurcated, or do firms actually overlap (we might expect, for example, some overlap in mid-sized producers who sell both at farmers markets and to larger supermarkets)? If two separate cliques of firms do emerge, are they different structurally: More or less dense? More or less centralized? Which firms have power in each clique? Are norms really different in each clique? How so?

To date, food systems researchers have not yet embraced structural network analysis despite a network-based ontology that recognizes the relational aspect of both industrial and alternative food chains. For one thing, as in the case of the above examples in the organic agro-food sector, data can be difficult to collect. In network analysis, missing data has particularly strong negative consequences on the statistical validity of the data. Even where it is possible to collect data, social network methods can seem inaccessible and overly technical. Yet these methods have the potential to bring more clarity to specific questions about how global, organizational, and individual actors connect to one another to both uphold and upend our current systems of producing, processing, distributing, selling, and consuming food.

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Works Cited

Granovetter, M. 1985. “Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness.” American journal of sociology 481–510.

Howard, Philip. 2009. “Consolidation in the North American Organic Food Processing Sector, 1997 to 2007.” International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 30.

Kirschenmann, Fred. 2007. “Guest Feature: Beyond Organic, What’s Really At Stake?”

Raynolds, Laura T. 2004. “The Globalization of Organic Agro-Food Networks.” World Development 32(5):725-743. Retrieved April 17, 2012.

A brief section from a long paper I wrote for a course I took in Field Research this semester in the Management and Organization department at the business school at UM. The class was wonderful, thanks to great group of classmates, and also in large part due to our really wonderful instructor Wayne Baker.

Each of us chose a field site for study and took detailed field notes over the course of the semester. Wayne read all our notes and gave us weekly feedback. It was so valuable to my development as an ethnographer to have someone else looking over my shoulder, especially someone who was completely “fresh” to my field.

I chose to focus on FoodLab Detroit (formerly the Metro Detroit Good Food Entrepreneurs) — the group of triple-bottom-line food entrepreneurs that I’ve been working with in Detroit. In a lot of ways, it become something of an auto-ethnography… so much so that I titled the second section “Origins of this Me-search Project.”

Table of contents is below for context, then just a very very short section. Interested to hear what folks think.

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The Good Food Movements: Peeking Inside the Lumpy Tent……….. 3

Origins of this “Me”-search Project……….. 5

Journey into Detroit’s Good Food Movement……….. 5

Research and Activism……….. 7

Background on FoodLab Detroit ……….. 9

History and Founding……….. 9

Network boundaries and characteristics……….. 14

FoodLab and Race……….. 15

FoodLab as a social network……….. 18

Networking a Network……….. 18

Mapping the FoodLab network……….. 20

Understanding the periphery……….. 20

Bridging two cliques……….. 22

What’s in a Tie?……….. 26

Information & Advice…………….. 26

Shared Resources…………….. 28

Emotional Support…………….. 30

Social Pressure…………….. 30

All networks not made equal……….. 31

FoodLab as a Social Movement Guild……….. 34

More than the sum of parts……….. 34

Social Movement Organization versus Social Movement Guild……….. 36

Framing within a social movement guild……….. 39

Frame disputes and network structure…………….. 41

A Dispute about Ethics…………….. 43

FoodLab as a movement broker……….. 48

From the parts, to the whole, to the whole in context……….. 48

FoodLab bridges a divided good food field……….. 49

FoodLab and Tertius Iungens…………….. 53

Further Questions……….. 55

Implications……….. 57

For FoodLab……….. 57

For entrepreneurship in Good Food Movements……….. 58

Social Movement Organization versus Social Movement Guild

FoodLab Detroit has some of the markings of an emerging social movement organization (SMO). Snow, Soule and Kriesi (2003) define a social movements as:

Collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional or organizational channels for the purpose of challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part. (P. 7)

Social movement organizations are generally conceived as formal organizations that work to implement the goals of a movement (Caniglia and Carmin 2005). Emerging social movement groups (ESMG) are SMOs who are “in the process of becoming and defining themselves. They are works in progress” (Blee and Currier 2005: 129) Yet FoodLab differs from typical conceptions of social movement organizations (even those in the process of forming) because it does not exist to implement the goals of a particular movement, but rather to propagate the use of a skill or process (good food entrepreneurship – or social entrepreneurship with some food component) in service of multiple goals defined and chosen by individual entrepreneurs. This structure seems to make sense given the fragmented landscape of movements related to good food (see Figure 8 below).

