How This Farmer Found His Alliance
Unexpected emergence as an activist led Ed Dubrick to public policy role
Small Farms Can Make a Big Impact
Note: The following is part 2 of an essay by Ed Dubrick of DuChick Ranch in Cissna Park, Illinois. In part 1, published Monday (February 12), Ed detailed his participation with a group of Illinois farmers who recently visited Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress members and staffers to support farmer-and-environment-friendly provisions in the upcoming federal Farm Bill. In today’s conclusion, Ed details how regulatory hurdles he faced as a new farmer led him to become an activist for positive changes, which ultimately led him to take his role as Policy Organizer with Illinois Stewardship Alliance, the organization that first published Ed’s content.
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Finding the Illinois Stewardship Alliance
So just how the heck did I end up in Washington, D.C. meeting with federal legislators to talk about Farm Bill policies?! How did a two-acre micro-farmer from a town of 800 get to sit with congressional members and talk agriculture policy?
The short story is this was a work trip, but the real story has so many more layers to it. And in truth, that story really starts four years ago.
Lindsey and I launched DuChick Ranch LLC in November of 2020 . We had been raising a few chickens for meat and eggs for ourselves in the year prior, but every time we shared the fruits of our labor with friends and family, they asked us to raise more so that they could purchase them.
We decided to go about it the right way. We formed an LLC, received the necessary state and local health department permits, and learned the regulations in place, many of which were not designed to make it easy for new small businesses to get started.
What should have been a simple task left me frustrated with the hurdles in place that make it difficult for small farms and food businesses to launch and, even more so, succeed in this state, be it scale-inappropriate fees, overreaching regulations, or whatever else. Everything we wanted to do with our small farm seemed like it was either illegal, expensive, or required multiple, ridiculous layers of bureaucracy.
In the spring of 2021, at the peak of my frustration with these policies, I stumbled across a piece of Illinois legislation called the Home to Market Act. This bill would allow cottage food producers to sell their products online, at home, and expand the types of products they could produce.
This bill was being championed by the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. While our farm business was not a cottage food based operation and still isn’t, I remember thinking that this is exactly the type of reform needed if we want entrepreneurs to succeed! Cottage food and farm-based businesses in general can serve as excellent small business incubators, especially in rural economies. I remember thinking that more of our laws need to be written in a way that allows small local food businesses to thrive.
Intrigued by the bill, I was determined to find out more about it and the Illinois Stewardship Alliance as a whole. I learned how they work with farmers and eaters to amplify their voices and be heard by state and federal decision makers.
I remember my first conversation with Alliance organizers Kathleen Mueller and Molly Pickering. The intrigue I had only grew larger when they told me about the Local Food Farmer Caucus — a working group of farmers like me, focused on issues that stand in the way of local food production and viable small farms.
I knew immediately that these were going to be my kind of people, my community, and just the thing I needed. No more would I be someone who encountered problems and simply complained about them. Now I could work with like-minded people towards a solution!
I had the passion and energy to make change, but I had lacked an avenue to funnel that into something productive. The Alliance provided that for me.
Inspired by the Alliance
I immediately became involved with the Illinois Stewardship Alliance’s campaign committee on cottage food reform. Through multiple meetings with public health stakeholders, legislators, farmers and entrepreneurs, bill language was negotiated, passed through the legislature, and became law! It has significantly improved cottage food business opportunities in Illinois and now has us leading our neighboring states in this area, rather than lagging behind as we were previously.
Having seen the great success of passing the Home to Market Act, that fall I was inspired to bring to the caucus a problem that was facing our farm. Our farm was growing rapidly and, in an effort to reach more customers and sales, we wanted to participate in more farmers markets. However, each time we wanted to do so, we were faced with the high costs associated with getting multiple temporary food permits or paying the same fee as a brick-and-mortar store that was open all year long.
Neither permit route seemed scale-appropriate for a vendor that’s open five hours a week for 20 weeks a year. It turns out many other farmers in the Local Food Farmer Caucus had the same challenging experiences as us.
In 2022, I worked with farmers across the state on what would become the Farmers Market Permit Act, which expanded farmers market access to farmers selling meat, eggs, and dairy products. Once again, we drafted bill language, negotiated with stakeholders, and worked with legislators to get it passed.
It not only passed, but passed UNANIMOUSLY through both legislative chambers and was signed by the governor. It placed a cap on the fee a health department could charge farmers market vendors of meat, dairy and eggs, and helped streamline the patchwork of regulations that existed across county lines throughout the state.
This act made it easier for eaters who wanted to purchase sustainably produced local food for their families to do so. It made it easier for farmers to access new markets and new customers. For my work on this act, I was named by the Alliance as its 2022 Local Food Changemaker of the Year at the Illinois State Fair Ag Day Breakfast.
