Toxic Donuts and Food Deserts
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(August 30, 2020) This show about toxic donuts and food deserts starts with farmers. I first heard about Marty Travis and his Down at the Farms program just as the COVID-19 pandemic was exploding in early April. Travis, his wife Kris and his son Will operate the 160-acres Spence Farm in Fairbury, Illinois. It is, in fact, the oldest farm in Livingston County. In their own words, “Spence Farm is a bustling center of activity with a wide array of heirloom and native crops, heritage animals, and a huge diversity of agricultural opportunities.” He’s also not afraid to speak his mind, having written the book, My Farmer, My Customer: Building Business & Community Through Farming Healthy Food.
Skip to a specific segment in this podcast
4:39 Marty Travis and Matt Wechsler from Village Farmstand
27:26 Rodney Williams Sr., Azariah Baker and Keith Tankson of Austin Harvest
37:36 Peggy Salazar and Gina Ramirez from Chicago’s southeast side
1:05:51 Meteorologist Rick DiMaio
Travis started Down at the Farms, LLC as a farmer to farmer marketing and delivery service based.
We represent over 60 of the finest farms in Central Illinois to chefs, grocers, individuals and institutions. Farms retain their identity and are able to showcase their unique products to a large audience. We operate as a “food hub”, but are so much more as we work with nice people to create community and cooperation between farmers in the area. Our growers produce a wide variety of product using chemical free or certified organic practices, pastured livestock and non GMO seed. Our weekly deliveries to Chicago and downstate restaurants have helped to put Central Illinois farms on the map. Our goal is to continue to offer these opportunities for small and beginning farmers and to reach an ever wider audience.
However, as the coronavirus crisis was exploding, the restaurant industry was imploding. Travis explains what that meant in a podcast he did for Tractor Time on Acres U.S.A. Suddenly, the main source of income dried up. But with the help of chefs, who quickly got the word out, the same customers who patronized those restaurants started purchasing food directly from the farms. Down on the Farms also did a remarkable pivot, offering their usual Friday list of crops to the public, but at the same whole prices they offered to restaurants. In addition, unlike traditional CSAs, they allowed folks to make choices about what they wanted.
The result was that sales shot through the roof. However, there was still a need to solve the logistics of getting those crops to the consumers. Each week, I–along with hundreds of others–received a newsletter called “this week at Down at the Farms.” Travis often explained how the delivery system worked.
Orders are made by sending us a return email listing the products you would like to order and the amount of each. All orders are first come, first served until we run out of that particular product. All orders are due no later than Monday at noon each week. We will then harvest, wash and pack all orders and they will be brought here to Spence Farm and placed in your particular crate. Everyone is very aware of taking extra good care to be sanitary and careful. All prices are the same that we have always done to our wholesale restaurant accounts! Then, on Tuesday evening I send you a Square invoice that can easily be paid online, preferably before delivery on Wednesdays. This does include a 3% card fee that allows us to do all of this safely with as little contact as possible. PLEASE let me know what pick up option from below you wish to do!
The three drop off spots in Chicago were at Publican Quality Bread, River Valley Restaurant and at Middlebrow Brewery. But there were also deliveries to the Peoria and Champaign areas, as well as for Locals in Fairbury.
One thing I haven’t told you about Marty Travis is that his farm was the subject of a documentary called Sustainable, which got a write up in Civil Eats in 2017. That film was by Matt Wechsler and Annie Speicher at Hourglass Films. SUSTAINABLE was screened at 40+ film festivals around the world and won the 2016 Accolade Global Humanitarian Award for Outstanding Achievement.
On June 19, “this week from Down at the Farms” included this message.
We have been working for the last two months with Matt Wechsler, the filmmaker of “Sustainable”. Many of you who ordered last week were recipients of a free DVD of that documentary. Matt and I began a conversation around how to help make this system easier and more convenient for you the customer and also for our farmers and also for us as delivery folks. We understand that standing in line in the heat, rain or eventually snow or ice, is not the optimum system for distributing food. We are also well aware that many of you are beginning to return to work and it is becoming harder to have the ability to meet us on Wednesdays.
