Solar-funded food production
What if a farmer was paid to grow food for neighbors that need it most from the profits from community-owned solar? The ECP is partnering with Working Power to build 1MW+ of community-owned solar in Peekskill, NY, that will demonstrate the power of solar-funded food production in public food gardens. We believe it is one small way to demonstrate a world where access to fresh, local, nutritious food can be a human right, all while building renewable energy systems and community wealth via the power of the sun.
These last ten years of farming in the Hudson Valley have taught us something about the local food economy. At our micro-scale (~1 acre), it’s hard to compete with the low price of food sold in the supermarket – up against all of the subsidies provided by unpaid-for-externalities like fossil fuel driven mechanization, harmful pesticides, and labor exploitation. And we wouldn’t want to. While fruits and vegetables sold in most supermarkets might be grown to look good, our produce is grown to taste good and deliver as many nutrients to our bodies and those we feed as possible - as well as steward the land and soil with future generations in mind.
But we have learned that there are a few ways to increase the economic value of high quality, locally grown food. It turns out that when you prepare the food, set it on dishes in a beautiful setting, and pair it with wine, its economic value skyrockets. Or you can sell directly to restaurants, growing high end salad makings, micro-greens for plating dishes, or exotic varieties that stand out on menus in the highly competitive battle to attract customers. Or you can start a niche food business – like ginseng or Asian mushrooms – or truck your produce to farmers markets in wealthy communities where supporters of local food are willing and able to pay more to support local farms.
None of these are bad things. The re-emergence and growth of small farms worked by actual people is a good thing and there will be a lot of different business models needed to survive in this crazy food economy we’ve created. But when you start to pay attention to who eats the food you grow as a small farmer using regenerative farming practices, you begin to realize that you are still a part of sustaining a clear food divide in our country.
The best tasting, most nutrient dense food is typically reserved for the well off. And the well off in America looks mostly white. In most (but definitely not all!) poor, urban neighborhoods there are no farmers markets, there are no local farms, and there are no Whole Foods – because the people living in these neighborhoods can’t afford to pay for the unsubsidized cost of healthy, responsibly grown food. And so too many of these neighborhoods are left with choices between processed foods with an endless shelf life, fast foods, or low quality fresh foods that have lost a great deal of nutrients in the long travel between farm and bodega shelf.
This is not a new problem. There are (and have been) many, many good people and projects working to address the food divide. There are community gardens that give residents a plot to grow vegetables. There are emergency food providers, like food banks and soup kitchens, that provide basic essentials in tough times. There are mobile trucks that bring pop-up farmers markets to struggling neighborhoods. And more recently, there are small examples of philanthropic foundations paying farmers directly in order to grow and donate food to low income communities.
All of these approaches are helpful and necessary. But all of these approaches remain fundamentally stuck in the food economy that we’ve created. They remain stuck in a world where food is treated as any other economic commodity and not as a basic human right. In commodity world, the best product goes to the highest bidder and if your neighborhood doesn’t have an adequate “consumer base” or “median income” than you are invisible to the market. In human rights world, everybody deserves access to things that are essential to life – like local, fresh, nutritious food – regardless of their ability to pay.
I don’t think “you’re on your own” is an answer that is going to continue to cut it.
Sure, we can have an argument about whether capitalism and the free market, on the whole, improve the lives of most people most of the time. But I think that if honest, most people would admit that the free market is a failure when it comes to some really important things - how to provide people access to basic human rights like clean water, healthy food, health care, or housing when they don’t have the ability to pay for it. In an economy and society where more and more people face making decisions like using food banks to save money for rent or medication, I don’t think “you’re on your own” is an answer that is going to continue to cut it.
So how can we lift local, fresh, nutritious food out of commodity world and into human rights world?
All we can do right now is experiment. As Milton Friedman once famously said, “Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” Amen, Milton. And the irony of quoting the godfather of Neoliberalism in this context does not escape me, but instead … it is quite delightful.
Over a thousand shares of free, healthy produce distributed by Regenerators to neighborhood families.
In 2020, our nonprofit organization the Ecological Citizen’s Project launched the Regenerative Communities program. The goal of this initiative is to recruit and train new, diverse farmers, help them establish public food gardens in Hudson Valley communities, and employ them to grow and distribute locally grown, nutrient dense, culturally relevant fresh produce to food insecure neighbors for free. We view these sites as a new type of social infrastructure grounded in principles of food sovereignty: a public food garden tended by a trained and employed local farmer where community members have a say in what’s grown and can harvest their own produce as they need it anytime. To date, we have established three public food gardens in Peekskill, NY, Newburgh, NY, and The Pershing Neighborhood Farm and Garden in Poughkeepsie, NY (the latter in partnership with Scenic Hudson and The Poughkeepsie Farm Project).
Our experience has revealed a great deal about the mindset we are all locked in that stands in the way of embracing new social structures designed to ensure that all people have access to basic needs as a human right and fulfillment of our American social contract. In the first year, many people passed by the garden – looking, looking, looking – without entering. An old woman who was an immigrant from Central America moved a log under a tree in the far corner of the site and watched from afar. Not until they were approached – you’re welcome, open to the public, this is a park, this is your garden – did they begin to come. Not private? Not something made for others?
