Staff spotlight: Chango Reese, Summer Practicum TA

Chango Reese will be serving as Teaching Assistant
 for the Groundswell Summer Practicum.

Groundswell volunteer Audrey Gyr caught up with Chango Reese, Groundswell's Summer Practicum TA, to share a bit about his story in this Staff spotlight.

by Audrey Gyr

When Chango Reese first moved to Ithaca from the Bronx three years ago, he immediately noticed the disparity between who had good food and who didn’t. In order to combat this inequity, Chango began a program with his friend Anthony Gallucci they called “Healthy Food for the Hood.” Their mission was to “combat unhealthy food pantry traditions with organic and locally grown food for our people, who felt excluded from places like GreenStar and the Farmers Market and who felt stigma about going to local pantries.”

The duo contacted local CSAs, who supplied them with surplus produce that they then boxed and distributed to families. Chango credits Ecovillage, West Haven Farm, Joanna Green, and Elan Shapiro for helping him and Gallucci make the program a success. Ithaca Community Harvest, an organization that strives to provide all of Ithaca's residents with locally grown, organic produce, heard about Anthony's and Chango’s program and suggested turning it into a market box program similar to a CSA, but without the up-front investment that many families find prohibitive. Chango saw it as an opportunity to expand the program's reach, so Ithaca Community Harvest hired him and devoted resources to support the program.

After turning over the program to Ithaca Community Harvest, Chango got involved with other groups in Ithaca's food movement, volunteering for urban agriculture group Gardens 4 Humanity and participating in Groundswell’s 2011 Summer Practicum. Chango found the Practicum to be valuable because it covered an immense amount of information in a short period of time. He says, “I was really interested in the farm tours and seeing all of the different livestock operations, from organic meat farms to commercial dairies. I realized that the lack of butchers and processing plants are very limiting to small farmers in the area.  Mondays were also great because we were able to get in the dirt and work outside.  The two biggest things I got out of the Practicum was learning more about the regulations that surround food production, and the meaning of labels such as certified organic and all-natural.”

Farm Service Agency offers new program: Land Contract (LC) Guarantee Program

by Devon Van Noble

We are pleased to share news of the launch of a new financing program through the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), called the Land Contract Guarantee Program. As of January, the FSA will be offering loan guarantees to eligible farmers to buy and operate family sized farms. The focus of the program is to reduce the financial risk to sellers, who wish to sell agricultural property to a beginning farmer or a farmer who is a member of a "socially-disadvantaged group". Groundswell has been working hard to develop new farmer training opportunities, but without financing options that are compatible with the scale of farming they are interested in, these new farmers wouldn’t be able to continue growing in our area.

In some places in the country, the purchase of farmland through land contracts is a key mechanism for land succession, and we see this Program as a wonderful opportunity for both, landowners and new farmers in Tompkins County and Central New York. If you are beginning to plan for the transition of your estate, or selling property, we hope you will take the time to understand how this financing option works. You can find more information at www.fsa.usda.gov.

What does this mean for beginning producers and landowners?

The Quintessential Black Farmer: Dreaming of Timbuctoo

Dreaming of Timbuctoo, an exhibit documenting a chapter of black
land ownership in Upstate NY at The History Center in Ithaca

by Kirtrina Baxter

The concept of the black farmer is not just a vestige of slavery. In fact, Africans had agricultural systems for centuries, and as some more recent studies assert, even millenia ago. In this county we know as the US, however, African American farmers are usually associated with post-enslaved people, staying on at the plantations where they were enslaved in the south. What a lot of people may not know is that blacks owned land and farmed on that land in the south and in the north during slavery and after.

Right here in our own neck of the woods, there were black farming communities set up in the mid-1800’s. I visited an exhibit this past week at The History Center in Tompkins County entitled Dreaming of Timbuctoo. This exhibit speaks of an abolitionist plan right here in New York State to give 120,000 acres of land in the Adirondacks (mostly in Essex and Franklin Counties) to 3000 black people in 1846. 

“The vision of an Adirondack farm settlement for African-American New Yorkers was a response to the nightmarish facts of daily life for black people in metropolitan New York in the 1830s and 1840s. Waves of white immigrants were displacing black laborers and artisans from long-held jobs. A housing shortage forced impoverished black families into epidemic-ridden slums. Bounty hunters on the trail of fugitive slaves prowled black neighborhoods. Most insultingly, a discriminatory $250 property requirement for free black men disenfranchised nearly all black New Yorkers from 1821 until 1873.” 

Dreaming of Timbuctoo

Of these 3000 grantees, not many settled on the land. Some felt it was a difficult move because they would be isolated from the black communities of support they were familiar with and accustomed to in the city. Others assessed the move as not economically secure enough, realizing the costly efforts of homesteading would be an enormous undertaking that included the cost of moving which many could not afford.  And still others were so immersed in the freedom movement that they could not break away to work the land. There were various reasons why some never took possession of their granted land; however, there were also many reasons to do so.

Farmers v. Monsanto

GMO corn in Germany.

This message, from Gianni Ortiz, contains information about an upcoming gathering to show support for the 82 farmers who are taking agro-tech giant Monsanto to court in The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA), et. al. v. Monsanto. Gianni is organizing a delegation from Upstate NY to make an appearance at the event. For more information about the case, click here.

Sorry for any duplication and please share with lists and friends generously.