That led to a revised system for ordering, which led to a brick and mortar structure to serve as a quasi-permanent place to purchase food. On July 10, Marty Travis wrote this.
Tonight I want to share a note from Matt Wechsler, the person behind all of this store.
“In 2013, my wife took me to my first farmer’s market. It was a transformative experience that led me to make a documentary film on food and farming, which is how I met Marty. Seven years and two food films later, I’ve become highly empathetic about the issues facing our farmers. Why? A 2017 Wall Street Journal article summed it up by calling Rural America the new “inner city” and explained how the rural population leads all poverty statistics. The corporate takeover of farming has led to mass exploitation of labor and the land, much of which has been exposed due to the pandemic. Fortunately, the opportunity to change our food system – and make it equitable for all – has never been greater. We are hoping to be leaders in that change and I thank you all for your continued support!”
So, with that, here is the link to the store. www.villagefarmstand.com. Check out some of the new things tonight and stay tuned. We are all headed into the bounty of the season that we want to share with all of you.
As of Friday, August 28, Village Farmstand was a reality. The location is 810 Dempster Street, Evanston, Illinois 60202. Online orders can be placed anytime and picked up Thursday through Sunday at the Evanston storefront. They offer same day pickup and can fulfill orders in as little as 15 minutes.
Today, we’re please to have Marty Travis and Matt Wechsler on the show to tell the story of how farmers and farms are fighting to survive a pandemic and how getting communities to pull together still makes a difference.
Even where there aren’t toxic donuts, there are food deserts
Village Farmstand is just one piece of the food puzzle. It’s one thing to have a pandemic reduce your access to local, healthy food. It’s quite another when that lack of access is baked into the basics of who you are, where you live and the color of your skin. That’s unfortunately why there are “food deserts” in our country, places where there is limited access to affordable and nutritious food. All too often food deserts are in urban areas, especially in low-income neighborhoods. Don’t worry, we’ll get to “toxic donuts” soon enough.
In Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, a group of people–including some teenagers–decided to take matters into their own hands. The result was the birth of a “pop up market” at 423 N. Laramie Avenue. Almost predictably, the market is on the former site of a liquor store. But that building was razed for the new venture.
The group behind the transformation is a coalition of those teenagers, Chicago athletes and other concerned citizens who are part of the Entrepreneurship Program of By the Hand Club for Kids. As they explain on their website,
By The Hand is a Christ-centered, after-school program that takes kids by the hand and walks with them from kindergarten through college, loving and nurturing them—mind, body and soul.
By The Hand began in 2001 with 16 children from Cabrini-Green. Since then, we have witnessed transformation within the lives of our kids—and as an organization. Thanks to the many people who help make The Solution possible, we now serve nearly 1,600 kids from Cabrini-Green, Altgeld-Murray, Austin and Englewood, with property in North Austin to begin serving there.
Rodney Williams Sr., who is Director of Entrepreneurship and Economic Development with By the Hand Kids Club, says it was the kids who came up with the idea of the store. Fortunately, they had those Chicago athletes who were willing to listen and to step up.
The project got enthusiastic backing from a number of professional athletes. Former Chicago Bears’ linebacker Sam Acho led the charge. “People care. It’s a time for people to show up. I think our world has changed,” Acho told BCC. “So for us to be able to come together and say we’re going to lead that change, it means something.”
Other athletes who contributed to the cause included the Blackhawks’ Jonathan Toews, Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky of the Bears, White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito, Cubs outfielder Jason Heyward, and St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. Together, they raised $500,000 in seed money to get the project rolling.
Sam Acho’s organization is Athletes for Justice. It’s hard to imagine how anything being more about justice than the right to eat healthy food. And their participation allowed them to be able to purchase the liquor store, which Williams says they had been trying to obtain for ten years. Some of the other partners involved in the project are
- Flowers for Dreams, which sells locally crafted flowers online starting at a simple $35 with free hand delivery in Chicago and service to Detroit, Milwaukee, and all their surrounding suburbs. Every single bouquet sold benefits an amazing local charity.