Figure 8: Social Movements Related to Good Food (in Flora 2009)

The  relationship between social movements, social entrepreneurship, and social change is contested. Mair & Marti (2006) suggest that social movement literature may be a useful lens through which to examine the process of social entrepreneurship because “both social movements and social entrepreneurship are concerned with social transformation.” Yet as Starr (2010) and others have pointed out, social entrepreneurship  and social movements are ultimately different models of social change (Martin and Osberg 2007; Thekaekara and Thekaekara 2006).

Critiques of entrepreneurial approaches to transformation within good food movements abound. Food systems academics have noted that purely market-based or entrepreneurial approaches to food systems change may fail to address or may even exacerbate issues such as food security for the most vulnerable and racial and cultural injustice (Allen et. al. 2003). Critics of entrepreneurship as a food movement strategy also suggest that a reliance on market and consumer-driven approaches to change may encourage “individualized, depoliticized behavior” at the expense of attempts at structural change (Donald 2008). Starr (2010) responds to this argument with a catalogue of the strength of the social entrepreneurship approach:

Responding to a political landscape that seems to offer only dead ends, energetic social entrepreneurs are making things happen with resolute utopianism. They are creating space, enabling new experiences, innovating, and providing meaningful jobs for other people who want to work their values. Social entrepreneurship as an approach to social change is personalistic, isolated, and unaccountable, but also experimental, decentralized, agile, and multi-issue. And entrepreneurs know that cultural relevance is necessary to their success, a lesson many social movements refuse to learn. (P. 486)

Notably, FoodLab members have described the network as a way to hold one another accountable to individual missions and shared values through public standards and audits, social pressure, and a shared value of “transparency.”

Rather than a social movement organization, FoodLab could be considered an emerging social movement guild (SMG). The term “guild” implies an association of craftsman organized around a common skill or craft. Guilds incorporate systems of apprenticeships to build skills and competence among members, they often enforce mutually agreed-upon standards of accountability, they may share resources and share a collective identity, yet guild members themselves are independent and may apply have different motivations and ways of applying their shared trade. An SMG, as opposed to a traditional guild, prepares members to use their craft in the service of social change rather than maintaining the status quo: specifically “challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part” (Snow, Soule, Kriesi 2003: 7).

Some quick thoughts jotted down this afternoon

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Social movements can be difficult to observe and describe because they tend to be “fuzzy and fluid phenomena often without clear boundaries” (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Different approaches to describing social movements may focus on the way movements mobilize resources, formal social movement organizations (SMOs), the interaction of movements with external agents, or the way that movement actors construct their identities.

Regardless of the specific approach, movements can be said to be organized to some degree and can perhaps be understood best as networks or networks of networks (Diani, 2003). One of the ways of understanding these networks is through the movement’s online identity, which is becoming an increasingly important part of new social movements (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Online identity can be understood by analyzing a variety of online media created by popular media, SMOs themselves, or individual movement actors, including websites, blog posts and articles, email archives, and online listservs.

The Good Food Movement is no exception to the slippery nature of new social movements. Despite attempts by practitioners and academics to characterize, “pin-down,” and evaluate the success of the movement with comprehensive goals and indicators (see, for example the Vivid Picture Project, Soule 2008),  the movement remains a moving target; some argue that coming to a consensus on movement goals is neither a necessary nor particularly useful exercise (Hamm 2009). As Starr (2010) writes:

Movement critics (academic and activist) tend to write like restaurant reviewers, assessing the worth of a movement’s “product” (always expected already to be running at peak performance). I have recently come to see social movements are long, stuttering conversations in which conversants do not begin with the same mother tongue but over time develop both linguistic and cultural literacy. I see social movement culture functioning as a process of recognition, query, and expansion, repetitious, slow, but growing bigger in each conversation.

Online listservs offer one glimpse into this “stuttering conversation.” Despite their obvious limitations (e.g. various “digital divides” means that low-income and rural contingents might be less represented in online conversations), listservs offer one view into the way the good food movement constructs its identity through movement “frames.”

The COMFOOD listserv was founded in 1997 by Hugh Joseph, a significant leader in the good food movement. Joseph cofounded the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), the New England Sustainable Ag Working Group (NESAWG), Boston Food and Fitness Initiative, and the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at Tufts. Joseph was also instrumental in starting the Community Food Projects and Farmers Market Promotion Program, two USDA grant programs.

According to Joseph, “When Comfood started in 1997, it was envisioned as a straightforward national networking vehicle on community food security topics. Now it’s become a repository for most food-related issues” (Qtd in Starkman 2008).

