New Beginnings for Revival Alliance

I started out as a "doing" person—picking up produce, food scraps, and "garbage" to take home for the chickens and the compost pile. I've ended up as a business consultant.

This path seems only reasonable now. In my Pajaro Valley community, we need awareness about food issues. Even though we're an hour and a half away from San Francisco and less than an hour from Silicon Valley, we're rural. We're agricultural.

And, we're ruled by a paradigm that doesn't make sense.

Great, fresh produce is picked here, put on a truck to a distribution center in L.A.—five hours away—and then put on another truck that delivers the produce back up here to the Safeway supermarket in Freedom. Is this stupid, or what? Our food system, and its processes of distribution, are part of a larger problem. All that driving is only part of the picture.

Things like that get me pacing the cage.

I felt impelled to bring the concepts of localization and sustainability to a community with numerous immigrants striving to be "American" and all that entails...including shopping at Safeway--or SaveMart--or Nob Hill. Even with a plethora of smaller grocery stores, most of the people here do not eat locally grown produce.

Our local CSA farms—because of economics—serve mostly people in surrounding areas such as Monterey and Silicon Valley. Our Farmers Markets are small. I believe these situations also are linked to the "American" way, because shopping at street markets was what one did in Mexico or El Salvador or China. Now that they're here in "America" people prefer to shop at the big supermarkets.

And all the food that get thrown away because of this system! Well, it's a massive issue.

On top of that, we have a large number of hungry people here. We have a very high unemployment rate, a high percentage of elders, and a high number of nutritionally deficient families. For all these reasons, lots of Pajaro Valley residents don't get to eat healthy meals on a daily basis.

So, we have Carbon Footprint issues for all that food that's driven around, we have reduced access to healthy food, and there is one other huge issue. Conventional agricultural practices contaminate our aquifer, poison not only farm workers but neighborhoods throughout the Pajaro Valley, and use up our water supply—we're at 200% overdraft right now because of antiquated ag practices. For example, if my advice is followed, local farms would get solutions that reduce fertilizer and pesticide applications, lower their water usage, and improve their soil.

I'm a solution-driven person. I like answers. My friends and I can produce solutions through action and education. I believe awareness is the first step to change, so I went back to school to learn more about agriculture, marketing, pollution, composting, and social media.

And now here I am, ready to help you and your business take the first step of awareness. It's the first of many steps, but I do have solutions: evidence-based advice, materials, and training packages for you and your employees. This will make your business stand out, will provide value-added products without heavy capital investment, and will cut your costs.

This journey will not only help your bottom line by saving on expenses such as garbage pickup. It will present your business to the community in such a way that your name will be associated with green and sustainable operations. Not greenwashing, but actual tactics will reduce pollution, increase community health, produce more healthy food locally, and involve you and your employees in social equity. You can connect with other businesses that support your goals.

How? you say. Well, contact me for a free consultation, and I'll tell you.