Growing SEED

It has been a busy four-plus months since our last post!  We shouldn’t have been surprised that talking more and more about SEED and the automated system with more and more folks generated more and more questions.

What exactly is it? How does it work?  What’s in it? Who can use it?  Among others.

It was difficult to answer some queries simply because there was no assembled package.  But there was also the matter of sharing too much and having an idea appropriated before we even got it off the ground (literally!).  So, we began further developing the SEED project kit so that we could answer some of those questions without losing the more proprietary elements.

The kit, which is run on Arduino, is receiving a lot of interest and we have taken it on the road.  One of the highlights of the last month was an invitation to share SEED at the Food Day LA showcase at Los Angeles City Hall.

“But still,” you ask, “what is SEED?”   SEED is —

TRAINING and ENTREPRENEURSHIP – The future-forward job skills participants learn can be transferred to work in larger food/agriculture technology companies, neighborhood small farms, or their own enterprises, and each participant learns how to install resource-conserving systems that reduce waste and expenses.  Our goal is to provide this training as a key opportunity for traditionally hard-to-employ groups such as youth, veterans or previously incarcerated community members.

STEM EDUCATION and AGRICULTURE TECHNOLOGY – South Los Angeles, like many low-income communities, is often ignored in terms of technology and innovation.  So, we’re working to tap into the agriculture technology and robotics market – an industry projected to grow to $16 billion by 2020.

WORKSHOPS – Our current workshop curriculum educates community members in food security and production topics such as permaculture gardening, food preparation and preservation, health and nutrition and food distribution, along with job training to prepare residents for work in the emerging “green economy.”  STEM sessions focus on: assembly and utilization of low-cost technologies; garden and farm development; explorations of computer coding; soil management; permaculture; and, business development.

FOOD SECURITY and SUSTAINABILITY – SEED engages residents in the citizen science and food system innovation that increases access to fresh produce. Importantly, our participant farmers analyze scientific and engineering processes to understand the complexities of our globe’s food and ecological sustainability challenges.

We know that is still a lot of words — and little visual — but we hope you will stay tuned as we complete development of the growing kit and eventually make it available to the public!   Oh, and if you’d like to see the kit in person, we’ll be at the DTLA Mini Maker Faire December 2nd.

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Audacity and Oughtness

Photo credit: SL Williams

It has been a while since our last post as we have navigated new projects and a new, national reality. But, today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In this post-election world, it is more important than it has been in a while to reflect on his words, ideals and actions. So many folks fear for their futures…many rightfully so. In some ways, we are in a boat that is not only shaky but also has a leak and no wind for its sails.

We have been moving forward with our food justice and entrepreneurship work. The Ghettostead is developing (we have plans for an unveiling on Earth Day this year) and we will soon conduct our next set of Arduino workshops in our sister city of Santiago de Cuba. Today, we will hear references to Martin Luther King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, and we will remember how he touched upon food justice in other speeches. We are also reminded that, often, he spoke on the notion of audacity – the willingness to take bold risks. During his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King said:

“I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

He acceded that this risk-taking is only so useful as it leads us to what and how we ought to be. His speech that day also included these thoughts:

“I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.”

Some of us have always been immersed in the struggle for economic empowerment and social justice, because we have seen or continued to experience discrimination and consequential slights.  For better (never for worse) we now have a cadre of allies to work with us as we embrace the lessons of those who have worked so hard before us.  So on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, one that precedes a new, and for some a disquieting, future let’s find our audacity. Let’s remember to aspire to our oughtness. Show up, dive in, stay at it.

What Happened?

As it turns out, plenty!!

It may be an understatement to say that it has been a busy and productive year here at home&community. With our OriginalGreen and fiscal sponsorship projects firing on all cylinders, it’s often been dizzying but always exciting. One sneak peak for 2016 we think you’ll dig…we’re bringing some neat, new technology to the farm sites.

We know a lot of friends and supporters follow our activities and many of the news items we post, but it’s still easy to miss some of the news! So, we’ve put together a list of our most popular posts for the past year.  Let’s see…

We became certified to sell at the farmers market AND we sold out of produce on our first outing. The culmination of a months-long process to get our first farm entrepreneur selling has been satisfying, since we’ve been working without the benefit of large donations or funding.

We gave it our best shot at lot takeover with Broadchester Farms (we’re not giving up, just yet!) and even received nice local news coverage (here and here), along with starting urban farm work with Alliance Judy Ivie Burton Tech students, at a donated site next to their high school.

There were posts offering insight into gender and farming.

And we highlighted successes in public housing gardening while continuing to add to our own public housing garden census (nearly 150 strong across the nation!).

We grew peanuts and a great soul food garden at the Ghettostead!

We talked a lot about the benefits of growing food in the city (they go far beyond nutrition), and the fact that 20% of the world’s food is growing in those cities (but what does that mean?), while contemplating growing food without owning land.

