Groundwork Center - Food Access

Written by Christina Barkel & Photos by Beth Price

Spring Issue '24 - Online Shop

It’s a snowy Wednesday morning in deep mid-winter. Members of the Northwest Food Coalition Purchasing Committee log into a virtual meeting room from all over the region to review purchases, discuss upcoming opportunities, and share any needs or observations about their work serving the community.

Each purchasing meeting opens with a review of the committee’s community agreements—a set of norms and aspirational statements that guide how the group works together. This week’s meeting opens with this agreement: “Try on new perspectives and ideas. Adopt ‘both/and’ thinking, rather than either/or. More than one reality can be true at the same time.”

Indeed, more than one reality can be true at the same time. In a region of rich agricultural abundance, people struggle to access enough healthy, nutritious food for themselves and their families. Our community’s farmers work extremely hard and long hours to grow high quality food, yet one unlucky weather event or market downturn can wipe out a season’s profits in no time. We can create resilient systems that both increase the amount of healthy accessible food in our community and invest in our regional food systems. Systems that ultimately benefit everyone in the community. People experiencing poverty and food insecurity deserve access to the same nourishing food, grown in their own communities, as those with means. We can both meet the immediate needs of people in need, as well as work towards the systemic changes necessary to lift people out of poverty.

Part of my role at Groundwork is to serve as a facilitator and coordinator for the Northwest Food Coalition’s “Farm2Neighbor” program, which is the program by which the coalition supports local farmers and food producers through the purchase of healthy, fresh and frozen produce, ground beef, and eggs. The “Farm2Neighbor” program began in 2018, after a visionary food insecurity study by Kris Thomas led to discussion and motivation from the Northwest Food Coalition’s volunteer leadership team to explore ways to increase the nutrition and quality of food offered at member pantries and meal sites. An initial gift from the Benzie Sunrise Rotary Club provided the seed funding for the coalition to begin food purchasing. That first year, the coalition worked with six different farmers to purchase food which was distributed once a month at the coalition’s monthly meeting in Traverse City.

From the beginning, the program benefits were clear. The coalition paid a fair wholesale price to farmers, which was an investment in the local food economy and allowed farmers to plan and produce more crops for their business. In turn, this investment allowed more healthy and nutritious food to enter our region’s emergency food provider system, which bolstered food access and dignity for people seeking food. The overall result was a stronger, more resilient and sustainable food system that benefited everyone in the community.

I grew up in the suburbs, but over 15 years ago, I moved to a small family-run farm outside Ann Arbor to live and work on all aspects of their vegetable production. I fell in love with farming then, immediately and deeply, and have incorporated that work into my life in some way ever since. When I relocated to Northern Michigan, I spent several years working on a vegetable farm in Leelanau County, and enjoyed selling produce at the farmers markets and building relationships with our CSA members almost as much as I enjoyed the long hours outside with my hands in the soil. Food unites us all, and it’s always been important to me to use my skills to help others. So when it came time to join the team at Groundwork, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to work on community food access, so that everyone could enjoy the high quality, delicious food that our region's farmers work so hard to provide.

I facilitate the coalition’s Purchasing Committee, which is a small group of pantry and meal site coordinators that represent the various constituents of the coalition itself. We have large pantries who serve hundreds a week and whose pantries look like fancy grocery store aisles. We have small pantries that operate from just a few shelving units in a church basement. We have pantries that primarily serve members of our Anishinaabe tribal community, and we have pantries that focus on parents and families of small children. Because the coalition covers such a broad geographic area (six Northern Michigan Counties) and has many kinds of members, one of the challenges in running the collective purchasing program is the necessity of making sure that purchases meet the needs of most members in the coalition. 

At this week’s meeting, several committee members note that the number of people served at their pantries seems to be going up. Work hours are cut during the slow winter months. Inflation at the grocery store keeps increasing. Monthly bills continue to climb. People must choose between food and medical bills, childcare costs, and unexpected emergencies. 

In the face of these challenges, however, the pantries continue to work together to figure out ways to meet the needs of their food insecure neighbors. “Everybody really enjoyed the fresh carrots we put out last week,” notes one pantry coordinator. “I wonder if we could purchase some more, and maybe also some potatoes and onions to go along with them, so people could make a hearty soup or stew.”

