A Love Letter to Our Food Workers

It is June, friends! With the weather finally warming up, I, like many others, feel inspired to dig in on all the food being grown right here in our exceptional local foodshed. In normal times, visiting farmers’ markets, eating tremendous seasonal meals at our favorite restaurants, or gathering with loved ones to grill up some local meat and produce are activities that all of us look forward to this time of year. I am missing this. I know you are too.

It is an understatement to say that things look a lot different for everyone right now. The ravaging spread of COVID-19 creates massive change and disruption in our businesses and our day-to-day lives, and even as we work to take mindful steps back into a public life, very little will feel “back to normal.” You, our partners and friends in the local food system in Madison and across our state feel this deeply and acutely.

Whether you are a farmer, farm worker, grocery store worker, or in the restaurant and food service industry, we know that you are living with unprecedented ambiguity about your livelihoods and the future of your industry. At this point of unparalleled fear and anxiety, please know that I, along with countless other Wisconsinites, are here to support you in whatever ways we can.

I cannot express my gratitude enough to all of you who are thinking outside the box to provide the best experience for customers while keeping employees safe, and doing all you can to keep your businesses afloat. We are inspired by your creativity, your innovative new service practices and new food pathway projects and community partnerships. So many business owners and workers are being forced to choose between sacrificing their paychecks or their health by providing for their customers and their families. These actions have not gone unnoticed, and I’m incredibly thankful for your commitment to our communities.

You feed us. Your work is crucial. And, your resilience is dependent on us, your community, showing up. We will show up for your curbside pickup and delivery. We will show up to pick up our farmers’ market goods, placed in the backseats of our cars. We will show up to join your community supported agriculture (CSA) community. We will show up to share a Neighbor Loaf or Tortillas Comunitarias or buy meals for those in need, for essential workers, to stock shelves at the food banks. We will show up to work on policy change that addresses your needs.

We must recognize that the way we operate as a community, including our local food system, may never be the same. And while that can be a scary thought, it can and should provide an opportunity to do better than what we knew as the status quo. All of our communities deserve better than the social, economic and racial inequities, the cracks that we now see so much more clearly than before. We deserve more than the status quo of an ailing planet. We shouldn’t put “normal” on a pedestal.

I am hopeful for our future, because I see the outpouring of love and positivity amid so much hardship. While the changes we’ve made to our routines and our businesses are challenging, we see a reduction in carbon emissions as people spend more time at home with their loved ones. We’re seeing love for our state’s beautiful parks and natural outdoor spaces grow as people get outdoors and recharge. And, we’re seeing people gain a better understanding of all the love it takes from farmers, grocers, and restaurant workers to get food from their farms to our tables.

I am hopeful we will not take the positive changes we’ve made as a result of this crisis for granted, that we will carry on these new ways of loving each other and our planet when we’re on the other side of this pandemic. And if we truly want to address COVID-19 and prevent something like this from ever happening again, we need to look at even more ways to devote our love and attention to our environment, our health care systems, our economic systems, and our food systems. Know that we are working hard on policies to support change and provide aid to those who need it most.

As your Lieutenant Governor, I want all Madison area farmers, farm workers, grocery store workers, food system non-profit staff, chefs, and restaurant employees to know that I am thinking of you. I am so grateful to you for never failing to enrich and nourish our communities.

Stay safe, be resilient, and we will get through this together with healing, compassion, and lots of tasty food to share. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Sincerely,
Mandela Barnes
Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin
@TheOtherMandela