TASTE
Repackaging Food Ideas
Davis sets ambitious goals for the future of its food system
BY Jennifer Fergesen PHOTOS BY Debbie Cunningham
S
From left: Catherine Brinkley, Grace Perry,
Deema Tamimi and Ann Evans co-authored
the “Food and Economic Development
(FED) in Davis” report.
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comstocksmag.com | March 2020
ince Sacramento adopted the
slogan “America’s Farm-to-Fork
Capital” in 2012, the market-
ing campaign-turned-movement
has encouraged the region to see
itself as an epicenter of local food.
Across the causeway in Davis, a
university town where 44 percent
of students report food insecurity,
there’s another effort underway to
center civic identity around food —
and this one has a broader scope.
In May 2019, the Davis City Coun-
cil approved the “Food and Economic
Development (FED) in Davis” report
that urges the city to rethink its rela-
tionship with food. The report urges
action across the food system, from
ending hunger to supporting agricul-
tural tech startups, painting a picture
of a future Davis at the frontier of
sustainable food innovation. It’s the
result of a series of community discus-
sions started in fall 2018 or, if you ask
some of the authors, decades earlier.
“What we have here ... is a sort of
repackaging of various ideas that have
been around for a long time and which
Davis has excelled at over the decades,”
says Ann Evans, a former mayor of
Davis who helped found both the Davis
Farmers Market and the Davis Food
Co-op in the 1970s. She co-authored the
report with three other women: Deema
Tamimi, founder of the nonprofit Land
& Ladle; Catherine Brinkley, an assis-
tant professor in the Human Ecology
department at UC Davis; and Grace Per-
ry, Brinkley’s graduate student. “This is
a new chapter in the story,” Evans says.