The Health of the Nation: New Article on Regional Foodsheds

After recently attending a Food Empowerment conference at Rutgers in Newark, I was left to consider the necessity of  cities to secure sustainable and resilient foodsheds and the types of policies that would go hand in hand with supporting these structures.  In researching ideas I came across a new 2011 law review article from the Fordham Environmental Law Review: Regional Foodsheds: Are Our Local Zoning and Land Use Regulations Healthy?  The article explains some of the reasons why its so important to focus on agriculture as a solution to our recent environmental, health and social equity issues and also inventories some local communities efforts (within the USA) and the policies they are experimenting with to create and sustain local foodsheds.

The most crucial point the article makes, and one which policy makers, activists and local communities should take note of, if they want to create an inclusive, broad reaching and sustainable foodsystem, is the idea that planning for regional foodsheds should be a collaborative process: “Regional foodshed planning must be comprehensive, and it should ―approach food not just [as] a commodity but as an infrastructural system. . . that needs to be managed and considered in all urban and regional planning efforts.”

Currently, in most situations, food is viewed exclusively as a commodity.  This understanding of food is as unsustainable and unhealthy as it is  incorrect, and we should be as concerned about the present dysfunctional state of our food supply system as we are with other forms of our crumbling infrastructure - roads and foreign-oil dependence.  Consider our current dependent on foreign oil and how stressful the situation has become, now imagine being dependent upon foreign food.  We would soon find ourselves in the situation faced by the majority of the global south, where crops are grown for export and the farmers growing these crops cannot afford to buy imported staple crops to feed themselves.  It is past time to consider how we can improve our current food system structure, and our relationship with food itself.

The article begins by providing an overview of local and regional foodsheds, reviewing not only the environmental and public health benefits, but also highlighting the economic benefits:

In 2009, U.S. households spent more than $526 billion on food produced outside of the home, indicating a significant economic market for locally grown and processed food. Local sourcing can supply a significant amount of food. A recent Michigan State University study posits that by converting vacant urban land to a host of urban agriculture related…, Detroit residents could be supplied with 76% of their vegetables and more than 40% of their fruits… Strong regional food markets economically support labor-intensive small and medium sized farms, which have been overtaken in the past several decades by mechanized, large-scale industrial agricultural operations. Local economies are also reinforced as the foodshed movement spurs the need for local food processing facilities and agri-businesses providing supplies, equipment and services… In addition to job creation and economic development, regional food markets reduce transportation costs and provide some insulation from volatility in the global food market. Furthermore, regional markets for production and processing can decrease costs for healthy foods, which can in turn produce economic benefits by preventing health care costs from diseases associated with poor diet and obesity.

Following this overview, the authors go on to detail strategies that local governments might attempt: creating food policy councils/task forces and incorporating food policies into their comprehensive planning.

Some local comprehensive plans contain sections…that touch on regional food policies, such as agriculture, sustainability, or economic development elements. For example, in Marin County, CA the plan supports “the production and marketing of healthy, fresh, locally grown food.”

The article also delves into a number of other policies being tried across the country, including policies that many larger cities (including NYC) have begun to explore: employing the purchasing power of local governments (and also large institutions):

Procurement policies that favor locally grown foods can help establish a market to support regional food production. In Cleveland, for example, an ordinance was passed in 2010 that requires the commissioner of purchases and supplies and each contracting department to develop a list of local food producers and businesses and to ―endeavor to maximize purchases from these sources. It also favors contract bidders that are locally based and purchase twenty percent of their food locally. Albany County, New York, has also enacted a policy to increase the percentage of local food consumed at the county‘s residential healthcare and correctional facilities. The policy recognizes that locally produced food supports the regional economy, requires less oil and gas, and provides nutritional benefits. Furthermore, in early 2011, a proposal was introduced in New York City to increase purchases of New York state food by city agencies.

The article is a great general starting place for anyone wanting to view a broad array of possibilities for their local communities.  It is also an invaluable tool for those in Newark’s city government and others involved in the redevelopment of the city’s food system and the new sustainability plan.

FoodCorps Launches National Service Program to Transform School Food

Fifty young people from around the United States are convening today in Wisconsin to launch FoodCorps, the new national service organization dedicated to addressing childhood obesity and diet-related disease by building school gardens and developing Farm to School programs.

