The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Breaking Down Barriers to Local Food
On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, host Tiffany Owens Reeds talks with Shelby Wild, a mom, a lifelong gardener, and executive director of Route One Farmers Market in her hometown of Lompoc, California, which she started in 2018 after her neighborhood farmer’s market closed.
As both a traditional farmer’s market and a nonprofit, Wild’s goal for Route One Farmers Market is to increase access and break down barriers to local food in California’s Lompoc Valley. The market runs every Sunday and is currently the sole market for 50 miles of the central coast of California that offers customers both EBT and Market Match.
Wild and her team strive to make the market a place that brings together the diverse communities that call Lompoc home. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wild led her market to be the first in the area to offer a produce bag for curbside contactless pickup for all customers, distributing hundreds of bags of local food for those under shelter-in-place restrictions. Last year, they launched the first ever mobile farmer’s market in Santa Barbara County, and just recently, Wild was honored as Woman of the Year by her local Chamber of Commerce at their annual awards banquet.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Check out Cold Coast Brewing Co., Dare 2 Dream Farms Homestead, and South Side Coffee Co.
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A graduate of The King's College and former journalist, Tiffany Owens Reed is a New Yorker at heart, currently living in Texas. In addition to writing for Strong Towns and freelancing as a project manager, she reads, writes, and curates content for Cities Decoded, an educational platform designed to help ordinary people understand cities. Explore free resources here and follow her on Instagram @citiesdecoded.