Ears to the Ground: Guidance From Our Soil Stewards
[Read Time: 4 minutes]
When Kitchen Table Advisors first began supporting farmers and ranchers, our focus was on providing in-depth, personalized business advising. We helped ecologically and socially-centered producers learn to stay in the game, a game that we know is not designed to allow them to thrive. Over the years, we worked on refining our advising model and expanding our skills in areas where small-scale farmers need the most support: financial capital, markets and land. We committed to a trust-based approach, building relationships with each individual. We shifted to a region-based structure, where clients are paired with advisors with ties to their communities.
Beyond Business Advising
Along the way, we listened. We listened to the farmers and ranchers we serve, to partners across the industry, and we realized that for our clients to truly have an opportunity to thrive, the game itself needs to change. So we changed, too. A couple years ago, Kitchen Table Advisors expanded our work to include what we refer to as Ecosystem Building projects. These projects involve collective work with partners to rebuild a marketplace that is more favorable to sustainable, small farms and ranches, particularly in the core areas of land, markets and capital. By supporting farmers and helping shape the marketplace, we can increase and deepen our impact on the livelihoods of individual farmers and ranchers while creating greater ripple effects of systemic change. Both our advising model and emergent Ecosystem Building work created a strong foundation from which we have been able to support client farmers and ranchers through these unprecedented times.
It has been said before, by us here at KTA and by partners across the country: our food system is broken (or, rather, expertly designed to be oppressive) and COVID-19 has highlighted these existing inequities. We see this in the ways our current system fails to neither protect nor uplift the local, small-scale food producers who are on the frontlines of the pandemic. Producers are showing us the true value of their work by adapting to new realities and ensuring our communities remain nourished, meanwhile, they struggle to make ends meet amidst rapidly fluctuating sales channels and barriers to accessing federal dollars.
The True Value of Farming
While farmers and ranchers grow food that sustains us, so much of their work is indirectly tied to food production, such as seed saving community programs, and holistic land stewardship. The cost of their food so rarely reflects the breadth of services they provide for our foodshed.
Last fall, KTA’s Ecosystem Building work headed in a new direction, one that is aligned with our broader vision of a community-based food economy: connecting farmers with financial resources specifically for their non-market based work. In December 2019, Kitchen Table Advisors co-hosted a convening for farmers of color, focused on centering their voices and expertise in finding solutions to the challenges they -- and our food system -- face. Out of this convening, farmers proposed that moving forward we will need to look outside the “market”, and identified one of the more pressing barriers they face in leading these efforts: financial resources. Kitchen Table Advisors worked with other organizations in attendance to direct capital to the participating farmers immediately following the convening in recognition of the leadership, time and labor (in all senses of the word) they shared. Since the convening, we’ve partnered with other organizations to continue directing financial resources to farmers, especially as they’ve been tasked with even greater responsibilities as the pandemic persists. These resources have supported farmers as they work to connect communities hit hardest by the pandemic with healthy food, as they learn to adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace, and as BIPOC farmers face increased barriers to accessing federal support dollars (during the pandemic and historically).
Listening to Farmers
Kitchen Table Advisors’ work around resourcing farmers, like so many pivotal moments in KTA’s history, is possible because of the farmers and ranchers we serve. Because they told us what they needed, and we listened. For our food system to continue to carry us through this current crisis, and the many others we are sure to face, we all need to commit to doing the same. To asking the people who have nourished us what they need, and listening to their answers. To then put their words into action by moving resources and power into their hands. Frontline communities are our lifeline; they are the individuals who will lead us into our most daring visions for the future. Many of our farmers and ranchers are already telling us what they need, how we can help. Are you seeking them out? Are you listening?