We are pleased to welcome Julie Ankenbrandt to our fold, one of few (we guess) COOs who milks her own cows and grows her own food. Fortunately for us, she also knows a thing or two about growing Internet businesses.
“I wouldn’t have guessed that someday my interests in local food and my experience in payment systems and the Internet would converge,” Julie says. “But I couldn’t be more pleased to have the dots connect with a team like Local Orbit, and a platform that helps streamline and scale how local food is bought and sold.”
Food and farms are the roots of Julie’s memories of growing up in Iowa. Summer meals came straight from her mother’s enormous garden, cattle socialized and corn grew out the giant window of the hayloft on her grandfather’s farm, and her aunts canned every summer’s harvest in her grandmother’s kitchen. She loved every minute of it – the sweetness of peas straight off the vine, driving tractors at an early age, the sweltering heat and camaraderie of a kitchen canning – and hoped to someday show her own kids the same treasures.
Julie and her boys
Before settling into a farmstead, however, Julie migrated from Iowa to Silicon Valley where she met Elon Musk, who was starting a new venture called X.com – which eventually became known as PayPal, the online payment service. Julie joined as employee number five and the company’s first female, and over time held three different titles as vice president – of product, operations & customer service, and public relations & communications.
In addition to serving as company spokesperson to top-tier publications like Forbes, Fortune, and The New York Times, Julie built a customer service center from scratch in Omaha, Nebraska, from 0 to 100 people in exactly six weeks. Today that center employs nearly 2,000 people, making PayPal the second largest employer in the city.
“Being part of PayPal in the early days was extremely fun and drama-filled,” Julie says. “We created something completely new but never knew for sure if the credit card companies, the government, or the banking regulators would shut us down on any given day.”
Prior to PayPal, Julie managed public relations and marketing for Frank Quattrone’s technology-focused investment banking group at DMG Technology Group (then Deutsche Bank Tech Group) during the high-tech and early dot-com booms.
Today Julie lives in Colorado on a small farmstead with her two boys, four Jersey cows, fifty chickens, and a cat with the inaccurate name of Pumpkin. “As a kid I knew there was something magical in eating straight from the garden,” Julie says. “I’m thrilled to provide that experience to my own kids, and to work with Local Orbit, who is making it easier for everyone to get food from farm to table.”
We were so pleased this morning to see this excellent article on Detroit Eastern Market published on the homepage of MetroMode.com. Eastern Market “is the most comprehensive food hub in the nation” according to its president, Dan Carmody. Understanding their methods and learning from their model could significantly increase the amount of regional food hubs in our nation – creating jobs, improving the health of our communities, and growing the small farm sector in an unprecedented way.
Dan Carmody, president of Eastern Market
We’ve excerpted a few of our favorite quotes from the article, especially the piece that shares how we are aiding in Eastern Market’s efforts, but please make sure to read the full story here.
{The food hub helps small farmers grow the size and yield of their farms and create other viable sales outlets that aren’t community supportive agriculture (CSA), a farmer’s market, or direct sales to restaurants because “farmers have to balance their time between selling food and growing it,” Carmody says. “It’s the next step in the devolution of a food system into a stronger regional system, encouraging smaller growers.”}
{Carmody and his staff have increased the profile of local and regional growers supplying the market, says Debbie Tropp, branch chief of the Agricultural Marketing Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is conducting a two-year study of Eastern Market. “They’re doing their level best to try to revitalize the regional food system in a way that may not have happened prior.”
Eastern Market is considered a “hybrid market,” where wholesale and retail activities occur, one of about 50 in the nation, according to James Barham, agricultural economist and head of a USDA interagency task force on regional food hubs. “Hardly any of these would be classified regional food hubs. Mainly, it’s a property manager who’s leasing space…. What Dan is doing is pretty remarkable. He could have set up as a property manager and leased space. Eastern Market would have continued to exist.”
Food hubs are a fairly new designation for comprehensive agricultural centers that provide a catalytic impact on the regional food system, says Barham. “Because of the strong relationship regional food hubs have with producers, and because of the demand for locally grown product, producers are scaling up their operations, they’re hiring more staff, they’re planting more crops, they’re switching practices from more conventional to more sustainably produced because there’s higher customer demand for that type of product.”