We shared lots of science! There was a bit of “we told you so” about the benefits of living near trees.   Not to mention some knowing nods about a 30-year study revealing organic farming outperforming conventional farming in years of drought.

Last and absolutely not least, our farm sites were cleaned, amended and all-around transformed, by the volunteers from GoogleServes.

What will we do next?  Well, there’s even more planned than the sneak peak we gave you about new technology.  You’ll just have to keep up with us in the new year!

Tech Sneak Peak

The Right Race

Vote!

We submitted our first ever “vote-for-us” campaign. There have been many things to come out of it. But one thing is: 

It helps to have a huge email database!

Don’t get me wrong, it has been fantastic to receive such support from our dedicated folks and be reminded of how people appreciate what we are doing…along with getting a chance to spread the word to several more people.  That has been nothing short of great.

It’s the campaigning and realization that some of the time, you can have a pretty neat thing you’re doing, but without ready access to big numbers of people to vote, there’s a lot of “campaigning” to do.  There are a lot of proposals to read! Even I have only been able to read about a third of them in our category of 60. (I intend to read them all, because they deserve that.)

But really, no sour grapes here.  No way. It’s simply a realization that these platforms work best for groups with large followings or ones that can quickly energize numbers to compete with those large groups.  The difficulty (sometimes) is that smaller groups already have limited resources to commit to such a campaign.  Of course, there are examples of small groups getting something going and going viral in an effort. Of course there are!  It is finding that one compelling image, story, video that takes your issue from relative obscurity to superstardom! It’s a different kind of race, really.

So, yes, there have been many things to come out of this.  Lest this comes off as negative or defeatist, there’s this:

More people see the value and are behind this project…momentum!  People are asking us about how to create a fair food system and how to bring more food to low income communities and how to take charge of food production.

The project is actually in progress.  There is food GROWING and being shared on site and it is getting notice by and inquiry from neighbors who live in the community.  They are asking how they can grow at their homes.  It’s incredible and this is what we’ve wanted.  

We’re growing at the Ghettostead.

There are many among us that want to do things that are meaningful and some of us are unrelentingly compelled to do so.  With Original Green, we at home&community inc are aiming for multiple hundreds (dare we dream thousands!) of households served, but even serving 10, 20, 50 has been worthwhile.  That’s 10, 20, 50 families that are eating better and feeling better and reviving their community.

A fair food system, more access and increased decision making.  That’s our primary race.  And we’re already hitting that trifecta of food justice, food security and food sovereignty.  Oh, and we haven’t given up the campaign by any stretch.  There’s still time to vote.

Failure is like…

…a word that gets used far too often as a motivator for change or some instructive path to success.

Lately, I’ve been surrounded by people talking about failure. They find comfort in quotes about failure being necessary to reach a goal.  They seek permission to fail. They worry that they are not making or building anything of consequence.  They lament that they are not achieving this or that plan.

Well, I won’t ever give someone blanket permission to fail, and I’ll argue that what we often call failure is sometimes not.  On the point of making things, I say pick something and do it.  Start something.  Make something.  Grow something.  If it helps people in some way, even better.  (I’ll like you more.)  On the point of achieving this or that plan I ask, “Are you moving a plan forward?” It’s not even “are you moving THE plan forward?”  Because THE plan often changes.  (The fact that it shifts is usually what makes you think you are failing.)

Now…it is important to distinguish between a plan and the goal.  The goal, that’s the thing you choose, and it doesn’t change.  That is the “eyes on the prize”.

We have a goal for OriginalGreen: food justice and food security in South Los Angeles.

How we achieve this is a consistent strategy: create a healthy community food system, empower low-income food entrepreneurs, increase access to fresh food.  But there have been a bunch of variables and incompletes along the way, including loss of land and lack of resources.

The thing is, I’ve never conceived of these incompletes as failure, even if some folks consider them the traditional definition: “lack of success”. They’ve been opportunities to learn and get the thing right.  And that’s why I don’t buy into the vaunted “cult of failure” discussed all over the Net, in start-up culture and entrepreneurial philosophy.

Moving towards a goal and not reaching it the first, second, or even tenth leap, is not failure.  It is moving towards a goal.  It’s taking all the steps.  Even those times you hit it out of the park, you still have to run the bases to validate the effort.

Now that home&community is the closest to opening the co-working homestead, is connected to 67,000 square feet of growing space, and has technological help for our open tools platform, I look back on getting here and see the incompletes, the almosts, the detours.  Actually, I saw them pretty clearly when they were happening, but none seemed negative to me.  They are simply the 100 things that won’t work and needed to be figured out.

So, no “embracing failure” or “failing forward” or “failing fast” for me, OriginalGreen or home&community.  We’ll stick with trial and error, process, making, doing, collaborating, risking.  Failure is too easy, and it doesn’t get people fed.

As always, the garden and farm offer a great metaphor for failure and risk.  A garden is the ultimate laboratory for goal-seeking and learning from mistakes.  You don’t fail in the garden; you don’t founder on the farm.  You learn and then you keep growing.