The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust of Australia Report by – Peta Christensen – 2004 Churchill Fellow To study overseas developments in urban agriculture and food security focussing on community garden projects and community markets in low income communities. Peta Christensen Community Gardens Support Worker Cultivating Community PO Box 8, Abbotsford Victoria 3067 0411 899 618 peta@cultivatingcommunity.org.au
I understand that the Churchill Trust may publish this Report, either in hard copy or on the internet or both, and consent to such publication. I indemnify the Churchill Trust against any loss, costs or damages it may suffer arising out of any claim or proceedings made against the Trust in respect of or arising out of the publication of any Report submitted to the Trust and which the Trust places on a website for access over the internet. I also warrant that my Final Report is original and does not infringe the copyright of any person, or contain anything which is, or the incorporation of which into the Final Report is, actionable for defamation, a breach of any privacy law or obligation, breach of confidence, contempt of court, passing-off or contravention of any other private right or of any law. Signed
Dated
Contents 1. Introduction and Acknowledgements 2. Executive Summary 3. Programme 4. Introduction 5. San Francisco 6. Brazil 7. Toronto 8. New York 9. Denmark 10. Conclusions & Recommendations 11. Bibliography
1. Introduction and Acknowledgements In 2004 my partner, Chris Ennis, and I applied for a Churchill Fellowship. Having similar fields of interest, work and passions in the areas of urban agriculture and food security we hoped that at least one of us would be successful knowing that the two of us would benefit enormously from the opportunity of travelling overseas to investigate food projects. Although I was the successful applicant, this wonderful journey was as useful for Chris and his work as it was for me – so in a way the Churchill Trust got two fellows for the price of one! Having worked for a small NGO, Cultivating Community (CC), in community garden projects in Melbourne public housing communities for the past five years I had witnessed first hand the potential that growing food in the city had. These garden projects address issues of hunger for low income participants, empower gardeners and build confidence in disadvantaged communities. More than just a 2x4m plot these gardens bring people together from different cultures in what are often difficult times lifting spirits and helping people to feel a connection to their food source and the rhythms of the natural world. In the year before we left CC had begun to think about the high prevalence of food insecurity in public housing communities and look at ways to increase access to fresh food for everyone living on the estates instead of just the participants in the community gardens projects. We began a not-for-profit fresh food market on the Fitzroy Estate and wondered about ways that we could tie the market and urban agriculture projects together, how we could get young people and unemployed people involved and how we could support small local family farmers at the same time. In these investigations I came across many projects in the United States, Canada, Brazil and Denmark that were addressing these very issues through inspirational food programs tackling these issues of food justice for all. Many thanks to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust of Australia for providing this valuable and unique opportunity to look at these projects close up and to see the potential of what we could achieve here in Australia. I would also like to express my gratitude and appreciation to my referees who are each inspiring community leaders and teachers to me, Basil Natoli, Greg Milne and Meredith Freeman. On our trip so many people welcomed us with open arms, open homes, open hearts and fountains of information along the way – this journey would not have been the beautiful and awesome experience it was without you, your generosity, friendship and kindness blew us away time and time again: Cindy Lang and Lola, Dave, Galen and George, the People’s Grocery, Willow and City Slickers, Tiffany and Farm Fresh Choice, Joy Moore, Amy and the Ecology Centre, Daria, Daniel and Spiral Gardens, Beebo of the Berkeley Community Gardens Collaborative, David and Mo Better Foods, Lee and Wayne of Tierra Vegetables, Martin Prechtel, Edson and Selma, Rafael at the Curitiba tourist office, Cecilia Rocha & the Canadians, Rodica, Anna, Simeon, Marcos and all at REDE & CAUSA, Kathleen and Just Food, Roger and the honey bees, the La Familia Verde gardeners, Anim and the Boston Food Project, Miriam and John and Community Markets, Adam and the Clinton Community Garden, Mark, Flor, Siobhan, Daphne, Tati and Issac, Jen, Laura and all at FoodShare, Anil and Kevin, Caroline, Carolin and the Flower Fairies, Charles and the Stop, Kim and Making Connections, Anan and the African Food Basket, Wayne Roberts, Lara and Del, Wendy, Nina, Finn and Carolina, Tanta Greta, Sana and Henrik, Snix and James, Eileen in NY, Amy and Ann and everybody else who helped us out along the way. Also many thanks to Cultivating Community and CERES for your ongoing support and patience and to all of our friends and family! Thanks to Chris for his insights, instincts, wisdom, love and humour – what an adventure we had! Special thanks to Gem for being a great camera lady and travel companion.
