Taylor Hanson, Food On The Move founder and TulsaPeople’s Tulsan of the Year
There’s a line out the door of the Jane A. Malone Community Center at Chamberlain Park, 4940 N. Frankfort Ave.
Tulsans of all ages and races are waiting for the clock to hit 5:30 p.m. so they can begin receiving bags full of fresh fruits and produce at Food On The Move’s monthly Community Food and Resource Festival.
For two hours, dozens of volunteers fill bags with potatoes, yams, peaches, bananas and an assortment of greens. As they get low on inventory there’s another volunteer ready to restock with more boxes of fruit or vegetables.
It’s a pay-as-you-can model that ensures families in need of assistance are given access to healthy food.
Nearby a DJ is playing the Fugees’ classic “Ready or Not,” which creates a singalong for many people in the gym as they go about their business. Many of those who aren’t singing are smiling. It truly feels festive and unlike the bleak images that come to mind when one thinks of food insecurity.
Once the blue bags stamped with a Food On The Move logo are full of fruits and veggies, guests circle the room learning about community resources provided by a multitude of organizations, including ArchWell Health, Family and Children’s Services, Family Safety Center, Grand Mental Health, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Health Department. Near the end are students from Oklahoma State University Health Sciences Center who are checking blood sugar levels. In the middle of the room is a mom-and-daughter duo volunteering to help children with arts and crafts.
FOTM hosts three Community Food and Resource Festivals each month. There’s Chamberlain Park, Tulsa Community College Northeast Campus, 3727 E. Apache St., and Northwest Tulsa Hub at 19 S. 49th W. Ave. On average 250 families participate in each festival.
These events are the backbone of Food On The Move, an organization now entering its 11th year. It’s on the verge of a major transformation with its Urban Farm project that each year will produce nearly 200,000 pounds of food indoors using aquaponics and hydroponics, as well as educate future farmers as FOTM works to end hunger in Tulsa and revitalize the local agricultural industry while also making it more sustainable as populations increase, land availability decreases and the climate gets hotter. If it all works out, it means more access to locally grown healthy foods that are affordable.
It’s an ambitious plan for the small and mighty nonprofit that in the past decade has distributed over 5.6 million pounds of food to over 225,000 families and has educated more than 1,200 students through its Ag in Schools program, which includes training and education using innovative urban farming systems.
It all started when Taylor Hanson felt a calling to help the people of his hometown. It had been about 15 years since his band Hanson became world famous, flying around the globe numerous times over the years. Fame mixed with that kind of worldly education has long been a formula leading many music stars to pursue societal change through activism, like Bono, Bob Geldof and Joni Mitchell to name a few.
Hanson’s vision for Food On The Move is kind of like a distant cousin to Willie Nelson’s vision for Farm Aid. Ask Hanson what made him want to invest his energy into combating food insecurity and he’ll tell you it came from a conversation with the late Ambassador Edward J. Perkins, which led to him reading a book by Perkins that consumed his mind and led to more conversations that created a vision to ensure everyone in his hometown has access to healthy food. The rockstar then did what he does best. He worked the rooms and entertained, making others believers and supporters. He got them to open their wallets and their hearts.
“All of the dreams Taylor had are coming to fruition now. We’re just excited that it’s all happening basically like Taylor had envisioned it,” says Paula Marshall, CEO of Bama Cos., and an instrumental supporter of FOTM. “He’s very brilliant. A lot of people don’t understand that about him. He’s got this vision, and look at what’s happening.”
Food On The Move’s mission is “to transform food deserts and the legacy issues created by living food-insecure through creating access, education and innovative solutions.”
This year, FOTM becomes a stronger force in the fight with the addition of a larger growing facility that uses aquaponics and more new technology, plus the addition of a more robust adult education program that will empower local farmers to revitalize a dying agricultural industry, while adapting to global changes. If all goes as planned, it will become a healthier, stronger Tulsa in more ways than just by what we consume for nutrition.
It’s a transformational opportunity and none of it would have happened without the relentless efforts of Taylor Hanson. This is why he’s our Tulsan of Year.