Chosen from over 1,200 applicants, the first class of FoodCorps Service Members will spend the week training for yearlong placements across 10 states: Arkansas, Arizona, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon. The orientation includes a full day at the renowned Growing Power Community Food Center, Will Allen’s innovative urban farm project, where they will receive hands-on instruction about building gardens, educating children about healthy food, and more. 

“These young leaders are dedicating a year of their lives to help give kids a relationship with healthy food that we hope will last a lifetime,” said Curt Ellis, co-founder and executive director of FoodCorps, and co-creator of the award-winning food documentary, “King Corn.”

Across the nation and the political spectrum, people understand that Americans and especially our children are in a health crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimates that the number of obese children has tripled in the last 30 years, and for the first time in history the majority of Americas poor are not starving, but rather suffering from numerous diseases connected to overconsumption of calories, sugars, fats, and sodium.

“As a nation, we are tightening our fiscal belt, yet health-related obesity costs are projected to reach $344 billion by 2018. FoodCorps is a sound investment in a healthy future and gives our kids a chance to beat back the painful and costly epidemic of diet-related disease,” said co-founder and FoodCorps Program Director Debra Eschmeyer, herself a produce farmer and former outreach director of the National Farm to School Network.

In addition to establishing school gardens, FoodCorps Service Members will work with local food service directors to source more school meal ingredients from local farmers. They will also provide nutrition education to students.

Founded in 2010, FoodCorps is a national nonprofit organization that seeks to address the trend of childhood obesity and diet-related disease by increasing vulnerable children's knowledge of, engagement with, and access to healthy food, while preparing the next generation of leaders for careers in food, health and agriculture.  The centerpiece of our work is an AmeriCorps public service program that places highly motivated young leaders in limited-resource communities of need where they conduct hands-on nutrition education, build and tend school gardens, and bring high-quality local food into public school cafeterias. 

For more information, click here

Growing Nutrients and Renewed Hope in New Orleans

A new video shows the hope and renewed energy going into rebuilding New Orleans through a group of gardeners in the Treme neighborhood.

The Perennial Plate Episode 57: Lord, Lord, Lord from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

Since Katrina a multiplicity of urban gardens and farms have been popping up all over the city as people seek ways to eat healthier and to re-imagine the city's landscape.

The Future of Farming: Oxfam Release and Olivier De Schutter's Address to Congress

Today Oxfam launched it's GROW campaign with a panel is Washington, D.C. with special guests Academy Award-nominated actor Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, In America), UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter, bestselling author on world hunger and cofounder of The Small Planet Institute Frances Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet is celebrating its 40th anniversary), Dr. Cheryl Smith, President of Trillium and immediate past Chair of the Social Investment Forum, and Oxfam America President Ray Offenheiser.


Click here to listen in: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/grow-campaign


Tomorrow De Schutter  will present the findings from his report on agroecology and the right to food to the US House of Representatives.

Needed: A New Conceptualization of Agriculture

It is a mistake to think of agriculture as simply about productivity. Agriculure provides employment and livelihoods, it underpins food quality, food safety and nutrition, and it allows food choices and cultural diversity. It is necessary for water quality, broader ecosystem health,  and even carbon sequestration. Agriculture must necessarily be integrated with the many needs of humans and ecosystems.

Spring Seedlings for Summer Sustenance: Planting Round #2 in Newark

Last Sunday the Tabernacle Garden in Newark planted their summer seedlings as a part of a day of celebration over the gardens initial success.  As a part of Newark's Interfaith Week the tabernacle opened it's doors to the neighboring community and invited them to share in celebrating the projects progress so far, as well as plans for expansion in the following year.  Rabbi Curtis Caldwell kicked off the event with a welcoming speech, inviting the entire community to join in both the planting and harvesting of the garden, as well as the larger vision of creating a community project to serve as a catalyst and centerpiece for rejuvenating the community.  

Following a short commemorative video, which highlighted the initial planting with local Peshine Avenue Preparatory and TEAM Charter schools, the Rabbi invited up partner institution Planting Seeds of Hope to introduce the broader project goals to the community.  Emilio Panasci, local planner and representative for PSOH and Open Communities, explain the current on-site collaboration between the local schools, government offices, urban agricultural institutions and the faith community as well as the desire to expand the current project through the development of a new community development corporation based around the urban agricultural project and it’s potential offshoots.  