2. Executive Summary Name: Peta Christensen Position: Community Gardens Support Worker Address: Cultivating Community PO Box 8 Abbotsford, Victoria 3067 Telephone: 0411 899 618 Email: peta@cultivatingcommuntiy.org.au Fellowship Objective To study overseas developments in urban agriculture and food security focussing on community garden projects and community markets in low income communities. Fellowship Highlights 1. The People’s Grocery, Oakland, California USA – a dynamic and youthful project working in creative and interesting ways to address issues of hunger, education and employment. Their mobile grocery store and Food Justice tour were strong highlights. 2. Farmers Markets, San Francisco and New York USA – vibrant and diverse outdoor fresh food shopping alternatives that are accessible by all. Accepting food stamps and other welfare program initiatives, these markets ensured that low income people could access the freshest, affordable produce possible whilst supporting local small family farms. 3. REDE, Belo Horizonte Brazil – an innovative and progressive organisation genuinely and powerfully working with local people to educate and empower them to become community leaders. These newly trained leaders in return teach their neighbours and families urban agriculture and healthy diet alternatives to help address issues of hunger and nutrition in disadvantaged communities. 5. FoodShare, Toronto Canada – one of the largest food security organisations in North America, FoodShare is addressing food justice issues on every level from urban agriculture and the Good Food Box program to policy and education. 6. Making Connections, Toronto Canada – based at a food bank, this program creates connections between low income city people and local family farms. The program promotes local family farms and utilises their less than perfect or excess produce by collecting it directly from the farm and distributing it through the food bank. A highlight of this program was attending a gleaning tour in a strawberry patch. 7. Just Food, New York USA – another holistic program working to educate community leaders and use a wide variety of programs to increase food security and promote food justice. A highlight of this program was their community gardener run farmers market and fresh food stand. 8. Hydespjaeldet, Copenhagen Denmark – an amazing low income housing estate that had become a model in sustainability through the efforts of a creative and dedicated team of tenant volunteers. The estate included community gardens, a sizeable collective urban agriculture project, grey and black water treatment programs, an organic café, a clothing swap shop, sheep, chickens and an impressive community recycling and rubbish sorting centre. Findings The community gardens and city farms network in Australia is strong and established. Through developing relationships between these networks, local government planners and health workers, other agencies and organisations concerned with health & food security and local family farmers we can create a stronger, more sustainable local food network that improves access to fresh food for all and creates vibrant, strong communities. Some key features of these sustainable local food networks are: • strong relationships between key stakeholders – formation of local food networks • community/regional food policy development • education, training and skill sharing • ongoing financial food subsidies for low income earners These findings will be disseminated through: • oral presentations to local councils, relevant conferences and interested organisations. • A documentary film including key interviews and footage of projects visited. • The availability of catalogued film footage and other written materials gathered on the journey to Cultivating Community and CERES colleagues. These findings will be implemented through: • application of some findings to existing Cultivating Community programs • encouraging other organisations and local governments to adopt initiatives • research funding opportunities to implement new programs
3. Programme NB: As I extended my time overseas to 6 months, there are too many places visited to describe all of them in detail in the main body of the report. However I have listed most of them here for interested readers. Date 30/4/05 – 14/5/05
Where West Oakland California USA West Oakland California USA Berkeley California USA Berkeley California USA Berkeley California USA West Oakland California USA Berkeley California USA Oakland California USA Berkeley California USA Berkeley California USA San Francisco California USA California USA
23/5/05 Curitiba – Brazil 30/5/05
Project Name The People’s Grocery City Slicker Farms
Contact Malaika Edwards & Brahm Ahmadi www.peoplesgrocery.org Willow cityslickerfarms@riseup.net
Farm Fresh Choice
Tiffany Golden www.ecologycenter.org/ffc/
Ecology Centre
www.ecologycenter.org
Berkeley Farmers Market
www.ecologycenter.org/bfm/
Mo Better Foods & Mandela Farmers Market Karl Linn Community Garden
David Roach www.mobetterfood.org
Sol
Berkeley Community Gardens Collaborative www.ecologycetner.org www.oaklandsol.org
Spiral Gardens
www.spiralgardens.org
Berkeley Food Policy Council
Joy Moore www.berkeleyfood.org
Centre for Ecoliteracy
www.ecoliteracy.org
Tierra Vegetables
Wayne & Lee James www.tierravegetables.com
City of Curitiba *Urban Agriculture Program *Citizenship Street *Cambio Verde
Edson Rivelino Pereira rivelino@smab.curitiba.pr.gov.br
31/5/05 Belo Horizonte – Brazil 10/6/05 Belo Horizonte Brazil
16/6/05 New York – New York 21/6/05 USA New York New York USA New York New York USA 22/6/05 – 26/6/05 1/7/05 – 14/7/05
Boston Mass USA Toronto Ontario Canada Toronto Ontario Canada Toronto Ontario Canada Toronto Ontario Canada Toronto Ontario Canada Toronto Ontario Canada Toronto Ontario Canada Toronto Ontario Canada
REDE Centre for Studies in Food Security – Ryerson University – Student Study Trip *Popular Restaurant *Fome Zero *Bolsa Familia *”One Bag” Market *School Meals Program Clinton Community Garden
Rodica Weitzman Seg.alimentar@rede-mg.org.br www.rede-mg.org.br Cecilia Rocha www.ryerson.ca/~foodsec/ www.fomezero.gov.br
www.clintoncommunitygarden.org
Community Markets Farmers Markets
Miriam Haas www.communitymarkets.biz
Just Food *La Familia Verde *East New York Farmers Market The Food Project
Kathleen McTigue www.justfood.org Anim Steel www.thefoodproject.org
Plant a Row Grow a Row
www.growarow.org
Making Connections
Kim Colbran www.northyorkharvestfoodbank.com
Food Share
Debbie Fields www.foodshare.net
The Stop
Charles Levkoe www.thestop.org
Toronto Food Policy Council
Wayne Roberts www.toronto.ca/health/tfpc
Ryerson University – Centre for Food Security Dufferin Grove Park
Cecilia Rocha www.ryerson.ca/~foodsec/
African Food Basket
www.africanfoodbasket.com
www.dufferinpark.ca
Toronto Ontario Canada 14/7/05 Chicago – Illinois 17/7/05 USA 24/7/05 Hoeje Taastrup – Denmark 3/8/05 Albertslund Denmark Denmark Copenhagen Denmark Albertslund Denmark
Food Animators Project Growing Power
www.growingpower.org
Environment & Energy Centre
www.mec-ht.dk
Agenda 21 Centre Allotment Garden Federation Christiania Hydespjaeldet
www.christiania.org
4. Introduction “Seed by Seed, plant by plant, peasant by peasant, community by community, country by country, we will reclaim our food freedom.” Vandana Shiva (www.terramadre2004.org) Definitions Community Food Security “Community Food Security is "a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice" (Hamm, 2001). Community food security, in other words, recognizes the need to use a host of community-based institutions and sectors - from agriculture to community development to public health to government assistance - to achieve true food security for all households in a given area or region.” (Community Food Security Coalition: www.foodsecurity.org). Urban Agriculture According to Wikipedia, urban agriculture is defined as “the practice of agriculture (include crops, livestock, fisheries, forestry activities) within or surrounding the boundaries of cities. The land may be private residential (including balconies, walls or roofs), public roadside land or river banks. Urban farming is practiced for incomeearning or food-producing activities. It contributes to food security and food safety in two ways : first it increases the amount of food available to people living in cities, and second it allows fresh vegetables and fruits to be made available to urban consumers. Because it promotes energy-saving local food production, urban and peri-urban agriculture are sustainability practices.” (www.wikipedia.org)) All over the world, in both developed and developing countries, cities are dealing with issues of community food insecurity. And all over the world we are realising that people are hungry not because there is not enough food being produced, but because our current food systems are uncertain and unjust. In addition to issues of hunger, in most developed countries like Australia we have a relatively new phenomenon whereby we find food insecure people suffer from complications such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease due to the kinds of foods that are being accessed. These symptoms are especially common in low income communities where often access to fresh food is limited yet there is an abundance of convenience foods that are high in sugars and fats. Urban agriculture plays an important role in addressing these issues. Community gardens are in great demand and springing up all over the inner city wherever land is available. Grass roots organisations and local governments are combining community development with projects involving growing food and providing outlets to increase access to affordable fresh food to develop more sustainable long term ways of readjusting the balance.
