Other Avenues Are Possible: Legacy of the People’s Food System of the San Francisco Bay Area

by Shanta Nimbark Sacharoff

Other Avenues Are Possible offers a vivid account of the dramatic rise and fall of the San Francisco People’s Food System of the 1970s. Weaving new interviews, historical research, and the author’s personal story as a longstanding co-op member, the book captures the excitement of a growing radical social movement along with the struggles, heartbreaking defeats, and eventual resurgence of today’s thriving network of Bay Area cooperatives, the greatest concentration of co-ops anywhere in the country. Integral to the early natural foods movement, with a radical vision of “Food for People, Not for Profit,” the People’s Food System challenged agribusiness and supermarkets, and quickly grew into a powerful local network with nationwide influence before flaming out, often in dramatic fashion. Other Avenues Are Possible documents how food co-ops sprouted from grassroots organizations with a growing political awareness of global environmental dilapidation and unequal distribution of healthy foods to proactively serve their local communities. The book explores both the surviving businesses and a new network of support organizations that is currently expanding.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Food

200 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2016

Reviews

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

V inclusive encyclopedia of the history of worker cooperatives in the food system in San Fran! Picked this up at an anarchy bookstore when visiting weesie on haight st. I learned a lot about the obstacles of democratic governing and decentralized leadership within local movements, but I would have loved more elaboration on some sentences. Ex: "there was ample evidence to support the idea that activist organizations like the PFS were targeted and disrupted by outside forces" ..... girl what?? That's a cliffhanger sentence you can't just leave us like that

[Alaina]

though not written at a remove from its subject matter, this book sheds light on the bay area people's food system, which begot the cooperative grocery movement, which begot the stores at which i buy bulk flours today. learning how today's cooperatives lean into capitalism just enough to stay open, but preserve their principle of collective governance from pressures to hierarchize makes me appreciate them even more.

[Wyndy KnoxCarr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other Avenues Are Possible: Legacy of the People’s Food System of the San Francisco Bay Area, by Shanta Nimbark Sacharoff is a short but carefully nuanced history of food cooperative stores and systems, including the Consumer Cooperative of Berkeley (CCB) that began when Finnish Berkeley Cooperative Union groups joined with food-buying clubs in the 1930s “to supply quality food at affordable prices.” (p. 13) Sacharoff covers CCB and the birth of the Bay Area Food Conspiracy briefly, which shared much in common with other food cooperatives and services here, in Minnesota, where I was involved with the North Country Coops in the 1970s, and pockets like Massachusetts, Madison, Wisconsin and Santa Fe, NM. At Berkeley’s height of need during the 1930s, the Scandinavian carpenter-settlers seeded owner-worker principles of the Rochdale model to buying clubs and food pantries that expanded to storefronts, even a gas station and repair, an original coop credit union and the “Twin Pine Savings and Loan” over the years.
Sacharoff briefs us on history first; Bay Area, “old-wave” food cooperatives in the United States; then fleshes out the main groups and forces moving behind the People’s Food System of the San Francisco 1960s and 70s in its many expressions, blossomed, wobbled and then thinned down to a few “new-wave” survivors in the 1980s. The three she focuses on are Veritable Vegetable, Rainbow Grocery Cooperative and Other Avenues Food Cooperative (OA), all based in San Francisco.
These have had “socioeconomic challenges faced by urban populations” like “rising cost of housing driving away workers” and “competition of the retail health food market.” However; she, I and a few longtime Berkeley sources agree that the ones who made it through the fast rise and exhilaration of the early years, tumultuous volunteer/ commercial/ political shifts and splits of the unity/ storefront/ business/ solidarity models, shared “1) strong connections with both their immediate neighborhoods and the food and justice community at large, 2) constant attention to pragmatic business practices, 3) a clear mission to bring healthy food to the people, and 4) a strong commitment to workplace democracy.” (p. 60)
The whole “Food for People, Not for Profit” ideal sounds naïve in the 2000s, but not only made perfect sense in the 60s to the hippies, but to the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Programs as well as Frances Moore Lappé’s (1) Diet for a Small Planet “health food nuts” and anybody wanting to eat well on a pinched penny. Up until Ronald Reagan and the “trickle down economy” of the 1980s, we were all for “politically and economically food-related communities…(who defied) the escalating international food conglomerates and …(defended) the rights of food workers, consumers, farmworkers, and small farmers.” (53)
Not very popular in agribusiness-monoculture-based present-day California! But hey, small is beautiful, and “whatever works” in the ever-changing biosphere of which we are a part. Pinching pennies, shared child-care and communes may look pretty good when the tech/housing and other Bay Area bubbles burst again. Part III of Other Avenues reflects on how “Food Sharing Builds Community” and part IV, like the ending chapters of Walker’s Pictures, broadens to a horizon of “The Future is Now;” sustainability, possibility, vision, challenges, political climates and resources for the journey ahead.
She shares many asides to worker-owned coops and collective businesses along the way, with shout-outs to ACCI Gallery, Berkeley Free Clinic, Alchemy Collective Café, BioFuel Oasis, Cheese Board/ Arizmendi Bakeries, Food Not Bombs, Heartwood Cooperative Woodshop, Juice Bar Collective, Missing Link Bicycle Cooperative, 924 Gilman Street “Music and Art Community Coop,” Pedal Express courier/delivery and Three Stone Hearth Cooperative in her Appendix; but doesn’t say much about presses, bookstores, distributors, cooperative housing (Rochdale student?) or even the food shelves and farmer’s markets that evolved through and survived the peoples’ food system days.
Governments, networks, coops, farmers and consumers can all learn from Other Avenues not only how to connect with and sustain existing food movement work in Berkeley and the Bay Area, but also how Bay Area “successes” can be implemented further and how our identified organizational and political drawbacks can be avoided.
And perhaps how to construct and cooperate on setting up new systems of reciprocity and equity that will work even better. Right on, Sisters and Brothers, Right on!

