Eric Kornacki is the President and CEO of THRIVE Partners, an organization created to provide communities with the tools to establish healthy, resilient, inclusive and vibrant economies. He is also the former Executive Director of Re:Vision, a venture that transformed one of Denver’s most marginalized neighborhoods by cultivating community food systems and developing a place-based economy.
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Alexsandra Guerra and I’m here in Denver with Christophe Jaspe.
Christophe Jospe: Hello, nice to be here. It’s a very sunny day in Denver. We’re lucky to be sitting across the table from a social entrepreneur who is based here. He is the co-founder and previous director of Revision and a partner or founder of Thrive Partners, Eric Kornacki. You can find him on the internet if you Google Eric Kornacki and find very embarrassing YouTube videos that we probably have to now bring up, right? Cat’s out of the bag.
Eric Kornacki: We’re going right there.
Christophe Jospe: Just kidding. No, actually, there’s a TEDx and it’s amazing and I highly recommend it to anyone. So that’s kind of like the primer to what we might be getting in today. And I think that, you know, the broad theme is that climate change is this really hairy Thank you so much for joining us. But I’m not going to put words in your mouth. I’d love to hear it from you. And we like to start the show off with what are people’s stories, their motivation that gets them out of better? Where did it all begin to get you to this point where you’re sitting on the Reversing Climate Change podcast?
Eric Kornacki: Thank you. So happy to be here. Interestingly, so early 2000s, I was, I failed out of school, University of Colorado, got kicked out for too much partying and bad grades and was really kind of floundering, didn’t know what I wanted to do. Went to work for Coca-Cola for two years and I’m embarrassed to admit that on this podcast, but maybe not.
Unknown speaker: What did you do at Coca-Cola?
Eric Kornacki: I was a regional sales manager, so I had to push a lot of sugary beverages to grocery stores and I quickly realized that it’s not what I wanted to do, both in a corporate environment, but also the more I got to see the inner mechanisms of this huge company working, I saw a lot of the things that I didn’t want to be associated with. When I went back to community college and was taking just a basic English class, our teacher made us choose two random topics out of a hat, right?
And we had to write, that was kind of our semester-long thesis paper. The two topics I pulled out at random were economic development and environmental degradation. I had no idea how to link these two topics together at first. So I began doing research, trying to find my thesis statement. And when I started doing the research on just sort of overall economic philosophy, right? Neoclassical economics. Neoliberalism and all these things that have really shaped the international economy that we have today. On the other hand, looking at the environmental degradation that’s taken place across the globe over the past 100 years, right?
And starting to see this correlation that our economic ideas and philosophies We’re really at the root of the environmental degradation that has led to what we now call climate change or global warming. Right. And so for me, this was kind of like my wake up moment. And at the same time, I’m early twenties. I don’t have a lot of skillset. I don’t know how to solve this problem of how do we create an economy that works for people, but it doesn’t destroy the planet at the same time. And I don’t know what that looks like, but I set out on this course to really try to figure it out.
Unknown speaker: I’m at the edge of my seat. Keep going.
Eric Kornacki: So my basic premise is that like I was searching for, I wouldn’t say like alternatives to capitalism, because I think once you start putting yourself in the like anti or pro capitalist camp, right, we started getting associated with the labels more than we do the underlying philosophies of it. But I just was, I was driven by this. Why does economic growth have to come at the expense of our environment or people? Why is somebody always getting exploited? Whether it’s people in a sweatshop in a third world country, whether it’s the rainforest in the Amazon, can we not finance?
And so it kind of led me on this path where I switched my majors. I ended up getting my degree in economics and international development, had the opportunity to travel to a lot of developing countries. I spent three months in Albania working in a slum, trying to figure out how to Really get resources to meet the basic issues that people are faced with. Like, how do you get electricity to a village? How do you bring in clean drinking water? How do you create jobs and create pathways? And again, do so in a way that isn’t creating more harm in the long run.
And so two kind of things that I think really shaped my experience. And one was like... Traveling to other countries, seeing what poverty looked like, wrestling with these, not in a theoretical classroom sense, but like actually trying to solve problems on the ground. Similarly, I went to Central America and worked on a couple of sustainable farms there that were trying to create. So being on the ground and trying to wrestle with these big questions was one. Two, from like a kind of academic or sort of theoretical perspective. I was really motivated by the work of EF Schumacher, who in the fifties and sixties went to India, studied Gandhi and economics under Gandhi, and was really driven by this, what he called the village economy.