There are also powerful connections being made between small local farmers and disadvantaged urban communities. Through direct partnerships, urban communities can support small local farm enterprises and in turn these city folk can learn more about where there food comes from and increase their access to fresh, seasonal produce. Looking to places like the USA, Canada, Brazil and Denmark we see exciting projects not only looking to feed people in the short term, but to truly create a “sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice”. (Community Food Security Coalition: www.foodsecurity.org). The Trip 5. San Francisco Each morning Chris and I would drive past San Quentin Prison over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge from our friend, Cindy’s house in the well heeled, gourmet fed suburb of Marin County over to the run down, colourful and action packed neighbourhoods of Berkeley and West Oakland. Here we found a dedicated, resourceful and creative network of urban agriculture projects, working with young people, lobbying local government and getting quality, fresh food to people in need anyway they could. This close knit community of food activists often shared resources, ideas and worked together wherever possible; understanding their added strength in diversity and partnership. We tapped into a rich vein of projects just in the Berkeley and Oakland areas, part of a vast network of people committed to creating a just food system in creative and innovative ways. We ended up having no time left to explore projects in other parts of San Francisco. Every time we talked to a new person they directed us to a new project in the area saying, “you must see this place!” People’s Grocery The People’s Grocery Mission Our mission is to uphold the human right to healthy and affordable food and to build community self-reliance by increasing neighbourhood access to locally-produced fruits and vegetables and by promoting social enterprise, youth entrepreneurship, sustainable agriculture and grassroots organizing. Our vision is to help transform West Oakland into a thriving centre of economic well-being, sustainability, and social justice supported by an entrepreneurial spirit for innovation and self-determination. We use a cross-sectoral strategy of bringing grassroots organizing and street-level marketing together with socially responsible business and agricultural practices to positively impact problems facing West Oakland. (www.peoplesgrocery.org)
The People’s Grocery was established in 2003 by a couple of young community activists, Malaika Edwards, Brahm Ahmadi, and Leander Sellers who were frustrated by the limited access to fresh and affordable food in their community. Although West Oakland has approximately 30,000 residents it has one grocery store with over inflated prices yet it is also serviced by 36 liquor/convenience stores. Due to the limited access and high prices of food, combined with high unemployment and poverty, 25% of West Oakland residents are dependent on food emergency programs. Sadly this scenario is not uncommon in many low income neighbourhoods as supermarket chains tend to avoid setting up shop in these communities. Through creative ideas and solutions, the People’s Grocery is addressing the food needs of local residents through building a local food system that incorporates food outlets, urban agriculture, education and support for local family farms and farmers of colour. Mobile Market This bright and funky bio-diesel fuelled truck with a solar powered sound system that booms out contagious groovy hip hop tunes as the truck makes its rounds is the most publicly visible part of the People’s Grocery’s programs. It cruises the streets of West Oakland twice a week making nine stops outside schools, parks, senior citizen centres and other significant community points. The truck is loaded with organic packaged staples, snacks and fresh produce from three People’s Grocery community gardens or bought at the local farmers market. The enterprise works on a co-operative model and has discounted member prices and slightly more expensive non-member prices with the main aim being to make the food as accessible as possible. Partly staffed by local young people, employed after taking part in a food justice and entrepreneurial training program, the truck acts as an important point of outreach and community education. Local folk can also access educational materials on health, urban gardening and local economics. With as few as 30 customers a day the mobile market is not yet self sustaining and needs to build up its customer base, however the organisers feel confident the numbers will increase as people become more familiar with the concept and become increasingly aware of the poor food choices that are currently available to them.
Urban Agriculture The People’s Grocery has three urban agriculture sites and also works with several other local garden projects such as City Slickers. The 55th Street garden is the main site with other gardens located at a school and a local community centre. Much of the produce for the mobile market is grown in these gardens by paid youth interns and committed volunteers. The gardens are bursting with the colours of beautiful vegetables and gorgeous flowers making them an attractive feature of the neighbourhood as well as a site of learning and growing much needed food. Malaika Edwards expressed the importance of paying young people for their work to not only acknowledge and value their work and contribution but to also provide an ongoing incentive to be involved in this education and skill development.
