Our food system is broken: agriculture contributes massively to water pollution; factory farmed meat accounts for 70 percent of our nation’s use of antibiotics; and our food system is making too many of us sick.
Rates of obesity and nutrition-related illnesses are on the rise as access to fresh, affordable food is declining, particularly in low-income communities of color.
To sow the seeds for change, in 2006 the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation joined with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to create Diversifying Leaderships for Sustainable Food Policy (DLSFP). This nationwide, three-year initiative supported ten people-of-color led organizations in rural and urban areas forging a more sustainable and just food system. In this unique funder-to-funder partnership, Kellogg made a $1.2 million grant to Noyes, which contributed an additional $535,000.
WE ACT for Environmental Justice used DLSFP funds to hire Sustainability Coordinator James Subudhi. Along with staff from the other nine organizations, Mr. Subudhi received training and technical assistance. In turn, he is training community leaders to assert their right to healthy food.
Among those leaders is Emma Jackson, a resident of Taft Houses in East Harlem. Ms. Jackson learned how supermarkets operate, why they have been closing, and how to bring them back. In June 2008, Ms. Jackson led a neighborhood tour to show how the closure of local supermarkets left community members with limited access to healthy foods. Beyond bananas and onions there was nothing fresh in sight.
“Without access to healthy food our health suffers,” said Ms. Jackson. She organized her neighbors and together they convinced the New York Housing Authority, which owned one of the closed groceries, to find another tenant. That fall, a supermarket reopened on the ground floor of her public housing development.
Research suggests the new supermarket will markedly improve the diets of community residents. “Black Americans reported increased intake of fruits and vegetables…corresponding to an average increase of 32% for each additional supermarket,” according to a 2002 study by Kimberly Morland, PhD, published in the American Journal of Public Health.
“Food Justice,” Mr. Subudhi says, “is about organizing people of color and low-income people for the production, distribution, and consumption of affordable and healthy food.” And organizing and nurturing community leaders, DLSFP successes show, can be a crucial step toward repairing our broken food system and creating healthy communities.