As of November 6, 2011, the listserv had 5333 members, which may make it the largest online network of food activists and food movement organizations. In contrast, two of the most popular movement-related listservs after COMFOOD are ASFS (created in 2001 by the Association for the Study of Food and Society) with 1829 members and SANE-T (created in 1991 as a discussion group about sustainable agriculture) with 822 members.

Generally, the list is made up of practitioners, activists, academics, students, policy-makers and other individuals. A description of the listserv on the Community Food Security Coalition website explains that “Postings by any subscriber may include, but are not limited to:

• Broad or specific discussions on the issues and strategies relating to community food security; similarly, articles of general interest;
• Requests for information, contacts, or assistance on topics related to CFS research or programs;
• Requests for information about organizations working in specific areas (for example, which groups in a region are doing entrepreneurial gardening programs);
• Requests for technical assistance or related help in designing or implementing projects;
• Descriptions of new activities your organization is initiating;
• Announcements of CFS-related activities – workshops, training sessions, conferences;
• Job notices or internship opportunities”

The listserv is open for anyone to join and to post; it is unmoderated (anyone can post to the list and posts are not screened), and governed by a peer-policing system along a set guidelines.

I was particularly interested in using COMFOOD to begin to understand the role of entrepreneurship within the movement. I’m aware that there are limitations to using the COMFOOD list as a proxy for the “good food movement” as a whole, but I see this as a place to start.

The chart below shows the number of total posts and the number of posts that include the word “entrepreneur” on the COMFOOD listserve from January 2008 to June 2011. I tabulated posts at six month intervals from the COMFOOD archives. Over this time period, there were an average of 374 posts each month and 12.5 posts (or 3.3%) of posts included the word “entrepreneurship.” Overall posting volume has increased over the 42 month period, and the use of the word “entrepreneur” has followed this general upward trend.

The next step in analysis will be to read and code instances of the use of the term “entrepreneur” and “entrepreneurship” in a randomly selected sample of 50 emails over a 12-month period from Nov 1, 2011 to Oct 31, 2011.

A draft of a paper thinking through how we might apply some of the growing body of lit on social entrepreneurship to the Good Food Movement. I wrote this back in April and my thinking’s evolved quite a bit since then. I’m not sure “social entrepreneurship” is a useful category given what I’m actually trying to get at: the role of entrepreneurship (of all types) in the good food movement (and potentially in other movements).

Rather, I’m starting to rephrase  to ask: What role does entrepreneurship (whether defined as a series of processes — e.g. innovation, a stage in business development — e.g. startup, particular characteristics, etc.) have to play in food systems change? How is it conceived in the good food movement by entrepreneurs themselves? How and when is entrepreneurship discourse invoked? What are its “real” and perceived opportunities & limitations?  What does this say about the movement itself?

Check out the MindMap for some of my questions from back in September.

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Social Entrepreneurship in the Sustainable Food Movement

“The food movement […] may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn’t just about reform — it’s about revolution.” (Walsh, 2011).

1. The Rise of Entrepreneurship as a tactic in the Sustainable Food Movement

The sustainable food movement has been characterized in the popular media as a “big, lumpy tent” that coalesces around “the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’ – that it can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a breakdown of some kind, whether environmental, economic, or both” (Pollan, 2010). Policies and organizations that make up the movement have increasingly promoted socially and environmentally-motivated entrepreneurship as a strategy for change.

The 2008 Farm Bill created the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development Center to support food enterprises that aim to increase access to healthy, affordable, locally sourced foods to underserved communities (CSREES 2009). The USDA’s Community Food Projects Program which aims to “meet the food needs of low-income individuals [and] increase the self-reliance of communities in providing for the food needs of communities,” gives preference to proposals that “support the development of entrepreneurial projects” (NIFA 2010). A study that interviewed 37 urban and rural alternative food initiatives in California found that entrepreneurial programs dominated their activities (Allen, FitzSimmons, Goodman & Warner 2003). In the past five to ten years, a growing number of consultants have emerged who specifically support sustainable food and agriculture business development[1]. At the same time, academics like Hamm and Baron (1999) have described small-scale microenterprises as “prerequisites for sustainable food systems” (p. 57). Donald & Blay-Palmer (2006) come to a similar conclusion in their analysis of a 5-year study on food enterprises in Toronto. Based on extensive content analysis and key informant interviews, they find evidence that alternative food capitalism in Toronto offers an opportunity for change towards a more “socially inclusive and sustainable urban development model” (Donald & Blay-Palmer 2006, p.1902).