This potential was fleshed out in a brief discussion of example projects across other regions led by Ms. Payne, the teams sustainability and agricultural development consultant, and highlighted the cohesive potential of urban agricultural institutions to promote integration of diverse populations around community gardening activities, the possibility of addressing local economic issues through agriculturally based business ventures, and the potential for the envisioned educational center to serve in promoting multiple urban justice goals: increasing food access and nutritional education, as well as enhancing local public space and creating a haven for civic action and community activism.  

In closing, Stephen Panasci, the group’s landscape architect debuted the proposed garden design to be phased in over the next year.  The plan included the expansion of the current raised beds, as well as the addition of an Urban Orchard and various learning areas.  

The brief overview and call for community collaboration was followed by a meal prepared by the in-house Chef, Shonda, and featured nutritious dishes based on the vegetables and herbs the tabernacle expects to harvest from their garden later this year.  Following the presentation, local children and parents were invited to participate in the spring seedling planting.  The children were given a hands-on opportunity to connect with locally grown foods as well as the opportunity to learn about the life-cycle of plants and some growing basics.  Community members were also invited to participate in funding the future of the project with a mini-seedling sale, which took place throughout the planting.

A preview of the seedlings to be planted

Preparing the new beds

Tomatoes for the summer community dinners

Staking out our peas and beans

Learning how to loosen the roots

Planting Marigolds to scare off pests

Companion planting with onions and eggplants

Water for our thirsty transfers

All this and more in a days work!

Why Buy Local?

A new Iconograph by eLocal lays out the triple bottom line on why consumers should buy local foods, looking at the social, economic and environmental impacts that a shift towards local buying would bring.

(Click to enlarge)

Source: eLocal.com

Growing Community In Newark: Ground Breaking Event

Sunday marked the groundbreaking event for the Tabernacle Garden in Newark, New Jersey.  A community building venture hosted by the Tabernacle, the Garden will be open to the entire community and will be based in a partnership with the local Team Academy and Peshine Schools.

Some of the participants, including Tabernacle and community members, Planting Seeds of Hope members and local students.

Students choosing what to plant and learning why we were planting it now.

Cleaning out the beds for planting.

Planting our herb borders (Dill, Parsley, Basil, and Cilantro!)

Getting our fingers dirty at a young age: Community Mini-Gardeners!

More to Come Soon!

A Moveable Feast - Green Carts and NYC

An Edible Schoolyard Grows in Brooklyn

Yesterday Historic P.S. 39 The Henry Bristow Landmark School in Park Slope, Brooklyn launched an innovative Edible Community Garden (ECG) pilot program. The program plans to integrate the garden into the school’s curriculum, food program, and the surrounding community and is based in an edible micro-garden, showcasing modern planting methods appropriate for urban challenges. 

The growing obesity epidemic across the US has highlighted the critical link between children’s health and nutrition, and improving school food has been recognized as one important area where cities can tackle the problem at a local level.  School gardens have been recognized as engaging, hands on solutions to this issue. With the stated goal of engaging students in all aspects of farm to fork activities from inception to harvest, the project hopes to foster curiosity and a desire to understanding where food comes from in the students and community, as well as encouraging healthy lifestyle choices, and teach them in a hands-on way what it means to be environmental stewards.  

Currently, outside of several well-publicized and intensively funded school garden initiatives, few examples exist in the US that can quickly and affordably enable communities to tackle nutritional and food justice issues right now.  The pilot project hopes to team P.S. 39 staff with parents and community members in order to build a showcase school garden that aims to become a template and inclusive model of urban micro-farming for schools, homes, and businesses across the country, all within a 6 month time period.

P.S. 39 ECG intends to implement a garden-based learning curriculum where scientific principles come to life. The edible garden will be used to engage students with hands-on learning experiences from ‘seed to plate’ throughout the growing seasons.  The elementary classes will study, plant, maintain, harvest and enjoy the edible plants through curriculum-tied activities, learning about scientific principals through hands on experience. 