That stated, he couldn’t do it alone, and he’ll be the first to say it. It has taken the efforts of FOTM’s CEO and President Kevin Harper with support from Marshall and other donors, along with staff and many volunteers who have kept the organization going as it grows.
Movers and Shakers
It’s shortly after 3 p.m. on Nov. 1 when Taylor arrives at a field northwest of FOTM’s Micro Farm in north Tulsa. Earlier this morning at 1:30 a.m., he exited Nashville’s Cannery Hall after he and his brothers played a 22-song set that kicked off with a cover of Radiohead’s “Optimistic” and ended with “Lost Without Each Other.”
He’s here to take part in a photoshoot and to talk about FOTM while seeing the nonprofit’s new facility that is nearing completion. In a few hours he will swap his casual attire for a tuxedo then walk the red carpet at his nonprofit’s annual fundraiser at the Mayo Hotel, where Hanson will pose for pictures before entering the gala that he will conclude hours later DJing a penthouse bar dance. He has to be in Austin by noon the next day to prepare for the band’s concert at Emo’s that night.
But right now, he’s apologizing for possibly overstepping his boundary to share his thoughts on what color aprons he and Harper should wear for photos. Blue is the color for volunteers. More than 900 people wore a blue apron in 2023. Some are food festival guests, who later return to give back their time. Green is for the nearly 100 volunteers who have devoted at least 50 hours to the organization in a year, and black is for the employees. Hanson settles on blue after some discussion to honor the volunteers. It’s an example of how intentional the founder is about everything he does when it comes to FOTM.
Next he’s balancing an assortment of fruit and vegetables cradled in his arms. “Look at my children,” the father of seven jokes.
It’s all smiles as flashes pop.
This is largely Hanson’s role for the organization today. He does press because he’s the rockstar founder, who over the years has graced many magazine covers before this one, including Bop, Entertainment Weekly and even TV Guide. There have been stories in Rolling Stone and People Magazine. There are blog posts, Reddit threads and countless social media comments about his various hair styles over the years. He has always had that celebrity superstar presence.
His band responsibilities limit his physical presence at FOTM. In what little free time the world-touring musician, husband and father has, he spends it researching and reading about things like food insecurity and community-building. He speaks with donors. He talks a lot to Harper, who does the day-to-day heavy lifting. Hanson remains in constant contact with board chair Jacob Chapman, sharing his thoughts and getting updates.
Those who have talked to Hanson about food insecurity quickly learn he devotes a tremendous amount of brain space to these efforts, and he can talk endlessly about all the reasons it’s important Food On The Move achieves its goals. He concedes, earnestly, that he nor the topic are built for soundbites. He’s truly passionate about the cause, calling it a movement.
“When we were first starting to go out with some of our fundraising plans, I would laugh and say, ‘Now, Taylor, you’re gonna have to be quiet, because these people don’t have two hours to sit on the phone and listen to our pitch.’ I’m probably one of the few people who could actually say that (to him),” Marshall says as she laughs.
As Hanson and Harper stand in the field for portraits, Hanson mentions that behind them in the distance is where he originally thought Food On The Move would be located, north of Tulsa Community College’s Northeast Campus. Instead, it’s to the east.
Building gardens
Just over a decade ago, Hanson met Perkins, who became a mentor to the musician. When Hanson read Perkins’ memoir “Mr. Ambassador: Warrior for Peace” (co-authored by TulsaPeople contributor Connie Cronley) he was instantly captivated by the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa’s stories and lessons learned from his work in community-building and helping free Nelson Mandela.
“I saw this man, and I thought about how his life had been taking on incredibly difficult challenges and somehow succeeding where others had failed,” says Hanson about the spark of the idea for FOTM. “I really felt this pull to roll up my sleeves in Tulsa to be a part of how do we make this city thrive, or how do we take on some of the things that have been cycles that have continued to repeat themselves — poverty, segregation, all of the layers within those.”
The rockstar called the rockstar ambassador and the two talked about making positive change. “I said, ‘Where would you start?’ He said, ‘I would start with food.’ Food On The Move is a direct response to him saying to me, ‘I would start with food.’”