Wrote a seminal book in the sixties called small is beautiful economics as if people mattered. And for me, it was really the kind of blueprint to developing what I think we’re going to talk about this idea of place-based economics or village economics. Like how can you create an economy that works in a community? Where you are creating ownership, you’re creating new opportunity, and you’re building that sort of long-term self-sufficiency and resiliency.
Alexsandra Guerra: So you touched on our most beloved to hate false dichotomy, which is that, again, that capitalism and economics and vitality is mutually exclusive from environmental stewardship. So I’m so excited to dig in. And then let’s tie that into this concept that you just brought up, which is local economies.
Eric Kornacki: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that when you, again, start putting labels on things, we close ourselves off to really exploring what does it look like? What are the positive things about capitalism, right? Versus what are the not so good things? And then how do we really take what’s good and find a different way? And so for me, what that really came down to is trying to figure out how to, when you look at the basic economic system, means of production and dealing with scarcity, how can we create and carve out these little niche economies in this bigger global capital system that we live in?
Where I kind of landed in starting my previous organization, Revision, was really driven by this idea that we can, on the margins of society and on the margins of the economy, find really fertile soil to plant new ideas. And that really led me to kind of looking at communities right here in Denver that are considered food deserts or where there’s scarcity of healthy food. Where there’s also low rates of graduation, when there’s high unemployment, there’s low skilled jobs and say like, that’s the fertile ground for us to find new solutions.
We don’t need to put labels on it and say, we don’t have to name what we’re doing. We’re just simply trying to address people’s problems today by rethinking and re-imagining the systems that we all function in.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. Have you ever heard of Eckhart Tolle?
Eric Kornacki: Yeah. Huge fan. Read him all the time.
Alexsandra Guerra: Exactly. Look at the flower. Don’t name it a flower. Just look at it and really try to be present with it. And that’s all I’m thinking about. As you keep saying, don’t put label on things, don’t put label on things.
Eric Kornacki: Yeah. And that comes from, you know, a lot of Buddhist teachings, which is really to, yeah, not associate identity and not get fixated on something, right?
Christophe Jospe: Yeah. There’s also something really beautiful where it can be a certain attraction to those who want to make an impact in the world to go say, well, I can make the greatest impact overseas. And it’s almost like this white savior complex that, oh my God, I’m a white man. I have I’m a white man.
Eric Kornacki: I think just what you said, being in developing countries and seeing that the status quo was white people and or this kind of Western developed country. I come from the IMF or the World Bank or the... I’ve got the answers. I’ve got the resources. You living in poverty must not have the ability. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in this situation. Right. And so we typically put a lot of the onus and the responsibility on the individuals in a situation rather than looking at the system level causes. And I thought one, there’s something seriously wrong with that too.
I’m not going to be here in this country reaping the consequences of my decisions or my actions. Right. And so you see that a lot in development where someone will come in and we think that we’ve got a good idea. We know how to solve it. Image or the story that’s coming to my mind the most is in Jamaica in the 1980s, 1990s, they were heavily in debt. Their economy was suffering. So they borrowed money from USAID and World Bank. And as such, one of the conditions is they had to begin receiving imports of American milk from dairy farmers here in the US, right?
It completely undercut Jamaica’s local dairy production to the point where no local farmers could afford to have dairy cattle anymore. So we completely destroyed this entire industry that they were living on and it was very much a self-sufficient. So I was really keeping that at the forefront of my mind that if I – I feel like it’s unethical to implement something that I don’t therefore – Face the consequences of. So yes, that led me to finding ways to get involved right here in our own community. Even if the problems of poverty in Denver are not nearly as severe as they are in poverty in Africa or other countries, but relative to, you know, quote unquote, like average or median income or quality of life here in Denver, we do have these areas where there’s severe poverty.
So I felt that I needed to invest in my own community first.
Alexsandra Guerra: For sure. So for those of you who are listening and are Picking up on these topics, but have not seen the TED Talk that Christophe alluded to earlier, it’s really wonderful. And it talks about your work, Eric, at Revision. And if I can try to relay some of that in a short summary, Eric... Started working locally in Denver to address the food desert problem, which is interesting because we keep using these labels and we’re saying don’t use labels. But the problem that local communities are experiencing, which is they have to drive really far to...
So you started working with people to do gardens. And what is it? The community garden? It’s not community gardens. Is it?
Eric Kornacki: We have a couple of urban farms. Yeah. Urban farms. And then a co-op and yes.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. And so anyways, you’re helping people to learn how to garden and they’re starting to grow their own food. And now with a $1. 3 million grant from the city of Denver, you bought a junkyard.
