In 1991, David Roach was a senior at Morehouse College taking an Urban Economic Public Policy class that would change his life. Dr. William Sheftal, then Director of the Business Department at Morehouse College gave an assignment to his class to find economic solutions for the African American community.

During Mr. Roach's research, he came across alarming statisitics concerning the decline of Black farmers, and the economic effects of the decline of our farmers.

Since this paper, Mr. Roach has been on a crusade to promote our community to support Black farmers by emphasizing the need and opportunity we have by feeding ourselves directly from our small farmers.

He returned to the Bay Area to teach in East Palo Alto and later at Castlemont High School in East Oakland soon after at McClymonds Highs School in West Oakland.

It was at Castlemont High School, when a graduate of Castlemont High School returned to visit the school. The ex-student was feeding her child candy when Mr. Roach asked her, "why are you feeding your child candy...how about some fruit?" Her response was, where am I going to find some fruit around here Mr. Roach?

He does not recall his response to the question, but couple of years later, Mr. Roach became the Director of the Business Academy at McClymonds Highs School and started a school based enterprise called the Mo' Better Food Market in 1997/8.

The Mo' Better Food Market was more than a farmers market. It was a meeting ground for folks in the neighborhood. Also, Students learned about the state of Black farmers (less than 1%) and participated in the marketing and outreach of the farmers market.

In 2003, Mr. Roach became the co-director of the West Oakland Food Project Collaborative (funded two years from the U,S.D.A) , while directing the affairs of Mo' Better Food.

At the time, we thought it would be good to move from McClymonds H.S. to move to a more busy section of West Oakland. Thus we moved to the street off of the West Oakland BART (where the market is held today) 7th Street and Mandela Parkway, and we decided to rename the market to Mandela Farmers Market to make it easier for folks to know where our market was held - on Mandela Parkway. However, the mobetterfood.com web-site was always the official web-site of the market.

After two years of co-directing this collaboration, Mr. Roach realized Mo' Better Food agenda needed full attention and resigned as co-director of the West Oakland Food Project Collaborative to focus on Mo' Better Food's national healthy economics campaign.To symbolize this change, the Mandela Farmers Market name was renamed to our original name the Mo' Better Food Market.

Mr. Roach works with other organizations to further the mission of building healthy communities. Mr. Roach is the President of Bay Area Morehouse College Alumni Association, A board member of Urban Releaf, Steering commitee member of the Community Food and Justice Coalition, a co-founder of the Friends and Alumni of McClymonds High School, and board member of the YMCA Urban Services- Oakland.