The two became very close. On Sept. 19, 2014, at Tulsa Country Club, Hanson hosted a conversation with Perkins. It was among his nonprofit’s first events, and its goal was “to examine the issue of hunger in Tulsa and Oklahoma,” according to a Tulsa World report. It raised funds for Iron Gate — not his own organization.
Around the time Hanson was building FOTM, Marshall had made her annual trip to Chicago for the National Restaurant Show, where there was a lot of talk about the need for community gardens and the benefits of them. She was very intrigued. Soon Bama leadership was examining how to implement gardens at its Tulsa factories. As the plans moved further along, a group of plant managers called a meeting with their CEO.
“They were very concerned about the possibility of attracting bugs and rodents when it’s their jobs to keep those things away,” Marshall says. “I was very disappointed. They were very afraid to tell me, you know, they didn’t want to do it, but I totally understood that it was a food safety risk.”
Marshall was down, but not out. She and her team explored other opportunities.
Meanwhile Hanson’s nonprofit start-up was providing fresh produce to folks through mobile food events even though it wasn’t yet a 501(c)3 with fundraising and an organizational chart. Hanson’s band had launched their own beer with Hop Jam in 2014 to “celebrate entrepreneurship” he told News On 6 at the time about their beer tasting event and concert in Tulsa Arts District. During its six-year run, proceeds from a raffle went to Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma.
While promoting the 2019 festival at the KTUL studio, Hanson met Harper, who was then two years into his job as director of marketing and business development for A New Leaf Inc., a local nonprofit that serves more than 500 clients with intellectual and developmental disabilities and operates six greenhouses, two permanent garden centers and two seasonal garden centers, employing more than 280 staff overall. One-third of A New Leaf’s produce is donated, while two-thirds are sold to fund operations.
Harper was at the studio to help promote A New Leaf’s annual gala when Hanson told him about his small nonprofit operation addressing Tulsa food deserts, and how he could use more fresh produce.
“I told our CEO Mary Ogle, ‘I got this connection with Taylor Hanson at Food On The Move,’ and she said, ‘You make that a good partnership.’ And I did so much he hired me,” Harper says.
Harper invited Hanson to the annual gala, which is where Marshall would meet the rockstar she’d been told was doing work in food security and looking to grow. She was stunned to learn Hanson lived here and not in New York or LA. Then he started talking about his vision. She was sold and told him she wanted to help. Hanson said if she was really interested in supporting the mission, he’d like to set a meeting at the TCC Northeast Campus, which Hanson thought could be utilized as a potential location for his nonprofit.
“They had a building they were using for agricultural training. They’d had a class on ag and had a class on farming. The problem was they hadn’t had a class in a very long time,” Marshall says. “The building had classroom space, plumbing, greenhouse space. Taylor was so excited because the infrastructure has everything there.”
The building also came with red tape and everything else that comes with working with the government, Marshall says. After more than a year of work with little progress but lots of frustrations, a TCC board member suggested 5 acres of land behind the school. A contract was drawn up but then neighbors complained. The parties settled on land to the east of the school and Marshall made a gift to FOTM to purchase the property.
During that process Harper began donating produce from A New Leaf and volunteering at FOTM events. He and Hanson talked a lot and Harper started helping him get more organized behind the scenes to become a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Finally, Hanson asked him to draft a job description for the CEO position.
With the land locked in and FOTM becoming more structured, Hanson and Harper asked Marshall for a meeting to discuss their vision for the nonprofit and the future.
When the trio sat down, Hanson explained how busy he was and told Marshall he thought Harper was the man for the job.
“I was dumbfounded because I didn’t even realize Kevin wanted to because, god, he had such a big thing going over at A New Leaf,” Marshall says.
She asked Harper if this is really what he wanted to do.
“This is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do,” he told her.
Knowing it would be more stress to work at obtaining the funding to pay Harper and assure he felt stable, Marshall decided Bama would hire him and place him in the community development office working with Kim Owens (who had introduced Marshall and Hanson at the gala), but assigned to Food On The Move.
Five years later, Harper still works for Bama. “That’s something we want to keep doing, and we’ll probably always do that,” says Marshall about the unique arrangement. “I’ve worked in the not-for-profit world a long time with a lot of great people, a lot of very big names around here, and I know that they come up with unique ways to push our not-for-profits forward, but I don’t know one that has done this exact thing.”
