ECO SPEAKS CLE
ECO SPEAKS CLE is where the eco-curious explore Northeast Ohio's unique and thriving environmental community. Each episode delivers thoughtful and informative interviews with local sustainability leaders and offers tips to help listeners connect, learn, and live with the community and planet in mind. ECO SPEAKS CLE is hosted by Diane Bickett and produced by her son-in-law, Greg Rotuno. Diane draws on experiences and relationships developed during her 31-year environmental career to showcase the impactful work shaping Cleveland's environmental future in a podcast that speaks to sustainability newcomers and masters alike.
ECO SPEAKS CLE
Eco Meet CLE - Our Local Food System
In this episode, we bring you the conversation from Eco Meet CLE, a sustainability event held this October at Great Lakes Brewing Company. The theme of the evening was local food. Over 100 people joined us for food, beer, and a conversation about our local food system with a panel of guests that helped us explore the meaning of the term food system, the various roles within that system, and ways we might make it more local, more accessible, and more inclusive.
In this recording, we first hear Lexi St. Denis, the local and responsible food coordinator for Great Lakes Brewing Company, describe her job and the farmers she works with. After that, we hear from Dr. Darcy Friedman, a renowned researcher and the Director of the Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health at CASE. Dr. Friedman moderated our panel of 3 speakers that included Zainab Pixler, the Local Food Systems Strategy Coordinator for the City of Cleveland Department of Public Health; Annabel Khouri, the owner of Bay Branch Farm in Cleveland and a member of the USDA Farm Service agency committee; Jennifer Lumpkin, founder of My Grow Connect, an organization that works to connect the community with agriculture and member of the Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition.
We've set the table for some intriguing topics - everything from food sovereignty to wealth building for BIPOC growers. And we examine solutions that Cleveland can adopt to improve its local food system, address disparities, and improve health in our communities. So pull up a chair. There's plenty to digest on this episode of Eco Speaks CLE.
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You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the EcoCurious explore the unique and thriving environmental community here in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Pickett and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together, we bring you inspiring stories from local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn and live with our community and planet in mind.
Speaker 2:My name is Don Gattis. I am the director of North Star Cleveland. I'm also a grower and you can't see it, but I'm African American and there are very few African American males representing in this industry. And it's awesome to come to a networking event where it doesn't even matter where. When the conversation starts, you don't even recognize what people look like. You only hear the value of their words and the value of their experiences, and that's a powerful thing, a very powerful thing.
Speaker 1:Hello friends, that was Don and one of the many folks who came out to our October EcoMeat CLE event. The theme of this EcoMeat was local food, and over 100 people joined us for food, beer and a conversation about our local food system. In this episode of EcoSpeak CLE, we bring you the conversation from that night, where we explore the meaning of the term food system, the various roles within that system and the ways we can make it more local, more accessible and more inclusive. Now our EcoMeat CLE events are held three times a year and they're open to all, and we organize these with the help of our friends Victoria Avi and Danielle Doza, and our host, dan and Pat Conway with Great Lakes Brewing Company, and we are also grateful to our many sponsors who make these events possible. Please see our show notes for a list, and also please stay with us as we hear from those involved in our local food system.
Speaker 1:First up, we hear from Lexi St Dennis, who is the local and responsible food coordinator for Great Lakes Brewing Company. She describes her job and the farmer she works with, and after that we hear from Dr Darcy Friedman. She is a renowned researcher and the director of the Marianne Sweatland Center for Environmental Health at Case. And then Darcy moderated our panel of three speakers, including Zynab Pixler, the local food system strategy coordinator for the City of Cleveland, annabelle Corey, the owner of Bay Branch Farm in Cleveland and a member of the USDA Farm Service Agency Committee. And Jennifer Lumpkin, the founder of MyGrow Connect, an organization that works to connect the community with agriculture, and a member of the Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition. We hope you enjoy this episode and thanks for listening.
Speaker 3:Yes, let's get started here to introduce our panel and talk a little bit about what we are eating here tonight is Lexi St Dennis. Lexi, come on up. Lexi is a local and responsible food coordinator for Great Lakes Brewing Company and she played a crucial role in sourcing local produce for today's event. Her commitment to local and sustainable food systems is truly commendable. Please join me in welcoming Lexi to the microphone.
