One man's path to community food activism

By Mary Adams,
Center editor

As a ten-year-old in northern New Jersey, Mark Winne loved to ride his bike out into the country to see the garden and truck farms that lined the roadways. But as he grew older, he says he had to ride farther and farther to find green and growing things amidst the suburban developments. He remembers a feeling of loss as he watched New Jersey's rural countryside disappear-but he gained a sense of purpose that has led to a career in educating people about food systems and food security issues.

Today Mark Winne is executive director of the Hartford Food System, a private nonprofit agency that works on food and hunger issues in Hartford, Connecticut. In May he spoke to a group of 50 on the Iowa State University campus about creating a sustainable food system. His appearance was sponsored by the Leopold Center, the Iowa Food Policy Council and several other groups.

Wrestling with hunger
A graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, Winne started out as a counselor and social worker. He became a food issues activist when he saw that many of the problems he was counseling people about were related to meeting their basic needs such as food and shelter. Winne joined the Hartford Food System in 1979 when it began organizing community self-help food projects designed to assist the city's lower income and elderly residents. Hartford, halfway between New York City and Boston, has a high proportion of people living at the poverty level.

The Hartford project began, Winne says, because "a progressive city administration was willing to try to solve some of the problems of food, housing and energy of low-income residents."

He says that every state wrestles with agriculture, hunger and health issues, but only Iowa and Connecticut have food policy councils. The councils can be vehicles to strengthen local food systems.

"[These councils] can create stronger linkages and offer more holistic education on food issues," Winne says. "The groups that join together [on food policy councils] aren't giving up power-they're gaining more power by banding together."

Educating schoolchildren
The Hartford group's Farm Fresh Start program is a model for development of Iowa's "Connecting Schools and Farms" program in Story County. The Nevada school food service is working to increase the purchase of locally grown food. Local farmers in Connecticut provided 70 percent of the total fresh produce purchased during an 11-week fall harvest. Students who participated in an accompanying food and nutrition unit in class also took more optional fresh fruits, green salads and cooked fresh vegetables at lunch.

Winne also chairs the Working Lands Alliance, a multi-interest coalition dedicated to preserving reasonable tracts of Connecticut's farmland.

"Until we formed the alliance, there was no organized effort for farmland preservation. We were losing 8,000 acres of farmland a year, and by mid-century there would be no farmland left," he says.

The 70-member coalition includes bikers, environmental groups, farm groups, conservation and wildlife groups. The most recent session of the Connecticut legislature passed a bill with $7 million in funding for farmland preservation, thanks to the efforts of the Working Lands Alliance. He notes that Iowa may want to look beyond the purely agricultural economic interests in preserving farmland to the rural quality of life issues that motivate activists in Connecticut.