On average about 60 Bama team members volunteer for FOTM each month, according to Marshall. Bama has supported the nonprofit in acquiring more land that enabled the construction of Urban Farm.
Harper became FOTM’s CEO in November 2019. Four months later the COVID-19 pandemic hit Tulsa and there was the shutdown that forced the nonprofit to grow faster than anticipated.
“It was me and we had an intern when we started the mobile drive-thrus,” Harper says. Then the volunteers came to help. “Food On The Move handed out 4.5 million pounds of food (from April 2020 – May 2021). We had the drive-thrus down. We could do 1,200 cars in two hours.” There was also always a DJ on-site to provide a mood-lifting soundtrack.
Harper credits their pandemic response to helping them gain support through federal money, donors and community partners, and dedicated volunteers — more than 100 during the pandemic. “It gave us instant credibility because we were there, we did it and we did it well. No one knew who we were. We were a small little thing known as something that Taylor started because he felt passionate about it. COVID showed we legitimately could do what we could do, and that’s when we started getting people on board with the cause.”
FOTM followed this success up by partnering with Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma to provide three meals a day for 209 consecutive days to Afghan refugees living in local hotels from September 2021 – April 2022.
“That was a long 209 days, and we pulled it off,” Harper says. “Those things happened, and it got us the credibility by proving if we say we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it.”
The organization continued its food and resource festivals and started community gardens at FOTM, Chamberlain Park, Monroe Demonstration Academy and Tandy Family YMCA. In what could be considered a pilot for future education efforts, FOTM launched its Ag in Schools Program, which includes training and education using innovative urban farming systems. It educates students in the critical foundations of urban farming, the importance of healthy eating, and how to become an urban farmer.
They started growing produce of their own at their Micro Farm using aquaponics to learn best practices as they scale up operations and begin teaching others how to use it.
Food Home Direct (formally known as LocalFarmOK) became a division of FOTM in 2024. It’s a subscription service that delivers fresh, locally grown produce, meat and dairy to customers’ doors with proceeds going to the fight against food insecurity.
The long-running Hanson Day, the band’s annual fan celebration held in the Tulsa Arts District each May, also became an opportunity to raise awareness for FOTM and its mission with a lunch-and-learn that was added to the event schedule in 2023. According to Hanson fan blog Scream and Be Frees, at this year’s event a goal was set to raise $4,100 for the nonprofit in honor of the founder’s 41st birthday. That goal was met and surpassed by nearly double.
Urban Farm
Back in the field the photoshoot is wrapped, and Hanson says he’s excited to see inside the new facility dubbed Urban Farm. He hasn’t been inside in months, so he’s anxious to see the progress before it begins operations in the second quarter of 2025.
He can’t contain his excitement as he walks across the construction site, hopping over random boards, wires and other materials. He walks across a concourse area that will one day serve as a marketplace for what’s grown inside the building, which he enters, then walks over to an interior wall and immediately peels some brown paper to reveal a window to the grow space. “Oh, my god, it looks fantastic.”
According to Hanson, there is no model to build from. They are the innovators. And he’s looking at a nearly complete prototype of Urban Farm he hopes is copied over and over down the road.
“There are people teaching aquaponics and indoor growing, and then there are people building food hubs, but the way in which the complete integration of the way we’re looking at this, we don’t have anything to copy,” says Hanson, who points out where we’re standing will be a classroom for high school students and adults to learn skills to immediately go to work farming.
Hanson’s longterm vision is those farmers will then take their skills and grow food for Oklahomans that will be sold in locally owned markets and stores and used in restaurants throughout the state, all while making farming a sustainable industry once again.
“This is the future of growing things,” Hanson says. “We need urban farming. We need traditional farming. We need all of it to take our food back and reclaim all the food we’re buying from California and Mexico and then shipping around and filling our bellies with stuff that’s packed with preservatives. It serves the food-growing companies to grow in one spot and put it on a truck, but it doesn’t serve Oklahomans.”