Eastern Market has established a virtual food hub to connect the region’s growers and buyers in an unprecedented way using Local Orb.it. “The buyer can go online and pick Eastern Market as their hub, see a variety of our growers, our specialty product vendors, and be able to order from these different types of growers on one purchase order,” says Christine Quane, wholesale market coordinator for Eastern Market. “That allows growers to tell their story, inventory their items and put their wholesale pricing [on display]. They pick their products, make their orders, and the two meet on a set day — saving time for both. By knowing the story behind the grower, they know where their food is coming from. They’ll know who the growers are and how they grow.”}
Mike Thorn believes in change. He believes that small farmers can build sustainable businesses. He believes that restaurants and institutions will one day be able to source local food with ease. And he believes it’s time for high-tech solutions to support the vibrant, local businesses that are bringing good food to our tables.
Mike joined Local Orbit as the lead programmer in May, and he hasn’t come up for air since. From developing new features for our pilot hub sites to figuring out how to solve problems created by rural satellite internet connections, he’s been busy. Mike’s work on our upcoming release will allow us to tailor Local Orbit’s tools to each region’s unique needs and support a variety of food distribution business models. It will also provide rich production and distribution information to help everyone involved in the value chain with future planning.
Mike’s food values come from his deep family roots. His father, a professor and doctor, cooked dinner for his family every night, inspired by the foods of his Thai and Chinese upbringing. Local produce was always on the menu and still is today; he purchases at least 50% of his food from Farmer’s Markets and blows away dinner guests with his unbelievable lamb curry that takes 10 hours of hands on cooking to perfect.
Mike was majoring in Chemistry at Eastern Michigan University, but chose to jump into the fast and furious world of internet startups instead. Soon after, his first startup consulting company was awarded a major project for The Dow Chemical Company, lasting 9 years. Mike’s role in this project was the primary software architect for their laboratory information management system. His software was used to outsource millions of dollars of routine testing, enabling shorter hold times on inventory and freeing expensive internal resources to focus on product development and refinement. Later, he helped implement a web-based data mining processor that used natural language processing to calculate performance metrics for Fortune 500 companies such as Disney and RCI. Most recently, he designed a HIPPA-compliant architecture for an electronic medical record system start-up, Therapy Charts
Mike is excited to see his work help farmers grow stronger businesses. In the long run, he sees himself making an even greater contribution by helping our users run their businesses more effectively with the robust, easy-to-use planning and marketing tools Local Orbit is developing. His goal is to bring the resources and tools that create advantages for big agriculture and huge retail chains to 10-acre farms and 10-table restaurants alike.
The New York Times has a terrific piece about the work our partner, St John’s Bread and Life, is doing to bring good food to Bed-Stuy.
Tony Butler, Bread and Life’s executive director, talks about the Local Orbit partnership: “You don’t create community around problems,” said Mr. Butler, who hopes that clients on food stamps will eventually be able to shop from Local Orbit farmers at St. John’s. “You create community around shared projects.”
John Glebocki, Tony Butler and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn
The new way of connecting farmers with communities is gaining a lot of attention. Last week, fifth-generation farmer John Glebocki joined New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Tony Butler to discuss food distribution issues in the region. John knows a thing or two about fresh produce with 70 acres of fertile land in the black dirt region of Orange County, NY. His Goshen farm supplies the same high quality vegetables to Goldman Sachs, white table cloth restaurants and food pantries across New York.Since October he has been offering his produce for sale to residents of the Bed-Stuy community.
This month Glebocki’s vegetables — known for exceptional flavor — became part of a great holiday meal – sourced entirely through Local Orbit and enjoyed by 2,000 Bed-Stuy families, including a humanly raised turkey, a half pound of organic fresh cranberries and a vegetable bag that includes three carrots, four potatoes, one butternut squash and two to three onions.
Food systems 101 in five minutes – from a smart, home-schooled kid at TedXNextGenerationAsheville. Here’s hoping the Future Farmers of America share his perspective.
“The mother of slow food.” “The founder of ground-breaking Chez Panisse in Berkeley.” “The biggest influence on food and how it’s sourced and prepared in America since Julia Child.” That’s a significant legacy that Alice Waters, a spirited revolutionary, carries with grace and a deft sense of humor.