Collards n’ Commerce Youth Program Youth involvement and education are key factors in the success and motivation of the People’s Grocery. They recognise that young people are often the instigators of change within their families and communities and can act as powerful conduits when equipped with information and confidence. The Collards n’ Commerce Youth program teaches social entrepreneurship and sustainable agriculture involving West Oakland youth between the ages of 15 to 18. The program aims to impart life and leadership skills whilst providing a salary and school credits. The program covers areas such as social enterprise, business management, urban farming, cooking, nutrition, community building and food justice issues. As part of the program the youth visit local farms and community gardens and work on the various People’s Grocery initiatives. The People’s Grocery also runs a camp for young people twice a year in conjunction with other organisations. We also attended a Food Justice Tour with the People’s Grocery hosted by Brahm Ahmadi and one of the youth interns, Aswad. The tours are held monthly and on this day there were about 10 people from a broad range of backgrounds including students, community development workers, a woman who organised farmers markets in NY and a guy who runs a natural foods store. The tour included a comprehensive discussion whereby Brahm and Aswad explained the history, mission and projects of People’s Grocery. We then went to look at the community garden on 55th St where Chris and I had volunteered and then met up with the truck so that everyone could see it in action.
It was very impressive to see the strong relationships between the various agencies – often working together to achieve common aims. One day we went to the farmers market to observe Farm Fresh Choice buying their produce and found People’s Grocery there too working together with FFC to increase their collective buying power as well as streamline the processes. They actually place their orders together with growers, collect it together and then split it up out in the car park.
Farm Fresh Choice
“Farm Fresh Choice membership gives you access to discounted organic produce, to relationships with farmers, and to a feeling for the land on which the food is grown.” “The theory behind Farm Fresh Choice is that if people come to know the source of their food, they will appreciate the effort that went into coaxing it from the earth. As they develop that appreciation-through cultural links with farmers-their food takes on meaning and they eat better, feel better, and live better.” Joy Moore, co-founder. (Farm Fresh Choice: Awakening Inner City Taste Buds to Healthy Local Food)
Farm Fresh Choice was initiated in 2000 by the Berkeley Food Policy Council, a community-based food-advocacy group and later taken over by the Berkeley Ecology Centre. The program’s aim is to improve access to fresh produce for the many families living in the low income neighbourhoods of Berkeley and Oakland. The program was prompted by what could easily be considered a health epidemic in these communities. “In 1998, chronic disease accounted for 68 percent of deaths in Berkeley and the mortality rate from strokes was significantly higher than in the state as a whole. African-Americans had the bleakest prospects, comprising 19 percent of the population but accounting for 48 percent of deaths from stroke and 36 percent of deaths from coronary heart disease and hypertension. Diet is a factor in all of these diseases.” (Farm Fresh Choice: Awakening Inner City Taste Buds to Healthy Local Food)
Like the People’s Grocery, Farm Fresh Choice educates and employs young people and it is those young people who run the produce stands - from selecting produce at the local farmers markets, to displaying the produce, dealing with customers, handling money etc. We met up with Tiffany Golden, one of the coordinators and although she was quite new to the job, she couldn’t have been more passionate and helpful. The program not only teaches the kids business skills of “how to run a veggie shop” but also works to teach nutrition, cooking and working in a cross cultural community. A part of their program was to learn Spanish and learn about Latino culture, which we saw in action as the young interns practised their Spanish to purchase produce from the Latino growers at the Berkeley Farmers Market.
Farm Fresh Choice have their youth-run produce stands at four locations – a park, a school, a community centre and a young adults centre, three are operated on Tuesdays and one on Wednesdays. The stalls operate approximately between the hours of 3pm and 6pm, with the idea that people can shop when they finish work or when they come to pick up their kids after school. Most of the customers buying the range of basic fruits and vegetables, fresh eggs and healthy organic snacks such as muffins or pecan pies are Latino or African American. To make their produce as accessible as possible Farm Fresh Choice accepts food stamps and Electronic Benefit Transfer cards. They also buy directly from farmers of colour, linking interns and customers to these small family farms with regular farm excursions. At the stalls information such as seasonal newsletters is always on hand, with he young interns answering questions and talking up the benefits of seasonal, organic foods grown not too far from town. Cindy and Demetris, two of the interns explained to us how much their diet had changed since they had been involved with the program and about how, over time, they noticed changes in their community. Often these small stalls don’t break even and the project receives funding grants to keep it going. But to the youth who operate and are educated by the experience and to those who shop with Farm Fresh Choice the stalls’ presence is just as important as their sales figures.
Spiral Gardens Spiral Gardens Mission Spiral Gardens Food Security Project promotes healthy communities by encouraging the productive use of city soil and improving neighbourhood access to fresh regional produce. (www.spiralgardens.org) Spiral Gardens is located on two vacant city-owned lots of the old Santa Fe Railroad line and consists of a nursery, urban farm, produce stand and place for education. To secure the land Spiral Members door knocked and leafleted 1400 people in the neighbourhood with their proposal before they started the current project – no one objected to the idea and the Berkeley City Council granted them use of the land. The over grown corner where the garden and nursery are now located once had the area’s highest incidence of crime. Things have changed quite a lot since Spiral came. Spiral Gardens is the latest incarnation of a network of food activists begun in 1993. Originating as a group of community activists addressing poor access to fresh food in low income communities, the group created organic demonstration gardens and nurseries on unused land in Berkeley and Oakland. These initial projects provided local organic food production, community education, urban greening, job training, composting, enhancement of local biodiversity and neighbourhood commons. Later in 1996, Spiral partnered with a non-profit organisation dedicated to ending homelessness and poverty teaching intensive horticultural to individuals in transition from homelessness. This program lasted for eight years, until 2004 when the funding was cut. Today, with Daniel Miller as the only original Spiral Gardener remaining, Spiral Gardens is understandably aiming to be self sustaining. The site features a retail nursery specialising in useful and edible plants, an urban farm, a weekly produce stand and community education. At present Daniel is working full time for the project and not making much of an income. He is committed to making it work but at the same time is not sure how sustainable the current set up will be, although in the back of his mind he also knows how precarious going back to outside funding can be. We visited Spiral when the volunteer run produce stand was active. Volunteers purchased most of the food for the stall from the local farmers market earlier in the day with the rest of the food coming out of the gardens. One woman had collected several boxes of oranges from around the neighbourhood to add to the produce on offer. The produce was sold at cost price in order to make fresh, seasonal and organic food affordable for all. The project is hoping to run the stall 5 days a week in a year or two’s time.
