Hannah Wallace

Food Visionaries

I was proud to be a part of Whole Living's beautifully-produced Food Visionaries package, in their penultimate issue.

THE VISIONARIES

They're growing kale in abandoned lots, feeding hungry schoolkids, looking out for our laborers, and teaching us why cooking matters. In short, they're changing our food world for the better. We toast them all. 

See Whole Living's web site, for the first 8, including Mayor Bloomberg, Jeff Bridges, Bill Shore, Abeni Massi, Nell Newman, and the founders of FoodCorps. 

But here's my contribution:

THE BIG BUSINESS WOMAN

As vice president of strategy, responsible for the sustainability programs for Bon Appetit Management Company, Maisie Greenawalt could just do her job and go home at night, but she cares too deeply—about everything from troll-caught tuna to migrant tomato workers—to rest easy. Not only has Greenawalt ensured that all 500 of the company's cafés (from the one at Amazon headquarters, in Seattle, to the one at Oberlin College, in Ohio) serve only rBGH-free dairy products and beef raised without antibiotics, source at least 20 percent of all ingredients from within 150 miles, and adhere to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's strict Seafood Watch guidelines, but she's helped establish a code of conduct for produce suppliers and contributed to a report that will serve as a road map for creating farmworker labor standors. We're in awe, and slightly exhausted, just thinking about it.

A Vineyard in the Inner City

Mansfield Frazier at the Vineyards of Château Hough in Cleveland

Last April I was in Cleveland writing a story about City Councilman Joe Cimperman and the city's vigorous urban gardening movement. While everyone else around the city was taking vacant lots and turning them into high-yield vegetable gardens or community orchards (awesome enough!), Mansfield Frazier, a reformed ex-con who lived in the hard-hit neighborhood of Hough, has reclaimed a weed-choked lot near his house and turned it into a vineyard. (Nevermind that he knew nothing about vineyard management or wine-making. "I tell people I'm an expert at taking a cork out of the bottle," Frazier, a devoted wine aficionado, told me.) As I interviewed urban farmers, restaurant owners, and city officials, Frazier's name kept popping up. So I decided to pay him a visit.

Though it's less than a mile from the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, Hough is a poor neighborhood with lots of boarded-up homes and empty lots. It's the kind of place where teenage boys saunter across a busy street without looking to see if a car is coming. So it was surprising—and delightful—to come across a meticulously groomed vineyard on the corner of East 66th and Hough Ave. As I sat on a bench with Frazier, chatting with him about his ambitious plans for the neighborhood (which include a bio-cellar, a wine bar, and possibly even an indoor fish farm), half a dozen people honked as they drove by, waving or giving an enthusiastic thumb's up. 

I immediately pitched Frazier and his vineyard to O: the Oprah Magazine. My article is in the November issue, page 46.

The boarded-up Victorian in the background will soon be a biocellar

Shocking news: the poor want organic, local food, too

The poster outside Rockwood Voices for Food Justice's Offices, in Gresham, OR

 

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen says that organic food is elitist, and assumes that the only people who demand healthy, pesticide-free food are well-heeled Whole Foods shoppers. Well, I don't know how else to put it: he's wrong. Here in Oregon, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon (known as EMO), has been helping churches, synagogues, Muslim community centers and even Hindu temples source healthy, organic food from local farms for over 15 years. EMO's Interfaith Food & Farms Partnership, which I write about in today's Oregonian, helps congregations launch farm stands, food buying clubs, cooking classes, and even community gardens—all of which are open to struggling community members, too. But EMO doesn't stop there: the organization is also committed to policy work and community organizing. (Their regular e-newsletter contains updates on the Farm Bill and actions you can take to further just food policies.) IFFP has begun a "community food assessment" of Rockwood, hiring local folks to canvas their own neighborhood and find out what people need when it comes to grocery shopping.

I tagged along with Marisela Hernandez and her husband Jose Luis Hernandez Avalos a few weeks ago and got to hear Rockwood residents' responses. Many of the families we spoke to rely on SNAP benefits (food stamps) or WIC coupons and say they have to drive or take the bus across town get to discount stores like WinCo and Food4Less. Several said they'd like to see more affordable food in their own neighborhood in the form of farm stands, community gardens, and farmers' markets. IFFP is on it! Once they finish canvassing the neigborhood, IFFP will summarize the all the data in a report that will be shared with the community and elected officials. With any hope, Rockwood will soon have more affordable outlets for healthy food.