Tenisio Seanima has just been named the first-ever Urban Agriculture Manager for East Point GA. Managing agriculture is the least of it. Managing competing interests and city bureaucracy is the big challenge. Tenisio is perfect for taking that on.
If you watched our online session on organic certification in 2017, you met Tenisio. Back then he was Farmer Services Coordinator at Georgia Organics, where he connected beginning farmers to resources. He also had a long track record of entrepreneurial side gigs, SPIN-Farming and music production being among them.
We’ve come to know Tenisio as a bridge builder, able to work both inside and outside the status quo, drawing out the best in each. His new position would try the soul of most SPIN farmers, being that it will have to deal with an alphabet soup of non-profits and government agencies that use committees and studies to advance a mission overloaded with buzz words, but which is pretty simple – feed more people locally.
We think the way to start achieving that is pretty simple too – more self-employed, self-supporting farmers making significant contributions to the local food supply.
How to get there? That’s where it gets complicated.
Bureaucracy has never been the entrepreneurial farmer’s friend, but to make progress, we need to connect top-down resources and policies with bottom-up community-based farm businesses, and help communities see how farming can be a business, not just a non-profit supported job.. If anyone can figure out how to do that, it’s Tenisio. We’re rooting for him.
Read more information about East Point’s Agriculture Plan here.
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