A Seed Planted, A Community Fed

This morning I met with Brandon Stankewsky, who, with the help of his wife Kathrine, established a company called A Seed Planted (you can find them on Facebook! Become their Facebook friend! www.facebook.com/aseedplanted). We met at the Flying M Coffeehouse yesterday morning and discussed garden aspirations over our respective beverages.

The main idea behind A Seed Planted is to get fresh food to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. As most people reading this blog probably already know, organic and fresh food (the good stuff!) is more expensive than pre-packaged, corn-syrupy, microwaveable imitations (the bad stuff!). Which means that the idea of "organic", because of this system, ends up being fairly elitist. I love going to the Co-op, but I use my food stamps. If I didn't have them, I wouldn't shop there, because I couldn't afford it. Even somewhere like WinCo, where the prices are generally lower than the Co-op, the organic options are still more expensive. So what do you do if you're short on cash? Most people go for the "bad stuff" (myself included).

If there were more organizations with aims like A Seed Planted, fewer people would have to opt for the bad stuff. Brandon made it clear to me, over and over again, that he has no intention of ever selling any of the food he grows or looking for money from this venture.

As far as I'm concerned, this is what it's all about. People being able to eat. From the Foodbank side of things, as I have said many times, I don't want to dominate community gardens. The point is that people can eat more fresh food. That's it. It's really very, very simple, and with that goal in mind we will help them to get there in as many ways as we possibly can.