City Slickers
City Slicker Mission City Slicker Farms increases food self-sufficiency in West Oakland by creating organic, sustainable, high-yield urban farms and back yard gardens. These spaces provide healthy, affordable food and improve the environment. We seek to serve all West Oakland residents, prioritising people who have least access to food. (www.oriononline.org)
When we visited City Slicker’s 55th St Garden a couple of neighbourhood kids not more than nine years old were running the sidewalk produce stall. Lots of local people were coming by to purchase produce, have a look at the garden or to volunteer. Old men were hanging out drinking on a bench outside the garden and reported the project had improved the neighbourhood, gave people something nice to look at and that sometimes they came inside to get their own greens. City Slickers has five community garden sites, supports backyard gardens, runs its produce stall, sells seedlings (in partnership with People’s Grocery) and seeds at Mandela Farmers Market, hosts bbq’s and other events, conducts workshops and provides bins for people to drop off kitchen scraps to make compost. Volunteers are the life blood of this program and they come from all walks of life across the community. City Slickers receives no external funding, Willow, the project’s founder, is very sceptical about appeasing funding bodies and is wary of being totally dependant on grants. Like Daniel from Spiral, Willow works full time for the project but receives little financial payment. She is currently receiving a disability payment after being severely wounded by a wooden bullet in an attack by police on an anti-war demonstration the year before. In a stroke of good fortune Willow had purchased a block of land the 55th St garden now occupies. At a debtors auction she got the corner block for an unbelievably good price (she thinks there may have been some kind of mistake or mix up). Another garden is on vacant land owned by another spiral friend and others are located wherever they can access land including behind private buildings and in individuals back yards.
SOL
SOL Mission We work to support and promote and urban community involved in, inspired by and educated about environmentally and socially conscious living and to provide a space to model and teach these practices locally. Sustaining ourselves locally. Growing community. (www.oaklandsol.org) SOL is a share house with a difference. Made up of nine 20 something men and women who are passionate about living sustainably and providing an example for other people. The group have rented three adjoining West Oakland apartments. They have transformed the backyard into an urban oasis where they run programs for local youth at risk to come and help out, learn and connect with food and the earth. All of this work is done voluntarily and is very much a part of their lifestyle and passions. The founders of this program spent some time teaching outdoor education at a place called Slide Ranch after which they wanted to continue spreading the ethos of living in a connected and responsible way to disconnected folks in the city. To help fund and promote their program they run a stall at the local farmers market selling organic seedlings raised in their green house.
Brazil In Brazil all levels of government are active making sure people get fed and that local farmers are supported. The philosophy is that having adequate food is a right of citizenship. In contrast to the fearful pronouncements we hear all to often from our own politicians President Lula’s inaugural address in 2002 was about Food Security not Homeland Security…. ……“In a country that has so much fertile land and so many people willing to work, there ought to be no cause to speak of hunger. Nonetheless, millions of Brazilians, in the countryside and in the cities, in underprivileged rural areas and on the outskirts of the cities, at this very moment, have nothing to eat. This can not continue. So long as one of our Brazilian brothers or sisters is hungry, we can only be overwhelmed by shame. It is for this reason that I have placed, among the priorities of my Government, a food security program to be known as Zero Hunger ('Fome Zero'). As I said in my first speech after the election, if, when I conclude my term of office, all Brazilians can have breakfast, lunch and supper, I will have fulfilled my mission in life. This is a cause that can and should be embraced by all, regardless of social-class, political-party or ideological distinctions. In face of the cries of those oppressed by the bane of hunger, the ethical imperative of joining forces, skills and instruments to defend that which is most sacred must prevail: the dignity of human beings. That country people may have their dignity restored to them, in the knowledge that, upon rising with the sun, with each stroke of their hoes or of their tractors, they are contributing to the well being of all Brazilians, both in the countryside and in the cities.”(www.brazil.org.uk) Curitiba In the 70’s & 80’s under the enlightened Administration of Mayor Jaime Lerner many progressive projects were introduced in the city of Curatiba (pop 2 million) around, transport, food health and pollution. Also at the time food security, disease and rubbish collection were big issues; the Cambio Verde (Green Exchange) scheme put the problems together; in exchange for rubbish people received food, good quality excess staples like corn bought from local farmers that would otherwise be ploughed under – approximately 200kg of trash could be exchanged for 10kg of food. This program was implemented in slum areas that were located far from town centres where there were no rubbish collection services. Anybody can be a collector with a truck coming to the communities every 15 days to collect rubbish followed by another truck delivering food. Now rubbish is collected and recycled, disease rates have dropped because of a cleaner environment, people have more food and farmers have a more options to market their produce. The city has also set up subsidised Grocery stores where low income households can buy good quality staple foods at wholesale prices. The produce is purchased in bulk by the municipality who is also responsible for the strict quality control. The shops are placed on ‘Citizenship Streets’ suburban centres where government services, banking, training advice, small business support etc are easily accessed after it was identified
that theses services, like food, were also difficult for people in poorer communities to access. At present there are nine “Citizenship Streets”. To access these services, citizens are assessed by local social workers to determine eligibility which is usually based upon family earnings. There is also a limit on produce per family which stops people selling on the cheap produce for a profit. The community workers we have met say Curatiba is not rich but people are committed to building a fair and environmentally sustainable community and that creativity not money has been the key to doing it. They also told us that many of Curitiba’s programs have become models for other cities, “Plant it in Curitiba and it grows!”
