The Checkout’s Host, Errol Schweizer, discusses fair trade certification, Guy Fieri, GMO and Bioengineered (BE) food labeling, etc.

Brooklyn Packers cuts out the grocery store to bring NYC fresh produce from independent farmers, foragers, and makers.

From https://www.brooklynsupportedagriculture.com/what-is-bsa : Brooklyn Packers is a worker-owned, Black-led food sourcing, packing, and distribution cooperative. They form a conduit between farms and the city, building Brooklyn food sovereignty. As a part of the greater New York City solidarity economy, BSA: guarantees worker-owners the same salary and equal company voting rights; buys from small, local farms and food businesses that produce food sustainably; and facilitates community access by only charging for labor (i.e. we never mark up food).

Steph Wiley is a worker-owner of Brooklyn Packers and a longtime food justice activist. Steph has over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience and has been a member of Just Food’s board, the New York City Network of Worker Cooperatives (NYC NoWC) Advocacy Council, and the NYC NoWC Training Collective. Steph co-founded Brooklyn Packers with Shawn Santana in 2016. Along with his work at Brooklyn Packers, Steph is helping to develop a network of cooperative homesteads. He believes that aligned movements working together in solidarity is the best way to seek justice for all in our lifetimes.

From https://www.howardconyers.com/about Dr. Howard Conyers was born in Manning, South Carolina and has changed the narrative around barbecue and the black hands that molded it presence in the culinary world.

After high school, he attended North Carolina A&T State University and earned his BS in Bioenvironmental Engineering. Leaving the historically black university with a perfect GPA, his next step was to further his education at Duke University. He earned his MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering with a specialty in Aeroelasticity from the university in 2009.

Howard became an Aerospace Engineer for NASA and dedicated his career to the study of aerospace and design of testing facilities for rocket engines. However, it was not long before Howard ventured back to one of his childhood passions---barbecue. The descendent of farmers and barbecuing masters, he decided to dig deeper into the world of BBQ. What he found was that black people had been erased from its history. Revealing blacks’ BBQ lineage back to slavery, he felt obligated to tell the story. Howard plunged back into preparing BBQ and ultimately traveled around the world-sampling BBQ and gathering stories from pitmasters all over. Howard’s research and fascination earned him a role as host on Nourish, PBS’ food show that highlighted the connection between the culinary and community realms. The feature was just one of many spotlights from the media. He has also been featured in, NY Times, Southern Living, Bon Appetit, The Post and Courier, BBQ Beat, The Nod, The Trip and many more. One of his favorite features was on The Cooking Channel’s Man Fire Food.

The late Zora Neale Hurston once said, “Love makes your soul crawl out of its hiding place.” If the writer’s words ring true, Dr. Howard Conyers’ love for storytelling and BBQ, has liberated the souls and stories hidden in the sauce.

Liz Abunaw is the founder and operator of Forty Acres Fresh Market, a grocery startup launched in January 2018.

Alarmed by the lack of fresh food options on Chicago’s west side, after leaving her sales job at Microsoft in November 2017, Liz committed to opening an affordable specialty grocery store with a bountiful fresh food selection on Chicago’s Westside. Using an innovative mobile strategy centered on full-selection pop up produce markets to test and develop the right business model, she has grown Forty Acres from idea to a social impact small business built to scale. Since its inception Forty Acres Fresh Market has serviced over 2000 Chicago households. It continues to expand its reach through a delivery service option and participation in Veggie Rx programs. Forty Acres’ impact on Chicago’s Westside has garnered investment from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the USDA Healthy Food Financing Initiative, the American Heart Association Social Impact Fund, the State of IL Office of Minority Economic Empowerment and other funders. Forty Acres Fresh Market is now poised to open to scale from a mobile produce vendor to its first brick and mortar store in 2022.