Despite growing momentum on the ground, and a general golden glow around entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, researchers have yet to critically examine entrepreneurship in the sustainable food systems movement. Herein lies an untapped opportunity to develop more effective theories on how and to what extent and in what forms entrepreneurship is a useful strategy to move us toward a more healthy, more sustainable food system. As Donald & Blay-Palmer point out,

The strength of the firm-centred approach is in its ability to understand better the complex multidimensional and multi-scalar interdependencies between, on the one hand, the internal innovative dynamics of firms and, on the other hand, the broader institutional – as well as social, environmental and cultural – setting within which we all operate. (Donald 2008)

Specifically, emerging theory about social entrepreneurship may provide a framework for developing useful hypotheses about the process by which individuals and organizations can produce social, environmental, cultural and economic transformation within the context of the goals of the sustainable food movement. As Peredo & McLean point out, if social entrepreneurship is a “promising instrument,” academic inquiry into its processes can produce knowledge for policy-makers and practitioners to inform effective legislative support, social policy, and best practices in development and management (2006, p. 57).

For the rest of the paper, click here to download the PDF.

So I’ve been struggling for the past few months with what it is that I’m actually going to study in my dissertation.

We have some pretty awesome plans in the works with the Metro Detroit Good Food Entrepreneurs. I’m excited about the business plan bootcamp we’re putting on in January, February and March… and website development and the idea of developing training/resource modules around starting a good food business in Detroit, and a mentorship program, and networking together commercial kitchens, and all kinds of other good stuff. And supposedly I have IRB approval to start my research with the group and approved consent forms and all that, but my questions are still murky (or perhaps myriad is a better “m” word to describe where I’m at… myriad, multitudinous…)

So I’d tried talking it out and I’d tried writing it out in a linear fashion and neither of those things were working very well, so I decided to make a little mindmap. This is still a bit confusing. As you can see, lines cross each other every which-way, but I think it’s helping me come to some sort of peace about how different elements are connected, and what needs to be put to one side or demoted to a secondary or tertiary focus.

click it to make it bigger!

Sometimes folks ask me why I find social networking tools useful.

There was the time when I was up on the farm and posted a note asking if anyone wanted to drive my car from California up to Washington. My old friend Sean from Catholic kids choir days had just finished up his time in the navy and was looking for something to do. He saw my note and voila! a few weeks later, I had my car, and he’d had a nice road trip.

Then there are things like this:

This guy is a rockstar. Everything he says resonates.

What inspires you to do your work? “Problem solving… Creating interesting, innovative, and efficient solutions”

“I think we miss opportunities to connect food advocacy and other fields of interest because the nature of the work (and the method of funding) breeds specialization rather than integration.”

“I don’t know one initiative in any field of interest that has been able to create sustainable, game-changing outcomes within 12 months… But in the food movement, we overpromise and underfund, then get mad when we don’t change the world after a year.”

“Investing in communities to create things. Be a part of the creation movement.”

And yet another reason to move to Detroit:

“In two weeks Detroit will launch its Green Grocer Project, which is a grocery expansion and attraction program to help with operations, financing and giving them a direct liaison housed in the City for anything they need. To create a space in the city for a grocer at any level to get involved and give them a contact for anything they need: bookkeeping, accounting, store design, product handling, you name it.… the Mayor will make an announcement on May 17th and it’ll be like watching my baby be born.”

This is the first of a few posts I’m planning on Florida market (aka Union, aka Capitol City). The whole area is slated for redevelopment — a plan that’s been evolving for the past 3+ years and is surrounded by controversy. It’s a totally fascinating story and something I wish a real journalist would take up. Sara R?!

I am obsessed with Florida market. Anyone I meet these days ends up with an earful about my favorite place in the whole district. I love markets. I really really do. Especially the ones that are a little gritty, that remind one that food isn’t meant to be intimidating or inaccessible, or elitist, but something elemental, raw, real, that we all share.

The Union Market buildings were built in the first phase of market construction from 1929 to 1931 and designed by architect E.L. Bullock Jr. in a reduced “Classical Revival” style.

Florida market is gritty. So much so in fact, that people who have visited sometimes crinkle their noses when I mention it. “You buy things there?” they ask. “But those dumpsters with rotting produce! The trucks! The exhaust! The derelicts! The peeling paint and vacant buildings and signs in foreign languages. The noise, the heat and the smell, and the butchers in that warehouse with all that MEAT.”