We spent some time with Edson Pereira, the manager of the city’s community garden support crew and his wife Selma, an environmental engineer at the local uni who showed us around some of the very impressive 980 community gardens that have been established in Curatiba. These gardens have been especially successful with people who have been economically pushed out of the countryside and into the city and who have upon arrival struggled to find suitable work. These people hold a wealth of agricultural knowledge which has been applied to growing food in the city. Belo Horizonte Belo Horizonte is Brazil’s fourth largest city, located North East of Rio, high up on a savannah like plateau with eucalypt clad hills in an old gold mining region called Minas Gerais. Belo Horizonte began seriously tackling issues of food security long before President Lula came to power. In 1993 the city, where one fifth of the city’s children were malnourished, became the only city in the capitalist world to declare food a right of citizenship. Much of the new innovations were aimed at moving away from the traditional charitable hand out model and moving towards more long term, sustainable solutions. The Canadians The Canadians were a group of Food Security and Nutrition students from Ryerson University in Toronto visiting government initiated projects in Belo Horizonte with their Professor, Cecilia Rocher, herself a Brazilian native. They were joined by a group of food security workers from the North of Brazil and some local academics. Cecilia was kind enough to let us tag along to their talks and field trips and see a side of Belo Horizonte we would never have seen, as well as making some good friends and contacts for later in Toronto.
At a state food security forum we attended with a small NGO, Rede, we heard much frustration with the pace of change federally, Lula has been in power since 2002 and people had expected more from his government, but there were also others saying three years was a short amount of time to turn 150 years of political history around. Here are some of the things we saw that have been done by Lula’s, the Minas Gerais State and some local municipal governments. Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) is Lula’s $US6 billion per year program run by a Ministry that works across health, agriculture and social security ministries in partnership with local food security councils (CONSEA’s) to create long term solutions to food access problems. If you are living below the poverty line you get a Food Card which can be used to buy food at a subsidised ‘one bag’ fruit and vegetable store run by the Belo Horizonte City Council where the price for most of the produce was 59 centivos per kg (A30 cents a kg). With one price per kg all the great quality, local in-season produce goes into ‘one bag’ to be weighed. The produce is often surplus crops sourced from farmers who would otherwise plough them if they were not able to secure a break even price on the open market. Out the back of the market we talked to one of the guys unloading the 10 pallets of produce off the truck and he told us that they had two truckloads like that everyday, which didn’t include the tables of greens the local farmer was selling from a stand out front of the shop.
Another municipal project we visited was called The Popular Restaurant. Here we ate a big lunch of rice, beans, meat, salad and fruit juice for A25 cents (so big I couldn’t finish mine). The Popular Restaurant, like the subsidised produce market, is open to the general public; we sat at long tables surrounded by a range of locals from street people to mobile phone toting office workers. Every lunch time in the two Belo Horizonte Popular Restaurants 7000 people sit down for a meal. We ate with the manager who said he believed a big part of its success was having a payment involved, even though it was a small one, it took away the handout stigma for the customers as well as the staff. When we were leaving I saw the client surveys posted at the exit reporting on service, food quality, amount, variety etc; the satisfaction levels were all in the 90%’s.
For people who can’t access the one bag markets or popular restaurant services or don’t have the money or the knowledge to prepare food for themselves and their families there are food banks in neighbourhood health centres. Community health workers seek people out who need food and/or training in preparing nutritional food. These are supplied in part by 2nd harvest programs that salvage food left over from wholesale markets or events. The State government also run after-school programs and employment schemes like a workshop we visited where a women’s textile cooperative produces quilts and bags at a community centre that also included a community kitchen and food gardens. This is not to say Brazil is a paradise, there are plenty of people who think Lula is all talk, the favellas or slum areas, where the majority of people live, lack basic services and have major problems with drugs and related violence, but it seems there is also a very positive spirit and a sense that turning an economic and social system around takes time. Rede Rede Alternative Technology Exchange Network is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation based in Belo Horizonte. Established in 1986 by a group of people committed to strengthening small scale, family based agriculture based on the practice of agro-ecology in the state of Minas Gerais.
Rodica Weitzman, a Boston native living in Brazil for the past eight years, was our guide and translator. Rodica had worked for a long time with Rede’s urban agriculture program but was now the Education Program Director. Rede (a Portuguese word for network) has an office in a house with nine workers, including a cook who makes lunch so everybody can concentrate on work and then eat together as a group. We arrived just in time for the day’s lunch and Rodica introduced us around to everybody who were, as always, generous with their time and patient with our bad Portuguese and as we ate our rice beans and vegies we heard the story of Rede. Rede is a little like my organisation, Cultivating Community, advocating for community gardens and food security, especially in low income areas. They also initiate and support sustainable agro-forestry and family based agriculture projects in rural areas and promote the connection between biodiversity and culture. They do a lot of capacity building; teaching skills to community groups that get local projects off the ground. We visited a garden Rede had helped a community group establish on vacant land. It was only three months old yet was already productive and buzzing with people very proud of what they had achieved on what was until recently a local dumping ground.
We spent a lot of time with a group Rede helped establish called CAUSA, made up of one man and nine women (the subject of many jokes) in a favella (slum area) called Vera Cruz. The people from CAUSA with support from Rede have themselves become facilitators and educators in urban agriculture and small business. They are invited to work in other communities to help others establish urban gardens, community kitchens and micro enterprises which include healthy catering services and low cost natural pharmacies using locally picked and processed medicinal plants. While we were there CAUSA and Rede were negotiating how to continue their partnership now CAUSA was operating in its own right and not a Rede client. We attended a CAUSA/Rede meeting where after we ate a big cooked lunch together, the meeting began with a song, which was followed by a lot of talking and finished with another song. The marathon meeting went from 12pm to 5pm, people came and went to get food or coffee, someone even had a nap, but when it seemed important everybody was there and awake and people went away happy with what had been worked out. It was wonderful to be involved with a community meeting where both the workers and community members gave the meeting process time to fully explore the issues presented.