Speaker 4:Hi everyone. Thanks so much for having me speak tonight. I am really excited to be involved in tonight's event. So, as I was said, I am the local and responsible food coordinator for Great Lakes.
Speaker 4:Brewing Company, I manage all of our local food purchasing efforts, and that is involved with the Brew Pubs for seasonal menus, brew Pubs, exclusive beers and then also for our density. So for me, being a local food coordinator really starts with local farms. I've been working on small farms for the past seven years and I really wanted to bring that perspective into this position. Being a grower myself, I tried to be flexible with the small growers, and I try to do that so that we can maintain a consistent buying schedule and make sure that we feature the freshest produce possible. And then supporting small farms in Cleveland for me is about creating a stronger network of growers that can be supported in part by restaurants and institutions. I really do believe in the power of collaboration and have really enjoyed expanding the networks that Great Lakes can support. And then I do really think that my role at Great Lakes is very unique. I not only handle the direct sourcing, but I'm also involved with community education efforts, marketing events and creating new sustainability efforts as a whole.
Speaker 4:Okay, so now I want to bring attention to the food that I have sourced here this evening.
Speaker 4:I purchased from eight different local growers and producers, and two of them Bay Branch Farm and Micro Connect are on the panel this evening, so I wanted to give a special shout out to them and I think that brings attention to the fact that farmers do have a wide range of expertise outside of the field and I'm excited for that to be showcased today on the panel.
Speaker 4:I also wanted to recognize the Oberlin Food Hub. If no one is familiar with the Oberlin Food Hub, they really do simplify local food sourcing and streamline it and make it easier for businesses like Great Lakes, and they also have produce all year round. So if you're unfamiliar and you have local sourcing heat, that is a great place to start, honestly, and they were a huge help in sourcing for tonight's event. Woo yeah. And then, last but not least, I wanted to give a shout out to Steve Foreman. That is our group of master. We got the first batch of pumpkin ale here tonight. It is not even on tap, so we harvested those pumpkins from our own farm, pinesize Farm, in the Kairoga Valley.
Speaker 4:National Park and we had an insane harvest this year, so I am so excited to share that with you tonight.
Speaker 8:It's delicious Good evening and welcome everybody. Thank you all for those amazing introductions and it's really great to be in a room with a lot of people that we know because we've been working together for a long time and a lot of people that we know because we've only met each other virtually and we get to meet each other for the first time, and that's my case with Jennifer because we've been working together virtually, and this is my first time meeting her in person today, so it's good to be here.
Speaker 8:I'm Darcy Friedman. I want to acknowledge that a lot of people that I'm here with tonight are members of the Nourishing Power Network. If you're in the network, maybe raise your hand. These are people around Cleveland. Lots of us are here. We are a community action research project testing ways to transform food systems by bridging community power with organizational power to spark and expand justice initiatives led by the community.
Speaker 8:So to start us, let's just ground a minute in the term food system. This is a big word. We've heard it multiple times in our introductions and I just want to have you guys raise your hand if this is the part of the food system that you touch. Are you involved in growing and production? How about processing? How about distribution? How about retailing? How about preparing food, whether that's for your house or your other people? How about eating? Anybody eat. And what about waste management? Okay, we have the whole system in this room. That's pretty amazing. I asked chat GPT what is the food system and this is what they told me the food system encompasses all the processes, activities and relationships involved in producing, processing and distributing and consuming food. It includes the entire journey of food from the farm to the table. The food system is a complex and interconnected network that includes these elements Production, processing, distribution, retail, consumption, regulation and policy, cultural and societal factors, environmental factors economic aspects and health implications.
Speaker 8:So basically, all of us are here because we are touching the food system minimally as eaters and the food system touches and ripples out in so many other ways. So just a little bit of facts to ground us today. As a data person, as a researcher, I always think it is fun to think about some of these numbers. So Cuyahoga County has the highest percentage of food grown that are fruits and vegetables, compared to all other agricultural products, than any other county in the state of Ohio, according to the USDA Ag Census, which is pretty impressive, so we're already starting off with a major asset coming into this space.
