Fifty years ago, a group of Washington activists launched a movement that revolutionized the way Western food is grown, eaten and composted. The organization, which focused on organic farming and livelihoods, eventually became Seattle Tilth and later Tilth Alliance, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Over fifty years, the impact of Tilth Alliances has been significant. Its efforts influenced organic farming standards in Washington and federal agriculture departments, and the organization helped Washington State University create the state’s first organic farming degree. Tiers championed the farm-to-table restaurant movement and pushed Seattle to compost at home and have the city collect food and yard waste.
By educating and empowering a new generation of sustainability-minded farmers, as well as ordinary citizens who want to take issues of food waste, production and more seriously, the organization aims to improve today’s food systems while combating climate change and systemic inequality.
Tilth Alliance now hosts annual conferences, workshops and classes, as well as community events, such as the organization’s May Edible Plant Sale on May 4-5. In honor of Earth Day, April 22, we’re taking a look back at the organization’s 50-year history.
Farming Alliance Roots
In July 1974, Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry gave a fiery speech at Gonzaga University that inspired the creation of Seattle Tilth. Mark Musk heard Berry decry the loss of small farms and their cultural knowledge as a result of industrial agriculture. Berry later said that sustainable food practices activists need to unite agriculture’s different interests and achieve better agriculture through education.
Inspired, Mussk, Gigi Coe, Woody and Becky Deryckx organized the three-day Northwest Alternative Agriculture Conference in Ellensburg that November.
Over the course of 90 days, we held a meeting with nearly 800 farm and food activists from across the West Coast, and the energy level and emotion at the meeting was absolutely explosive, said Musk, who has worked in the food activist field for decades. years, and now continues to serve as a Board Member and Cultivation Alliance Archivist. This tradition will be highlighted at the three-day 50th Anniversary Conference and Trade Show in Vancouver, Washington, November 14-16.
The organization continued to expand, first developing a community garden program for Seattle’s Meridian Park Good Shepherd Center, which became Tilths headquarters in 1978. It was conducted under the umbrella of the newly formed Tilth Association, but the association was dissolved in 1984 and chapters were encouraged to operate independently. Seattle Tilth lasted for decades, merging with Cascade Harvest Coalition and Tilth Producers in 2016 to become Tilth Alliance.
Carl Woestwin was Seattle Tilths’ first permanent employee as head gardener at the Meridian Park site. He later worked for Seattle Utilities and in 1986 spearheaded the SPU-Tilth Master Composter education program, which became a model for similar programs nationwide. After learning about composting and sustainability, students are expected to share their knowledge at school and at farmers markets.
Ours is the first master compost program in the country and it is a model for others around the country, Worstwein said.
He credits the Tiers Alliance with making Seattle a place where people grow food in parking lots, raise chickens and cultivate worm bins in city yards. Without Seattle Tilth, there might not be a city curbside compost collection program.
He said Tierth’s presence in the city really facilitated those things.
Today, Tilth Alliance manages numerous education and outreach programs and resources, many of which are free, from Master Compost and Sustainability Stewards programs to culturally relevant food programs for seniors. The Natural Yard Care Program and Garden Hotline support earth-friendly gardening, while farm walks allow farmers to learn about the best practices in organic farming.
Marcia Ostrom, professor of sustainable food and agricultural systems at Washington State University, said Tilth Alliances’ connections bring together various sectors of the food web to ensure our food systems remain strong and climate resilient Resilience to the challenges of change. As director of the Food Systems Program at Washington State University, she admires Tierth’s unique ability to lobby for changes in agriculture. But most importantly, Ostrom said, as the first generation of organic farmers begin to retire, sharing knowledge and infrastructure for new farmers is critical to attracting the next generation.