Almost a year ago, I heard Alice Waters speak to—and apparently hold in thrall—a packed hall at the tony Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT. I was certain that everyone, from students and faculty to farmers from Sheffield, MA to Millertonm, NY residents, heard her call to action. Charge the barricades! Go local! Boy, was I wrong.
Leaders of the food revolution: 17-year old Sam Levin of Project Sprout, Alice Waters and farmer Dominic Palumbo
The Alice Waters Story
Waters first learned about the importance of food in people’s lives while studying in Paris. Eating food together, she saw, “encouraged conversation and closeness.”
For Waters, food should be a “form of sustenance, not just fuel.” She brought that winning recipe to the opening of Chez Panisse in 1971. Her unstoppable search for great tasting, quality ingredients led her to forage for the best sources of cheese, fruits and vegetables, meat and fish in the Bay area. In the process she created a community of 85 sustainable producers that support and nourish her restaurant to this day. read on
The conversation about fixing our food system continues to move further into the mainstream. Last week, Oprah did a great show on Food 101 with Michael Pollan on Food Rules, Alicia Silverstone on changing her diet (including a funny exchange on poop), and excerpts from Food, Inc.
[UPDATE 2/4/10 - looks like Harpo Productions took the videos off YouTube and are making the Food 101 show available on DVD. A shame they won't allow this information to be distributed more freely, but at least they did produce great content. You can get more info on the Oprah site.
Just wondering - do you think Food, Inc. will get a share of the revenue from DVD sales of this episode that include excerpts from the film? Sure - they get great PR, but still..... ]
Here’s video from YouTube, in 5 parts. No additional commentary needed!
Ezra Klein talks to Ezekiel Emanuel, health care policy advisor to the Office of Management and Budget, in a recent Washington Post article. Emanuel doesn’t address the impact of corporate food marketing on our eating habits, but he offers excellent perspective on the disconnect between the health care debate and food, as well as cultural obstacles to encouraging better food choices.
The Obama administration is raising awareness about healthy eating through the high profile White House Garden and new local food campaigns such as Know Your Farmer. It’s a good start, but, as Emanuel notes, “lifestyle issues are hard for the government to address.”
Along these lines, Adam Corner proposes that psychology is the missing link in the climate change debate: …while the consensus may be growing on the need for changes in behaviour, we’re no closer to understanding how we’re going to do it. Attempting an unprecedented shift in human behaviour without the input of psychologists is like setting sail for a faraway land without the aid of nautical maps.
Our political system is a lot more comfortable talking about health care than about health. We’ll pay enormous amounts of money to treat diabetics, but we don’t do much to change people’s diets to prevent diabetes. That’s a strange use of resources: Focusing on health-care coverage without doing more to address the factors, such as diet, that determine our health is a bit like buying fire insurance while ignoring the fact that you have a gas stove and a large fireplace in a wood cabin. A dry wood cabin.
…”My own view,” says Emanuel, “is we know there are large parts of health that are primarily best approached as a public-health issue and not as a doctor-patient issue. Nutrition, wellness, exercise and smoking, for instance. But lifestyle change is hard to accomplish. What smoking showed is it’s not a single thing. It changed from being socially acceptable and doctors would recommend it in the ’50s to being scorned and barred indoors.”
The smoking case is an interesting one. Emanuel brings it up repeatedly as one of the few examples where public-health advocates managed to change the culture around a previously unexamined act, which is exactly what they’re going to have to do with diet. “On smoking, there are a combination of things that had to happen,” he says. “We had to make smoking socially unacceptable. We took it outside the building. We raised taxes on it. It became linked to cancer.” But as he admits, “you can’t take eating outside the building.” Nor can you demonize it entirely. Certain products can be attacked, but in a world of organic Oreos and Splenda with added fiber, it won’t just be an uphill climb. It’ll be a climb with constantly changing footholds.
Moreover, as Emanuel says, lifestyle issues are hard for the government to address. They’re personal, for one thing. Whether it likes it or not, the government is fiscally invested in the way we eat because it pays for the consequences of a bad diet. But few feel comfortable with the government’s involving itself in the choices that lead to that bad diet.
…So where does that leave us? “You have to change the whole culture around this stuff,” Emanuel sighs. “That’s a complicated thing. It’s even more complicated than how to change the health-care system, if you can believe it.”
Klein piece via ethanagri4 on the Comfood listserve Corner piece via the foodtimes
