Viewpoint: Gleanings from my 16 years in the WMass local food movement

As I am poised to leave my job after 16 years as executive director of CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), naturally, I’ve started to reflect. My takeaways so far are: local farms are still challenged to keep farming, maybe even more so; the local community is solidly behind farms and CISA, yet that support is more likely to appear in times of trouble; and the number of folks who care deeply about farms has grown along with the desire for a more just local food system.

When I took the helm at CISA, I didn’t come in with a deep background in agriculture. What I did know was how to grow an organization and create community. The timing was a bit scary because it was right when the 2008 recession began, and I spent many sleepless nights worrying that local farms would go out of business because consumers had less to spend and donors might have less resources to fund CISA’s support of farms in their time of need.

Thankfully, these concerns were unfounded. The recession resulted in residents buying more from local farms, and increasing their support of CISA, perhaps because people were looking to deepen their roots, keep farms farming and bring in fresher and healthier food for their families.

CISA Executive Director Philip Korman, right, with Emma Gwyther at a Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce event in 2020.(Ed Cohen photo)

This was not the last time we saw a surge of interest in buying local food during a challenging time. When the pandemic hit, many residents who did not feel safe shopping in big supermarkets turned to small farm stores and farmers’ markets. When the national food supply chain was disrupted, residents (re)discovered local meat, cheese and much more. 

In both the 2008 recession and the 2020 onset of the pandemic, the community supported CISA in increasing its efforts to connect residents to farms and farms to residents.

The community has also shown up to help local farms directly as climate change has brought new challenges. In October 2011, in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene, the support of local residents and businesses enabled CISA to launch a new Emergency Farm Fund to provide no-interest loans to affected farms.

And in 2023, when hundreds of farms were severely hurt by the worst range of weather disasters in recent history, residents, local legislators and the governor rallied. Within a few months, over $3 million was raised through private donations and $20 million from public funds to help these farms survive the season.

While economic and climate conditions have continued to shift, there’s one factor that continues to put pressure on local farms and our local food system: the shrinking number of global companies that control a greater percentage of the national food and agriculture markets.

The top four corporations in many agricultural sectors, including meat processing, seeds, fertilizers, and retail grocery, control 60-90% of the national market.

Over my time at CISA, we have worked to understand more deeply how our local food system reflects the racial, gender and class inequities of our nation. The owners of farms across the country and state are still overwhelmingly white and male. Many people who work on farms are from other countries, here to build a better life for their families, doing the hard work that few others want to do.

And access to local food in our state is still difficult for folks without personal transportation and discretionary resources.

Against this backdrop, CISA has worked to lift our local food system as a place where we can make some movement on these issues through community engagement and serve as a model in the region and nation. Many vital partners who have emerged as the leaders in their communities have been our teachers and we, hopefully, their ally.

We can be proud that we are the only state in the nation with HIP, the Healthy Incentives Program, a state government program that provides fresh, local produce for families on SNAP, and a grant infrastructure farm program that invests needed millions to help local farms expand to feed their communities.

Our work has grown as our support from local businesses and residents has grown. CISA is equipped to creatively and strategically look ahead and take risks to face our current and future challenges.

And while I am sometimes still up in the middle of the night, concerned about how farms will weather climate change, a challenging economy and systemic inequities, I am confident that more people in our community understand more deeply that what they buy, how they vote, where they invest, and who they share a meal with is a daily practice of love, connection and change.

Philip Korman is the executive director of CISA, Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture