The Lake Pontchartrain Basin is a 10,000 square mile watershed encompassing 16 Louisiana parishes. The land use of the region is both rural and urban. It is the most densely populated region in Louisiana, including metro New Orleans and the state capital, Baton Rouge. The Basin is one of the largest estuarine systems in the Gulf of Mexico and contains over 22 essential habitats and numerous rare plants.
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation website
For a region known for its legendary food, southeastern Louisiana’s direct marketing farming production remains shockingly sparse and largely disconnected. For example, New Orleans has a majority African-American population and longstanding Central American and Vietnamese communities, yet has few successful production farmers that serve or who come from those communities. The Native American/indigenous population continues to protect the land but is not given enough direct support to lead the way. The city of New Orleans hosts fewer than a half-dozen regularly scheduled farmers markets and has few sustained sites or support for encouraging or brokering intermediate (small grocers, family restaurants, and food box programs) sales for direct marketing farmers. Few multi-generational farms exist in the region, partly due to the heavy emphasis on commodity production via plantation-style farming. Lastly, the region lacks long-term networks and funding of support around training, marketing, and education for farmers and for food shoppers. The increasing fragility of the entire Gulf Coast is partly to blame, as is the overdevelopment of the productive land in the parishes across the watershed.
By establishing the Pontchartrain Basin Agricultural Network (PBAR) as a valuable and unique initiative, we can increase support for regionally grown food by connecting the entrepreneurial activity within the regional food system to climate change initiatives in the Gulf Coast.
This idea was born from the work many have done over the last 20+ years in and around New Orleans. I hope to see the network included in plans and funding that are mitigating climate instability and supporting entrepreneurs and residents in being better stewards of our place. How we expect to begin:
1. To build the Pontchartrain Basin Ag Network WordPress site with a focus on mapping production and case studies, interviews, and news stories of any strong climate and food work in the region.
2. To lend support to direct to consumer farms or outlets through technical assistance or resource development for mitigating climate events on their businesses.
Feel free to get in touch with me via this site if you have suggestions or comments about the PBAR idea.
Community-based initiatives and businesses that contributed to the regional food and farming sector in and around New Orleans during this era. Have something to add or correct? Please let me know.
-The Mississippi Association of Cooperatives (MAC) was established in 1972 as an affiliate of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund (1967). Farmers like 4th generation Ben Burkett in Petal, Mississippi fostered collective action and justice work through entities like MAC, the Indian Springs Farmers Association and through farming the land and sharing knowledge. The Burketts continue that work today, with daughter Darnella now also working statewide and nationally while farming her own land and raising her daughter to be the next generation of activist in the family.
-1972: Buying clubs form, including the Robert Street Co-op, Marengo Street Co-op, Cohn Street Co-op (From Robert Thompson, longtime activist): The residents of the house included other Tulane students Steve Samuels and Rick Moss. A buyer went to the French Market and bought seasonal stuff, and was arranged like a store with buyers circulating around buying what they wanted. Liz and I worked the cash register each week. Afterwards a guy from the Marengo St commune would come and buy up all the remaining food. This coop functioned during the school year. In summertime, the student members left, and those of us who lived here would combine efforts at the coop on Cohn Street. The serious player there was an acquaintance named Armand Jonte. He was later a chef at Gautreaux’s I think. Last I heard he moved to Gulf Coast. I wish I could recall more about him. Seems like there were a couple of roommates with him on Cohn… But Armond (was in my mind) the soul of the Cohn St Coop. There was always talk of a storefront and I think by the second summer they made the move from Cohn Street to the building by the cemetery.”
-1974: Hare Krishna Community (ISKON) purchases land in Mississippi for farm named New Talavan
-October 1974 : Opening of Whole Food Company at 7700 Cohen, New Orleans. Its mission was to be a grocery store featuring good, wholesome food. Sales doubled each year for the first four years. By 1978, the store (only 1100 square feet) was doing more than $1 million per year. Success was fueled by a committed staff who were all stockholders in the company. (From WFM corporate history)
-1981: Opening of Whole Food Company, Esplanade Avenue. WFC became the largest outside customer of Texas Health Distributors, the wholesale division of Whole Foods Market. (From WFM corporate history)
–1984: All Natural Foods opens on Magazine Street. Operated by Michael Zarou, closed in 2003.