The movement still has momentum. Tilth Alliance currently has 42 full-time employees, and its revenue grew 30% from 2018 to 2022, reaching $4.73 million two years ago. Compared to 1974, when organic farms were few and far between, in 2021, Washington had 949 certified organic farms. Farming has had a huge impact on this growth.
organic participation
By teaching people to garden, farm and make environmentally friendly decisions in their homes and businesses, Tilth Alliances’ grassroots impact continues to grow from neighbor to neighbor and farmer to farmer. It’s not hard to find Tierth’s success story in Washington.
After graduating from the Tilth Alliances Soil and Water Stewards program, Hannah Alhajahja was able to join the National Young Farmers Alliance to advocate for marginalized farmers’ access to land through the 2023 Farm Bill. Today, she enjoys working locally at home and with her neighbors in Des Moines.
Anyone has only so much energy to fight pipelines or develop utility-scale green products, she said. I love things that are convenient and low-impact, saving rainwater at home, growing food with medicinal properties in my neighbours’ homes, and participating in activities that actively combat climate change while making life more enjoyable.
Meanwhile, the Tilth Alliances youth program helps develop future earth advocates. Lexy Timmermans volunteers with the YMCA Earth Service Corps at the Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands (Tilth Alliance Community Garden, established in 2017). She leads Rainier Beach High School Garden Club students in growing plants ranging from mint to microgreens in the greenhouse. Some also take cooking classes led by Tiers. The organization sees gardening as a way to be liberated and able to feed oneself.
Timmermans said most of these young people have never engaged in such activities. The first thing we do is marinate. It really enriched the time we spent in Tilth. I feel like I learned a lot when we went there.
Gardening fosters the generosity associated with territory. Atop a Seattle Center parking lot, Jon Lourenco-Vlaskamp and his husband, Wallace, use their compost master training to lead the UpGarden P-patch composting efforts, growing hundreds of pounds of food for food banks each year.
Lourenco-Vlaskamp said being able to participate in these programs has been a highlight. They bring a lot of value to my life.
Many Titlh enthusiasts grew up with the organization. Sarah Cassidy was the garden coordinator for Tilth Alliance in the late 1990s when we were doing trails as a DIY-style nonprofit, she said. She now co-operates The Grange Farm and Restaurant in Duval, where a Tilth-sponsored grant funded an oversized worm bin and elk enclosure, allowing her to offer sustainable farm-to-table service.
Farm-to-table service is just another movement that might not exist without Tilth. Cassidy said she admires the way Tiers Alliance brings people back to nature.
Fewer humans are interacting with soil today, she said. An important part of Tiers’ work is to re-establish humankind’s relationship with soil.
expect
Melissa Spear, executive director of the Tilth Alliance, said concepts like organic and sustainable have moved from the fringes to the mainstream since Tilth in Seattle started, but there are still new challenges to address, such as remaining resilient in the face of climate change. .
The way we grow food is considered critical to combating climate change and figuring out how our agricultural sector can remain resilient in the face of it, Spear said. Tilth Alliance is truly committed to helping solve these challenges.
Spear emphasized the need to reduce food waste, a major source of greenhouse gases, on multiple fronts, while encouraging carbon sequestration methods such as rain gardens, healthy soil care and composting.
Within the organization, equity and inclusion are also key goals, Spear said.
Agriculture in general has struggled with equity issues, she said, recalling the 1999 Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit, a class-action lawsuit brought by black farmers over unfair lending practices at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We are acutely aware that we are a white-led organization and have been working hard to understand the systems of oppression that perpetuate racism.
She said Tilth Alliance has diversified its workforce and worked with a consultant to focus on racial equity within the organization. “It’s very challenging, but we’re fully committed to it,” Spear said.
Through its cultural influences, food growing and consumption practices, and sustainability-minded courses and programs in urban and rural settings, Tilth Alliance has been answering Berry’s call to create better forms of agriculture for fifty years, Musick said.
Musick said, “In my opinion, this is what we at Tilth have been doing for 50 years.”
#years #seeds #influential #Tilth #Alliance #sown
Image Source : www.seattletimes.com