Eric Kornacki: It was an old junkyard.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, a junkyard. And you’re currently in the middle of remodeling or you have done that?
Eric Kornacki: Revision just completed a pretty serious renovation to a couple of the dilapidated buildings. A lot of it was driven by community input on what they wanted to see there. And then small co-op, there’s a farm. There’s a lot of really amazing things happening there.
Alexsandra Guerra: So these 400 plus people who are now growing food in their urban gardens in the middle of Denver are able to sell that produce in this co-op and also like the things that they make out of tamales and whatever. I love that and I love, I’m just like now going to just say all the things I loved about that TED Talk and this concept that you’re working on, which goes to what you’re saying is focusing on the people because the relationships that you’re building, you’re investing in your community, but like life is more about relationships and not transactions is kind of what you’re saying.
And I think that you’re absolutely right that we need to start focusing on having agency within our local community. Our local areas and think that’s the most impactful thing we can do. If you, Eric, in Denver, if we go to Seattle, if those who are listening who are in Miami, New York, whatever, you start working on your community impact, your local impact. Then that scales up and we don’t have to worry so much about, oh, let me be this God, the Savior who creates this amazing thing. I mean, that’s a little bit ironic because Nori’s trying to create a marketplace Reversing Climate Change.
But, you know, we start somewhere. We’re working with farmers in the U. S. So...
Eric Kornacki: Well, and that’s, and that’s a perfect example. And I think, you know, what we were talking about earlier is that if we look at these issues in the global sense, we can get paralyzed. We can’t say like, it’s too big to change. I don’t have the agency or power. And what I really set out to do with revision is actually show, no, you do. Right. We have the power. Maybe not me singularly, but we as a community have collective power to begin shifting and creating alternatives and doing so in a way that is building a lot more than just the issue we’re addressing.
And so I looked at food. Food security or food insecurity in this case as the way to come into a community, build relationships and start creating capacity to address a whole host of issues. If I had come in and said, hey guys, I’m here to reverse climate change or what about like, you know, carbon trade, people would have tuned me out, right? But when I come in and say like, hey, let’s talk about food. What are the issues and the barriers you have to accessing food? And then we start painting the whole map of the food system and people can see how they’re connected to it and then how the food system is connected to climate change or is connected to economic inequality or racial inequality.
And so, in just under a decade, Revision created the largest community food system in the entire country. We started over 2,000 gardens. Yeah, thank you.
Unknown speaker: I mean, it was impressive.
Eric Kornacki: Stop it. I didn’t say it’s going to be me through my effort and my intellect. It’s we collectively as a community need to figure out how to build power. And one of the strategies that I employed in doing that was saying, I need to create jobs in the community and train and give people the opportunity Mm-hmm.
Christophe Jospe: It’s such a beautiful theory of change. You know, I becomes we. It’s about the community empowerment and to allude to the joking about search Eric Kornacki on the internet. You’ve got this sort of young version of Eric saying, yeah, you know, I had to create a board and it was really hard. But that’s like the most important thing.
Alexsandra Guerra: Wait, what are you talking about? See, I didn’t watch that and I’m glad.
Unknown speaker: Don’t watch it.
Christophe Jospe: But I’m curious. So in a way, like you put life and energy to this thing that you stepped away from. And that is the most lasting way to create change. But how since the beginning of revision to now, have you seen things evolve?
Eric Kornacki: More ways than I can count. I mean, personally, but then as a community, one of the biggest ways is that when I first started working in this kind of neighborhood in Southwest Denver, I was kind of surprised to see the lack of what I would call like neighborliness, right? A lot of people that moved here are living in situations where they lived in fear or isolation. And I was there to help people learn how to grow food and talk about food and health and such. But people started opening up to me and asking me, I didn’t live in the community, but asking me for help on things such as like, And what I started to pinpoint was that there’s such a breakdown in community and even in this case, from the exterior, it looks like it’s homogenous.
It’s like 82% Hispanic, Latino. But when you get down into it, a lot of people aren’t connected. They don’t know each other. They just kind of keep to themselves. And I think that’s across the board in society right now is that We’re more interconnected than ever, but we’re also like more isolated, right? And so this longing for community, I think is inherent with us. I mean, that’s how we evolved and how we survived for hundreds of thousands of years is depending on other people. And yet that’s not what the dominant or predominant ideology in this country is, right?
