Hartford Food System
Mark Winne
509 Wethersfield Ave.
Hartford, Conn. 06114
(203) 296-9325

This model organization has achieved so many specific successes that becomes easy to overlook the genius of its underlying principle; in fact, it is not so easy to boil down that principle into a simple statement that expresses clearly just what it is that Hartford Food System does.

Here's my best effort at defining it, after a morning of touring the Food System's impressive activities and talking with its creative director, Mark Winne: The Hartford Food System seeks to identify the barriers & challenges that keep Hartford's poor people hungry, & to find ways -- working with its core staff & in collaboration with other community non-profit groups and government -- to fill all the gaps, building toward the goal of ensuring that everyone in the community is fed.

Founded in 1978, Hartford Food System grew out of a comprehensive study of local hunger and poverty commissioned by a then-progressive city administration. The study found that Hartford was rich in self-help food activities, but it concluded that the effectiveness of these efforts was limited because there was no coordination or focus. City government, working with representatives of many of the groups, came up with an audacious idea: Create a "Food System" as a way to bring together all the community's anti-hunger activities in a "holistic framework." The resulting model, an umbrella-like agency, brought together scores of groups, from the CAA to community gardens, soup kitchens and neighborhood organizations, each responsible for its particular piece, under coordinated management by the Food System.

It didn't work, Winne said. Some projects were better than others; a few died well-deserved deaths on the birthing table. Turf issues quickly arose, and the coalition wasn't able to respond to the separate agendas of every member, winding up with considerable tension. The Food System soon was devoting all its time and energy to management problems, not food projects. So, after three years of struggling, the organization reinvented itself in its present, more decentralized form. Hartford Food System, with a core staff of five and operating budget of $350,000, supports and advises other local hunger organizations. It studies hunger and poverty in its community, identifies gaps in service, provides some programs directly, passes other off to other organizations, and creates still other programs only to spin them off eventually as independent initiatives.

During the early years, many of those initiatives were relatively simple, though important: Community gardens, farmer's markets, food-buying clubs. It wasn't long, though, before the organization moved into areas where its models are literally unique.

Here's a look at some of the best:

Holcomb Farm, a 16-acre Community Supported Agriculture farm, is moving into its third crop-producing season on property in the village of Granby, Conn., originally donated to the state university by an elderly brother and sister. It came under the Food System's management in 1994, and Winne hopes it will yield 100,000 pounds of produce this season. In a creative bootstrapping arrangement, 100 "shares" in the farm are sold to middle-income families for $375 per share, providing them an estimated 400 pounds of produce which they may pick up at the farm weekly during the 22-week season. This provides sufficient income to run the farm and to distribute another 4,000 pounds of produce to each of 10 non-profit social service and community organizations, which pay $850 per share -- only about 20 cents a pound -- to help feed their clients throughout the growing season.

Main Street Market, an outgrowth of the Food System's effective "Farm to Family" program that links farmers with low-income neighborhoods through a series of neighborhood farmer's markets, has placed a quality farmers' market and small-business incubator on a prime piece of downtown real estate that had been left vacant since a major bank abandoned its plan to build an office tower there. Organized and managed by a consortium of organizations including the Food System and Greater Hartford Architecture Conservancy, the market is housed in two attractive red sheds, in which farmers lease market stalls for $500 a season, while other vendors including a minority-owned restaurant, a produce stand, and barbecue and hot-dog wagons lease space for $300 to $500 a month. An open stage provides a venue for musical and entertainment groups to perform, luring crowds at lunchtime; and a donation program for the public and institutions raises $15,000 to $20,000 a year to subsidize a food-coupon program to help low-income people buy fresh market produce which augment the WIC and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program also started by HFS and now run by CT Department of Agriculture.

Hartford Farms, a 13,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse raising 250,000 heads of organic lettuce per year, got its start in 1984 when a group of non-profits including the Food System purchased a vacant lot from the city for $1 and built the greenhouse as a way to produce more food -- and create more job opportunities -- than was possible through community gardens alone. Using a creative-financing combination of nearly $300,000 in high-risk, low-interest loans and $30,000 in grants, the groups established the greenhouse, saw it become a financial success, and then turned it over to its manager as a going business concern in a new location after the Hartford Courant purchased the property it was on . . . for considerably more than $1.

Another advocacy project goes into the city public schools with a two-pronged approach, teaching youngsters about nutrition and working with food-service personnel to encourage schools to buy as much produce as possible from local farmers.

Not every Food System project has been successful. One major early effort, a food-cooperative supermarket housed in a store that A&P abandoned when it took its store out of the city, failed after a year and a half because the numbers didn't work out; income was insufficient to hire competent managers, and the co-op never turned a profit; the coops managed the project after the Food System quit then failed in turn after another year of losing money. The Food System remains active in access-to-food advocacy, however, working with supermarket chains in hope of bringing quality grocery alternatives back to the inner city, and advocating for consumers with suburban groceries and smaller city stores. One current project involves conducting and publicizing a bimonthly price survey of suburban stores, an effort that revealed a startling range from $69 to $79 for the same "market basket" list.

Finally, in an effort to see its work replicated on the national policy level, the Food System has created a small national network called the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC). Created in 1994 with an eye to influencing the 1995 Farm Bill, CFSC succeeded in having a Community Food Security Act passed, making $2.5 million per year available in competitive grants to community food and nutrition groups for seven years. The coalition's work did not end with passage of the Act; it now monitors USDA's administration of the Act and works with local groups to ensure that outstanding local programs will be recognized and given the opportunity to seek funding. In the language of the Act, its grants would make "assistance available to support community food security projects designed to meet the food needs of low-income people, increase the self-reliance of communities in providing for their own food needs, and promote comprehensive, inclusive and future-oriented solutions to local food, farm and nutrition problems." Preference will be given to projects that "develop linkages between two or more sectors of the food system; support the development of entrepreneurial solutions to local food problems; develop innovative linkages between the for-profit and non-profit sectors; or encourage long-term planning activities and multi-system interagency approaches."

(Last visit: Autumn 1996)

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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