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting overview of the food justice cooperatives in the San Francisco Bay Area. And there's definitely some drama and craziness in that history. Mostly, it's about grocery stores and warehouses and refining business practices, but there's definitely enough excitement in there to make a movie. Being social justice advocates, the community welcomed the previously incarcerated and had a mix of social and class challenges to overcome - as well as all the other social problems of the era, including gangs and business consolidations in the 80s. So interesting read for what happened when Berkeley mixed with San Quentin with some Cointelpro thrown in for good measure. That took down the "People's Food System" and several other businesses sprang up around time. This gives some of the background of Rainbow Grocery, Veritable Vegetable and a lot of information about Other Avenues - because the author was one of the early volunteers and eventually a worker-owner. Interesting, and a good overview of how local coops have worked and what the challenges have been. It started out rough with a big mistake in the first chapter, but that was background history setting the stage for the new information the author could provide from a lived experience point of view, so I pushed past it. The claim that Upton Sinclair had been governor of California made me look that up - he lost but that's a rabbit hole I want to go further with. "The End of Poverty" Campaign of the Century where one of California's top authors and political commentators ran for Governor? Research hole I will enjoy for a long long time. So, I forgive the glaring error and hope the newer stuff was better fact checked. That's why it is 3 stars - a solid 4 for content- if it were more reliable.

Read in a paper book form from a used book store! I don't remember if it was Dog Eared Books or Green Apple...

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting history of the food justice movement in the Bay Area. It's written by someone who actually lived through it all and has been part of the Bay area movement and cooperatives for decades. I wish I had written my little blurb earlier because memory has faded... but I recall the first half of the book was a pretty fascinating history of the movement (I hadn't quite realized where/when the local food cooperatives in the cities I've lived in all started! Doh. I also hadn't realized that they controlled things as big as warehouses and distribution, whoa!) and the second half focused specifically on three of the cooperatives that still survive in some form (spoiler alert: they're not all cooperatives anymore, oopsie!) today. I picked this book up for my brother because he's a small farmer and ended up reading the whole thing on my plane ride. Despite how interesting the history is, it's really fairly depressing in terms of the arc of history... as is the case in all "radical organizing," petty in-fighting and internal grievances tear everyone apart... they try to do a good thing by bringing in ex-cons to work in the stores but then gang violence erupts, people are shot... there's contention about whether they need to be fighting for "big ideals" and "trying to change the world" and (as usual) a divide opens up between the hard core radicals who want to uphold more and more stringent and extreme moral policies and the people who think they're just there to slang affordable groceries to their block of the city. Typical stuff! In the end it all falls apart, save a handful of surviving stores, one of which isn't a cooperative at all, quite ironic. The author tries to put a brave face on the present and future but... this is the stuff of ancient history at this point! My take away was mostly that cooperatives don't work, sadly.

[Lindsay P · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book. It has everything — good food, good food systems, workers’ rights, vegetarian recipes, San Francisco.... Even Rainbow Grocery!

But I just couldn’t get past the writing style. At its best points, it read like a list of facts in a textbook. At its worst, a braggy resume.

I wish the author had partnered with a page-turner-nonfiction allstar like Chimamanda Adichie or Malcolm Gladwell. Or even a local option like Dave Eggers or Mary Roach or Michael Pollan.

I’d like to keep it as a reference book (mostly for the list of local businesses), but I wouldn’t look forward to reading it again.

[Jonathan Kauffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The San Francisco People's Food System was one of the most complex, highly developed network of food co-ops and anti-capitalist food enterprises in the country in the early 1970s. Shanta Nimbark Sacharoff tells the story of its rise and dramatic downfall, as well as her own co-op, which managed survive into the present (and is a great place to shop).

[Karen Mahtin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some nice Bay Area community food/grocery industry history. The book could have been even shorter, as the author kind of repeated herself a lot.

I love hearing about the companies that still exist (and also about what caused the demise of the earlier network). I love Rainbow Grocery and Veritable Vegetable, so it was cool to learn their histories.

[Eugenio Negro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little short for how important this book is! A quick and dirty lesson on food co-ops with a few painfully slim (for a bay area resident, anyway) memories of how things were over 40 years, plus recipes. Written with the humility and enthusiasm of the lifelong learner.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and interesting read from someone who was there. Also enjoy the insights of the many people she interviewed, as well as ideas on how to move forward.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoroighbretelling of the rise and fall of the Bay Area People’s Food System.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history, helpful information on how to get involved. I have follow up reads from this. Glad I read it, even if it wasn't the best read.