FOOD: A Basic Issue For Everyone

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The Community Food Security Movement
A Report by Christine Ahn

The following are some snapshots of what community food security looks like in the United States.

New York's Just Food
justfood.org	In 2003, 1.6 million people in New York state received emergency food, further stressing the soup kitchens and food pantries that fed 45 percent more people in 2002 than in 2000. And from 1987 to 1997, the state lost about a million acres of fertile farmland, displacing family farmers. In response to these crises, Just Food began connecting farmers with urban families in the New York City area.

Since 1996, Just Food has organized thirty community gardens and thirty-five CSAs, with each CSA supporting up to six regional farmers. During the harvest season, the CSA farmers deliver produce and meat--usually organic and always fresh--to a central distribution site in the city. According to Dr. Gussow, who chairs the Just Food board, demand has soared faster than local farmers can supply.

Boston's Food Project
thefoodproject.org	Transforming vacant lots into lush city farms is a crucial way to feed a rapidly growing urban population, and the Boston-based Food Project has become a national inspiration to other inner city communities.

In 1991, the first growing season yielded 4,000 pounds of food from 2.5 acres of detoxified soil. By 2001, the Food Project was growing 209,000 pounds of organic food on a twenty-oneacre farm and three city lots. The project donates 55 percent of the food to fifteen homeless shelters and soup kitchens, sells 5 percent at reasonable prices at inner city farmers' markets, and distributes the rest to 225 CSA shareholders.

The Food Project also gives youth a chance to learn urban farming, work in Boston homeless shelters, and run city farmers' markets. As youth coordinator Anim Steele puts it, "We need to involve young people because they will inherit our practices, and they need to learn that alternatives exist."

Oakland's Peoples' Grocery
peoplesgrocery.org	Hamburgers, pizza, Chinese take-out, and donuts are some of the most accessible foods for West Oakland, California's 30,000 predominantly African American and Latino residents. This impoverished neighborhood has just one grocery store, forty liquor stores, and a handful of fast food restaurants.

In response, community activists started Peoples' Grocery, a community garden and mobile market in the heart of West Oakland. They transformed a 4,000 square foot vacant lot into a garden that now grows seasonal fruits and vegetables and educates youth and residents about urban renewal, food justice, and revitalizing the local economy. They also operate a mobile market on wheels that runs on bio-diesel fuel and sells fresh produce, staple goods, and healthy snacks from local farmers and urban farmers' markets.

According to co-founder Brahm Ahmadi, Peoples' Grocery was founded "with the long-term goal of building community self-reliance in West Oakland. We've chosen food as an organizing tool for our work because it is personal and universal to everyone and is fundamental to the inner workings of a community."

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