ADK Action began informally in 2007 and became a formal nonprofit in 2011 to work on under-addressed issues in the Adirondacks. Its focus includes road salt reduction, broadband access, and food security. On Thursday, ADK Action is coordinating the Adirondack Food System Network’s sixth annual Food Justice Summit for the Adirondacks. Speaking with WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley, ADK Action Executive Director Sawyer Bailey explains what food justice is:
It's the idea that no matter where you live, no matter what you earn, you should be able to eat well and eat food that's nourishing. In the Adirondacks, I know too many people who despite living just down the road from a farm can't afford to enjoy its produce for a lot of different reasons. But we want to make sure that when folks want to eat healthy that they have the opportunity to. Every single one of us probably stops at Stewart's and buys Doritos. That's just part of life. But too many of us can't enjoy food that is nourishing to the body and to the community.
Who is most impacted in this region by the food justice concept?
We hope that it's something that can really lift all boats and can benefit everybody from local farmers to food hubs, food retailers, our local grocery stores and every eater.
Is this an effort to get people to have more homegrown food rather than a lot of the prepackaged pre-prepared foods that you go into the supermarket, you go into the freezer in the supermarket, pull out those microwavable meals because they're easy and fast? Is this part of trying to get people away from that sort of buying or is this more for people that just don't have access to food?
It's more so the idea that we love our farms. We want them to be able to thrive here in the Adirondacks because there's so few of them and growing conditions are just so harsh. And at the same time, we realize that too many of our neighbors have a hard time just putting food on the table. It doesn't matter what it is. It just has to do with dollars and cents and time. We're certainly not trying to tell them what to eat. We realize that's a very personal decision and there's a lot that goes into it. We're just trying to make sure that we as a regional food system can be resilient, can be inclusive and can be really sustainable, can be here for a long time. So when we want to buy Adirondack cheese or want to support a local grocery store, they still exist.
Sawyer Bailey, the subtitle of the summit says Growing Partnerships to Transform Local Food Systems. How does our local food system need to be transformed?
Well, I think we have a pretty great food system to start with particularly where we are in the Champlain Valley. That's where we see most of our Adirondack agriculture. But I can tell you where I used to live in Blue Mountain Lake, there's one farm in the entirety of Hamilton County. That is a really difficult place to find local food. Honestly, it doesn't really exist. It's a long drive to grocery stores. But there are a handful of local grocery stores and we're working to try to make sure that they stay viable and that those dollars can stay in our local economy. We also are incredibly lucky to have a rich network of wonderful partners across the food system. And what we're getting at with that subtitle Stronger Together, Growing Partnerships is that we want to work together even more strategically and collaboratively so we can solve problems we've never solved before. The Adirondacks really are the place to remake the world and remake the food system and I think we can teach the rest of the country a lesson.
What are those problems?
Well, I think we touched on a few of them, one being food deserts and food access. There are plenty of places in the North Country where it is especially difficult just to find food. But on the producer side I think too many of our small farms are worried simply about their margins. This is an incredibly difficult business. I think that's one of the biggest challenges we're seeing right now. And our farmers are being incredibly innovative to try to expand markets wherever possible, while making sure that they can still serve people at a reasonable price point. We're also seeing some incredible innovations around aggregation and distribution. We have at least three food hubs in the Adirondacks which do a lot of co-packing, co-distribution to help make that market for our farmers more viable while also reaching more people. So our challenges are in one hand and our solutions are in the other. And I think there's even more that we can be solving when we come together for the summit.
Sawyer Bailey, what's the vision for transforming food systems in an area that is so vast?
That's a great question and it's one that all my fellow steering committee members on the Adirondack Food System Network considered together. How can we really make tangible progress when we are up against a wilderness the size of Vermont? What we decided was that we were going to take three strategic steps to do that. One is what we're already doing with the summit, which is building connections across the region and sharing knowledge. The other is that we really need to get a landscape level view on patterns of opportunities and challenges. And to do that we need to be talking to more people but also gathering data that's being collected in isolated pockets. We're seeing something in Franklin County being collected by the Public Health Department. We're seeing something being collected in Herkimer County by another nonprofit and we're not aggregating all that information. So the network is trying to do that. And then lastly, we're trying to really work regionally county-by-county, community-by-community to bring and to build capacity, because some members of our community who are leaders are doing a lot with not enough and they don't need a lesson, they need an extra pair of hands to really help them do what they know needs doing. But then on the other hand, there are plenty of nonprofit organizations or school cafeterias that really do need doors opened for them. They need additional resources and they need maybe some skill building to help them take that next step and that's what our program manager is going to be doing.
Is there a goal from this summit this year?
There is. So we have two wonderful keynote speakers and I think they both really get at what we hope the takeaway from this summit is. Our first keynote will come out in the morning. Her name is Cortney Renton. The idea how do we help bring one stage of transformation to the next? How do we make intentional progress? And then our afternoon keynote, his name is Stu DeCew, and he teaches classes on collaboration. He is going to be talking about we’re better when we work together and we’re great when we work alone, but we're not accomplishing as much. So my real hope is that attendees walk away feeling like they have actionable strategies and they feel like they have more tools in their toolbox to work with people across the aisle, across the region, to work better together.
The Food Justice Summit will be held Thursday at the Wild Center in Tupper Lake from 8:30 until 5.
ADK Action is the fiscal sponsor and host organization of the Adirondack Food System Network.