Hanson and Harper examine the area dubbed Food Hub, which is where local producers and distributors will meet. They check out a clean room that minimizes contaminants during packaging, a refrigeration room, and shipping and receiving areas before walking into the main grow space that is 10,000 square feet and will soon hold row after row of aquaponic beds growing fruits and vegetables. Hanson then steps inside a giant tank turned on its side.
“These will be fish tanks full of tilapia, as well as a variety of different kinds of fish that naturally do what they do in the water,” Hanson says. “There will be six tanks with like 300 fish in each one. They swim around, they poop, and their waste is the perfect fertilizer. Their natural waste gets processed through the systems and kicks back all the things the plants need.”
Harper adds, “We’re going to produce 185,000 pounds of produce a year and then 13,000 pounds of fish.”
These leaders in the fight against food insecurity feel the urgency because time is of the essence with what’s to come in the years ahead.
“We know that in 2050 there’s a food crisis coming, so the amount of land is not going to meet the need of the people. So indoor farming becomes a critical reality,” Harper says. “By 2028 aquaponics will be a $1.8 billion industry, with North America leading the way. We’ll have a state-of-the-art training facility right here in north Tulsa.”
Harper points out the environmental filtration system will also run through the heating and cooling system made by RAE Corp. in Pryor that is called ZeroCool. FOTM will pull 80 gallons of water an hour from that system then filter it for plants. They will be installing solar panels in the next two years for increased sustainability.
Hanson says while initially the focus has been on the metro food deserts, he believes the work ahead will benefit the smaller communities sprinkled across Green Country and hopefully beyond.
“The destruction of the rural small towns is dramatically connected to the food process,” he says. “As you lose all those rural jobs because the food companies have swallowed up and basically broken the backs of small distribution channels, there are no food hubs now. Well, who dies first? It’s the small towns where they owned farms, where they worked with their hands, and where they grew our food. The legacy of this is really going to be helping to rekindle the flame of our main streets across Oklahoma, because that’s where our farmers live.”
He’s done the research, sees the opportunities to do more and has a vision of how to end food insecurity in Green Country.
“It’s impossible to put into words the meaning of the fact that we’re even standing in this building,” Hanson says. “What we’re trying to show with this entire process is not to be afraid of imagining something better … I’m much more interested in what’s possible than what’s likely, because you can bet on likelihood, and you’ll probably be right about what’s likely to happen, but I don’t think there’s any of my time that should be dedicated to predicting the likelihood of something. It takes seeing it and not being afraid to say, ‘Well, the whole thing’s broken.’ Nobody really wants to say that. We can fix it, but we have to decide we’re going to fix it.’”
Hanson’s passion and conviction and the way he shapes his thoughts could lead one to wonder if there’s a future in politics?
He laughs then says, “We’re all in politics. Today, I was in politics because I casted my vote.”
Right now his mind is only on FOTM’s mission as they ramp up their efforts at a time when according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Tulsa has a poverty rate of 18.2%, whch is nearly three points higher than the national average, and FOTM partner Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma states one out of six Oklahomans are food insecure.
“What we’re doing, it’s like we’re two or three steps up the ladder right now, and we have a mountain ahead of us. Food On The Move has a huge mountain that is going to want to destroy every single thing we’re doing. That mountain is not one villain with a cigar, one political party, one business, one self-motivated critic,” Hanson says. “The mountain is that whole idea of what’s likely versus what’s possible. Because if you look at what’s likely, we continue down the road of cheaper, processed food that costs way more than it should. That is fueling a crony capitalism government and big business working together to sever the sovereignty of food, and the exciting thing is, I didn’t start this off as a food expert. But what we did do is we got a lot of people together, and we asked a lot of questions, and we kept showing up.”
The list of supporters keeps growing as Food On The Move grows. And everyone keeps showing up ready to help Hanson achieve his ultimate goal.
“I’m super glad and super happy we’ve been able to bring his vision to life and not look back and regret anything,” Marshall says. “Every single thing we’ve done has been purposeful. It’s been clunky, but it’s been purposeful. And we’ve had a lot of folks along the way, like Joe Deere with Cherokee Nation and Michelle Hardesty. We just have so many folks that have come with us along the ride.
“We’re doing it. We’re doing it. That’s what I can say. And Taylor’s the guy that got us all in the pied piper line. We’re all here still following him.”