- Garfield Park Conservatory Greenhouse
- The Hatchery, a non-profit food and beverage incubator dedicated to helping local entrepreneurs build & grow successful businesses.
Austin Harvest officially opened on August 24 and is set to run for 12 weeks. Hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. On today’s show, we welcome Rodney Williams Sr., along with Azariah Baker and Keith Tankson.
Toxic donuts and social justice…
If you were wondering when the “toxic donut” part of today’s show was going to appear, welcome to the second hour of The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki. That phrase appeared just a few days ago in this piece in the Chicago Tribune: Editorial: On Chicago’s Southeast Side, the peril of living in a ‘toxic donut’.
A large landfill bounds Altgeld Gardens on one side, a sprawling sewage treatment plant on another. Not far away, the Little Calumet River “stinks before you even come up on it,” Smith says. Elsewhere on the Southeast Side, more landfills, a host of industrial plants, and two sites on the federal Superfund list of abandoned, highly contaminated industrial tracts.
Welcome to the Southeast Side. Chicago’s very own dumping ground.
The editorial goes on to report on how General Iron Industries plans to move from its Lincoln Park site along the North Branch of the Chicago River to a largely Hispanic Southeast Side neighborhood known as the East Side. This part of Chicago has not just been neglected for a hundred years, it has been routinely violated, as we’ve documented on this show in the past.
Whether the issue is petcoke storage or dirty industries or expanding a toxic dump at the mouth of the Calumet River on the shores of Lake Michigan or general vulnerability to environmental toxins, the southeast side of Chicago is almost always near or at the top of the list of places you wouldn’t want to live if you had a choice. During this year’s Earth Day, celebrated in the midst of a pandemic, activists called upon Chicagoans to save the southeast side.
After this month’s demolition of the old Crawford Coal smokestack that blanketed Little Village with a cloud of thick dust, Lincoln Park residents began calling on Mayor Lightfoot to shut down metal scrapper General Iron. While that fight continues, General Iron is planning to move to to the East Side at the end of this year— a move Gina Ramirez, co-chair of The Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke, said is a slap in the face to area residents.
“It’s moving from a wealthy white community to a low-income minority community, so it’s enriching the North Side community at the expense of the residents of the Southeast Side,” Ramirez said. “… It’s a clear symbol that this neighborhood is a sacrifice zone.”
So, on August 13, 2020, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reported that
Chicago community leaders filed a civil rights complaint yesterday against the City of Chicago for actions they say are glaring examples of environmental racism and in keeping with decades of policies that have entrenched housing segregation and discrimination of communities of color. The complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under the Fair Housing Act, says that Chicagoans living near industrial corridors have been subjected to discriminatory treatment and increased segregation as a direct result of land use and zoning decisions made by the City of Chicago.
I can’t say I disagree with their conclusion. Especially when you stack the moving of a toxic scrap iron business to the southeast side on top of the decision to to build a 25-foot tall toxic waste landfill on Chicago’s lakefront. That’s how Friends of the Parks board member Pat Sharkey frames the proposal in this OpEd.
It makes one wonder, what the heck is going on here? Is it racism or politics or money or an unholy amalgam of all of those things? We’ll find out today with the aforementioned Gina Ramirez, who is Midwest Outreach Manager for the NRDC. She is joined by Peggy Salazar, Executive Director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force (SETF).
Mike:
With all due respect: Food deserts are not due to any kind of social injustice. Don’t you think that if the grocery retailers, especially the big chains, thought they could make a profit by having stores in these neighborhoods they would have them?
The problem is not the retailers. The problem is the people in these areas. They shoplift these stores out of business. Or they create other deadly dangers that make it nearly impossible to shop or work there.
Some years ago I was the night manager a chain grocery store in Scottsdale. For a few years the company had been closing its stores in central Phoenix, a low-income area. An executive involved told me that the reason was the excessive “shrinkage.” And, he also mentioned excessive robberies, often at gunpoint.
Not until the locals conduct themselves in such a way that the retailers are confident that having stores in their neighborhoods will be profitable will food deserts disappear.