Like individualism, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, like the rugged individual, particularly in Colorado. I mean, we’re dominated by this mythology of the pioneers and, you know, this idea that of like the front range mentality and work ethic. But I think that there’s a lot of positives there, but the downside is that we get disconnected from each other. We don’t see our needs being similarly to your needs. And so coming back to this eye to the weed, when I use food as the way to bring people literally to the dining room table and share a meal together and cook together and then talk about these bigger issues, I started earning trust and building a relationship.
And that’s That’s the thing that on a personal level, the way I change the most is that I feel more connected to an authentic community that I can rely on for anything than I ever have before. And within the community, I started people seeing them transform, emerging from their shell, seeing that there was more to life that was possible than their current situation. And so it was a way to give people hope. It was a way to help people see that they were better than what society was telling them. In the case of a lot of our immigrant communities and our undocumented population, these are people that are exploited.
They live in the shadows. They live in fear. And they don’t see very much of a positive future for themselves. They’re doing it to try to give a better future for their children, right? But for themselves, they kind of see a dead end. And so watching mothers emerge and women who never got to go to high school Who are now becoming managers and directors and the new executive directors like of companies and organizations and leaders within their community and see what that does to themselves and how that ripples out to their children and their family and then to the broader community.
We believe we can tackle anything now. So when we talk about how do we reverse climate change, how do we tackle such a huge thing? I think we need to figure out how to activate so much of our underused human capital. We all need to be on board coming up with solutions and really You know, fighting the fight.
Alexsandra Guerra: There are so many themes here. I mean, three in my mind right now is this connectivity, this isolation thing that you’re talking about. Second, like agency. And then three, like we could dig into really what happened here in Denver and illustrate your story. I might entertain the first two for a little bit and maybe we can go to the third. Mark Manson, I think is the name of the author, The Subtle Art of Not Giving Enough. He also writes Subtle Art of Not Giving Enough. Well, that’s what I was going to say.
Christophe Jospe: I said F. Yeah, okay. We’re keeping this PG. We do not want to put the explicit. Okay.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. But you hummed it, so it’s okay. Anyways, in that book, I found it so eye-opening to me. There’s some things I reject, but some things that were really useful, and they’re related to what you’re saying, which is, I’ll share a personal kind of evolution. I think I was so focused in high school, like... Be the best, be the best, be involved in everything, get into a really good school, get into, you know, I got into an Ivy League school and I went there and I was like, study, study, study.
And I so let my social connections like fall to the waistline. Which was interesting because my Latin culture is very much community focused. And I grew up like in high school, I was in every single club, but I was in them for the wrong reasons. But I was getting the benefits that I didn’t realize, which was community, bonding, friendships, like relationships and working together as a team and soccer and NSF, whatever it was. But then I had achieved this thing. I got into the amazing Ivy League school. Like I was getting paid for.
And then it was like, oh, I got to focus on like my next accomplishments. And then if you’re not in college and you’re not intentional about the relationships you’re building, especially at Columbia, in New York City, you don’t get them. It’s really, really, really difficult. So luckily I do have very good friends that I made there, but I didn’t focus enough on building that community. And so now older, like a decade after graduating, I’m turning 30 next month. Woo. Woo.
Unknown speaker: Still baby.
Alexsandra Guerra: Thank you. I’m realizing like, wow, like how much of life did I miss out on? Because I was focused. And even in California, I moved to California for grad school and I only focused on my career. I was doing nights and weekends, like networking, going to like hackathons, like startup weekends, all this stuff. Because I was like, I got to create a startup, focus on sustainability, et cetera, et cetera. And the point that I’m trying to share here with the learning Through my experiences like that was, I’m glad, I mean, I got to know Kristoff, I learned a lot, and I met people.
But there was so much life that was missed because I was trying to achieve some thing. And once I let go of it, like I had given up at some point. So when Kristoff and I had chatted about Nori, it was probably maybe a year after I gave up on like all of this, I’m going to build, fine, I’ll just, I’ll settle in my job here. I’ll like start setting roots. I’ll like really get involved with my community. And then Nori came up and I moved on. The point is I so regret that.
I so regret not actually being involved with my communities and having those relationships and being focused on some superficial goal.
Eric Kornacki: And I think most of us can relate because that’s a message that is, you know, driven home from very early age, right? Particularly in, you know, when I say typical American culture, you know, one of the things that, that I think coming back to this idea that you brought up about like transactions versus relationships, when we see life as just a series of transactions, then it is easy to fall in that mindset of like, Well, it doesn’t matter about what’s going on externally to me as long as I’ve got, right, I’m climbing the ladder, I’m successful, I’ve got what I want.
