Greetings! As my first sustainability blog entry, I’d like to start a dialog with everyone about the benefits of social media (Cash Mobs a variation of Flash Mobs) to engage the community and support buy local campaigns, specifically; those geared to local food movements.  

Many of you may have experienced a growing interest in local food economics in your governments.   Cities and counties across the country are establishing local food hubs, analyzing their food systems or are setting strategic “food shifts”. 

In Alachua County, Florida we are exploring a similar process with a vanguard of support among young, entrepreneurial minded citizens and who are deeply engaged with the community via social media.  Because of this and many other reasons, agriculture feels like it is going through a generational revolution with these “agripreneurs”.   It is hoped that this new consciousness of food economics will buoy and re-energize a shrinking/graying industry of small farming.

After several months of brainstorming engagement strategies, on February 4, 2012  Alachua County Office of Sustainability, Florida Organic Growers (FOG), Little Bean Productions, Blue Oven Kitchens and Buy Local North Central Florida held a Cash Mob at the Alachua County 441 Farmers Market.

Youtube Video of February 4, 2012 Cash Mob

Rationale
As some background on this project, it was originally conceived as a how-to manual of best practices for farmers markets. Enthusiasm among team members was not exactly thrilled with the idea of creating another print document that may or may not be of use to the community.  Through a series of round table discussions with our team partners we refocused on what we were trying to achieve: building the local economy, supporting local food, engaging the community.  From this, the Cash Mob project emerged, backed by a brief documentary film that could be replayed over social media.

Cash Mobs are a type of Flash Mob; where citizens are rallied via social networks to sing, dance or engage in unexpected performance art. A Cash Mob builds upon the Flash Mob by asking participants to spend $20 to help local businesses which in this case was the Alachua County 441 Farmers Market. The spirit of a Cash Mob is: “We each do a little. We all do a lot.” By joining forces in the community, we have a greater impact than singular actions could.

Regional food production has incredible potential to revitalize struggling local economies.  It is estimated that food purchases in our surrounding ten county area is over $4 billion every year.  Right now, the majority of those dollars are exported out to import food products.  This Cash Mob was just one step and one tool to reverse the flow of dollars with locally produced food. We reached out to citizens using traditional media and social media, such as Facebook, to promote the February 4 event.  And in the end, Cash Mob helped build civic support for the local food economy in a unique and engaging way that directly increased the viability of our area farms.

To maximize participation, Cash Mob was geared as a family activity.  Our local recycling superhero “The Waste Watcher”, a bounce house, and prepared food was on hand for the day.  In addition, we produced a short film to memorialize and promote awareness of the impact of local food in our economy.

As an added incentive to bring out a broader demographic of participants, our community partner FOG, doubled the first ten dollars of participants SNAP purchases.  As a social equity component, our team agreed that it was critical to reach out to those in poverty that may not be aware of the health and cost effectiveness of fresh grown produce.  These extended SNAP benefits used a token system in conjunction with an electronic benefit transfer reader (EBT) to shop at the farmers markets. Corporate contributions were solicited to extend this benefit.

Outcomes
Leveraging the power of social media with a minimum investment of resources, the Cash Mob drew an estimated 800 people and generated $11,000 in additional economic impact.  This was a substantial increase to this farmers market’s average numbers.  Annualized, this has the potential of $724,000 to $1.2M in economic multiplier effects which could translate into 9 ½ jobs at $50,000 per year.  Based on this, our team felt a strong argument could be made that people are hungry for creative ways to engage with their food and farmers.  It is important to temper some of this by saying that using social media is not a panacea.  However, it will remain a critical component of growing our local food economy.

An Opportunity to Engage
Part of my interest in this topic (and this has been a bee in my farmers market basket for some time) relates to a December 2011 PM Magazine article, “Flash Mobs: The Newest Threat to Local Governments”. 

The points the raised in the article were valid and valuable, but made me wish that the positive aspects of social media could have been explored to a greater extent.   And at the time of reading it, I was in the midst of planning Cash Mob.  If anyone else were thinking of using social media in a "mobbing" capacity, I felt that the article may have inadvertently discouraged innovative approaches like ones we were contemplating.

To that end, I hope our example project can be one of the many positive efforts centered on social media.  We borrowed good ideas from others to make this a success and hope you will replicate our efforts and improve upon them.

Partners
Alachua County has over a decade of initiatives and programs dedicated to creating a more sustainable community stretching from the 1999 Alachua County Sustainability Projects Ad Hoc Committee, to the most recent, Energy Conservation Strategies Commission in 2008. In each endeavor the County, representatives of the business community, local institutions and private citizens have met to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of our children’s children to have the same quality of life. http://alachuacounty.us/Depts/Manager/Sustainability/Pages/Sustainability.aspx

Florida Certified Organic Growers and Consumers, Inc. (FOG) supports and promotes organic and sustainable agriculture, wherein; we educate consumers, farmers, future farmers (children & youth), businesses, policy makers and the general public.  www.foginfo.org

Little Bean Productions is focused on working collaboratively to humanize environmental issues through storytelling. Led by documentary filmmaker, Shelley Rogers, the company recently transplanted from New York City to Gainesville, FL. Productions include the award-winning feature film, What’s Organic About Organic? and the short film, The Rye Bread Project. Rogers co-creates both events and videos that aim to engage the public more deeply with their role in the food system. www.littlebeanproductions.com

Blue Oven Kitchens Inc. is a not-for-profit kitchen incubator serving North Central Florida. Its mission is to foster a whole-system approach to the sustainable growth of the North Central Florida food system by providing and promoting foodways, foodshed, food economics and food safety research and education; and by incubating low-income and disadvantaged food entrepreneurs.  http://www.blueovenkitchens.org/

The Buy Local North Central Florida program is designed to promote our local economy and support local businesses. Dollars spent at local and independently-owned businesses create a "multiplier effect" in the local economy, meaning that they re-circulate within our community to support small-scale livelihoods and what is unique about North Central Florida. https://sites.google.com/site/buylocalncf/Home

Alachua County 441 Farmers Market is the only Growers' Market in North-Central Florida. Everything sold at our market is grown within 100 miles of the Market, by the local farmers you see selling the produce. http://www.441market.com/