Hello Everyone,

The Bus will be leaving promptly at 6am Tuesday January 31st from the old Wal-Mart parking lot in Hudson. The exact address is 351 Fairview Avenue, Hudson, NY 12534. Please be there no later than 5:45 am. Those who have already confirmed are guaranteed a seat, everyone else will be first come, first sat – maximum capacity is 55 passengers. Bring anything you will need to be comfortable for the day. We will reserve space for signs, etc… The weather should be quite gorgeous with temperatures in the low 50’s. Also we are asking that those in our group wear a purple armband so that we can keep track of and support each other during the action. You can find guidelines for signage and more at www.osgata.org.

We will be gathering with occupywallstreet. They are planning on having a large demonstration with a timeline of different egregious actions committed by Monsanto over the years, a teach-in, and possibly a large banner. A big thank you the organizers of Occupy Big Food and Occupy Wall Street Food Justice for their hard work on this. I believe we will be leaving Foley Square at mid-afternoon but cannot guarantee that, so please make your plans accordingly. Departure time from NYC will be announced the morning of. We have the use of the bus up until leaving NYC at 6pm.

Break Bread, Not Shale

Local baker Stefan Senders baked 200 loaves of bread, and then, with the help of Thor Oechsner, the farmer who grew the grain and Neal Johnston, the miller who milled the grain into flour, he carried them all from a veggie oil powered VW station wagon to Sunday's rally in Albany, distributed them to the protesters, marched and chanted all day, drove home in the darkness went home, fired up his ovens and began baking bread to distribute to the members of the Wide Awake breadshare today. Thank you Stefan.

Shale Gas Rally speech, Albany, New York
1/23/12
by Stefan Senders
Wide Awake Bakery
Trumansburg, New York
www.wideawakebakery.com

My name is Stefan Senders, and I am a baker. Beside me are Thor Oechsner, an organic farmer, and Neal Johnston, a miller. We work together.

Today we bring bread to Albany to intervene in the self-destruction of the great State of New York. We come, Farmers, Bakers, and Millers, to remind our state and our Governor, Andrew Cuomo, that despite the promises of industry lobbyists, the exploitation of Shale Gas in New York is a bad and broken economy of the worst kind.

This bread is the product of our community and our farms. The wheat, grown, tended, and harvested by our local organic farmers, is fresh from the soil of New York. The flour, ground in our local flour mill, is as fine as concerned and caring hands can make it. To resurrect a term long since emptied by advertisers, the wheat, the flour, and the bread are wholesome: they bring our communities together, give us work, nourish us, please our senses, and make our bodies and our land more healthy. This is good economy. It is wise economy. It is a steady economy that nourishes the State of New York.

Growing the Farm Enterprise Incubator in 2012

The Farm Enterprise Incubator at EcoVillage at Ithaca in 2011.

By Devon Van Noble

This winter marks a new phase for Groundswell’s Farm Enterprise Incubator — a program designed to provide beginning food producers with affordable, low-risk access to land, business mentorship, training, and support.  The Incubator program is especially focused on providing these opportunities to limited resource and socially-disadvantaged communities in the area.  For now, a field of approximately 10 acres has been designated by EcoVillage at Ithaca as the initial site of the Groundswell Incubator. This winter, Groundswell is engaging in a planning process with farmers and potential incubees to ensure that the Incubator meets everyone's needs.

Permaculture Design at the Incubator Site

This past August, we began regularly walking the 10-acre Incubator site with our two farmer-consultants, Melissa Madden and Garrett Miller of the Good Life Farm in Interlaken, NY.  Having just used a permaculture design process to create their own 69-acre farm, we knew they would be wonderful coaches to help us thoroughly assess and understand the 10 acre site at EcoVillage.  Permaculture design is a process of truly understanding both the land and the people that you are working with.  Not only have we been evaluating the water flows, soil composition, and landform that make up the Incubator site, but Melissa and Garrett also helped us design an interview process that collects a swath of useful information from the many stakeholders who have an interest in the Incubator project.

After Melissa and Garrett introduced the permaculture principles, I think some of us were ready to just start designing!  But they kept reminding us that we had a lot of observations to make and data to collect before we would be prepared to actually lay out plans for the site.  Permaculture is really an iterative process between the needs of the land, the people and the life around them, so one of Melissa’s ongoing tasks has been to keep checking our expectations for the Incubator and help us to be open to the process as it develops. 

Student Profile: Max Chapman

Groundswell volunteer Audrey Gyr caught up with 2010 Summer Practicum student Max Chapman to find out what he's been up to and what the Practicum means to him.

Max Chapman

Max Chapman first heard about Groundswell's Summer Practicum from his adviser Kelly Wessel when he was an Environmental Studies major at TC3. At the time, Max was interested in becoming a biology major and was hoping to gain a greater scientific background in agriculture. He quickly grew to love working on West Haven Farm in Ithaca and began to feel a deeper connection to the Ithaca area after visiting local farms and businesses. 

He began working at Greenstar Cooperative Market in Ithaca after a Practicum class visit, and you can currently catch him at the deli counter at the West end location. He says that taking part in the Summer Practicum "broadened my awareness and consciousness, and helped shape my personal philosophy." He enjoys working at Greenstar because they sell many local products and he can see firsthand how they contributes to Ithaca's food system. When not working at Greenstar, Max is busy completing his EMT certification. In the future he plans on focusing on wilderness medicine.