“If you want to change the face of culture and of the planet, the food system is the way that humans have the most impact.”
Michael Dimock President, Roots of Change Michael Dimock’s goal is simple: to create a sustainable food system in the state of California by the year 2030 that can be used as a model for the rest of the country, if not the world. Ambitious, definitely. But Dimock’s track record for changing the unchangeable is hard to argue with. Long before words like “sustainable” and “locavore” became headline favorites, Dimock was using his grassroots approach and business acumen to convince community members to set aside differences and join forces around the common objective of preserving the future of local agriculture. Part diplomat, part activist, he seems to understand what so few others in the new food revolution do: lasting transformation only happens from the inside out. And the stakes couldn’t be higher—with America’s skyrocketing obesity rates and rapidly diminishing natural resources, our lives literally depend on the radical reformation of how we eat . . . perhaps our lives literally depend on Michael Dimock.
R
ight before I took my job at Roots of Change (ROC), I asked
in Sonoma County thinking about what I was going to do next. I realized
myself, “Am I a reformer? Is that what I am?” Because if you look
one day, as I was looking over this beautiful area, that I wanted to live
at the lives of reformers, they’re often painful and short. But I’ve
here, first and foremost. And second, I wanted to continue working in
realized this is what I was meant to do, and it’s deeply satisfying.
food and agriculture.
I grew up in San Jose, California, in a house surrounded by
There’s a saying, “Once you decide, all things line up.” I was sit-
walnut and cherry orchards. In the background was the sound of tractors
ting in a coffee shop one day reading an article about agriculture when a
knocking down the trees as they developed Santa Clara County. I remember
woman sitting at the table next to me leaned over and said, “Are you in-
lying in my bed, hearing that squeaky tread and the engine, and then the
terested in agriculture?” She was on the board of Select Sonoma County,
tree falling. I often think that memory is part of why I do this work.
which was the first nonprofit in the United States focused on promoting a
After a graduate program at Columbia in Soviet studies, I went to work
county-based identity for its farming products. Soon after, I was hired as
for an international agribusiness company that supplied ingredients to the
the first director of marketing because of her and that chance meeting. I
big food manufacturers like McDonald’s—they bought 25 million dollars’
then took the county-based model to other areas of Northern California.
worth of tomato paste from us every year. I was based in Europe and I
The impact of industrial agriculture was really starting to hit, and the re-
lived in Holland and Spain, traveling all over. I also saw regional, sustainable
gional food producers were going downhill fast. I was getting a lot of work
agricultural systems, both in development and long existing. That was
advising communities on how to save the local agricultural economies.
the beginning of my true food consciousness. I was getting a taste of all
Eventually, I started my own consulting firm in 1992, to promote food and
models of agriculture.
farming sustainability in California, which later became known as Ag In-
When the First Gulf War happened, a huge recession hit and the company got in big trouble. So, I came back to California and I spent a year
novations Network. That’s when I became really interested in community consensus
Michael Dimock at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, CA.
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