building around regional identities for food systems. Community Alliance
Ventura suggested I apply to take the Ventura model statewide through
with Family Farmers (CAFF) invited me to join its board and I got into
ROC funding. So I did, and with their support I developed locally based
statewide policy work. In 1996, a friend introduced me to Slow Food, which
consensus-building policy bodies around the state. After two years, ROC
was really the first consumer-based component of the food movement. I’d
started to really develop, and they needed a full-time executive. I got the
been working with government agencies and industry-oriented nonprofits
job in the summer of 2006. There are now twenty-five food policy groups
up to that point, but there were very few organizations out there connecting
statewide. Almost half of them have been funded by ROC or are supported
producers and consumers, and I knew that was going to be a critically
by Ag Innovations, which I turned over to a wonderful colleague when I
important component in protecting local food systems. I founded a Slow
moved to ROC.
Food chapter in Sonoma, and that eventually led to my being asked to become chairman of Slow Food U.S.A., which I did for many years. Part of my work as chairman entailed traveling all over the United States, meeting farmers and producers who were doing cutting-edge things, and that was really a privilege and an education. It was all an evolution. I saw the linkage between the environment, communities, and food systems. I saw the food system as an engine for change because it is really the base of all systems. If you want to change the face of culture and of the planet, the food system is the way that
“Right before I took my job at Roots of Change, I asked myself, ‘Am I a reformer? Is that what I am?’ Because if you look at the lives of reformers, they’re often painful and short.”
humans have the most impact. It is at the root of transformation. I think another reason that I’m drawn to agriculture is that I see it as an extension
We are now in the next phase of Roots of Change. We completed
of the feminist movement. A lot of the leaders of this movement are really
our first five-year plan, which created a context for major change. In the
powerful women. I do feel that there is a need for the rebalancing of the
next three years, ROC is going to support California’s first statewide Food
masculine and feminine forces in the world. The food system is a place
Policy Council, and we’re going to pull all of these regional groups together
where that’s really happening.
into one body, to share what they’ve learned in their own communities
In 2000, my company Ag Innovations helped form this entity made
and to collaborate regionally. The most important thing is that together,
up of community leaders in Ventura county—environmentalists, labor
they’re going to become a voice to the governor and the legislature about
activists, farmers, and government officials—that came together around
what’s needed to unleash the entrepreneurship required to create regional,
the common cause of saving the area’s agricultural future, which was at
sustainable food systems in California.
risk because of development and changes in environmental regulations,
We have met huge benchmarks. When groups like Slow Food and
etc. These groups had been at war for years on the front pages and in
Roots of Change started really pressing, farmers got nervous and realized
the ballot box until we pulled them together into this consensus-building
that they had to be responsive. Sixteen to twenty of the largest cropping
body. We launched and within three years, we changed a state law, key
systems in California are now developing sustainability standards. And
local ordinances, and how people thought about agriculture and food. We
the most important crop system to change grew out of the statewide
transformed the community.
roundtable, the California Roundtable on Agriculture and the Environment
By this time—2002—ROC had already been formed, and they had
(CRAE). That group developed this idea called the Stewardship Index for
started providing grants in 2004. One of the people I was working with in
Specialty Crops, which is a way for growers of vegetables, fruits, and
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Michael Dimock