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Anthony Reuter
Volunteer Coordinator
Just Food
August 06, 2013

Our new friend, Anthony, is a self-proclaimed 'vegetable nerd'. We're pretty sure that's an underhanded compliment. Anthony represents the devoted food advocate in all of us. He has worked hard and made sacrifices for what he believes in, and his beliefs are inextricably linked with his community. Many of us can sympathize with not wanting to brave the Farmers' Market on a particularly cold (or hot) day, but Anthony reminds us why it's worth it.

When did you know that you wanted to work in food?

Growing up in a family that valued farming, that had a long history of farming, that kept an impressive vegetable garden, and that put up those vegetables for the winter?this was just bound to happen. I was a kid who hated visiting the small Wisconsin dairy farm my dad grew up on and worked on. I thought it was smelly and just no fun. But during my last summer in college in Minnesota, I became a member of the Driftless Organic Farm CSA. I spent the summer learning how to cook seasonally from their newsletter, learning how to put up that harvest for the winter, and learning how my CSA farm made it all happen. In the fall, I traveled to the Growing Food and Justice For All Gathering organized, in part, by Growing Power, to connect this newfound love of sustainable food to a larger picture. At that point, I was hooked. After spending my high school and college years organizing in the queer and trans* youth movement, I realized food was my organizing tool. Food brings people together. And the industrial food system was severing our ties to something so vital to our survival. I felt compelled, but I also felt the most happy when I could talk about food and farming. I'm just a vegetable nerd.

How did you get your current good food job?

I stalked Just Food's job postings. For almost three years, I applied for every open position they had, regardless of my qualifications. Finally, a position opened up that fit my experiences and skills and I jumped on it!

How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?

I originally moved to NYC to be an AmeriCorps VISTA with the New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH). I was placed at the Sylvia Rivera Food Pantry in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Hell's Kitchen is sort of a hidden neighborhood of food insecurity and I was tasked with organizing the emergency food programs to communicate and collaborate more. An opportunity arose out of our neighborhood meetings to create a collaborative rooftop farm at Metro Baptist Church. We ended up calling it the Hell's Kitchen Farm Project. The rooftop farm provides vegetables to the food pantry on site, education through after school programming and work days, and organizes a CSA with a rural farmer. As a result of that project, as well as my time as a Greenmarket Manager with GrowNYC and as an employee of The Brooklyn Kitchen, I became part of this amazing community of people committed to pursuing a more just food system on many fronts.  I love that I've been able to work across all of these great organizations and people.

What was the greatest obstacle you had to overcome in pursuing your Good Food Job dream?

Finding paid work!  A good food job seems to be everyone's dream job now, so competition is fierce.  We all work our butts off, and so many of us work for close to nothing because we love the work so very much. I remember suiting up in my winter gear for a particularly brutal winter Greenmarket day and just saying to myself over and over "I love my job, I love my job" and reminding myself that the farmers were doing the same thing. I got to work and had the greatest time? and ate some pretty amazing food in the process. The food and community keep me going.

What can you identify as the greatest opportunities in food right now?

Bringing the anti-hunger movement and sustainable food movement together. It seems to be happening in NYC with organizations like NYCCAH partnering more often with organizations like Just Food and GrowNYC.  Because everyone deserves access to fresh, healthy, local food and we can learn a lot from each other and be a force to be reckoned with!

If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?

I think the obvious answer is food.  But I'm also a nerd with a couple tattoos and would love compensation in the form of more vegetable and farming tattoos.  Tattoos and food.  Other than money, that's all I need.
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