Like, as long as my Amazon package is being delivered while I’m doing this podcast, what do I care about the fire that’s going on in the Amazon rainforest, you know? And once we begin to put more emphasis on relationships, we see that my action has other consequences on other people and on the planet. And I don’t think we can solve climate change until we develop a higher consciousness that does put relationships with all life forms, right? That we’re not independent, but we are independent. And Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth talks about that evolutionary shift that is required if we’re going to save the species.
Yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: I can’t believe you just mentioned my favorite book. I have been talking to like everybody. I’m like, have you read A New Earth Awakening? Have you? And no one has. After this podcast, you and I are going to talk about this.
Eric Kornacki: And I’m rereading A Power of Now is also. Yeah, that’s a good one. So coming back to like the idea of a place-based economy, like I was really... Later, I picked up Wendell Berry, who I don’t know if you’re familiar with him or I’m sure some of your listeners are, but...
Christophe Jospe: Oh, yeah. You’re just... You may not realize it, but you’re, I mean, we talk about Schumacher and Barry all the time on this podcast. So our listeners might be getting bored by now. I mean, he’s such an inspiration. Right. Yeah.
Eric Kornacki: You know, and he does such a great job of framing what a local place-based economy looks like. And to me, the thing that always resonates most is like, how do we locally... Ensure that our needs are met. Whatever resource, whether it’s food, whether it’s manufacturing, how can we produce what we need as much as we can locally? And only then do we begin importing to provide the other products, the olive oils, the wine, the things that we can’t do within our local region, right? And conversely with exporting, we don’t export our good or product or service until everyone’s need has been met locally.
And that may seem like so utopian and out there and people will try to put labels on it, but I think that the underlying principle is one of relationship. And he coins this phrase neighborliness, which I really like. It’s like, do the people around me in my neighborhood, on my block, in my apartment complex, wherever in my office building, are their needs met? Like, how do we take care of each other first before? And how do I put other people’s needs above my own? And I think that if we can’t get to that point, then I don’t think we can really make headway on such a big issue as like climate change.
Christophe Jospe: I agree.
Alexsandra Guerra: We’re nodding our heads vigorously.
Christophe Jospe: I really appreciate the framing because I think this is the right mindset to approach addressing challenges. But I want to take us a little bit to the practical like, okay, Revision is this amazing organization. And part of building it up, and there’s this really cool picture in your TED Talk of a bunch of smiling women, like holding out small little seeds or plants, and these are the promotores, is that right?
Eric Kornacki: Yes, the promotores, yeah.
Christophe Jospe: This is part of like the special sauce to building place-based economies. And I don’t want to put too many words in your mouth, but it’s like empower the local community to connect with those who can most relate to them and like just talk and listen and find solutions. But can you share some anecdotes incorporating the promotores into this theory of change with revision?
Eric Kornacki: Yeah. I mean, the biggest one is like when I first started building a relationship and talking to this community, I was like, hey, let’s all grow food together. They looked at me like, Are you stupid? Like you can’t grow food here in the city in Colorado, you know, in a backyard. We’re not going to feed a community like that. And I was like, well, I think we can. And we’re just going to go one garden by a time. And so I really had to find those early adopters and those champions and the people that were motivated to take action.
And so it was, you know, the first year I hired three women and said, Doesn’t matter what you come to the table with. Like I’m going to trade you and the skills that you need to do this job, which is simply, you know, this community, this is like you said, you’ve got relationships. This is your neighborhood, your people. You tell me who needs what.
Alexsandra Guerra: How did you find those three women, those early adopters?
Eric Kornacki: I went and found the networks in the community. So where were those hubs, whether it was a parent group meeting at a school and after hours, whether it was like a certain rec center that had an open house or a community meeting. I just went and tried to get on the agenda and talk in my terrible broken Spanish, but even making an attempt to earn a lot of street cred and points, right? And so it was just having conversations early on at the places where people were already gathering and then finding a couple of people that We’re in the community that could open doors and be a champion and basically vouch for me, right?
And be that liaison. From there, it was really just, okay, I’m going to invest in you to go do this work and you tell me what you need. I’ve got a certain thing that I think is going to work, but if it doesn’t, like, You know, you’re really the one that needs to be driving the shots and taking ownership. And I think that at the end of the day, everything comes down to ownership, right? If I’m up here and you’re down here and I’m telling you what to do and you don’t have the agency and ownership to make decisions, you’re not fully embodying it.