The pilot program will be based in pioneering sub-irrigated micro-garden planter technology, ideal for urban environments. Sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs), store water and oxygen below the potting mix and roots, conserving water and nutrients, and are therefore more accessible and environmentally friendly alternative to conventional gardens.   The beneficial closed loop system dramatically increases yields, and aboveground planter system is ideal for urban lots without open soil areas or with possibly contaminated soil.   Through the use of readily available recycled containers such as shipping pallets and soda bottles, SIP design makes ‘plots’ portable and easy to maintain, as well as, providing an economically efficient solutions for communities with limited resources

The Edible Community Garden Pilot Program represents an integral component of a larger district-wide movement to become a pilot district for wellness in the schools.  Other local schools are also growing food in school gardens, implementing salad bars and healthier menus in their cafeterias, reducing styrofoam and waste, integrating food choices into the curriculum, and helping families learn to cook healthier meals.

Hopefully this innovative project will prove inspirational to other schools in the New York area and beyond, but also show that these projects can be successful even with limited time, funding and experience, so that all communities see that enjoying the fruits of their labors is within their reach.

Funding Food and Farming: Obama’s Budget for FY 2012

President Obama announced his proposed budget for the fiscal year 2012 this morning.  This years budget specifically provides $23.9 billion in discretionary funding, a decrease of $3.2 billion, for the United States Department of Agriculture  (USDA). In keeping with the Administrations priorities, investments are targeted towards renewable energy and key research areas.   Savings are to be created across a number of key areas: reducing direct payments to high-income farmers, refocusing USDA’s homeownership programs, and targeting USDA conservation programs.

Below are some overall funding highlights and those directly pertaining to the USDA, and those which will most directly effect policy related to food and the food movement: 

Local and Regional Food Systems & Agriculture

• Agriculture and Food Research Initiative - Increases funding to $325 million and targets increases or research in areas that are key to American leadership: human nutrition and obesity reduction, food safety, sustainable bioenergy, global food security, and climate change.
• Farm to School Tactical Team —An increase of $2 million is sought to support work at the USDA between agencies to facilitate the building of supporting linkages between schools and local producers.
• Healthy Food Financing Initiative —Provides $35 million as a public-private grant and loan program to bring grocery stores and other healthy food retailers to underserved communities.
• Rural Development Regional Proposal—USDA is again proposing to dedicate 5% of several rural development programs to the development of local and regional food systems.
• Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program —received $5 million in mandatory funding as provided by the 2008 Farm Bill.
• Value-Added Producer Grant Program —The Administration proposes $20 million in discretionary funding, for a wide-range of value-added projects.
• Farmers’ Market Promotion Program —$10 million in mandatory funding as provided by the 2008 Farm Bill.
• SNAP Point of Sale Devices—As proposed in the FY 2011 budget, the President again proposes $4 million to equip farmers’ markets with wireless EBT terminals.
•  Rural Housing Assistance – refocuses on programs that work better, providing 170,000 new homeownership opportunities, of which at least 30,000 are expected to go to low income rural borrowers.

Nutrition & Hunger Programs

• 2012 Farm Bill —The Obama Administration is committed to working with Congress to reauthorize the 2008 Farm Bill and simplify programs, improve access, target payments, and enhance program performance and efficiency. As part of this collaboration, USDA will also work with the Congress to improve access to SNAP benefits, program operations, and program integrity.
• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) —$73.2 billion in mandatory funding. The Administration re-proposes to temporarily suspend the time benefit limits for certain working-age, low-income adults without dependents for an additional fiscal year. The Budget also proposes to restore the SNAP cuts that were used to offset the costs of Child Nutrition Reauthorization.
• Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) —$7.4 billion was proposed, an increase of approximately $138 million above the 2011 level. This funding will support a monthly average of 9.6 million participants in the WIC program, as well as $60 million to help states work toward implementation of EBT, which is mandated by 2020.
• Child Nutrition Reauthorization—The budget funds changes from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 , as they become effective in 2012. Improving access to food for children and improving their eating habits are top priorities.
• Increasing Access to Child Nutrition Programs—New school breakfast expansion grants and state childhood hunger challenge grants funded at $10 million and $25 million, to increase access to Child Nutrition programs, and combat child hunger.
• Healthier US School Challenge —Funding will be increased to $1.5 million in FY 2012 so that work to encourage schools to take a leadership role in helping students learn to make healthier eating and lifestyle choices will be strengthened.
•  WIC and Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Programs—Both programs were level funded at $20 million and $21 million, respectively.  
• Hunger Free Community Grants—$5 million was proposed for the grants to focus on promotion, outreach, demonstration projects, and technical assistance to support communities in exploring local strategies to prevent hunger.
• Congressional Hunger Center Fellowship—$3 million included to level fund the Bill Emerson and Mickey Leland Hunger Fellowship program.

