Rerun: Breaking Down Barriers to Local Food

Rerun: Breaking Down Barriers to Local Food

Author: Strong Towns May 7, 2026 Duration: 39:58
It’s farmers market season, so we’re revisiting this conversation with Shelby Wild, whose work in Lompoc shows how a weekly neighborhood market can reshape a community’s food system. This rerun highlights the deep local relationships, creative partnerships, and small-scale innovations that make markets like Route One a backbone of local resilience and access to good food. Shelby Wild is a mom, lifelong gardener, and executive director of Route One Farmers Market in her hometown of Lompoc, California, which she started in 2018 after her neighborhood farmer’s market closed. The market runs every Sunday and is currently the only one within 50 miles on the central coast of California that offers both EBT and Market Match. Wild and her team strive to make the market a place that brings together the diverse communities that call Lompoc home. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, she led the market to be the first in the area to offer produce bags for curbside, contactless pickup, distributing hundreds of bags of local food to those under shelter-in-place restrictions. They’ve also launched the region’s first mobile farmer’s market, a next step in making local food part of everyday life in Lompoc. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES Route One Farmers Market (Site) Route One Farmers Market (Instagram) Shelby Wild (LinkedIn) Check out Cold Coast Brewing Co., Dare 2 Dream Farms Homestead, and South Side Coffee Co. Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram) Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!   This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

There’s a quiet shift happening in neighborhoods and city halls across the continent, a push to rethink what makes a place thrive. The Bottom-Up Revolution, from the team at Strong Towns and hosted by Tiffany Owens Reed, dives into that shift by sharing real stories from within the movement. Instead of grand top-down plans, this podcast focuses on the tangible, often overlooked work of everyday people who are rolling up their sleeves to foster economic resilience right where they live. Each conversation explores the practicalities-how someone identified a small, solvable problem in their community, the steps they took to rally their neighbors, and the challenges they faced turning an idea into reality. You’ll hear about the messiness of local advocacy, the importance of building connections to create lasting influence, and the personal lessons learned along the path to a stronger town. It’s a resource for anyone who believes change starts on their own street, offering not just inspiration but a sense of shared struggle and possibility. Tune in for a candid look at the grassroots work that’s quietly reshaping our cities and towns, one concrete action at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The Bottom-Up Revolution
Podcast Episodes
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