Farm Folk/City Folk
By Louise Chatterton Luchuk
October 26, 2009
TORONTO, ON // When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled at least 1,500 miles from farm to plate. The 100-mile diet movement has brought the idea of eating locally grown food into the recent mainstream; however, for the last 15 years, Farm Folk/City Folk has actively worked to support community-based sustainable food systems in British Columbia.
They do this by engaging in public education with farm and city dwellers; actively organizing and advocating around local, timely issues; building alliances with other organizations; and harnessing the energy of volunteers. 2009 projects include Seed Security, Community Farms, and Get Local, a partnership with the Vancouver Farmers Market to educate consumers about the benefits of eating locally, where to find local food, and how to adopt a diet consisting of more local food products.
Opportunities out of the economic downturn
Few organizations can claim that the economic downturn has created opportunities for their organization, but Farm Folk/City Folk sees an increased interest in, and recognition of, the importance of their work. Executive director Heather Pritchard is a long-time food activist and co-founder/farmer with Glorious Organics Co-op in the Fraser Valley. "The changes are dramatic," says Pritchard. "When our organization started, there was very little sense of connection between farm and city. The founder of Farm Folk/City Folk was an organic farmer, and people didn’t have a sense of why it was important to support a local farmer; he left the business based on that. He felt he needed to bring awareness to customers and the general public. The changes in Vancouver in terms of urban agriculture have taken off like a brush fire recently."
Pritchard cites the example of 30 years ago when she lived in a cooperative in Vancouver and it was illegal to have a garden in the front yard. Now, the city has announced that in 2010 they want to have 2,010 new community garden plots. They have identified areas where they are actively promoting people to have urban gardens. Not only that, but soon chickens will be allowed in Vancouver backyards.
Hopefully this newfound interest in what Farm Folk/City Folk has long stood for will minimize one of their challenges. "Lots of times people consider what we are doing as being on the cutting edge. One of the hurdles of that is that people don’t recognize what you are doing and no one funds it. For instance, we had to find ways to fund our seed preservation work ourselves when we started it six years ago. Now, there is recognition of the important need to preserve seeds and it is easier to get funding."
Balancing the growing demand
With increased interest in cultivating a local, sustainable food system, the challenge for Farm Folk/City Folk is to stay grounded in what they can do and not over extend themselves. Pritchard says their main focus is on the farming industry, but recently they’ve experienced pressure to get involved more and more with urban agriculture. Explains Pritchard, "What’s happening is that the demand for urban agriculture is growing, but there aren’t the organizations in place to meet that demand. Young people have come together in groups but they don’t have the structural support of an organization, so they tend to come to us because we are supportive."
For instance, because of the 100-mile diet phenomenon, two young people saw the need for a local source of grain so they went about setting up a grain CSA in Vancouver. (Community-supported agriculture works like a subscription where people pay up front and then when the produce [or grain in this case] is grown, it is delivered throughout the growing season). The CSA was hugely successful and when the two young people moved away, Farm Folk/City Folk took on the project. "There was so much interest in the program. It wasn’t something we set out to initiate but it was successful. If there was another organization, we wouldn’t have taken that on, but there was no one else." Farm Folk/City Folk is about to start a strategic planning process and during that time they will review the projects they’ve taken on and confirm the focus for future projects.
This type of review is particularly important at this juncture in the organization’s history because Farm Folk/City Folk was one of the organizations hit by the loss of gaming revenue from the British Columbia government. They lost $40,000 of funding but, according to Pritchard, the fact that these were non-designated funds was a big part of the devastating loss. With threats over the years that the gaming funding would be cut, Farm Folk/City Folk had already started discussions about weaning themselves off of reliance on this funding source.
A snapshot of... |
Who: FarmFolk/CityFolk Society
Mandate/Mission: Farm and city working together to cultivate a local sustainable food system.
Location: Vancouver, BC (city office) but our work is provincial in scope.
When established: 1993
Number of staff: 1 full-time, 6 permanent part-time, 3 permanent seasonal event coordinators and project-based contractors and consultants.
Number of volunteers: 250
Budget: $350,000/year
Awards won: Edible Communities Local Hero award 2009, Georgia Straight Best of Vancouver- 2008- best literary sustenance for our Knowledge Pantry and honourable mention for our Get Local project, Georgia Straight 2001-best food event-for Feast of Fields.
Check out their Local Heroes website for a 6-minute homage to 27 farm and city sustainable growers. Images on the FarmFolk/CityFolk 2010 Calendar are also available here.
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Diversified funding is key
"We’re really fortunate that, by design, our funding is very diversified and that has weathered us through hard economic times," remarks Pritchard. Their Vancouver Island, Lower Mainland and Okanogan Feast to Field fundraisers (gourmet wandering picnic harvest festivals) are hugely successful. These events took fourteen years to build but now sell out in advance and bring in a significant portion of the organization’s budget.
Feast of Fields involves many volunteers. Fortunately, volunteers appear to be fairly easy to recruit for Farm Folk/City Folk events. For instance, there is a community of people involved with the Lower Mainland Feast of Fields that meets monthly at a restaurant. Over lunch, donated by the restaurant, the group plans the event. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
Farm Folk/City Folk deliberately focuses on harnessing the energy of volunteers - including the volunteers that sit on the board of directors. "Most people don’t think of a board as volunteers. But one important way that all this work happens," acknowledges Pritchard, "is through a really strong, active stewardship team of board of directors." The Farm Folk/City Folk board is instrumental in fundraising and boosting membership. Building this type of board took deliberate focus on getting the right core group of individuals. "Our board chair would interview each prospective board member to see if they had the time and commitment. We wanted to know if Farm Folk/City Folk would be their major volunteer commitments. It wasn’t about asking for a huge amount of time, but ensuring that what they committed to, they could be expected to do. If not, the board chair would talk them out of getting involved."
Farm Folk/City Folk - through the energy of its volunteers and supporters - develops and operates projects that provide access to and protection of foodlands; support local, small scale growers and producers; and educate, communicate and celebrate with local food communities. By extension, through reading about their projects and successes, more of us across Canada may start thinking about where our food comes from and about how we can cultivate our own local, sustainable food systems.
Louise Chatterton Luchuk provides research and resources for organizations that want to strategically move forward. She is a freelance writer and consultant who combines her love of writing with experience at the regional, provincial and national levels of voluntary/nonprofit organizations. You can reach Louise at info@luchuk.com.
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