In 2023, the Local Food Farmer Caucus identified a need for local food infrastructure in our state. Years ago, every small town had a cannery, creamery, a butchery, a mill, or some other sort of processor available to turn their area farmers’ raw goods into value-added products. Over the years, the centralization and globalization of our food system has erased many of these from our state.
Local food is having a MAJOR resurgence lately with unprecedented consumer interest and investments. In order for it to become more than a temporary niche market, and truly become part of a resilient regional food system, infrastructure investments are needed.
Through our research, we found that many of our neighboring states already had investments into these programs. Yet Illinois did not. Just like we did with cottage food and farmers market permits in the years prior, Alliance members were once again able to impact change through state policy.
In 2023 the Illinois Stewardship Alliance was able to get our state to invest $2 million of funds in local food infrastructure grants. That grant application period for this program closed on January 31, and I’m anxiously awaiting seeing what types of projects get funded and, more importantly, the impact they can make on our food system and our local economies.
Joining the Alliance Staff
By this point, I was fully bought into the Alliance, its work and its people. I had seen our successes, I had been an active part of them, and through the Alliance had found a way to make the change I wanted to see.
Prior to finding the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, I used to be a cynic and thought that my voice and my complaints were meaningless. I was one small guy complaining about a system designed and made by people far more powerful and far wealthier than I am.
I did not have the influence or the dollars to be invited to the table where decisions were made, and I thought there was no way for me to impact those decisions. I thought that the phrase “politicians work for their constituents” was cheap speak. Boy, was I wrong.
The Alliance taught me that by organizing with a community of like-minded folks and working with them for the greater good, we can and will shape the future we live in. To quote Morgan Snedden, a friend, fellow Alliance member, and farmer at Fox at the Fork in Monee, Illinois, “If you don’t sit at the table where decisions are made and the future is shaped, someone else will do it for you.”
Last fall, the Alliance staff was growing and was looking to hire a new policy organizer, one focused on issues facing livestock farmers. Between my experiences with the Alliance as a member and my lifelong love for animal agriculture, I was excited about the chance to turn a passion into employment.
If chosen for the role, it would be my job to empower other members and uplift their voices to decision makers. It would be my job to inspire community members to act just in the way the Alliance empowered, uplifted and inspired me.
I was blessed to interview and be offered this new role in the Alliance. It sure didn’t take long to say yes.
Our goal on our tiny farm is to provide healthy, nutritious local food to our community and to do so with sustainable and regenerative practices. Working for the Alliance is mission-centric to what we are trying to do at DuChick and it allows me to impact an area larger than just the reach of our small farm business.
Illinois Stewardship Alliance believes that Illinois farmers can feed Illinois and that stewards of their land should be able to make a reasonable living caring for their land and their communities. I believe in those same tenets and now get to perform fulfilling daily work striving to make those visions realities!
Why I Won’t Stop Here
The reason I continue to act and impact change is because I must. There’s so much more work to be done and I want a say in how that work gets done and what it looks like.
I find it ridiculous that the average Illinois grocery item travels 1,500 miles to make it to a grocery aisle. Illinois farmers can feed Illinois. We have some of the greatest soils in the world here, yet we import more than 90 percent of our food from other states and countries, sending billions of dollars out of our state that could bolster our local economies.
I think access to funding, technical assistance and other resources should be the same for small food farmers as it is for larger commodity farmers. I think we should continue to invest time and resources into programs that build resilient, vibrant economies all over our state and decrease our dependence on global megacorps.
I often hear people say the system is broken. The system isn’t broken, it’s working exactly as it was designed. It was designed without our input. We must organize so that we can redesign these policies with all stakeholders in mind.
I want my voice and the voices of my community to be heard. I used to be a cynic. I used to think I couldn’t make a difference. The last few years have taught me I wasn’t cynical, I was naive. My naivety blinded me from seeing how much change I could make.
The policy wins discussed above have allowed us to continue to grow and scale our business. They have increased our profitability. They have increased customer access to our products and to products of farmers like us. They have kept more dollars circulating in local economies and this is only after a short while. Imagine their long-substterm impact when paired with other system-shaping wins.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I hope now you know more about why I went to D.C. and what we accomplished there. I hope you understand why I feel compelled to act and why I think this method of doing so is impactful. More importantly, I hope you’ve been inspired to get involved in your communities in a way that feels impactful to you.
If local food and farms are important to you, I highly recommend the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. Whether you’re a farmer, an eater, food system professional, or just care about the issues, I’d encourage you to become a member of the Alliance.
If local food and farms aren’t your thing, find a group with similar interests/beliefs and get involved. Only through collective action can we make our future brighter than our present. Don’t be a cynic, like I was.
Bob’s World, and Welcome to It
Radiance at twilight, Monday, February 12.