Speaker 8:Secondly, we all have heard of terms or some of the problems in our food system related to access who has access? Around issues around food apartheid, which we're going to be talking in a bit about these definitions About 25 census tracts in our county are in areas defined as being low income and low access to a grocery store within one mile. So that's actually 6% of the tracts in our county. To me, that is a solvable problem. We can address 6% of the tracts in our county. Thirdly, I'm always shocked by this statistic that the EPA shows that food waste is the single most common material land filled and incinerated in the United States, A comprising 22 to 24% of land filled and combusted municipal solid waste, and that's as of 2022. In terms of consumption in 2021, 12.8, or almost 13% more than 1 in 10 of the people in our county were food insecure. We're wasting 22 to 24% of the food in this county is going in the trash and yet we have 13% of our residents who are food insecure. And lastly, another, because I come from the health perspective about 11% of our residents in Cuyahoga County have diabetes, compared to 9% nationally. And then I guess there is one last one.
Speaker 8:I was kind of getting excited about the panel and I thought what if we really grabbed all the dollars in this county for food systems transformation? So how much money is even in retail in this county? Well, according to the USDA this is a 2017 estimate, so it's dated there were $17 billion in Cuyahoga County in the retail industry. So let's just say we grabbed 1% of $17 billion. That means we have $170 million going into local food systems. Now, 1% is not a lot, so what if we did 5%? $850 million going into local food systems?
Speaker 8:So we have an opportunity, and that's probably what motivates me the most for our panelists today. So how do we get there? We can set some goals, but how do we get there? So I want to start off with having each of the panelists go down and give a little bit of an overview of the diverse areas of work in the food system that you're doing and your vision for what drives you to do that work. And, if you want to, if you feel like there's a term that's important to your work around food systems, can you define that term so that we're all coming into this conversation together? So, dana, do you want to go ahead and get started?
Speaker 9:Thank you, hello, good evening everyone. So I, as mentioned in my biography, I'm the local food systems strategies coordinator for the city of Cleveland. That means I am working on a lot of basically every single one of those sectors of the food system that Darcy was mentioning, and a lot of that work will be on policy work. So this is a new role. It's a brand new role with the city. I've been in it for about two-ish, three-ish months, so still figuring things out, but basically my role will be implementing policy to help support food access. So when we talk about food access, when I talk about food access, I mean healthy, nutritious, culturally relevant food that folks can afford and that they can get down the street or around the block, being able to walk to your grocery store, being able to take a bike or other means of transportation other than a car, which we know lots of folks across the city and county don't have access to a car.
Speaker 9:So that's what I mean when I talk about food access, and what really drives me is food is a joyous should be a joyous experience Buying food, making food, sharing food, consuming food and so I want everybody to have the access to be able to create, share, consume food that makes them and their families and their communities happy.
Speaker 10:Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to be part of this amazing panel. I'm really honored to be here. So I am a farmer and this is like a new thing for me to say about myself because I have an undergraduate degree in business and an MBA.
Speaker 10:And I worked in the corporate world and nonprofit world for a long time and I was always afraid to actually say I'm a farmer because we don't value farmers. But we should, because we all eat and your food comes from farms in a lot of cases. So I'm a farmer, I'm a grower, I sell my food online through an online store and I'm also a member of the Urban Agriculture County Committee for the City of Cleveland, along with Jamal Rakira from Village Family Farms, who represent the Eastside farmers, and Tanya Holmes, who represents the Central Farmers. So we are a direct link between the USDA and the farmers in the field. So for any growers in the room, feel free to come talk to me and you might not feel comfortable going and talking with the USDA, but there are lots and lots of programs available Through the USDA.
Speaker 10:There's a ton of money available from the USDA to support new and beginning farmers. We just got some funding to do some work in urban agriculture to help new and beginning farmers get access to the programs with NRCS, the Natural Resources Conservation Services, which I hope they'll talk about a little bit more later but also to work with youth to help them understand that agriculture and conservation is a viable career path, so we're really excited to get that up and running. We just heard about this, maybe a couple weeks ago, but we're super excited to work with all of the new and beginning farmers or aspiring farmers in the city. Thank you.
Speaker 11:Peace everyone. My name is Jennifer Lunkin, you see her pronouns.