As Anna Lappe of the Small Planet Foundation points out, the real power of Belo Horizonte might be psychological. “We are so limited by what we can imagine and we think the world can operate. To be able to say that there’s this place where they didn’t assume that this is how it has to be opens up people’s sense of possibility.” (Halweil, 2004 p104) 7. Toronto When interviewing Dr Cecilia Rocha from the Centre for Food Security at Toronto’s Ryerson University, she expressed that in her mind the two most exciting cities in the world in terms of Food Security work are Belo Horizonte in Brazil and Toronto, Canada. Toronto Food Policy Council
Toronto Food Policy Council Mission The Toronto Food Policy Council partners with business and community groups to develop policies and programs promoting food security. Our aim is a food system that fosters equitable food access, nutrition, community development and environmental health. (www.city.toronto.on.ca/health/tfpc)
Toronto has long been at the forefront of public health initiatives and food security research. Toronto was one of the originators of, and among the first world cities to sign onto, the United Nations' Healthy Cities movement. In 1991, in the absence of federal and provincial leadership on food security, the City created the Toronto Food Policy Council (TFPC). One of the reasons Toronto is so important is due to the work of Wayne Roberts who is employed by the City of Toronto’s Health Department on the Toronto Food Policy Council. Wayne, one of those people who’s name keeps coming up again and again, has been working with the idea of local food systems and food security since the early nineties and was one of the drivers behind the Toronto Food Charter, which is used as a guideline across The City of Toronto’s departments directing city planning and food purchasing policies.
The Food Charter encourages city planners to build in food to their designs for new and redeveloped communities - this can range from provision of land for community gardens to situating food stores within walking distance of residences. The city is a large purchaser of food, whether it be snacks at a meeting or supplying a school lunch program. The Charter promotes local, healthy, organic when possible, food for all occasions with the idea that government can have a positive influence on the health of local food systems. FoodShare Instigated by the then Mayor of Toronto and others concerned about the growing need for and reliance on emergency food relief services FoodShare was born in 1985 and has grown into one of the largest and most successful food security organisations in North America. Originally FoodShare was established to co-ordinate emergency food services. A few year’s later the staff at FoodShare, increasingly frustrated by growing levels of community food insecurity, began to develop long term and sustainable approaches to hunger issues. Implementing projects such as cooperative buying systems, community kitchens and urban agriculture sites FoodShare began to address the everyday issues of household food security aiming to build stronger and more resilient communities from the ground up. FoodShare’s catchcry is “from field to table” meaning that they work with every element of the food system from the growing, harvesting, processing, distribution, purchasing, cooking, consumption and finally composting. They see one of the main problems with our current food system is the treatment of food as a commodity. Like Belo Horizonte, FoodShare aim to make access to food a basic human right. They believe that this must be done through a range of not-for-profit food distribution and education mechanisms such as the Good Food Box, the Good Food at Home program, Sunshine Urban Agriculture Program, The Toronto Community Gardening Network, Farm Fresh Markets, Focus on Food Youth Project, Student Nutrition, Field to Table Catering Service, Toronto Kitchen Incubator, Healthy Babies Eat Home cooked Food and the Foodlink Hotline.
The Good Food Box The Good Food Box is the flagship program of FoodShare and aims to get affordable fruit and vegetables to as many people in Toronto as possible. The program is a weekly cooperative buying scheme where participants purchase a pre-packed box of seasonal produce. Customers can choose the size of the box (large or small) and between conventional or organic produce. The first boxes were packed in 1994 in the FoodShare office basement and the project has since grown from 40 boxes per month to 3,000. The boxes are now packed at a fully equipped warehouse located at FoodShare’s Field to Table Centre and distributed through 200 neighbourhood based drop-off points. These drop-off points are churches, day-care centres, apartment buildings, community centres – anywhere where there are at least 8 to 10 customers. Two recent developments of the Good Food Box program are a Wellness Box for women in active treatment for breast cancer. The box includes 25 – 35 servings of fruits, vegetables and other prepared foods. The program also offers other nutritional advice as well as post-treatment cooking classes and ongoing community dinners with other women who have experienced breast cancer. The other development is The AfriCan Food Basket; inspired by the Good Food Box it is a similar scheme that operates using the FoodShare warehouse gathering foods sort after by local African communities. Each week FoodShare volunteers, paid in-kind with a food box at the end of the day, gather to sort organic and conventional produce sourced from the wholesale market and direct from local farmers (some food comes from Mennonite farmers who farm with no power or machinery and do business from a fax at the local gas station). FoodShare sources Ontario grown produce wherever possible ensuring a good understanding of where the food came from and under what conditions it was grown. Purchasing local food also supports local farmers and means less fossil fuels are burnt in transportation. Each week, Zahra Parvinian, the Good Food Box Team Manager takes the time to offer the volunteer packers samples of the fruits and vegetables, explaining item by item where produce came from and any current growing and harvesting information farmers have passed on.
The Good Food boxes include a newsletter, recipes, food storage and preparation tip sheets. Volunteer co-ordinators collect money from participants in advance and then ensure that the customers receive their boxes once delivered. Participants get a great deal paying for only the cost of the food itself as all other distribution overheads are subsidized – this means that a $17 family box has a retail value of somewhere between $23 and $30. The Good Food Box makes quality, fresh and affordable produce readily available across the community in a way that does not stigmatize people fostering community involvement and community development while encouraging healthy eating.
