Cindy Gentry
Community Food Connections’ founder and executive director Cindy Gentry has twenty years’ experience with non-profit hunger prevention and healthy food systems development. During her tenure with CFC, she has worked statewide to nurture local food production, distribution and access capacities, and to support local farmers’ markets. She has developed the Arizona Farmers Market Nutrition Program and the Food Stamp redemption at the Market Project, organized the Arizona Food Policy Coalition and made progress in organizing a statewide farmers’ market association. Cindy is currently working to launch a Farm to Cafeteria program in Arizona. She has also been the “spark plug” in creating and assuring the opening of the Downtown Phoenix Public Market in February 2005 and the continued development of its resources and programs. When not thinking about organizing food issues, she relaxes with reading, gardening, traveling, enjoying Celtic music and friends and family. Find out more about Community Food Connections at their website: www.foodconnect.org
Read Cindy’s answers to the 4QQ.
Tony Macias
Tony participated in the Into the Fields Internship as a health outreach intern in rural S.C. during college. After learning about environmental action and agriculture in North and Central America, Tony returned to North Carolina in 2004 and is now Assistant Director of Student Action with Farmworkers. SAF is a national advocacy group for farmworkers, with a strong local focus. Tony coordinates From the Ground Up, SAF's community education and advocacy program. He also coordinates SAF’s Documentary Program and web communications. Learn more at www.saf-unite.org. We got in touch with Tony to hear the story of our agricultural system that most consumers never hear.
Read Tony’s answers to the 4QQ.
Brett Olson
Brett Olson is the Creative Director at Renewing the Countryside, a non-profit in Minnesota. This year, Brett and co-worker Lindsay Rebhan initiated a radio show called “Local Food Hero”. It’s a brand new project for a group of very passionate organizers who find new ways of telling the stories of local food. The radio show is “a show where we discuss the growing, cooking, eating and yes…the politics of what you put in your mouth.” You can listen online at http://localfoodhero.com or at AM KTNF 950. We sat down with Brett to find the whole story behind the radio show.
Read Brett’s answers to the 4QQ.
Bonnie Powell
Bonnie Powell founded The Ethicurean: Chew the Right Thing (www.ethicurean.com) in 2006. The blog is visited by more than 40,000 people per month, features numerous writers and recently celebrated its second anniversary of providing commentary on news, food policy, safety, labor, cooking, eating, and food humor. The blog defines an ethicurean as “someone who seeks out tasty things that are also sustainable, organic, local, and/or ethical.” Bonnie not only writes for and monitors the blog, but puts her beliefs into practice while helping others explore the intricacies and excitement of an alternative food system.
Read Bonnie’s answers to the 4QQ.
Patrick Crouch
Patrick Crouch is the manager of the EarthWorks Garden in Detroit, Michigan, a program of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen. The Garden has been producing food for almost a decade and has expanded form an initial small city plot in the urban core of Detroit to three city plots, complete with a greenhouse and honeybee apiary. An urban farmer, Patrick’s big dream is to be a part of radically change the structure of our food system.
Read Patrick’s answers to the 4QQ.
Heather Anderson
Farmworkers – the hardworking people who labor to provide us with food – often work in dangerous conditions for sub-minimum wages. The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs (AFOP) seeks to improve the quality of life for migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families. Their multi-level programs target farmworkers, farm owners, and policymakers, providing an impetus to reform our food system so that it becomes fairer for the people who work intimately inside of it. Heather Anderson leads the Children in the Fields Campaign, a program of AFOP that strives to improve the quality of life of migrant and seasonal farmworker children by advocating for enhanced educational opportunities and the elimination of discriminatory federal child labor laws in agriculture.
Read Heather’s answers to the 4QQ.
Erika Lesser
Erika Lesser is the executive director of Slow Food USA, located in Brooklyn, NY. Slow Food USA seeks to catalyze a cultural shift away from a standardized, industrialized food system and towards one that is more regenerative, sustainable, and delicious. Slow Food USA envisions a future food system that is based on the principles of high quality and taste [good], environmental sustainability [clean], and social justice [fair].
Read Erika’s answers to the 4QQ.
Maia Ermita
The eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival is set to kick off with a global premiere in New York on May 28th, 2008. Media That Matters is a project of Arts Engine whose mission “supports, produces, and distributes independent media of consequence and promotes the use of independent media by advocates, educators, and the general public.” The film festival is one of the ways they tackle their mission. With each viewing of the film, either online or at a community screening, opportunities and tools are provided for audiences to go beyond watching and toward action on issues that matter to them. Media That Matters: Good Food is a collection of shorts on food and sustainability and follows the same model as the annual festival where the films stream online, screen around the country and are distributed on DVD. Media that Matters has grown each year since its inception. Maia Ermita – Festival & Outreach Director - tackles our 4QQ about the Media That Matters Film Festival.
Read Maia’s answers to the 4QQ.
Andy Fisher
Our inaugural post of Four Quick Questions is with Andy Fisher, executive director of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) and a recent recipient of the Ecological Farming Conference’s Justie award. CFSC is dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times. They seek to develop self-reliance among all communities in obtaining their food and to create a system of growing, manufacturing, processing, making available, and selling food that is regionally based and grounded in the principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability.
Read Andy’s answers to the 4QQ.