Speaker 11:So firstly I am the great-granddaughter of Ruby Holland and Howard Holland, who were both sharecroppers in South Georgia, a town called Boston, georgia. I'm the granddaughter of Amy Lunkin. She worked for LCC Steel here. My grandfather was a distributor, a truck driver, and I'm the daughter of two teenage parents here from Cleveland and Warnsville Heights. I'm a community organizer. I'm the chair of the Kaya Hogger and Cleveland Food Policy Coalition.
Speaker 11:I'm also a grower. I grow here locally on my own property. I'm also an added value producer. I produce tea, bath sauce they're right over there in the corner, you can see them as well as jam. I help and support and facilitate other folks who are trying to reach food sovereignty, growing their own food, being able to understand how to process that and make a living and create generational wealth. So for me, food sovereignty is the ability and the power to know how to feed yourself, whether it's growing, whether it's actually working within the system to produce that food or produce added value, and to cultivate those systems to build intergenerational wealth. So as a great granddaughter of sharecroppers, it is fundamental and primordial to my work that I have sovereignty and how I operate and do my business and grow food. I moved back to Cleveland because my family had and is still experiencing illness, and sickness from moving from the south of North and consuming from a very short few options of food that we have here.
Speaker 11:It might not seem like it, but in the neighborhood I grew up in I mean KFC, mcdonald's, rallies Audis, what else?
Speaker 9:I think that might be it right.
Speaker 11:So we didn't have a plethora of options. So to me, food sovereignty was not existed until I left Cleveland and I lived in areas where I was able to actually grow food close to where I lived or where I lived, and I had more options. So I was able to really like avoid all the health issues that my mother and my father had at my age I'm 40. So I even look younger than they did at my age. So I was able to see and experience the difference of what it means to be food sovereign. And that is ultimately the goal right. It's to facilitate coalition building, facilitate movement towards food sovereignty and to reduce the barriers of that ownership. Fortunately, the land that my great grandfather grew on my family still lives on right. I want to be able to do that and I want to be able to have other people continue to do that after me and I want to see systems that cultivate that. So that's really the vision and to me, food sovereignty is the embodiment of actualizing all of those things.
Speaker 8:So we've just gotten started here and we're going to go a little bit deeper and come back to Jennifer, this idea of food sovereignty, of having that power and ability to have control over your food choices, your food destiny, communal processes of problem solving around the food system. So, jennifer, as you know, making local food systems equitable will rest on the extent to which and even we heard this with your comment, annabelle efforts create economic opportunities for growers like I mean, not even being proud to say the name of the role that you play, right. So what is needed to create wealth building, especially among BIPOC growers, as we build up our local food system?
Speaker 11:I was just having this conversation with Tissue, who owns Gaia's gift, and she makes fresh, fresh juices. She grows the produce. I source some of the produce because of the illness that her son had and for me personally I really can you repeat the question one more time?
Speaker 8:One is needed to create wealth building.
Speaker 11:So my experience here in Cleveland specifically, and I think also on the East Coast, has been nonprofit contention, because we can't compete with free right and people understanding the value of food and being able to access that in a dignified way, not a pantry right. Food is medicine. How do we make sure that we're building growers and actually utilizing the information we have from our health care systems and all these different social disparities to build wealth and inform people of how they can do that and Tissue and myself are examples of that.
Speaker 11:We're way healthier than probably our predecessors and our family, because we've actually taken on the role of being the economic driver of our own food in our systems and then providing it to people in a way that's less capitalistic but more collaborative and cooperative. I would love to see the nonprofit sector and the industrial complex really look for ways to not contend in the food space but to support and expand it so that we don't have to compete with free. It's hard to sell food to people who've been getting it for free and they don't understand the value of three pounds of tomatoes right. So I would love to see that systemic change happen.
Speaker 8:All right, anyone want to comment on that? Around the economic opportunities within the food system. You seem like you're ready there, Annabelle. I'm just giving her props for what she said. Okay, all right. So we're going to hold those nuggets and come back to them in the Q&A, so keep this in mind.
Speaker 5:I think that was a really good point for us to keep talking about.
Speaker 8:So, zaynab, can we just first of all acknowledge that Cleveland has a coordinator of local food systems. I know a lot of people in this room advocated hard to get this role, and Sometimes we think change doesn't happen, and I really am so thrilled to see that you are here and you have Taken this upon your shoulders with everybody in the room.