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I eat it up. This is the place that feeds DC. The wholesalers in the market distribute to restaurants and retail grocers throughout the district. No one who eats out or shops outside of farmers’ markets can pretend like they don’t eat from here. And when you come here in person, you can find all sorts of treasures you can’t find at Safeway, at Eastern, or even at the wonderful Freshfarm markets.

Also known as Capitol City market or Union Market, this is the place where the “other half” of DC shops. Mostly African and Latino families, with some Southeast Asian representation and occasional neighborhood hipster looking for a deal on tahini.

On Saturdays, most of the shops are open for retail sales, including Sam Wang produce, where besides the staples, you can find banana flowers, shiso leaf, nopales, chayote, lotus root, thai parsley, mini thai eggplant, masa, frozen banana leaves, tamarind pods, plantain, and every starchy root your heart desireth.

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Most families fill up two or three cardboard boxes with produce. Receipts I’ve average $60-100. Many folks ask the cashier to let them know when they hit a limit — “All I’ve got is $67 today, so let me know when we get there.” — some get to the end of the weighing and decide to put back the pumelo or melon because it puts them just over.

Sam Wang’s just one of the many shops. Down the way is a tofu production facility where you can get a tub of three super-fresh tofu blocks for $3. My roommate who once ran the kitchen at a vegetarian restaurant in town used to bike here every morning to buy in bulk.

You can also get a huge bag of fresh sprouts for $3 that’s bigger than a baby, but I don’t recommend it unless you plan to make pho for an army.

So far, I’ve brought about a dozen friends to the market with me on mini trips and all of them have found something to love:

Besides the produce, there’s a wonderful Halal market with basil seed juice (?!), samosas, frozen ready-made paratha, ginger tea, and lots of spices. Apparently you can also get goats, but I haven’t had time to set up a spit, so I haven’t indulged yet.

Then there’s the flea market where you can find everything from rusty industrial muffin tins to dancing panda radios, and also some useful things like an adapter for your beat-up no-frills cell-phone or sea foam stilettos to add a splash to your otherwise staid pantsuit.

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There’s a great market directory here of the businesses that sell direct to consumers. See you there Saturdays.

Three weeks or so ago, I sent in my Letter of Intent to register at UC Davis in the fall.

In two months and a bit, I’ll be back in California starting a research position; by the end of September, I expect to be deep into classes, papers, and starting on some of the projects I’ve been dreaming up.

It was hard to decide to go back to school and it was hard to decide to go to Davis, but now that I’ve finally settled on a plan, it feels darn good.

Now that I’ve painted the broad strokes of the next couple of years, it’s becoming more and more exciting to layer in the details. So many of the experiences I’ve had over the last three months are connecting back to the work that I’ll be doing in Davis; people that I continue to meet, places I visit, reports I read — they’re all giving me inspiration for what I can do with two years of financial support, university resources, and lots of excitement and energy.

I’ll be in a program called Community and Regional Development, focusing on community economic development through food systems; looking at the ways that community-based agri-food businesses can create jobs, empower people, improve the physical environment, improve people’s health, and promote cultural change that, among other things, may lead to more cooperation, more compassion, more participation, and ultimately, a more satisfied, happy society.

When you start to get immersed in the food systems milieu, the same concepts come up again and again. The same examples  too. Hardwick, Vermont is one of those examples: a town that supposedly epitomizes what’s possible when business savvy meets food, meets community; throw in a whole lot of elbow grease and voila! an economic and cultural miracle. Down-and-out old quarry town town transformed into a agri-food mecca.

So when a friend recommended Hewitt’s book, The Town that Food Saved, of course I had to read it to see what all the fuss was about. More and more people have a hunch that there’s something magical about community and local and regional “systems,” or at least as opposed to the centralized, industrialized system that we’ve created over the past 100 or so years and this book starts to articulate and demystify some of this magic, not through theory or metrics, but through a story.

The beginning and end of the book are slightly worn, the same concepts you’ll find recycled in your typical industrial-ag critiques and I took issue with some specific points of the discussion that didn’t seem entirely accurate, but the book was completely redeemed by the conversational exposition of the people at the heart of this town.

In the end, the story fired me up, made me feel excited to act, to get out there and buy a a mobile food truck and hire a few students and get produce from local farms and serve people food. By the end, all I wanted to do was be one of the “Toms” (the one who is slightly less obsessed with himself, perhaps) who are the drivers of this story. I was jumping out of my skin, crawling with anticipation, with ideas.

Now, a few weeks later, the flutters have died down a bit in my gut and I’ve started to think more deeply about what I need to DO and I’m feeling a deep sense of satisfaction and purpose.

Hooray for inspiration.