-1987: Eve’s Market opens, founded by Linda K. Van Aman and Claudia Dumestre. Eve’s was first located at the original Whole Food Company location at 7700 Cohn and then moved to Freret in 2001 after the landlord sold the building. Closed after Katrina. Link to Linda’s recounting of the development of Eve’s Market.
-1988: Purchase of Whole Food Company by Texas company Whole Foods Market. According to WFM corporate history, in May of 1988, the Esplanade store became the sixth Whole Foods Market.
-(1994) First Parkway Partners Community Garden opens According to the PP website, the organization was founded in 1982 in response to massive budget cuts to the New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways. Parkway Partners began its work by adopting out neutral grounds to citizens for maintenance.
PP Community Garden Directors: Kris Pottharst, Donna Cavato, Max Elliot, Hilairie Schackai, Macon Fry, Mario Taravello, Renee Allie, Susannah Bridges Burley…
Kris Pottharst identified the first new garden location for the Community Garden Project as being on Alvar Street, although existing gardens had also been added to the project. By 1995, the project identified 25 gardens as part of their network and that it had geown from “from 0 to 45+ garden sites within two years. Pre-Katrina, program featured almost 200 community gardens and was one of the largest programs of its kind in the country” (Kris Pottharst)
1995 garden for Dwight Mikey Stewart who killed July 19, 1994 by stray bullets which is part of the Community Garden Program of the Parkway and Park Commission. The garden is located at 3300 2nd street.
from a Jarvis Debeery 2010 column:
“.. I’m standing in “Mikey’s Garden,” a small lot that was announced as a blooming reminder of a life cut short but has become just one more overgrown, unsightly mess. A man pedaling along Second Street asks me if my presence means the grass is about to be cut. Does he want the garden fixed up so passers-by can remember it as the site where an innocent little boy was killed? No. He wants it cut because, he explains, he can’t see cars approaching on Johnson if he’s riding on Second. Mims is disgusted at the state of the park and what he thinks it symbolizes: a city that raises its voice in anger and anguish when a child is slain, marks the spot in an act of remembrance and then forgets.
-1995: Crescent City Farmers Market at 700 Magazine opens. The market organization is housed at the Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice at Loyola University New Orleans by Blueprint for Justice editor Richard McCarthy and local activists John Abajian and Sharon Litwin.
-1996: Cafe Reconcile is founded on Oretha Castle Haley, opening as restaurant in (yr?)
-1996: Founding of Red Stick and Covington Farmers Markets
-1997: Chef Susan Spicer opens Spice Inc. “take-out food, bakery, and cooking classes. This became “Wild Flour Breads”, which is co-owned with Sandy Whann.” (Wikipedia)
-1999: Slow Food New Orleans chapter is founded, formed by Poppy Tooker. (Chowhound)
-2000(?): The Vintage Garden Farm @ ARC is founded. Later becomes the first certified organic farm in city.
-2001: Chef Anne Churchill does farm-to-table pop ups at Bridge Lounge.
-2001: Downtown Neighborhood Market Consortium formed by Greta Gladney to add farmers markets in 9th ward.
-2002: Food Not Bombs New Orleans founded. Started by Paul Gailiunas and Helen Hill after moving to the city in 2000 after working with FNB in Halifax Nova Scotia. It is a non-profit, volunteer run organization dedicated to providing free vegetarian meals to the local community, started as an anti-nuclear action against the Seabrook, New Hampshire Power Plant in 1980. “…I remember working with Helen Hill and “Food not Bombs,” and St. Joseph’s church about 20 years ago to redirect edible food “waste” from Whole Foods. Winn Dixie wouldn’t participate, instead they opted to crush their unsightly produce out back of their grocery. (social media post from artist Michel Varisco)
-2002: New Orleans Food and Farming Network founded. It was created by Jeanette Abi-Nader, Max Elliot, Anna Maria Signorelli, and Marilyn Yank joined by local activists Jeanette Bell, Pam Broom, Macon Fry, Ed Melendez, Kathy Parry, Hilairie Schackai, and Dar Wolnik.