Speaker 8:That's one thing I really value about you is that you're saying this is collaborative. Just like Jennifer said, this is team sport. So, as the local food systems coordinator of the city, do you think we need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to coordinating local efforts, or are there examples in other cities that we could steal and make them our own?
Speaker 9:That's a great question and, lucky for me, we don't have to reinvent the wheel here in Cleveland, maybe retrofit it a little bit to serve Cleveland's very unique needs.
Speaker 9:But thankfully I am the first in Cleveland, but not the first in the country. There's plenty of other folks across the country that are sitting in city government, sitting in County government, working on food systems, whether it be in their public health department, like where I sit, or in their office of sustainability. Some cities are so Progressive that they have an office of food policy, which I dream of for Cleveland one day. But thankfully, even in our own state, columbus has a Food policy analyst who I'm very close with. We've been in similar student committees and rooms together.
Speaker 9:Franklin County, where Columbus sits, also has someone working on food systems work so really. And Cincinnati, I believe, has someone. They're a little bit newer as well. I'm so folks across the state and across the country I'm really looking to lean on and connect with and hear what they've been doing and really think about ways that we can bring sort of those ideas to Cleveland and, like I say, retrofit them to Cleveland's needs and the Cleveland's community and, really, bringing in to your point, this role was created From advocacy from wonderful people most of whom are in this room today, or some of whom are in this room today and really bringing those advocates along with me to do this work together, all right.
Speaker 8:So, annabelle, one of the things that's unique in your perspective tonight is the experience of working I'm gonna say, hand-in-hand with the USDA. I don't know if you can actually work hand-in-hand with USDA, but you are at least at the table with the USDA somewhat regularly, along with some of our other community leaders. So how do you think we can pull on the strings of federal policies and programs to accelerate local food systems transformation in Cuyahoga County?
Speaker 10:I'll speak from the perspective of a grower. There's definitely money out there to get for growing. I would say my biggest piece of advice if you're a newer beginning farmer or an aspiring farmer, find somebody who's doing what it is you want to do and connect with them. First, a farmer, because we are a strong collaborative network. The first thing I did when I started this journey was find a mentor, and I think he was registered to come tonight, but he's become a pretty awesome resource to our business and friend over the years.
Speaker 10:So Get a mentor and then See. You know, I benefited from some of the USDA programs and part of that is just being aware that they are out there and they exist and signing up for them. So if you are a new beginning farmer, go to Farmersgov and click on the work with us or connect with us tab, because there are tons of programs. You can find all the eligibility requirements online. Again, you might not be comfortable going to the USDA directly as a as a newer beginning farmer, so find a farmer that's benefited from these programs.
Speaker 10:I'll talk about one program that I've benefited from is I have two high tunnels that have been partially funded through the NRCS's Equip Program I apologize for the acronyms Natural Resources Conservation Service and and environmental quality incentive programs. Is the pot of money that that came from and they have funded? Actually, cleveland was a pilot city for the Cleveland high tunnel initiative and that was to build lots of high tunnels, which sorry definitions. A high tunnel is a Structure that is covered in plastic that allows producers to grow in the soil for longer into the growing season, outside the growing season and Protects those crops from pests and weather and in my experience, growing in a high tunnel, although there's certainly a learning curve, the produce is far superior to growing on the field and it's just more marketable. So those structures are available through that program, through USDA, and it's a cost share program so it doesn't necessarily cover the entire cost but it took our farm leafs and bounds ahead in terms of financial sustainability, the quality of the product that was coming out of our farm and you know it's just cool.
Speaker 10:Like you have this structure, it actually looks like a farm in our backyard now Because we have these two tunnels. So that's just one example and there is lots of other money and grants available through the USDA. But even locally, to bring it back to the community level, if you're not yet eligible for those monies, neighborhood connections offers, I think $5,000 grants for programs or community-led initiatives around growing food and Gardening for greenbacks is another program through the economic development department of the city, cleveland. So, again, connect with a farmer. We know a lot of stuff and can try to Connect you or figure out what you need and help you advance your business. Great.
Speaker 8:Is there a way for somebody to connect to a farmer? If they don't know a farmer, how would they find a farmer? There are several in the room, Okay so tonight, connect with farmers that you've heard about. But, zana, can they come to you if they do not know how to find a farmer in our county?