We are all living in a world where the creep of privatization is so all-encompassing that we mostly live in a world that more and more of us are fenced out from. Whether it’s standing on the sidewalk looking in through the window of a fancy restaurant, peering over the fence into a wealthy neighbors expansive and manicured yard, or staring at a screen of an influencer’s social media feed, the best and most beautiful things are reserved for the lucky few.
When we were proposing the idea to the Peekskill Common Council and described how the garden site would be largely unfenced, unlocked, and open to the public, a staff member in the economic development office raised the concern that the produce would be stolen by teenagers. If teenagers want to steal heads of broccoli or bunches of peppers and cilantro, “great!” we said, “they need to eat healthier, too!” And now, as the sun begins to set over the Hudson River on summer evenings, it has become a common site to see neighborhood families making their way through the garden, asking what is what, learning how to harvest and what is at peak ripeness, and taking a few things home for dinner that night. It is for them. It is a commons. And it sends my heart and spirits soaring every time I see it.
If teenagers want to steal heads of broccoli or bunches of peppers and cilantro, “great!” we said, “they need to eat healthier, too!”
We’ve been paying for these public food gardens entirely through the donations of private foundations and generous individuals. Philanthropic efforts are essential, but they are unlikely to be the place where the revolution happens. Given that they rely on the market to produce the small share of investment income they use for grant making, philanthropic giving alone will not be enough to solve the largest of problems and are likely to be more conservative when it comes to non-market based approaches.
Finally, there’s a big difference between being a renter and being an owner. If I rent my house, I have to follow the landlord’s rules or else I have no home. If I own my home, I can build it around my own vision. Working for community change through the philanthropic system alone places grass-roots organizations in the position of a renter – with the owner deciding what the rules are and offering funding in a precarious year-to-year cycle that encourages piecemeal approaches. Working toward land ownership is our goal, but we’re not there just yet.
The ECP’s public food garden sites are on rent-free land leased from municipalities, and are different from a community garden model in the sense that they are open to all members of the community (not just community garden members), they are stewarded by a paid farmer that reflects the diversity of the community, the food is grown in one collective garden plot (as opposed to nuclear household plots) and distributed to those in need for free, and local families can harvest their own produce as they need it. In addition, we have conducted outreach in the surrounding community to learn what local residents – based on cultural preferences – would like to have grown in the garden, ensuring that the community has input over what is grown in their commons. We believe a resilient food system is one where as much food is grown locally as possible, with distribution prioritized to those who need it most in the face of the increasing frequency of economic or environmental disruptions we are sure to experience in the future.
Small farming is a tough business. More than half – 1.2m farms in the United States – earn less than $10,000 of farm income per year. Almost all of these small farms are run by families and require off-farm jobs to make ends meet. So small scale growing is clearly not something that is driven primarily by profit motive – other values lie at the heart of these growing spaces, giving growers the reason they get out of bed in the morning: the desire to be more self-sufficient, the desire to serve community, the desire to work in nature, or the desire to step beyond the dreary 9-5. Most of these farms are already operating near the fringe of the commodified food economy. How can we free them from it completely?
Many of the people we train to grow food have never grown food before. What are the most basic things that are required to grow food we often ask on the first day. Tractors? No. Expensive sprays? No. A green house? It would be nice, but not really. Land? Yes. Water? Yes. Knowledge? Yes. The sun? Yes, yes, yes.
The sun is the fundamental source of energy that produces our food. It is also the necessary ingredient in producing renewable energy in our future energy system. Why not harness the economic power of solar production to pay the farmer that also uses the sun’s power to grow nutritious food for neighbors that need it most?
As the first waves of climate change appear in our lives as snowless winters, flooding rains, and extreme fires and weather events that cause billions in damages and human suffering, we know that reducing these climate dangers requires building a completely new renewable energy system in the next generation.
While most people view renewable energy as an environmental endeavor, we can’t ignore that it is also a historic economic opportunity to create wealth for local communities. The International Energy Agency estimates that, in 2021, global investments in new renewable energy generation was approximately $370bn. The next energy tycoons are being made right now under a status quo approach to development that concentrates profits in the hands of private investors and developers and further exacerbates economic inequality.
We believe the next energy system should be community-owned, changing the flow of who benefits from solar development away from developers to local communities to care for, build wealth in and regenerate these communities.
The ECP is currently working with our partner Working Power to develop 1MW+ of solar in the City of Peekskill, NY that will create $2.8m of community owner profits over 25 years. In a conventional solar development approach, these profits would leave the community in the form of exorbitant private returns to investors.
We believe the next energy system should be community-owned, changing the flow of who benefits from solar development away from developers to local communities to care for, build wealth in and regenerate these communities.
Under our approach, a portion of these solar profits will create a 25-year source of funding to economically support the Peekskill Regeneration Farm community farmer’s salary and other local food sovereignty projects. We look forward to demonstrating that we can build a food system where food is a human right and those with less ability to pay can still gain access to fresh, locally grown, nutritious produce. And it all starts with the sun.
About the author: Jason Angell is co-founder and Co-Director of the ECP. He lives in Garrison and farms at Longhaul Farm, along with his wife, 2 kids and farmyard animals.