Conservation and Energy

• Renewable and clean energy  - Invests $6.5 billion to spur the creation of high-value jobs, make America more energy independent, and drive global competitiveness in the sector.
• Forest restoration -  Maximizes efficiency and effectiveness of efforts to improve forest health and resiliency by combining and streamlining multiple programs.
• Wetlands Reserve Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program – Provides funds to restore and protect 271,158 acres of wetlands and provide over $1.4 billion for conservation assistance. 

However, not all proposals were positive, the President’s 2011 budget would eliminate funding for two important programs, Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development Center (HUFED) (http://www.wallacecenter.org/our-work/current-initiatives/healthy-urban-food-enterprise-development-center ) and the School Community Garden pilot program (Both these programs were funded at $1 million in FY 2010.

Currently, the FY 2012 Budget must still pass through Congress, who will make the final funding decisions.  (At this time Congress has yet to decided on government spending levels for FY 2011).  While Congress and the President agree that cuts need to be made in order to reduce the federal deficit, their opinions diverge around differ is how and where the cuts will occur. Therefore, many of the above sums are likely to change before the budget is finalized. 

For the full detail of the FY 2012 Budget, click here.

For PBS coverage of President Obama’s budget address, click here.

For NY Times coverage of the 2012 budget, click here. 

Destruction of the Garden of Eden

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the destruction of New York’s Garden of Eden, an earthwork created by Adam Purple in the 1970’s and 80’s.  The Garden once covered five city lots on Manhattan’s Lower East Side between Eldrige and Forsythe St. 

In 1975 much of the Lower East Side was a crime-ridden wasteland, but Adam Purple looked around him and saw the opportunity to reclaim the vacant spaces around him with the natural.  Purple had taken over the lot for the landlords who had abandoned them and left them vacant.  He set out to plant a garden behind his tenement building at a time when much of the area around him was being raised. The site where he began his project was covered in rubble from the demolition of two adjacent tenement buildings.  By the end of the project, Adam would have cleared almost 5,000 cubic feet of debris using only simple tools and his own muscle power. He also set about creating his own topsoil from materials on-site and around the cit.  By combining traditional composting with horse manure from central park he was able to create a fertile growing material which was eventually home to many crops, fruit bushes and flowers, including over 100 rose bushes and 45 fruit and nut trees. (Adam made daily seven-mile round trips on his bicycle to bring carriage-horse manure to the Garden, carrying about 60 pounds on each trip from central park.)

By 1986, his world famous eARThWORK had grown to 15,000 square feet and over 5 city lots. The circular design of the site meant that as nearby tenements continued to fall, the garden could grow exponentially with the addition of each new ring of plant beds. Adam, a long-term social activist and urban gardener AND revolutionary, “zenvisioned” the Garden eventually expanding and pushing out all the skyscrapers of the city.

In the early 80’s the Garden was slated for demolition to make way for a federally funded housing project.  At the time support poured in from various sources, including many prominent New Yorkers who wrote letters and delivered statements of support for Adam and the Garden.  In 1984 the Storefront for Art and Architecture in SoHo hosted an exhibition called “Adam’s House in Paradise” which showcased various alternative designs that would have spared the Garden or incorporated it into the new structure.  Unfortunately the city paid no heed to the protests and The Garden of Eden was razed on January 8, 1986.   It took 2 days for a bulldozer to break through the outside wall of the garden and another hour and fifteen minutes for a highway leveling machine to raise the agricultural masterpiece sheltered inside.  At the time the city had never recognized the site as anything other than a vacant lot (a problem still faced by many NYC community gardens). The new housing project did not include an apartment for Adam or space for a new garden.

The Garden of Eden was destroyed 25 years ago and the FusionArts Museum aims to ensure that Adam Purple and his unique artform are not forgotten, and are instead revived in theis time of pertinent urban discussion about the future forms our city takes. Documentation of the expansion of the Garden from 1978 to 1985 (by Harvey Wang), as well as a few rare prints of Adam’s own 1975-76 negatives will be on display in February at.

FusionArts Museum (Gallery B),
 57 Stanton Street, New York

February 2-20, 2011


Opening Reception: February 3 from 6-9 pm


For more information:, click here.

To hear an interview with Adam conducted for the StoryCorps Oral History Project, click here. 

To view a gallery of photographs of the Garden, click here.