I’d like to take a couple of minutes to tell
anyone reading why I decided to get involved with the co-op, and what it means
to me.
First, my keenest interest, personally and professionally,
is food. I’m a regional planner, and I
tend to think about the effect that food has on our environment,
infrastructure, economy and communities.
For the past nine years or so,
I’ve been involved in one food-related project or another. Most recently I co-chaired the Mayor’s Food
Policy Task Force, but this love started when I did my first work-share with a
local CSA, and from one project to another, I’ve been very invested in seeing
our region’s local food system grow stronger.
And how much stronger
it has become!! We now have far greater
opportunity to purchase wonderfully fresh, locally-grown food from a wide
variety of sources, and the venues continue to grow. But I believe that our community food system
still has a lot of room to expand, and that this co-op will fill an extremely
important role. In conversations
centered around food over the years, I’d often hear the question “why don’t we
have a co-op?”, met with eager eyes and exclamations of interest, but as far as I know, it hasn’t gotten further
than that until now.
Another idea that has repeated itself over and over is that
of a community-run, food-based meeting center.
The Food Policy Task Force recommended a space where everyone would be welcome to come learn about food, nutrition,
cooking and the like, and where the community could use their buying power to
make great food more accessible. The
Richmond Food Co-op fills a lot of this
need. It will be a place for people to
come together to take part in the process, to really have a say in what is
available, and to use our own time, resources and labor to make it come
about. The opportunity for the physical
building to be a place where all people are welcome to shop, but also a
community meeting place with the potential for classes, and even less formal
information sharing is an important step for our community food system.
From a physical, planning perspective, the co-op, located as
planned in Scott’s Addition, will bring life to a currently burgeoning yet
still underserved neighborhood. It will
increase foot traffic as more and more customers and members come to shop, and
open one of the region’s oldest neighborhoods to people who were previously unaware of its
existence and its charm. The second most
important aspect of the co-op’s physical, grocery store-like space is the consistency for both customers and
vendors. For consumers who struggle to
make the step from conventional grocery stores to more strategic food sources,
always knowing where the store is and that it will be open and have a wide
variety of products (toothpaste and toilet paper in addition to local produce,
meat and eggs) will make a significant difference. And for small new vendors, the flexibility
and the consistency of the co-op may be the leg up they need to succeed.
In short, I’m excited about the co-op because it moves the dial in
significant ways toward Richmond’s future full, robust, thriving, inclusive and
equitable community food system. I hope you’ll consider joining me in supporting this worthy
endeavor, and becoming a member of the Richmond Food Co-op.
Anne Darby, Steering Committee
