Bread for the City: Client Choice 2.0
We recently took the first step in an exciting new direction for our food pantry: opening up our menu so that clients can choose which foods they receive.
Carefully examining the results of this experiment, we arrived at 2 primary goals for our client choice endeavor: reduce cycle time and increase client-volunteer interaction. Our hunch was that these objectives can be best achieved together.
So last week, we took our second step in this great experiment.
This time, instead of our staff accompanying clients as they “shopped” through the pantry, we assigned volunteers to specific food stations. (These volunteers came from Elizabethtown College on alternative spring break). These helpers would greet each client at each station, politely explain the options and help clients load their bags.
Food Justice in DC & Oaxaca, Mexico
Synergy – where the sum is greater than the parts. If we can connect the dots at the grassroots level, we can amplify our collective voices. I recently returned from a Witness for Peace-sponsored delegation to Oaxaca, Mexico that focused on sustainability, trade policy, food sovereignty and the roots of migration. I returned with lots [...]
Students want healthy food and school gardens!
Students in Washington Youth Garden’s Garden Science program learned about the proposed DC Healthy Schools Act this past week.
We wrote letters to the City Council to express our support of this bill, a few of which you can read below. We will be submitting these letters of support to the DC City Council and will read a few of them during the public testimony period at the upcoming hearing on March 26.
Profiles in Fertility: Maintaining Garden Soil Organically
By Ed Bruske Contributing Editor For 4,000 years prior to the advent of factory-made fertilizers, the Chinese used every bit of organic matter they could lay their hands on–including their own excrement–to return to the soil the nitrogen and other nutrients their vegetable crops removed. It was only through meticulous attention to the cycle of terrestrial [...]
Posted in urban agricultureLetter from FRESHFARM to DC: Make WIC work!
We received this letter that Bernie Prince, co-founder of FRESHFARM Market, sent to Dr. Pierre Vigilance of DC’s Department of Health earlier this week.
Ms. Prince notes that the new WIC Fruit and Vegetable Cash Voucher Program — which enables low-income mothers to redeem food assistance coupons at farmers markets — is currently limited by a registration process that hampers farmer participation. As reported here recently, farmers had only one opportunity (this past Wednesday) to train and register to accept WIC vouchers. Ms. Prince notes that there are other options to increase community participation in this promising program.
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March 9, 2010
Dr. Pierre Vigilance
D.C. Department of Health
Washington, D.C.
Dear Dr. Vigilance:
I am writing to you on behalf of WIC recipients in Washington, D.C. and Maryland to urge you to expand access to fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables for low-income families. At FRESHFARM Markets, we were pleased to learn that D.C. will authorize market vendors to accept WIC Fruit and Vegetable Cash Value Voucher coupons (FVC). We applaud you for participating in this new program, and appreciate the District’s continued participation in the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP).
Unfortunately, based on feedback from farmers, we are concerned that the new FVC program will not reach its full potential here. One major hurdle is the training to participate. As you may be aware, there is currently one training session available, on March 10, in Greenbelt, MD. The training runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will require a two- to three-hour drive for many of our market farmers. The very same training for farmers market producers in Maryland covers all the necessary material in about one hour. In addition, while D.C. WIC farmers market coordinator Sabrina Lewis has scheduled just one training, James Butler, of Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, is planning multiple training sessions on 13 different dates in Greenbelt, Annapolis, Hagerstown, Baltimore, and Denton.
Based on a preliminary survey of farmers and our own experience, Maryland’s approach will significantly increase farmer participation. A member of the group DC Food for All, Daniel White, has conducted interviews with four of the farms that are most ubiquitous at markets within the District. One resounding finding: Farmers will not take part in a new or existing WIC program if it requires a large time investment and small earnings. The current training opportunities, in addition to other complaints such as the complex process of using WIC checks and delays in reimbursement, could limit the number of farmers willing to sell to low-income mothers.
I believe there is a simple step you can take to improve farmer participation in the WIC programs at farmers markets. Maryland and D.C. could craft an agreement to accept training for the FVC and FMNP across District and state lines.
What’s on your plate? A panel.
Last Wednesday, the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) held a panel discussion in Hyattsville, MD in an effort to spread awareness about food access issues beyond the geographical borders of the District. The event was significant because it demonstrated that people within the health profession are sometimes unaware of “where their food comes from.”
The panel was convened by Tambra Stevenson, Chair of the MWPHA’s Food & the Environment Committee (and DC Food For All contributor). Also on hand were Carl Rollins of Common Good City Farm (another DC Food For All contributor), Aileen Orlino, a GWU graduate student studying public health, and myself, also a public health graduate student. The topic was “What’s on your plate? Are today’s food policies making you sick?”
While non-organic healthy foods sat in the background, a yummy dynamic organic dialogue took place between the panel and audience—both of which were very diverse. Questions ranged from “Do I have to eat organic…I hear it is healthier, but I cannot afford it?” to “What are hoop houses” and “So are there PCBs in fish?”
In a wide-ranging, informative free for all the many aspects of our broken factory farm-focused food system were explored. Tambra outlined many of the problems: the tragedy that even though the system has successfully created a supply of low-cost food much of it is high in sugar, salt and lacks nutritional value.
We have traded health for an abundant supply. She also noted that we as a society can “Pay now, or pay later.” Healthy food can be more expensive but poorer health outcomes and decreased longevity are an overlooked societal cost. Moreover, “We need to stop our addiction with foods high in sugar that are like a new crack,” Tambra said.
Let’s make a garden.
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It’s almost spring time – and we are so ready to get gardening! Fortunately, City Blossoms has an exciting new project in the works.
There’s a plot of vacant land on Marion Street, NW — located just behind Bread for the City, between P and Q and 6th and 7th streets, less than a block away from the Kennedy Recreation Center — that will soon be transformed into an intergenerational community garden with educational opportunities for children, youth and adults. (See the beautiful artists’ rendering below.)
And City Blossoms needs our help to make that transformation happen! So on Saturday March 20th at 11AM, the DC Food For All will host a volunteer Garden Gang day. As inspired by the recent NYT profile of “crop mobs,” we’re looking for 15-20 volunteers to help prepare the site for construction and the growing season ahead. We’ll spend a few hours working together on things like: 
- sheet mulching!
- leveling!
- pulling out very very stubborn old weeds!
- setting up a fence!
- picking up trash!!
- and some planting!
So we need you — as well as any tools (large shovels, rakes, pick axes, large forks) that you may be able to provide for the afternoon.
RSVP to DCFoodForAll@gmail.com. Let’s get gardening!
Cooking for Peace
DC Food Not Bombs is an adhocratic group that shares vegan and vegetarian meals to promote healthy eating, peace, non-violence, community, and the reduction of waste in our economies. Barrett Jones made this short video of some of the behind-the-scenes preparation and serving.
[Cross posted to DC Food Not Bombs]