-2002: New Orleans Food Cooperative is formed (storefront did not open until 2011.) The first meeting was held on 11/11/2002 and had 22 people attending and was hosted by John Calhoun.
-2002: Opening of Whole Foods Market, Arabella Station In 2002 Whole Foods built a 28,000-square-foot store in an Uptown New Orleans location presenting New Orleanians with the reality that Whole Foods is not a small co-op or local store but a national corporation that is seeking expansion.
-2003: Jeanette Bell founds Fleur D’Eden Garden on Baronne, composed of an English Rose garden, a kitchen garden and an herb garden. Mississippi-born Jeanette had moved to New Orleans after living in Detroit where she had founded Bell Floricultural Service in 1980.
-2004: ECOnomics Institute, the parent organization of Crescent City Farmers Markets creates the White Boot Brigade, a pop-up shrimpers market held at the height of the season. The goal was to protect the livelihoods of wild harvest fishers in the Greater New Orleans’ coastal waters from the onslaught of farm-raised seafood imports and natural and industrial disasters.
-2005: Closing of Whole Foods Market, Esplanade In May of 2005, Whole Foods opens another large store, a 52,000-square-foot store in Metairie, announcing it will close the small Mid-City store in April of 2005. (UNO thesis, Nicole Taylor)
-2005: Opening of Savvy Gourmet on Magazine. This storefront served as a local purchasing hub for chefs after Katrina and a meeting place for food and farming work.
-2005 Laughing Buddha Nursery opens in Metairie; the first permaculture retail store in area.
-2005: Anne Churchill forms the Delicious. A cooperative kitchen at her commercial space in Bywater where other entrepreneurs were invited to create their products and build businesses.
-2007: Opening of Satsuma Café in Bywater. Possibly the first casual dining restaurants with a locally-sourced ingredient focus.
-2008: Opening of Hollygrove Farm. The farm, on the site of a previous commercial nursery is founded by Paul Baricos of Hollygrove CDC and Kris Pottharst, then head of New Orleans Food and Farm Network.
-2008: Announcement of Jack and Jake’s Food Hub
-2008: Sankofa CDC forms farmers market in 9th ward.
-2008: Little Sparrow Farm opens, becoming one of the first “microfarms” in the city. LSF was designed by its founder Marilyn Yank to serve as a demonstration site of the potential of single lot farming, to offer produce for sale to individuals and to intermediate outlets (restaurants/corner stores), and to set a standard for beautification of an empty lot for the recovering area.
-2008: Our School at Blair Grocery by Nat Turner forms
-2009: Backyard Gardeners Network is founded by Jenga Mwendo.
Judy was a great food editor at the local newspaper, remaining very supportive of the work being done in farming, unlike some of the other food writers at the time. She is a genuine person and I am always glad to see her again in her retired life of quilting, family and cooking. another great interview with a New Orleans food leader, courtesy of Southern Foodways
Here are pics of her autographing her original Cuisinart that she had gifted me a few years back. She thought my request for her to autograph it was hilarious.
My pal, local activist and publisher Hilarie Schackai, got me in touch with Linda Van Aman who many remember as one of the two owners of Eve’s Market along with Claudia Dumestre. Eve’s took over the original Whole Foods Company site at Adams and Cohen and then moved to Freret for a few years before closing in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.
Here is a bit of that history she shared:
I worked at Whole Foods Company from 1981-1987, mostly at the Esplanade store, first as a grocery stocker, then as department manager, then in upper management. Somewhere in there, WFC opened a deli & grocery outlet in the Riverwalk mall, which was unsuccessful and closed fairly quickly (not sure about the timeline on that). In early 1987,Whole Foods Market was positioning itself to expand into Louisiana (their first foray outside of TX), and Peter Roy was going to sell them the Esplanade store and close the one on Cohn St.
Claudia & I thought the Cohn store was still very viable, and proposed buying it. Between us we had more than 15 years experience in the biz.
