As the United States continues to produce more food on fewer acres, the county is taking a proactive approach to supporting local gardens, food banks and farmers in West Marin.
This week, the Marin County Board of Supervisors endorsed a list of organizations for the Food, Agriculture, and Resilient Ecosystems grant program. Their vote followed recommendations from the Parks and Open Space Commission that prioritized projects “positioned at the intersection of sustainable agriculture and equity,” according to Max Korten, director of Marin County Parks.
In a competitive process, the county received 47 applications totaling over $7.5 million in requests. Ultimately, only 21 organizations were approved for funding, awarded a total of $1.5 million that will be parceled out as grants ranging from $15,000 to $200,000.
“My biggest fear with this program was that there wouldn’t be enough interest,” Mr. Korten said. “But I was just blown away by how many great proposals we got.”
Several projects in West Marin will benefit from the new funding. Audubon Canyon Ranch received $61,000 for prescribed fire management on agricultural lands. Lagunitas Community School was awarded $70,000 to rehabilitate and expand its garden, providing fresh produce for school lunches. The Bolinas Community Center received $40,000 for a refrigerator and staff compensation for the Feed the People initiative, which offers free and donation-based meals four days a week. The Dance Palace Community Center was granted $46,000 to explore renovating its commercial kitchen to benefit local farmers. And the nonprofit Fibershed received $100,000 to restore grasslands on Black Mountain Ranch and to expand its work in carbon farming and multi-cultural, Indigenous agroecology.
The Dance Palace funding will explore expanding its community kitchen to foster new relationships between food producers and consumers, said Arron Wilder, owner and operator of Tabletop Farm.
For small farmers, it is nearly impossible to stay profitable throughout the year. With such a fragile system and slim margins, “a well-designed commercial kitchen would be a huge asset for increasing the value, shelf life, and marketability of raw produce,” Mr. Wilder said. He envisions a shared C.S.A. program with a pickup point at the Dance Palace, a communal space for family-friendly farmer gatherings, or a kitchen where imperfect produce can be turned into soups, stocks or jams.
Like many of the other grant recipients, the project aims to deliver better nutrition more equitably and more affordably to more people.
The partnership between Table Top and the community center required navigating accounting and regulatory hurdles, said Steve Siegel, the interim director of the Dance Palace. But, he added, the grant program’s staff provided essential technical support. “There was a lot of hand-holding that made the process so much easier,” he said.
David Lewis, director of the U.C. Cooperative Extension Marin and a longtime farm advisor, said the program’s technical assistance and outreach helped uplift organizations and advance their goals, even for those who did not receive an award this year. “Many organizations are now better positioned for success in future rounds and are ready to pursue other avenues to achieve their objectives,” he said.
This was a conscious effort on the part of the county, said Sonya Hammons, who heads the program. “We aimed to lower the barriers to accessing funding, looking at it through an equity lens at how smaller, emerging organizations could be supported in navigating government funding,” she said.
The FARE grants stem from the 2022 renewal of Measure A, Marin’s sales tax for parks and open space. The quarter-cent tax, which pays for the maintenance and acquisition of county parks, open space preserves and protected farmland, first passed in 2012 with little opposition.
In the original iteration of the measure, 95 percent of the sustainable agriculture fund—which constitutes 30 percent of the sales tax proceeds—was allocated to agricultural conservation, primarily to the Marin Agricultural Land Trust for purchasing easements. The remaining 5 percent went to the Marin Resource Conservation District for stewardship and restoration projects.
The 2022 renewal brought significant changes: only 50 percent now goes to agricultural easements, while 20 percent funds the M.R.C.D. and 30 percent funds the FARE program, supporting various sustainable agricultural initiatives. The reallocation reflects community desire for a broader focus on diverse agricultural needs, said Kevin Wright, a public affairs manager for Marin County Parks.
The FARE grants emerged from extensive dialogue with community groups focused on identifying critical community investments, Mr. Wright said.
“We had general ideas in the expenditure plan, but we needed to pinpoint the actual investments that are urgently needed in our communities,” he said about the planning process. “How can we create a grant program that really removes barriers and channels money into those places?”
Ms. Hammons said the initiative removes barriers by picking projects “across a range of different topics and geographic areas,” with a particular emphasis on underserved communities.
This story was corrected on Aug. 6 to reflect the scope and location of the work proposed by the nonprofit Fibershed.