All posts in Access category.
[Cross-posted at Bread for the City] As Bread for the City continues to increase the amount of fresh produce that we provide to our clients, people’s preferences for fresh food increase accordingly. Clients often want to know where they can find affordable fresh food — and we do have some good answers for them. Thanks [...]
Posted in AccessA number of DC area food lovers, educators, activists, and cyclists joined me this May for a tour of urban farms and community gardens around the city. What you may not have known is that along with us on the tour were the editor and photographer of a new, DC-focused, socially-minded magazine.
Posted in Access[Cross-posted at Bread for the City] You may have heard it first in the Washington Post, but we’re pleased to officially announce here that our Glean for the City program is expanding — into the city. That’s right: Glean for the City is now planning to forage from fruit trees growing right here in the [...]
Posted in AccessAya Community Markets (Aya) is a community-centered economic and holistic health experience that combines education, farmers’ markets and community supported sustainable agriculture to provide access to healthy food and improved nutrition in “food deserts” and underserved communities in Washington, DC.
Join us for our launch on Saturday July 30th from 11am until 5pm at Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church (3000 Penn. Ave. SE).
Aya’s physical farmers’ markets will be a vibrant gathering places and destination points where consumers will come to not only shop for produce, but will be able to access various vendors for goods and services for mental, spiritual and financial health. This holistic approach will attract customers in search of other health experiences such as yoga, exercise classes, or credit counseling which help to improve the community.
Aya Community Markets will offer fresh, local produce, flowers, prepared foods and handcrafted items directly to Ward 7 residents. In addition Aya will host a wide range of family and nutritional programs, including live entertainment, chef demonstrations and youth activities.
Aya will feature:
Visit http://dreamingoutloud.org/ayamarkets for more!
Over the past several months, I’ve been exploring what it might take to build a nourishing food system in DC. I’ve had the privilege of hearing ideas from different individuals and groups about what collaboration could look like and how something like a food policy council might help move the city as a whole in the right direction.
To me, the discussions have been exciting and the possibilities seem both endless and achievable. It’s also apparent that the work goes far beyond generating good policy ideas. Speaking with groups who’ve been living and working in the city for a long time, it becomes increasingly clear that as a white, young, relatively new arrival to the district, and someone who came from a pretty comfortable economic background, I need to spend some time reflecting on my identity and role.
It’s no secret that across the country, the impact of a broken food system is disproportionately felt by communities of color. In DC in particular, parts of the city with higher concentration of African Americans often have higher rates of poverty, lower access to healthy and affordable foods, and higher rates of the accompanying diet-related diseases.
Studies and facts are easy to find, yet less often do I find them accompanied by thoughtful analysis of why and of the reality of a racist food system that has been built and perpetuated throughout our nation’s and our city’s history. “Race & the Food System,” a project of WHY Hunger and Growing Food and Justice For All Initiative, explores some of that history and the present reality. From low-cost labor inputs from immigrant workers, to the discriminatory treatment of black farmers by the USDA, to the ongoing unequal wages and employment patterns across all aspects of the food system – it’s clear that race matters.
WHY Hunger and GFJI breaks it down: “The problem is systemic; therefore, the solution must be approached with an eye towards understanding those systems and how to change them.” So what does systemic change in DC look like? And how might something like a food policy council play a role?
As a starting place, it’s clear that white people like me must reflect on our identity (and the privileges that have come with it) and take responsibility for our place in an unjust system. Next, I hope we can prioritize listening and learning – about the history of food and racism in this city, about how ways of working on food politics might perpetuate some of those injustices, about work that’s already being done and ideas that people already have about how to fix it. (I’m excited about this week’s National Black Agricultural Awareness Week as one of those opportunities to reflect and learn. Learn more here )
We can gain strength for the long journey by knowing other cities have made progress – white people and people of color together building the kind of just, transparent, welcoming community needed to do this hard work. Some cities, like Detroit and Oakland, have explicitly built diverse representation and ownership into the mandate and mission of their food policy councils. Others have used participatory action research to engage as broad of a spectrum of impacted groups and individuals as possible in creating and implementing a ‘food systems plan.’ And some, like Toronto’s organized food community, took a few steps back through public conversations and gatherings, with the support of the Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative’s Toronto chapter.
The Community Food Security Coalition summarizes the aim: “In order to dismantle the structural racism within our food system, we must make a determined effort to cultivate and increase the leadership, voice, perspectives and demands of low-income communities of color within the food movement.” I hope that our work in DC can be shaped by that vision.
[Cross-posted on the Bread for the City blog]
Earlier this summer, Louise Thundercloud, Angie Stackhouse and I represented Bread for the City at the Community Food Security Coalition’s (CFSC) “From Neighborhood To Nation” Conference in Portland, OR. This event convened people from across the country who are working to promote local and state-level policies for healthier and more just food systems.
Set in a city whose mayor owns chickens and dedicates city hall land to the production of food for local homeless shelters, the conference had no shortage of government-driven food-policy role models. We learned about progressive and impressive urban agriculture policies and programs in Baltimore, healthy food systems resolutions in Cleveland, coordination across Michigan’s cities to identify shared infrastructure needs, and Seattle’s efforts to link local legislation to national Farm Bill policies.
Berkeley’s breakfast in a bin By Ed Bruske aka The Slow Cook When I worked in Berkeley’s central school kitchen a year ago one of the things that impressed me most was something I’d never heard of before: breakfast served in the classroom. Every morning at the crack of dawn we’d start loading plastic [...]
The answer is yes, and the school is the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School in Northeast Washington, DC. By: Andrea Northup, D.C. Farm to School Network Manager, and Anna Chute, D.C. Farm to School Network Intern Lisa Dobbs, Chef and Nutrition director at E.W. Stokes, will stop at nothing to make sure [...]
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