The Road to Good Food: Advocating for a Nourished San Francisco

03 Jun The Road to Good Food: Advocating for a Nourished San Francisco

Our first annual Food Action Summit: The Road to Good Food presented by the Food and Agriculture Action Coalition Toward Sovereignty (FAACTS) was informative, impactful, and nourishing! Through insightful panels, future-forward talks, and sharing delicious meals together, we convened as a San Francisco community to envision what constitutes a good food city.

FAACTS is a coalition of 30 organizations that are working toward protecting citywide food access programming, and ensuring consistent and equitable access to high quality, local, fresh, and culturally-inclusive food and nutrition services in San Francisco.

Over 200 attended the two-day summit, which opened with communal grounding exercises by Victoria Benson and her team from Justice Alchemy and Ms. Toni Hines of SF Food Action. It also hosted powerful speakers like Raj Patel an award-winning author, filmmaker, and James Beard award recipient; Navina Khanna co-founder and Executive Director of HEAL Food Alliance, and Aomboon Deasy, second-generation farmer and restaurateur of Pomet in Oakland. The FAACTS team hosted energetic breakout sessions, giving participants a chance to voice their ideas, thoughts, and concerns; some of which were led and moderated by Booker T.’s very own Omar Flores, Juanita Bruton, and Shakirah Simley.

Omar Flores, Booker T.’s Food Justice Coordinator., moderated the Decolonizing The Land Panel, and here’s what they had to say about its impact, “Being a part of the Decolonizing the Land workshop was such a privilege, particularly because of the panelists I was able to share space with. The voices we heard and learned from were those of indigenous folx, farmers, writers, cooks, parents, community organizers, and educators. We held space to discuss the importance of not just decolonizing the land, but more importantly re-indigenizing it and understanding that our current food system was intentionally designed to erase our connection to the food and land that feeds us. Its impact was seen immediately in the community; I started to volunteer the week after at Hummingbird Farm in the Excelsior and saw workshop attendees weeding the land and planting flowers that soon would attract pollinators like butterflies. Its impact was also felt by the panelists, as a couple of them showed heavy interest in joining FAACTS.”

Juanita Bruton, Booker T.’s Food Justice Manager, felt similarly about her panel Liberation Leaders, Youth As Good Food Leaders, noting that “The impact of having local youth leaders share their expertise about how to empower our young people to fellow teachers and community members was important by providing crucial tools and open conversations on next steps.”

The Black-Led, Black-Fed Panel, hosted by Booker T.’s Executive Director, Shakirah Simley, and Ali Anderson, Founder and Co-Executive Director of Feed Black Futures, was also dynamic and discerning. Taking into account how slavery and Jim Crow have had a negative generational impact on wealth, health inequities, and a lack of access to capital, over 30 attendees brainstormed ways to build and sustain a Black Good Food System.

The two-day summit didn’t solely begin and end with talking about food and food policy, our bellies were full! (So full!)  We not only gave away fresh produce to participants from Earl’s Organic, but we also shared meals from local food businesses like Farming Hope, Rucolina, Andina, and Frank Grizzly’s. These meals fostered connection and fueled discussions on building a more equitable food system.

All in all, we couldn’t be more proud of our Booker T. team and fellow FAACTS coalition members and their hard work!

As we draw the curtains on our first annual FAACTS summit, we are confident that the echoes of impassioned discussions, insightful revelations, and shared meals reverberate within us. But this is just the beginning. The seeds of change have been sown, and now it’s time for us to nurture them together. Here, here, to a Good Food City that equitably paves the way to nourishment for all!

Have questions about FAACTS or want to get involved? Please reach out at: hello@faactssf.org

Watch a recap video of the day here! A big thank you to the BAYCAT storytellers who helped us capture the summit.

The Food and Agriculture Action Coalition Toward Sovereignty (FAACTS) was formed in 2022 when 30 local partner organizations identified the need to protect citywide food access programming, and ensure consistent and equitable access to high quality, local, fresh, and culturally-inclusive food and nutrition services in San Francisco. Our mission is to build a just, sustainable, and holistic food system, ensuring we are neighborhood-based and coordinated across every district in SF, with the goal of nourishing our community in a way that is sincere, healthy, empowering, specific, culturally relevant, humble, and abundant.

Since its inception, FAACTS has achieved significant milestones, including:

• Preserving $75 million in funding for citywide, community-based, BIPOC-led food access programs

• Organizing the first-ever SF Food Action Summit where over 225 attendees informed co-creating a good food system vision, priorities, and solutions. See here for the program.

• Hosted advocacy trainings to empower community on the city budget process and empowered hospitality industry workers through a Worker’s Rights Training co-hosted with The Women’s Building and Trabajadores Unidos

• Every year, nourishing over 70,000 San Franciscans collectively with culturally appropriate, local and high quality meals, groceries, and fresh produce

• Directly supporting leadership of and direct purchasing from local Black and Brown small farmers and producers

• Performed research and landscape analysis on other cities and counties making major strides toward the right to food