Speaker 9:They can, like I said, still figuring things out. One of the really exciting projects that. I'm working on that's so really a development is sort of a census for parks and gardens throughout the city. I'm so really working to Think through how we can get everybody who's growing food and Know this can be a scary word but a database so that we can. Connect. Connect folks across the city who are doing this incredible work.
Speaker 8:So we're gonna make it real here for a minute what questions you guys have for these three panelists local food systems, opportunities, concerns, critiques. I'll bring this to you.
Speaker 7:Let's see if I can put this into words. I often hear about the large-scale agriculture and the issues they're facing and their transition to regenerative, and it's at such a different scale when you're talking about commodity crops. But I'm starting to think that we do need to have this small-scale local food producers in a completely different category and I'm wondering it like is that helpful? To think of them as something totally different, as large-scale commodity producers? Is that not helpful? And how you kind of segment it in your own mind?
Speaker 8:Did you guys hear the question?
Speaker 11:okay, yes, I can repeat. So you were saying is there a benefit to differentiating between small-scale farms and Mike and large-scale commodity farms? So from my experience working with the USDA, like any sort of like segregation or like defining between who's growing what size is not helpful because a lot of things can happen when you have like those identifiers and markers Usually small scale means urban and so like. When you start sort of like putting definitions based on like size and things like that, it can make it make you more vulnerable, depending on you know the political climate at that time, right. So like I would say no, but I think when it comes to actually like facilitating and working with people and trying to understand your capacity, you know, and like making a crop plan and things like that, like knowing that for yourself and your operation is important, but I personally, as a minor, I'm not going to call myself minority.
Speaker 11:As a woman who is a black woman in America, I would not want to be differentiated from any other farm. I want the same services, I want the same resources and everything. So I would not. I would not want that All right.
Speaker 2:I heard the term used several times apartheid could. Could any of you define that?
Speaker 9:Yeah, so we, all of us in this room, have probably heard the term food desert. Right, food desert is a term that's becoming updated then trying to use words like food apartheid to really bring in the structural systems that have been put in place to purposefully create the conditions of low food access for particularly low income, particularly for black and brown people throughout the country. So when we think about a term like food desert, it implies naturally occurring, it implies that there's a lifelessness. But food apartheid really takes into the systems that were put in place, things like redlining, that really intentionally drew out certain segments of the population to cut them out of being able to build their own food system, have food sovereignty, have food access and I'll want to stress the food desert and the lifelessness piece.
Speaker 9:These communities are not lifeless. They've got plenty of resources, they've got plenty of love and life to give to their food system, to be able to feed their people. They just need access to the finance, to the food in some cases. But again, like folks are growing food all over the place, folks are finding ways to feed people. It's, it's not a desert. So that's where the term food apartheid comes from.
Speaker 5:I'm wondering if you could comment on the opportunities that might exist between the small farmers or smaller farmers and the other distribution channels. Maybe it's working with smokers here in town or other folks that might have package or distribute food to make masks.
Speaker 11:I was going to say that, like it actually enables you to forecast and plan and have a growing schedule and actually be able to like apply for funds and know exactly how much you might need, based on a contract from a large producer like smuggers. Like that would be super supportive, right. And it could also encourage collaboration and cooperation in a smaller ecosystem to do that growing to even maybe like train people, right, you could create some sort of workforce development if you have a guaranteed contract from someone like smuggers, right. So like those sorts of things provide a level of stability and then also credibility, right. If you know that you have an end user who's going to purchase from you at the end of two seasons, then you could actually go for confidently funding and other opportunities, like to building your capacity and hiring staff, which is what I'd like to do. So I think that's one of the sort of like benefits of having a larger producer, but then also like it encouraged us to produce our own, because smuggers has a lot of sugar.
Speaker 11:So yeah, I think it would encourage us and give us insight as to what we could also do within our own communities right and broaden our perspective.
Speaker 13:Hi, I have a semi-selfish question, but it might fit. It fit others when you said of the word sovereignty, or you grew up on a homestead recently. So yes, both of you all. So recently.
Speaker 13:I found this term. I'm a farmer, a little bit of big, keeping a little bit of farming. I found this term called urban homestead and so I wonder, I know the growing part as far as the food, but I wonder what that looks like to you. I have a little tribe with me. There's a lot of them at home, so I wonder what that looks like to you and how that can be accessible to somebody, and what were some steps that you would move forward in that area?