“We’ve got room in the warehouse for more storage crops,” offers Taylor Moore, Food Rescue Program Director and Purchasing Committee member. “Probably for at least a few more bins. We’ll have volunteers coming into the warehouse to repack food most Tuesdays and Thursdays this month too.” Unlike when the program started, and farmers brought food to the in-person coalition meetings, these days Food Rescue employees and volunteers provide the logistics needed in order to directly deliver purchased food to food pantries and meal sites.

Armed with the information of warehouse capacity, I contacted a couple of farmers who I know are looking to sell more bins of storage crops to the coalition. A few text messages later, a plan forms—next week Food Rescue will send a truck out to the farm to pick up a couple of 800-pound bins of carrots and potatoes and bring them back to the warehouse in Traverse City. Volunteers will repack the food into 40-pound lugs, which each coalition member will receive along with donated Food Rescue food. Once the pantries receive the food, they will distribute it out to people in need, or cook and serve a delicious community meal. 

In 2020, the need for such a program’s existence became urgently clear by March, when Covid-19 arrived in Michigan, and the region’s restaurants, schools, farmers markets, and more shut down to prevent the spread of the virus. Coalition members predicted an immediate spike in need due to the number of people laid off from their jobs at that time, while at the same time the pantries were experiencing national supply chain shortages that led to bare shelves at the grocery store and affected the ability to keep food pantries stocked. Additionally, our region’s farmers did not know who would be able to buy their crops in the summer, or if they should even plant anything at all. Groundwork stepped in with the Local Food Relief Fund, a crowdfunding campaign that channeled generous donations from the community directly to the Northwest Food Coalition and Food Rescue (Groundwork also sent funds to Manna Food Project in Harbor Springs), so that the coalition would be able to increase the amount of food purchased from farmers. In this way, farmers would be able to continue growing food because they knew that the coalition would buy it, and coalition members would be able to stock pantry shelves with nutritious food.

Since the height of the pandemic, funding for the “Farm2Neighbor” program has been sustained through private donations, grants from foundations, and other fundraising efforts. Groundwork and Food Rescue continue to offer their skills and expertise to coordinate the logistics of the program. In 2022, all members of the collaboration were honored to be able to work with the Grand Traverse Band to receive a federal grant as part of the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which was initiated in response to the national agriculture supply chain disruptions that occurred during the pandemic. This grant provides funding for the program through 2025, and directs recipients to build relationships across the agriculture value chain to create more durable and resilient local food systems, open access to the hunger relief market for new producers, and create a new, reliable stream of orders for participating producers, in turn allowing these growers to further expand and invest in their businesses. The hope is that this program will become a permanent part of the Farm Bill, and thus sustain the innovative purchasing the coalition is able to do. 

The local impact of these years of program development and execution cannot be overstated. Local farmers have been able to sustain and grow their businesses despite continued threats from pandemic market challenges, unstable weather patterns, and the general grind of running a small business. And, just as important, our region’s emergency food providers are able to keep their shelves stocked and their meals full of delicious, high quality local food that sustains our neighbors who need help. Sitting down to a bowl of hearty, warm stew in the middle of winter might not solve every problem, but it does offer some respite, care and knowledge that in this community, people look out for one another and systems continue to exist and be refined to chip away at food insecurity in the region. 

A few weeks after that snowy Purchasing Committee meeting, I swing by one of the farms on my way home from work. The days are getting longer, and low sunlight filters through the greenhouse walls. The farmer proudly shows me row after row of newly germinated pepper and onion plants—thousands of them. We talk about how in a few months these seedlings that rise barely a quarter inch above the soil today will grow into food that will journey from the farm, to the warehouse, to the pantry, and then to the tables of people in need. We’re both looking forward to that, and all the other lessons and gifts of the growing season ahead. 

BIO

Christina Barkel is the Food Equity Specialist at Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities. She lives in Cedar and spends time gardening, swimming, reading, running, and biking whenever she can.

Beth Price is a visual storyteller who advocates for people, businesses, and causes that deserve attention. Her images are authentic, purposeful, thoughtful, and connecting. Her passion is the Great Lakes region, and ensuring its protection for generations to come.

Spring Issue '24 - Online Shop