Featured Leader: Sarah Rocker

There’s a deep history of tending food in my family, from my mother, to my mother’s mother, to my mother’s mother’s mother, who I still remember picking apples with from her trees and making apple sauce in the garage.
My first passion was foreign languages actually, and I ended up moving to Germany for a year to reclaim my family’s language which had been forgotten ever since they emigrated to the US. It was in Germany where I was first able to see and feel what regional and local food systems were like. I became inspired by all the gardens, local markets and the connection people seemed to have to the production of their food.

In the American food system, we can be so removed from knowing the source of our food. In our country, we were incentivized to build large, efficient systems of processing and distribution, and in many cases we now lack strong ties to our “local” land. Wendell Berry writes about the importance of reestablishing our connections to the land and to a place. There is such wisdom in this, but there are factors that prohibit people from doing that – the socioeconomic gap and disparities means not everyone has the same access to make these choices. This is something I’d like to understand more – food justice and equity work, gentrification and displacement, how people lose and regain connection to place.

Speaking of connections, can you tell us about your work exploring “social infrastructure for place-based regional food systems” at Penn State’s Northeast Regional Center?
My current work focuses on planning and policy strategies to foster connectivity among different actors of the food system in a particular place, and how each of us has a role to play in building local networks.  Some may have more of a 30,000-foot view of the larger system– but I believe whether you’re a buyer, food producer, nonprofit advocate, educator or local planner, we each have something to gain from participating in the connectivity of our communities.

Food systems work is hugely complex, and I think sometimes we construct boundaries around our work to make it ‘bite sized’ and easier to conceptualize; we break off pieces and begin working on that specific piece.
But the truth of it is that “food systems” work is about many overlapping sectors and systems. It extends to health, transportation, urban planning, policy, justice, and many other things that I haven’t had the creativity or experience yet to fully comprehend.

So this critical coordination role can be something that people not directly involved in food systems may take on?
Yes, I think it is broader. It truly is all connected. Perhaps a vision, or to put forth a challenge for us in food systems, is to think about who isn’t yet at the table but should be. And actually, the phrase “at the table” can even be daunting – it makes it seem that we all have to get together in the same place at the same time.

Maybe we need a new metaphor, like a ‘see you at the party’ – where not everyone is having the same large group discussion, but also having 1:1s and small group conversations. Talking with people that we don’t ordinarily work with can be really insightful and bring innovation to our work. I also think there is more to be done to foster conversations with those who are not in our immediate sectors or local networks. Building bridges to non-traditional partners is something that I’d personally like to do better. I invite my food systems colleagues to think creatively and share your ideas around this.