Speaker 10:I grew up on a homestead in a rural community in Vermont and I got to be honest I could wait to get away from that. But that was looking back. I appreciate what I learned growing up in that environment and I feel like I've sort of replicated it at my urban homestead, which I guess means I'm turning into my parents.
Speaker 5:She's asking if I can define homestead.
Speaker 10:I don't know the official definition, but I'll share what I think it means. And I think it means really taking control of the food that you eat to the extent possible. And on my homestead, where I grew up, that meant we raised animals, so we had our meat, we had bees, we tapped our trees from maple syrup, we grew the food. My parents knew all of the edibles in the forest and again, I didn't appreciate that. But now that is amazing. That's an amazing knowledge base to have grown up with and that's amazing to give to our community and to our children. And you can do that on an urban scale. So I wouldn't say you need to live early in order to have a homestead.
Speaker 14:Thank you so much. The issue of scale you just mentioned, Jennifer, it's been a word in the conversation a couple of times. Building on the work of David Beach, who's here, and many of you, we've been trying to bring back into the conversation. Bio regionalism, the scale of thinking beyond political boundaries to ecosystems has important for the future and Cleveland and the bio regions around here have a certain advantage when it comes to the future Timescale climate crisis, climate change. We do have access to water and other things. As you guys think about farming and local food at the scale of local and regional, where do you see positioning yourselves in Cleveland and what I think will be an increasingly important focus on how communities work together at that kind of scale bio regions?
Speaker 9:So I mentioned a little bit about the importance of policy when we think about local food systems and supporting local food systems. For me, my vision is that we leverage the millions and billions of dollars that the region is generating in food procurement and shift that towards supporting local food, local growers, and it also means ensuring that folks have access to the land to grow their food as well. So when thinking about the operations of the city, we think about the city land bank, and what I'd love to see is a reform and policy to be able to allow folks to be able to purchase land for agricultural purposes.
Speaker 10:Yeah, I think that access to land and soil that's not contaminated in an urban environment is really important.
Speaker 10:And, yeah, there have been farmers that I've come up with who have gotten leases from the land bank and tried to renew those leases and it's just been a nightmare. So there's a real disconnect between using vacant property for as productive green space, whether that's growing or turning it into a park. So that is a policy issue that needs to be addressed. Those farmers are no longer farming and that land is still vacant. So that's a problem and we can't scale up if we aren't utilizing the space that we have that's not being used for other means or other purposes. So I'm sure in our neighborhoods there's vacant properties that we see and I see that that's potential right. That is a potential space for something productive to be grown, to be turned into a park, not a dumping ground or a grass that's just growing and attracting vermin.
Speaker 11:So that's my two cents. I think building out food with the thought, the tangential thought of building out a green infrastructure in Cleveland specifically targeting folks who are already working as small scale contractors carpenters and actually having a green infrastructure that supports generational wealth. We have such high poverty here and there's ways to actually do a lot of like transferable skill apprenticeships that can build people out not just as trainees but as contractors. Right, really looking at how our unions interact with our communities and whether or not it's actually building out further social disparities and how building out a food system can actually remediate that and change that and rectify that through green infrastructure.
Speaker 11:There's really a lot of dollars that don't necessarily fall under the category of food that could support food right and support other economies within the city. So I would love to see some more innovative thought about how those federal dollars can support a green infrastructure that's inclusive of food and building out economic opportunities to not just bring people out of poverty but to thrive and to actually see a different type of culture around.
Speaker 11:I would say blue collar workers, right Farm workers like we're necessities and there's ways that what we do transfer into other sectors. So being really thoughtful about that and mindful of how we're doing the work and using dollars from other parts of federal funding to support the work.
Speaker 8:Okay, I've been warned. We have two final questions and I'm going to do this one and this one, so go back here.
Speaker 12:Thank you. I guess I follow up to the funding, or federal funding, in particular with the Inflation and Reduction Act and, in particular, funding for green banks. Have you guys thought about or have you tapped into the funding that's available there and, in particular, thinking about the fact that the leveraging that funding, along with local banks like Key Bank, is one of the largest funders of farms in the country? Those could be some opportunities that you could pursue as farmers and I'm just wondering how have you pursued the IRA funding today?
