At the recent Food Entrepreneurship Ecosystems Development (FEED) Summit in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, aspiring and new food entrepreneurs came together to address common roadblocks and to share strategies for adding value to small food businesses.
The conference is designed to facilitate connection, letting participants bring their questions to real people with the expertise and experience to help move them forward.
The FEED initiative comes from the University of Wisconsin (UW), Madison Division of Extension Community Food Systems Program. James Pyecroft, Food Entrepreneurship and Local Market Development Outreach Associate with Extension, tells Food Tank that the statewide FEED Summit aims to bring all resources into one room. This makes entrepreneurs’ needs easy to identify.
“You do not have to figure it all out on your own,” Jessica Jane Spring, Food Entrepreneurship Specialist in the Community Food Systems Program, tells attendees.
Keynote speaker Alesia Miller, Founder of Soul Brew Kombucha in Milwaukee, emphasizes that building a business requires engaging with the community. She highlights the importance of tapping into existing support systems in your city, and finding someone, “who believes in you before you believe in yourself.”
Will Green, Founder of the Madison-based youth empowerment organization Mentoring Positives, echoes Miller’s sentiment: “Nothing is going to get accomplished until you build trusting relationships with people,” he says.
A key partner for the conference is the Milwaukee Food Council, a nonprofit that works to support a locally anchored food system focused on collective action and food justice. Pyecroft tells Food Tank that FEED is excited to work with the Council because, “they’re so incredible with how they think about food systems.”
Jessica Thompson, Community Engagement Manager for the Council, tells Food Tank that, “yes, [people in food systems work] are siloed, but our values are where we come together.” Events like the FEED Summit take the important step of bringing more community members into the room to define those values and discuss how they can drive change. “We need to do something, and we need to do it together,” Thompson says.
The Council’s Executive Director Solana Patterson-Ramos says that food system change requires breaking down those silos. While supporting entrepreneurship is not a pillar of their work, “Milwaukee Food Council was happy to partner with UW Extension on this Summit. Making sure that future food entrepreneurs understand the issues within our food system helps us make the system better together,” Patterson-Ramos tells Food Tank.
This partnership allows the conference to educate a new wave of food entrepreneurs about food justice, Spring says. She tells Food Tank that this is a new focus for the conference, but she hopes to continue it in the future.
Historian Reggie Jackson says that to achieve food justice in Milwaukee, it is necessary to acknowledge the stark racial disparities. He explains during one panel that rates of food insecurity for Black residents in the city are 27 percent, compared with 20 percent for Hispanic residents and under 10 percent for those who are White. “That’s a big problem because it impacts people’s health,” Jackson says. He goes on to explain that the extreme health disparities seen in Milwaukee are due to the lack of access to healthy foods for Black communities.
Patterson-Ramos also notes that, “History must be talked about because all of these injustices are connected. We can’t correct [the issues] if we don’t look back and see what they actually are.”
And Jackson emphasizes the power of connection in moving forward. “Building personal relationships with people from different communities makes stereotypes disappear.”
Pyecroft tells Food Tank he’s hopeful the conference showcases the relationship between people and place. “It’s really about the community and the people that are involved and the ties that they feel with one another. Everyone is tied to the land in some form. And everyone has a place here in the food system.”
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Photo courtesy of Abigail Buta
