By ANN RICHARDS Among the 20 million participants who rallied across the country for a healthier, more sustainable environment on the first Earth Day in 1970 was Mike Hamm, a senior at St. Louis University High who received permission to skip school that day to hear Dr. Barry Commoner speak at Washington University in St. Louis.
“Looking back, I think that was my first career step,” said Hamm, now the C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing.
That early brush with Commoner, an environmental activist who based his “four laws of ecology,” on the premise that “everything is connected to everything else,” still influences Hamm’s work today.
Mike Hamm is C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing. |
As the C.S. Mott Chair of Sustainable Agriculture, he and the 12-member
C.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems, have worked in 63 of Michigan’s 80 counties, providing research expertise, training, and technical assistance across a range of 13 programs that strive to link the realms of public health, sustainable agriculture, environmental stewardship and economic development.
With income from a $2 million Mott endowment established at the university in 1989 as well as grants from a wide range of sources, the group delivers research, generates new knowledge, and engages with communities to build more locally based food systems and economies.
“The
food system [video 43:39] is a tool for approaching all kinds of problems in the community, and it’s a tool that can bring communities together,” says Hamm.
“Given the economic situation in Michigan, we don’t have the luxury of pursuing a single goal in our work. As a state, we are being forced to achieve multiple goals through one activity -– rebuilding our economy. We believe agriculture, and more specifically locally integrated food systems, will be a part of that new economy.”
Increased and diversified food production is one of several areas that could help the state diversify and build its economy. Currently Michigan’s agriculture industry is the second most diverse in the nation, and the food and agriculture sector employs one million residents and contributes $63.7 billion annually. Hamm also believes a more robust food system in Michigan is an efficient way to approach a number of challenges facing the state, particularly helping Michigan residents adopt more healthy lifestyles.
“Not only can food production be a growth engine for a more diffused Michigan economy, better nutrition can improve the health of our residents and help create a better business climate,” says Hamm. “It’s all inter-linked: increased agricultural production, wider access to nutritious food, reduced health care costs, a more robust local food system -– they all reinforce one another.”
Hamm’s diverse interests in agriculture, public health and the environment began to coalesce during his years as chair of the
Department of Nutritional Sciences for Cook College at Rutgers University. There, he helped found and direct the New Jersey Urban Ecology Program (NJUEP), which brought individuals from diverse backgrounds together to address sustainable food systems in the state. Hamm also facilitated the New Jersey Cooperative Gleaning Network and co-directed the New Jersey Food Stamp Nutrition Education Network.
Hamm also was involved in another community gardening and nutrition program, operated by the NJUEP at a public housing complex in New Brunswick, which ultimately led to the creation of the
Youth Farmstand Project, recently duplicated in Michigan by the C.S. Mott Group’s Anne Scott. In addition, he worked with a group of students at Rutgers to start the Cook Student Organic Farm in 1994, a student-run, community-supported agriculture farm that continues today.
“Michigan’s farming population is aging,” said Hamm in a recent speech. “Part of our work is to figure out what it takes to regenerate new farmers -– and part of that is training and business development assistance.” The C.S. Mott Group has been able to take advantage of MSU’s student organic farm, which was under development when Hamm arrived at the university in January, 2003.
Adam Montri, an MSU faculty member, visits a hoop house in Flint. |
Founded by Dr. John Biernbaum of the Department of Horticulture and Students, MSU’s student farm -- a 10-acre certified organic farm that includes 16,000 square feet of passive solar “
hoop house” space. It offers a nine-month intensive Organic Farmer Training Program focusing on diversified production of vegetables, flowers, fruits and herbs for local markets. Open to new and beginning farmers, urban and community farmers and gardeners, and students interested in sustainable farming techniques, the farm also operates a four-season, 48-week Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that provides fresh and stored vegetables to more than 100 families. Hamm has provided funds out of the C.S. Mott Endowment to support construction of 7200 square feet of four season hoop houses and a covered washing/packing shed at the farm in addition to funds for student farmer field trips to operating farms across Michigan.
Demonstrating a number of practices that the C.S. Mott Group hopes to encourage in communities across the state, the farm serves as a working model for “re-localizing” the state’s food system. It is also an important piece in the training of next generation farmers for a healthy diet, says Hamm.
“We need a global, a national and a local food supply -– but they need to be rebalanced. We have to ask ourselves how much cost is added by shipping food from non-domestic sources and how secure and sustainable is that system.”
Re-localizing Michigan’s food sources would result in more abundant access to fruits and vegetables, particularly if communities also developed the mechanisms –- such as farmer’s markets, grocery store access and farm-to-school programs -– that encourage local consumption.
Hamm’s team is working with Michigan’s network of farmers' markets to encourage EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) card access for low-income shoppers. It is yet another way of encouraging links that help upgrade the diets of struggling families while building a customer base for the markets.
“Of course, all of this takes manpower and money,” says Hamm, who uses Mott endowment dollars to leverage federal, state and other philanthropic funding for these and other activities.
“It’s been 20 years since the Mott Foundation endowed the professorship in sustainable agriculture, and the income from that gift has given us the flexibility to put dollars where they are needed most.
“The endowment’s most significant impact has been helping us provide the education and advocacy that has brought thousands of people into the conversation about the future of our local and regional food system and community nutrition,” he continued.
“I consider this position the best of its kind in the country.”