Speaker 10:I'll just say that access to traditional streams of credit can be really challenging for farmers because we don't make a lot of money doing this work and so I'm not familiar with green banks, but it would be really hard for me to go get a loan from a bank if I showed them my income statement from my business. But there are farm loans from FSA, and so you can get a loan at a much lower interest rate to start up your farm business, as long as you have a business plan, and so that is a way to get some startup capital to get your project off the ground, and I haven't done that myself, but that does exist.
Speaker 11:I have not applied.
Speaker 11:I think you have to also be less risk averse for really applying for those types of opportunities. So I have a full-time job which, to me, not only funds my farming. I work so that I can farm and typically that's not always looked at positively. It's not like I'm making $60,000, $70,000 farming every year. So for me being able to substantiate those dollars that I would get, I can't prove it because there's not enough people with enough income to pay me for what I'm selling and the services that I'm offering.
Speaker 11:So when I lived in DC I had plenty of customers that were buying for me. I would deliver. I had schools that would hire me, contract me. Those opportunities don't exist in Cleveland, specifically not for black women like me. So I have to work a full-time job and when I go to those places they're asking me questions that just are outside of my scope because I guess maybe I haven't lived long enough, I don't know. So I think that you have to be less risk averse for those types of opportunities. But I was just introduced to Green Bank, so I'm going to look at it.
Speaker 11:But traditionally those types of opportunities just are not catered to folks that are trying to do this work, especially not younger folks that don't have and built up credit or things like that.
Speaker 8:But we'll see All right, our final question is going to Sarah Condon, who's back here.
Speaker 6:Thank you all so much. This has been so informative. I was wondering if you could share with the room because I don't know if everyone knows what's been going on around the whole notion of the vacant lots, the cleave lot, all the different things that are happening and potential ways people can get involved with them, because there's a lot of publicly facing aspects of those that people can engage to be part of, hopefully getting into some of these tens of thousands of vacant lots in the city of Cleveland alone. You can share that? It'd be awesome, thanks.
Speaker 9:Yeah, absolutely so. Thank you, Sarah, good to see you. The cleave lot program is a program that's being run by the Western Reserve Land Conservancy in cooperation with the city's land bank. It's C-L-E-V-L-O-T. There is a beautiful website that you can learn more about the program. But really the intention is to make the whole process of acquiring land from the city's land bank more transparent, easier hopefully, and also help the land bank reform their policies to better support use of vacant lots across the city. I will note it is in development phases right now, so still very early stages, but they've been convening groups, they've been working as hard as they can.
Speaker 9:Western Reserve Land Conservancy does a lot, so this is just one of the things that they do, but I did want to note it's still in development, so I am going to wrap up our formal session with these panelists amazing panelists but first let's give them a round of applause.
Speaker 8:Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. To me, one of the themes that I heard tonight is that there are major opportunities for food system transformation, but there is also major risk if we're not thinking through who's going to benefit and who's going to harm, and who's going to benefit and who's going to harm. And what I heard in this room is that people want everybody to benefit and maybe don't understand how difficult it is for some people to access opportunities. So I would love to see coming out of this eco-meat. Where can we continue that conversation of these are the opportunities and how does everybody have a fair chance to take advantage of them? Because I appreciated Jennifer's link back to gender, and a lot of times in food work we don't talk about gender at all.
Speaker 8:But much of the burden of food injustice is born on the backs of women, whether it's women who are in the home, where a person's making them prepare food and they're not able to go out and have a job. There's women that try and get in the workforce but they're not able to make. We know they don't make. We don't make the same amount of dollars for a man with our same skill set. The most food insecure people in our country are women with children in their household, so we have a lot of opportunity to unpack. How do we create solutions that really work? And I do hope eco-meat can keep us in that conversation.
Speaker 15:We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak CLE. You can find our full catalog of episodes on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available the first and third Tuesday of each month. Please follow EcoSpeak CLE on Facebook and Instagram and become part of the conversation. If you would like to send us feedback and suggestions, or if you'd like to become a sponsor of EcoSpeak CLE, you can email us at hello at ecospeakclecom. Stay tuned for more important and inspiring stories to come.