You’re not really creating your own identity as somebody that is in this work, invested in this work. Similarly, I had to take ownership of my relationship in the community. So I moved into the community. I said, I’m putting roots down here so that I’m not going to be seen as somebody that is still living in the hipster neighborhood in Denver. I need to be where I’m working and I need to show that I’m invested too. So I think kind of both of those approaches were really important.
Christophe Jospe: Cool, yeah, so as it grew, can you just translate what is a promotores?
Eric Kornacki: A promotora is a community, it’s like a health worker that is not necessarily like a license or they don’t have an MD or anything like that, but they’re simply a community member that is passionate about health and nutrition. We took a model from Central America and I think it actually originated in Brazil as like a community organizing and power building strategy. It has a lot to do with like popular education and we simply applied that here and said, You are the promoter within your community. I’ll give you the tools and knowledge you need, but you are the one that knows this neighborhood and your lived experience is equally as important here.
And that was not something that they were hearing out in the traditional economy. Right. We’re missing huge potential, right? But when you come in and you have a relationship and you say like, tell me, what are your dreams? What are you motivated by? Like, what do you want to see for the future? That’s how we really bring people in a way that honors them and build an economy. Again, like coming back to Jeff Schumacher, like an economy that values people, right? Where all people matter.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah. So cool.
Eric Kornacki: So amazing.
Christophe Jospe: I mean, it goes back to what we touched on in the beginning. And I want to go deeper there, which is the place-based economy. The idea of you’re keeping money in the circle. And in your TED Talk, you mentioned that like, what was it? $11 million a year?
Eric Kornacki: A little higher. Yeah. So we launched this gardening effort. It’s just simply like, let’s get people growing food in their homes and feeding their family. And then once we saw how successful that was and people had more food than they knew what to do with, And so we would teach them how to preserve it in the winter, but people also wanted to sell it. And so this idea about like collective, you know, pooling of produce and selling it took place like probably like almost a decade ago. And I began looking for, well, what are the platforms or the business models or the vehicles that would allow us to do that?
And I kind of went back to some of the work I’d seen in Central America around like cooperatives where, you know, community would form a business that they all collectively owned. In order to either market a product or get a good to the marketplace. And so. More I dug into that, I realized like co-ops were this phenomenal tool that have been applied in like, you know, Vermont and the Midwest, but not out here in Colorado. There’s not a food co-op in Denver or Boulder or like, which is kind of crazy, right?
We think of, you know, particularly Boulder as this sort of liberal Mecca and there’s not a food co-op there. That’s crazy. So that was one side of it. The other side of it is that I started doing, you know, I hired a market study. We were looking at the economic data. Showing where people, where did they go to purchase groceries? How much were they spending? And what we found from this kind of like macro level picture is that within our community, this little neighborhood, we were losing over $16 million a year.
Every year that money was going somewhere else as people left the neighborhood to go shop for the groceries. And so I had several meetings over the course of a year and said, like, okay, you know, I’m hearing on one hand you guys want to collectively sell your food. A co-op could help do that. Over here we’ve got a need for a grocery store. Do we want to work with, you know, maybe our city council or our elected officials and try to give an incentive for a for-profit grocery store to come into the neighborhood, a chain store?
Or... Is there another option? Could we find a way to create a grocery store that was owned by the community so therefore those profits and that revenue didn’t leave this neighborhood, right? I mean, still dealing with outside vendors, yes, but like the profit and the control and the decision making would stay within the community. And the community unanimously said, we want that option, right? Absolutely. Coming in media and saying like, we want ownership of this and we’re willing to learn, we’re willing to be involved, but we want this to be the thing that we determine what it looks like and that we own it.
Alexsandra Guerra: Absolutely, because then they have the power and then they’re more invested and more excited. I actually have a question though. I keep thinking about seasonality and you mentioned about preserving the harvest through winter. So is the co-op going to be, in my mind, I’m like, okay, so they’ll be selling veggies and produce when spring comes and to the fall. And then after that, what, are you just selling like tamales that you were able to...
Eric Kornacki: Well, no, yeah. Tamales year round. Yeah, yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: Tamales year round and then the rest, the produce kind of shuts down for the winter.
