Through a combination of research and advocacy, politics and practice, Food First's Building Local Agrifood Systems program works to rebuild local food systems. Through five active projects they take on the issue from all sides. Here's a chance to learn more:

The Food Commons Project – Innovate Models for Sustainable Business:
--Food Workers – Food Justice
--Research for Action in Oakland
--US Working Group on the Food Crisis
--Youth Power – Go Live Real Food and the Oakland Youth Food Policy Council

The Food Commons Project – Innovate Models for Sustainable Business:
Working with a core team of local business leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area we are investigating successful business models that create and maintain wealth in our communities. Our aim is to create a process of action-research that involves, supports and enables local businesses in building a "food commons" – a new combination of public infrastructure and local entrepreneurship to build a network of food businesses that maintain a triple bottom line. The goal of the food commons is to build the institutions and integrate financing, public space and productive alternatives, to turn our community food systems into places of local economic resilience, job creation, entrepreneurship, stewardship and accountability.

Initial research topics will include a mapping of all sustainable food businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, including their business models, infrastructure and lessons learned; models for large scale cooperative systems - e.g. Mondragón, Knights of Labor, Farmers Alliance, etc.; sustainable business incubation models and consultative needs; agreed upon forms of evaluation, metrics and important components of sustainable food business; a sustainable conversion toolkit with support for labor standards; and manuals for small business exit strategies and ownership conversion.

Food Workers – Food Justice
Food First is launching a new collaborative program to build convergence among labor, food and immigration. They have invited a core group of scholars and activists from these three issue areas to participate in this project. The food sector employs one in six Americans, and many immigrants, yet wages in those jobs have decreased, sometimes dramatically.

Meatpacking workers for example, make 45% less than they did in 1980. Some 45% of farm workers go without enough food. Meanwhile, agrifood businesses use the public dime to underwrite sub-poverty wages. For example, last year 40% of Arkansas state Medicare spending went to active WalMart employees.

Food First will address the question of workplace fairness at every point from farm to fork and every job in between, debunking the myth that a fair wage means higher food prices, and looking at the use of migrant labor as corporate strategy. They plan to will investigate the prevalence of food insecurity among food workers and their use of public assistance programs like Medicaid and food stamps; and track the costs to taxpayers of the current compensation structure in the food industry. This research will feed directly into the ongoing Department of Justice hearings on corporate concentration in agribusiness and the upcoming immigration debates in Congress.

Research for Action in Oakland
Building Local Agrifoods is the host for the Oakland Food Policy Council, a City of Oakland sponsored initiative to turn the local food system into an engine for economic development. Food First supplies the office space and organizational support, as well as targeted research for action for the OFPC.

Food First recently conducted a study of Food Policy Councils from around the country. Food Policy Councils: Lessons Learned is an assessment based on an extensive literature review and testimony from 48 individual interviews with the people most involved in Food Policy Councils.

The draft went out for a wide review – and the response has been an overwhelming demand for this kind of information. They have heard from citizens from New York to Texas and Seattle looking for information on how to engage local and state governments in food policy. Food First has already published a Food Retail Impact Study for our hometown in Oakland. We developed an Assessment of Food Systems Assessments and published a meta-analysis of such studies for the San Francisco Bay Area, and put out the most complete study of Food Policy Councils completed to-date.

Their new project is building an online and print Grassroots Guide to Food Policy will draw on all the data and case studies amassed in these technical reports to answer the demand for information on how to build better local food policy. They answered a call for proposals with the Alameda County Health Department for a Health Impact Assessment of a potential ballot measure to fund an infrastructure overhaul for scratch cooking and a comprehensive Farm to School Program at Oakland Unified School District.

US Working Group on the Food Crisis
The global food crisis has motivated diverse groups in the US – including progressive labor, faith, indigenous, community food, farm, environmental, and trade justice groups – to join forces in response. In late spring of 2008, a number of groups representing different areas of the food system came together to form the U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis. The Working Group's goal has been to bring attention to the underlying causes of the crisis and to promote transformative solutions to fix our broken food system.

The theme of their national campaign, ending poverty by rebuilding local food economies, focuses on the poverty and injustice that the dominant food system creates -- and on the potential for communities, regions, and nations to build just and prosperous food economies from the ground up. Through the next year they are focusing on two main theaters of engagement:

• Engaging and mobilizing grassroots organizations working with farmers, farmworkers, urban agriculture, food justice, community food security, and food sovereignty to participate in the second US Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan, June 22-26, 2010
• Organizing grassroots perspectives and voices concerning corporate concentration in agribusiness, focusing on the five anti-trust hearings to be held by the Department of Justice and USDA in 2010.

Food First is a founding Steering Committee Member, and chairs the Outreach and Communications Committee.

The Energy of Youth – GO LIVE REAL FOOD and the Oakland Youth Food Policy Council
Food First is engaged in two new youth-centered projects. The first is driven by hip-hop artist Jennifer Johns.

GO LIVE! REAL FOOD is a campaign that brings together the cultural power of the people, the energy of university students, the analytical rigor of a think tank, and the strength of community organizations to build power for REAL FOOD, nationwide. Food First is feeding information and analysis to the GO LIVE REAL FOOD campaign as they travel the nation performing and organizing for food justice around the country.

In each city the GO LIVE team will perform, host parties for youth and food justice organizers to start collaborating, and raise the profile of local issues and efforts with youth who may not otherwise hear the real food message. The campaign will help activists and organizers better reach the people with a colorful, culturally relevant campaign of music, art, dialog, new media and, yes, lots of good real food!

Our second Youth project falls much closer to home. The Oakland Food Policy Council is working on seating a council of youth members from local schools, businesses, and community groups. These youth will receive extensive training in policy, research and advocacy, and will be asked to recommend city government actions on the issues that most effect their communities. Stipends will be awarded to youth council members with a special attention to recruiting a diverse group that truly represents Oakland's underserved, immigrant communities and communities of color.

Delivering Success
At the end of 2010 the Building Local Agrifoods Systems Program will have:
• Established a Youth Food Policy Council in Oakland and supported initial policy formulation buy youth from underserved communities and communities of color
• Developed Fact Sheets and an information dossier to feed the GO LIVE REAL FOOD campaign with information on local groups and issues in every city they visit
• Developed and carried out a successful media strategy, including a micro site on anti-trust hearings with the US Working Group on the Food Crisis
• Published articles and backgrounders illuminating the connections between corporate concentration and poverty in the food system
• Published an online Grassroots Guide to Food Policy
• Published a series of Policy Briefs connecting immigration, labor and the food movement, including a suite of policy solutions drafted in consultation with experts from each field
• Begun mapping all sustainable food businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, including their business models, infrastructure and lessons learned; and started research on models for large scale cooperative systems.