Prior to launching Forty Acres Fresh Market Liz was a partner manager in Microsoft’s sales division and before that spent ten years at General Mills, Inc. A native of New York state, Abunaw moved to Chicago in 2012 when awarded a full-tuition fellowship to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, from which she graduated in 2014. Liz is a 2002 Cornell University graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Policy Analysis and Management. She holds the staunch position that while Chicago deep dish is delicious, it is not pizza. It is casserole. Pizza folds. (ed. note- The Checkout fully endorses this.)

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The Checkout’s Host, Errol Schweizer, takes a deep dive on understanding food processing, enabling gig workers to write the regulations for delivery app's, accurate labeling of new GMO's and more.

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Workers at a chain of juice bars have gone on strike over pay disparities and working conditions, including allegations of harassment and racism. The Checkout spoke at length with two striking workers who wished to remain anonymous.

To support the campaign: https://www.gofundme.com/f/juiceland-workers-rights?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

The Checkout’s Host, Errol Schweizer, takes a deep dive on cultivated meat, the wage shortage and the threat of robot-powered retail automation.

From https://uwcc.wisc.edu/staff/west-esther/ : Esther West brings a long-time passion for worker co-ops and community development in her role as Cooperative Development Specialist since joining the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives in 2018. Esther researches ecosystems that support the creation of new co-ops, Latinx cooperatives, and conducts market and food accessibility analysis. Bringing five years of first-hand worker ownership experience from Equal Exchange, Esther provides technical assistance to home care cooperatives and supporting transitions to employee ownership.

Additionally, she has been Co-Facilitator for the Eastern Coordinating Committee for the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, a Trainer with Green Worker Co-ops in the Bronx, Equal Exchange’s Education Committee Co-Chair, and worked on issues related to immigration, racial equity, and sustainability. She obtained a Masters of Urban Planning, Design and Development, a Masters of Environmental Studies, and a GIS Masters Certificate from Cleveland State University. She also holds a Bachelor’s in Theology with minors in Political Science and History from Xavier University.

For more info:

https://uwcc.wisc.edu/research/latinx-cooperative-research/

https://resources.uwcc.wisc.edu/Research/Informe_Latinx_ES_092020.pdf

https://resources.uwcc.wisc.edu/Research/Latinx_Report_092020.pdf

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Gabriel Rosenberg analyzes the American food system with a focus on gender, race, sexuality and power. From debunking family farm mythology to shining a spotlight on social engineering and eugenics, this episode turns a critical eye to the inequities and violence built into American agrarianism.

Professor Gabriel N. Rosenberg is a historian of the modern United States. He writes about how race, gender, and sexuality have shaped the history of food, agriculture, and the environment. Rosenberg is currently an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and History at Duke University, as well as the Duke Endowment Fellow of the National Humanities Center and a Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. His first book, The 4-H Harvest: Sexuality and the State in Rural America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), is a gendered history of the USDA’s iconic rural youth clubs. Rosenberg is hard at work on his next book, Purebred: Making Meat and Eugenics in the Modern United States, which explores the institutional and intellectual ties between industrial livestock breeding and human race science at the turn of the twentieth century. He also tweets as Bearistotle and regularly publishes a Substack Newsletter, “The Strong Paw of Reason.” He is an unabashed partisan of blueberries, minimal techno, kettlebells, and water ovens.

Ligia Guallpa is the Executive Director of Worker’s Justice Project in New York City.

From http://www.workersjustice.org/about-us: Worker’s Justice Project (WJP) is a Brooklyn-based worker center that addresses the racial and economic injustice that day laborers and domestic workers face by building collective power and creating solutions to the problems our members experience at work and in communities where they live. WJP has a growing a membership based that is building power to win protection, adopt, enforce community labor standards and transform exploitative labor practices in unregulated industries such as construction and house cleaning.

Their mission is to empower low-wage immigrant workers to gain a voice in the workplace and build strong and economically sustainable communities through education, organizing, leadership development, and the growth of grassroots economic alternatives.

Their main goals are to change the conditions that lead to exploitation, to strengthen the grassroots base of the labor movement, and to create grassroots economic alternatives.