Eric Kornacki: At least locally, right? And so then we have to be able to either extend our seasons. We got a shipping container that we upcycled and we have an indoor hydroponic farm there. But yeah, we also have to purchase from other vendors. And so there is this... You know, kind of value trade off. And we said, do we only want to carry our produce and that means the seasonality? Or do we, if we need to have food access for the entire community around, we’re probably going to have to work with other distributors and such that is maybe not what we had in mind initially, but that’s the kind of reality of it.
Alexsandra Guerra: Okay. So are you doing that?
Eric Kornacki: Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a full year round grocery store. They do purchase from a lot of different distributors. Um, and then we, we sell as much as we can during that season when we’re producing.
Alexsandra Guerra: What are you producing in your, is it one shipping container that you have hydroponics in there?
Eric Kornacki: Yeah. So that one just focuses mainly on like greens and lettuces and things that, I mean, you can’t, I mean, you can grow like tomatoes and some finding crops, but it takes up too much space. So it’s, it’s all things that are pretty small. And then there’s, that’s connected to a one acre urban farm. And then again, the individual, like, um, there’s about two or 300 individual gardens.
Alexsandra Guerra: Very cool.
Christophe Jospe: So you’ve proven a model.
Eric Kornacki: Proving, yes.
Christophe Jospe: Proving. And you’re also stepping away from this one piece and now more actively involved with Thrive Partners.
Alexsandra Guerra: Sorry, before we move on from the model, I really have one more question. I’m sorry. The grocery store thing, are they all getting, like, how do you track? Who’s getting paid what? Like, are you also bringing in food from these distributors? And then bringing in, like, let’s say Alice has 100 pounds of tomatoes. And like, are you keeping Are you taking track of that? Like how do you actually share the cost of the co-op?
Eric Kornacki: The co-op isn’t currently because do some like some new food, food modernization and safety act, FISMA, like some new food handling regulations. I’m not purchasing from a lot of different, it’s not everybody in the community yet. And there’s some like traceability and some food safety things that need to be put in place. But the idea is that yes, it’s going to be a full service grocery store that is purchasing as much as it can locally, but then is also, yeah, kind of again, working to meet all the other needs that a neighborhood might have.
Alexsandra Guerra: Okay. So you’re starting with a few of your- Right.
Eric Kornacki: And I should say too that, you know, from coming back, staying on the topic of place-based economies real quick, from that, we’ve seen other co-ops emerge because people see like, oh, well, collectively we can start a business that meets our needs. And so like a childcare, a group of women that were providing childcare formed a nanny co-op, right? And a bunch of interpreters that were providing language translation formed a community language co-op, right? So that one, again, coming back to this idea of like, And being something that replicates based on inspiration, we’ve tried to say that it starts with food, but it doesn’t end there.
And so that the vision is to create other industries that are, they don’t all have to be community or collectively owned within the neighborhood, but owned by residents of neighborhoods serving the needs of the neighborhood. And so we’ve really tried to plant this idea of this place-based local economy where we are trying to meet the needs of this community because nobody else is.
Alexsandra Guerra: Okay. Thanks for letting me ask my question, Kristoff. Kristoff was about to go into Thrive.
Christophe Jospe: Well, there you go, Eric.
Eric Kornacki: Thrive Partners, Thrive’s an acronym, providing tools for healthy, resilient, inclusive, and vibrant economies. And it’s really taking a lot of the seeds that I planted at Revision, but now being able to do it on a more broad scale. So Revision was about going as deep as we could within one community and building a model that, again, has that deep roots, that’s rooted in place, and that others take inspiration from. Thrive is really about now kind of going broad and trying to create this as a movement and really helping... What already exists on the ground in other communities.
I’m not trying to come in and say like, you got to follow my playbook or this, you know, out of the box, you know, model, but it’s really about taking a lot of the inspiration and helping other organizations and communities thrive.
Christophe Jospe: So I want you to help us take this full circle. I mean, clearly you’re a systems thinker and this model has something to do with climate change, but not directly. Can you connect it for us?
Eric Kornacki: Sure. I mean, when I looked at coming back to my initial story, like I said, if we’re going to solve climate change, we’ve got to come up with new economic alternatives. We’ve got to figure out how to plant seeds locally and create something that is hopefully going to provide a roadmap or a playbook or inspiration for other communities to follow. So Yeah, it’s not on the forefront and on the face. It’s not about addressing climate change, but I think it’s the back end way that we apoliticize it and not even make it about that.
But yet the impact is such that if we can relocalize our economies, right? Bring resources back down to local places and plant those ideas of relationship more than transaction than I think at the end of the day, it is about climate change. So we need both then, right? We need the big top down like system changing solutions like you’re all working on, which like I think is incredible. Can’t wait to see where that goes. But then we also need, you know, these other models and, you know, we need a thousand approaches to climate change.
