Food will be the biggest challenge of the 21st century. Will you be ready?
Mark Winne has worked for 50 years as a community food activist, writer, and trainer. From organizing breakfast programs for low-income children in Maine to developing innovative national food policies in Washington, DC, Winne has dedicated his professional life and writing to enabling people to find solutions to their own food problems as well as those that face their communities and the world.
Mark Winne's Latest Book Is Now Available
Seven Unlikely Cities that are Changing the Way we Eat
Look at any list of America’s top foodie cities and you probably won’t find Boise, Idaho or Sitka, Alaska. Yet they are the new face of the food movement. Healthy, sustainable fare is changing communities across this country, revitalizing towns that have been ravaged by disappearing industries and decades of inequity. What sparked this revolution? To find out, Mark Winne traveled to seven cities not usually considered revolutionary. He broke bread with brew masters and city council members, farmers and philanthropists, toured start-up incubators and homeless shelters.
The cities of Food Town, USA remind us that innovation is ripening all across the country, especially in the most unlikely places.
Speaking
Mark Winne maintains an active speaking schedule that includes keynote speeches for annual meetings and conferences, talks and trainings for smaller gatherings, and lectures for colleges and universities. Topics include domestic hunger and food insecurity, public health, sustainable agriculture, social and food justice, food democracy and food sovereignty, the role of public policy in promoting social change, and empowering individuals and communities to take charge of their own destinies.
WRITING
Mark’s essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, The Nation, In These Times, Sierra Magazine, Orion Magazine, Successful Farming, Yes! Magazine, and numerous organizational and professional journals. He posts regularly to the blog on this website and is a contributor to www.civileats.org.
TRAINING
Mark Winne provides a variety of training and technical assistance services to organizations, governments, and communities interested in developing just, sustainable, and economically robust local, regional, and state/provincial food systems. These services include phone and email consultations; on-site trainings, workshops, seminars, and an array of printed and on-line resources. He also specializes in assisting groups that are developing and/or operating local, regional, tribal, and state/provincial food policy councils and networks.
Putting 50 years of community food system experience, activism, and policy advocacy to work for North America’s communities.
With the advent of industrialism and its widespread application to our food supply – factory farms, genetic engineering, and agricultural chemicals – the struggle between human freedom and authority has reached a critical juncture. In spite of the rapid growth of an alternative food system – local and sustainable food production, farmers’ markets, the public’s rising food consciousness – we become more dependent everyday on industrial agriculture whose representatives insist that it is the only way to feed a hungry world. In the face of such assertions, we must ask if our dependence on such a system threatens to supplant individual self-reliance. Will personal freedom succumb finally and forever to the dominant voice of authority? Are we at risk of sacrificing our democratic voice to self-appointed governing elites? These are no longer speculative questions suitable only for philosophers, but real-life concerns set squarely on the plate of every eater.
Mark Winne’s Blog
FINDING SOLUTIONS TO TODAY’S FOOD CHALLENGES
Book, Food, Pandemic
These are the times that try foodies’ souls! Lines at food banks are stretching around the block at the same time that farmers are plowing under their crops. Seed companies are running low on product as wannabee home gardeners envision rows of sweet corn where...
Love in the Time of Corona
We are now swamped by a microscopic virus whose backlit photos suggest an organism of luminous beauty rather than one of mass destruction. In a manner not unlike the “cocooning” that we employed during the aftershock of 9/11, we are told to self-quarantine, social...
Where I’ll Be Winter and Spring 2020
Before I share my upcoming appearances, let me note that Food Town USA has been receiving a respectable about of media attention – almost 70 “hits” since its release in October. These include radio interviews, podcasts, reviews, excerpts, and social media posts. I’m...
Washington, DC
Washington, DC is where I’ll be next week, and it’s also most of the name of the paper – The Washington Post – where I was 12 years ago. Thanks to the superbly quirky and timelessly perfect Tabard Inn, I’ll be speaking about and signing my book Food Town, USA there on...
Food Town Updates and Other News
U.S. News and World Report, the online magazine whose annual rankings have sent more than one college president to an early retirement, posted a “slide show” version of Food Town, USA. With photos of the seven cities accompanied by a brief descriptive commentary for...
Food Town, USA
Good food is the new normal, taking care of our own is the new ethic, community-sanctioned entrepreneurship is the new model for growth, and the rise of the individual is the new old story. Those are the conclusions I reached after immersing myself in the food scenes...
Return to Sender, Address Unknown
Don’t try mailing anything to USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) after September 30th. There won’t be anybody at the Washington, DC-based agency to open the mail. In fact, there may not be a forwarding address either since NIFA, which conducts...
So You Want to Change the World? Go Home!
About a year and a half ago, my son, Peter, told me he was leaving Brooklyn to move back to Hartford, Connecticut where he was born and raised. Having lived in New York for a while and recently completed a graduate degree at N.Y.U., he had soaked up enough of the Big...
Doing Food Summits Right
“Let’s do a food summit!” proclaimed the food policy council member, whose moving motion was immediately seconded and thirded by the council’s other members. “We can invite everybody!” suggested one member. “Michelle Obama can be our keynote!” chimed in another. “I...