Eve’s Market had its grand opening on April Fool’s Day, 1987 (no fooling! great slogan we thought); we kept all WFC employees who wanted to stay. The name came from a group of friends in a brainstorming session before our takeover — the “market” part came first, then someone said: “Eve’s on Adams” (the corner street). We also wanted to honor our mothers, who had helped fund the takeover deal, and Eve is the mother of us all. Thus Eve’s Market was born. We had a great run on Cohn St., until the landlady was going to sell the building. Our future there was uncertain, plus the building was very old & in need of repairs & renovation. After a lot of shopping around, the Freret St. location was suggested by a community development agency that had offices there. Eve’s moved to 4601 Freret St. in the spring of 2001, into a newly renovated space. 9/11 caused people to stop shopping as much for a while (and when) Whole Foods Market opened on Magazine Street in 2002, seriously eroded our customer base. All Natural Foods, a small store near Arabella Station, closed soon thereafter. We tried to refocus as a locally-owned small business, but eventually put the building & business up for sale, though we stayed open until Hurricane Katrina flooded the area in 2005. In the aftermath, the building was bought and became Zeus’s Place.
Some other asides from Linda:
We worked with Food Not Bombs to donate excess food to them, and bought from several local farmers consistently through the years, and had a great rapport with our regulars. •The founders of the food co-op met with us when our building was up for sale to consider it as a space for their store, but nothing came of that (too soon, maybe?). •The natural foods industry changed drastically as WFM expanded & bought up independent stores across the country. Manufacturers, who had supported small independent brokers and stores, began to change the rules to favor larger stores & distributors. Stores like ours could no longer get competitive deals.
I will be posting a series of notes for each major entry for the timeline. If you have info to share, please let me know.
1975: Opening of Whole Food Company at Adams @ Cohn
From Robert Thompson, longtime activist: We belonged to the Robert Street Coop 1972. Liz and I worked cash register each week. The residents of the house included our friend Steve Samuels and Rick Moss (Tulane students). A buyer went to French Market and bought seasonal stuff. Food was arranged like a store. Buyers circulated around and bought what they wanted. Afterwards a guy from the Marengo St commune would come and buy up all the remaining food. This coop functioned during school year. Summertime the student members left, and those of us who lived here would combine efforts at coop on Cohn Street. The serious player there was an acquaintance named Armand Jonte. He was later a chef at Gautreaux’s I think. Seems like there were a couple of roommates with him on Cohn, I’ll try to figure who. But Armond was in my mind the soul of the Cohn St Coop. There was always talk of a storefront and I think by the second summer they made the move from Cohn Street to the Coop store building by the cemetery. –
October 1974: Whole Food Company (WFC) opened its doors in New Orleans in Its mission was to be a grocery store featuring good, wholesome food. Sales doubled each year for the first four years. By 1978, the store (only 1100 square feet) was doing more than $1 million per year. (From WFM corporate history)
1981: Opening of Whole Food Company, Esplanade Avenue.
In 1981, WFC opened a larger store on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans. WFC became the largest outside customer of Texas Health Distributors, the wholesale division of Whole Foods Market. (From WFM corporate history)
From Linda Van Aman, founder of Eve’s Market who (along with Claudia Dumestre took over the original WFC location before moving to Freret):
I worked at Whole Foods Company from 1981-1987, mostly at the Esplanade store, first as a grocery stocker, then as department manager, then in upper management. Somewhere in there, WFC opened a deli & grocery outlet in the Riverwalk mall, which was unsuccessful and closed fairly quickly (not sure about the timeline on that). In early 1987,Whole Foods Market was positioning itself to expand into Louisiana (their first foray outside of TX), and Peter Roy was going to sell them the Esplanade store and close the one on Cohn St.
1988: Purchase of Whole Food Company by Whole Foods Market.
(From WFM corporate history) In May of 1988, the Esplanade store became the sixth Whole Foods Market.
(From Charleston Magazine, SEPTEMBER 2006) Peter Roy, who grew up with four sisters in a fifth-generation New Orleans family. In 1975, Roy began working at his sister’s new natural food store, Whole Food Company becoming its president in 1978. In 1988, Roy merged it with Whole Foods Market and moved to the West Coast to become president of the new California region for Whole Foods Market. In 1993, was promoted to president of the Company. “Basically, I bought my sister out and woke up 25 years later.”
2002: Whole Foods Market opens Arabella Station location.
Pontchartrain Basin Ag Network 