Alexsandra Guerra: For sure.
Christophe Jospe: Well, I was just going to state the obvious, which is food travels a really long way. And actually, it tastes a lot better when it is grown close to where you eat. And damn, does it feel good to eat your own vegetables.
Eric Kornacki: The thing I forgot to mention too is a lot of this like local place-based economy building to me is also about climate resiliency. Like what happens if everything hits the fan, right? And, you know, whether we’ve got increased droughts and fires, I mean, all these, there’s some major, major threats to our global food system. And how does a community, particularly the poorest, most impoverished communities, how do they respond?
Christophe Jospe: How are they impacted when these global systems break down?
Eric Kornacki: I think if we can do what Revision did and build alternative models that are increasing resiliency and self-sufficiency on local levels, I’ll tell you what, like this is the neighborhood I want to be in when everything breaks down, right? Because they’ve got self-sufficiency, they’re producing their own food, right? They’ve got community that will take care of each other. Whereas I think you look to downtown, you look to all these other places that status, that security is really, you know, it’s fragile.
Christophe Jospe: They’re like, crap, where my Uber Eats at, right?
Eric Kornacki: Right. You know, how am I getting the grocery store or when all of a sudden there’s food shortages or food prices go up, right?
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah.
Eric Kornacki: Neighborhoods that, you know, Revision has been working in, those are going to be the most food secure.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. I just started dabbling in gardening.
Unknown speaker: Awesome.
Alexsandra Guerra: Maybe in May or April. And it’s the most amazing thing.
Eric Kornacki: Yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: I always wanted to want to garden. Like I remember moving to Seattle.
Eric Kornacki: You want that to be our identity. You’re like, I want to be that person.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, I want to be that person. And I think when we moved there, Kristoff and I were like, yeah, we want like, Kristoff’s like, oh, I want to grow food. And I’m like, yeah, I want to want that. And then I don’t know, I think I was just bored one day. I was just bored one day and I had these seeds that I had bought from like a farm that we went to in Vermont. Oh, actually I was with Alden. I just planted them in a little egg carton and they started growing and immediately, as soon as it sprouted, I’m like, I’m 100% invested.
Like, I just want to see my plants. I want to touch them. I want to talk to them. I want to feed them. Like, I’m so, I miss them. My brother’s taking care of them. He’s watering them. But I went back and like, all my basil was flour and everything. It’s okay. We’re all good. But anyways, it’s so incredible to just start. So I recommend your listeners take that egg carton, get some soil, put down some seeds. You could take a seed from a tomato you just ate or butternut squash.
If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, there’s the Tilt Alliance Maritime Guide that tells you, it shows you an amazing like two-page spread on the calendar year, what seeds to plant when and what month and when you can harvest them. And it’s incredible.
Eric Kornacki: It’s awesome. And that knowledge is all connected to these bigger systems of... Climate is not this sort of technical, I mean, it’s nature. So when you teach, when you get people excited about growing something and they see the power of life and they see these cycles, like I think that’s how we also get people to care about the planet in a way that doesn’t feel like we always do.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, that makes you feel more connected. And then you keep saying this model.
Eric Kornacki: Mm-hmm.
Alexsandra Guerra: Is this, I mean, I didn’t check online, but is your model and your story available online for people who are listening and think like, yeah, I want to do that. I want to have, I want to live in the community that can be self-reliant when, if things go south.
Eric Kornacki: Yep. You can take a look at my TED talk from 2015 called How to Build a Place-Based Economy. My previous organizations work revision. coop. Thrive Partners is thrivepartners.com.
Alexsandra Guerra: Okay.
Eric Kornacki: And yes, we’re sharing this model widely.
Alexsandra Guerra: Great. Just making sure.
Christophe Jospe: Amazing. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Eric, for coming on. Do you have any closing words or inspiration that you want to leave our listeners with?
Eric Kornacki: Check out Nori, get behind their work, but they are doing that. But come back to what you’re saying, grow food, eat food, get in touch with like your local community, put down the phone, put down the screen and, you know, go find a way to get plugged in where you live. You’ll be amazed at the richness and the quality of life when you get to know people around you and, and then, yeah, grow food.
Alexsandra Guerra: And take the label off of things and read Eckhart Tolle’s New Absolutely.
Christophe Jospe: All right. Well, thanks a lot. See you next time. Thank you.