Community Gardening FoodShare are the supporting organisation for the Toronto Community Gardening Network which features some 110 gardens and whose aim is to keep gardens and gardeners connected. These gardens offer a place for people to grow food for their families, beautify their neighbourhoods and to be in touch with the cycles and rhythms of nature which can be difficult in an urban environment. As part of this program, the network organises special events such as seed exchanges, garden tours, dinners, talks and festivals. They also offer a 10 week course on how to start and sustain community garden projects and consult directly with communities on enhancing their gardens. Urban Agriculture FoodShare’s main urban agriculture site is the Sunshine Garden located at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. This 7000 sq ft market garden is the only certified organic market garden in Toronto. From June to October volunteers and participants from the centre grow produce which is sold twice a week through the project’s farm stand. The farm stand, located on a bustling street achieves two objectives – the first is to increase access for the community to fresh, local and affordable food - the second to encourage people to come onto a site that they would ordinarily pass by and may even feel intimidated by. Complimenting the urban agriculture program FoodShare
also has an impressive composting operation, a propagation facility and beehives at the Field to Table Centre. FoodShare believes that food distribution systems that provide opportunities to gain some control over this very fundamental part of our lives have great potential to empower individuals and communities. Food lies at the heart of our bodies’ health, our cultural connection, our social cohesion and our connection to land – all of FoodShare’s programs are guided by these community building principles.
The Stop
The Stop Mission The Stop Community Food Centre strives to increase access to healthy food in a manner that maintains dignity, builds community and challenges inequality. (www.thestop.org)
Starting out in the early 70’s as a church initiated project, The Stop has always provided services and advocacy that challenge poverty and hunger. In its current form The Stop Community Food Centre encompasses a small food bank, a drop-in centre, a café, a community kitchen, the Healthy Beginnings program for pregnant women, an urban agriculture site, participates in the Good Food Box, a Homelessness Prevention Program and Community Dining.
Urban Agriculture The Stop began its 8,000 sq ft community garden project in Earlscourt Park in 1998. The garden is worked by volunteers who come from the local neighbourhood, Stop service users and children from local schools. The garden produce is distributed through the Stop’s food bank which addresses one of the key issues associated with food banks; lack of fresh produce. The urban agriculture program runs year round with a winter greenhouse program where greens are grown in the off season. The program also runs a weekly pizza bake in their outdoor pizza oven. The oven is fired up on Tuesdays by a volunteer and with up to 100 people coming along to make a fun, healthy and very social meal. The dough is prepared by workers the day before and many of the toppings are grown in the adjacent pizza garden. As well as providing a meal this activity provided many people who were socially isolated an opportunity to come together and share a meal with others. Making Connections The North York Harvest Food Bank runs the second largest food bank in Toronto. It works like most food banks, relying on donations of predominantly canned and boxed non perishable food items making deliveries to 62 food programs that serve more than 250,000 people per year across northern Toronto. However this food bank also manages to include a small, but growing portion of fresh fruits and vegetables in their deliveries thanks to its Making Connections Program. Originating in 1998 out of North York Basic Needs Action Network, the program now partners with health centres, churches, community houses and Toronto Public Health aiming to increase access to fresh food for low income people, with an emphasis on targeting pregnant women at risk of delivering low birth rate babies. The program employs a worker, usually a nutrition student from Ryerson University, to work with farmers donating excess produce to the food bank, to organise gleaning trips with farms at the end of harvesting time and to provide educational material and workshops on nutrition, food handling, food preparation and food storage. The program relies on the fact that many farms have produce that either has no market or is blemished, under or oversized yet still good enough for consumption. Farmers are generally happy to see their produce go to people in need rather than be dug under and wasted. The day that I went out with the truck to pick up produce, one new farmer donated over 300 kilos of potatoes that he said would otherwise have been dumped. At this stage the collection of vegetables from the 4 participating farms was not necessarily a financial success as it may have even been cheaper to some weeks buy the produce from the farmers market or supermarket once you have taken into account the day’s wages for the worker and the running costs of the truck, however the program felt that they were laying the groundwork for future success as the amount of farmers participating increased and those relationships between the farmers and the food bank developed and grew. They also felt that this program addressed some greater issues including the importance of local food, of establishing a relationship with where our food comes from, rescuing food from wastage and building up a strong and resilient local food network.
Gleaning Trip Gleaning is the age old tradition of people being allowed into the farmers fields to gather what remains of the crops after they have been harvested (see the great documentary The Gleaners and I). This produce would otherwise be turned back into the ground or left to rot in the field. Gleaning is a wonderful practice that allows farmers to reduce their wastage and can provide greater access to fresh food and a farm experience to those who may otherwise go without. On the day we joined a gleaning trip, Making Connections had organised a big yellow American school bus to come by a large public housing community centre to pick up 15 of us, mostly women and children. We travelled out to the edge of Toronto to the enormous Whittamores Berry Farm to glean strawberries from fields the farm had finished harvesting from. A midsummer heatwave had ripened the strawberries all at once and the farm pickers couldn’t keep up, our field had only been lightly picked over and everyone proceeded to fill buckets and buckets, while kids were eating their own weight in strawberries. It was wonderful to hear people chattering in the fields as they bent to pick the endless supply of strawberries before them. In the bus on the way home everyone was tired and happy and full of strawberries bringing enough home to give to family and neighbours. The week before a bus load of gleaners had picked from a much riper field and the strawberries were quite soft so when the group returned to the city they prepared strawberry jam in a community kitchen. Kim Colbran, the Making Connections worker, explained that this year she was getting several calls a week from berry farmers asking her to bring a bus load of people to glean the strawberry fields – she was having trouble mobilising people to come as sometimes she only had a day or two’s notice. However she felt confident that as people grew accustomed to the idea of gleaning, it would become much easier to ring around and get a group together quickly.
Food Animators Food Animators, another innovative project in Toronto is the funding of a group of food security workers, these are people in the community who have shown an ability to start food related projects. These people are working in areas that are currently under serviced by food programs and are helping communities begin either farmers markets, Good Food Box stops, community gardens, community kitchens or improving access to existing emergency food programs. The role of the animators is to act as a catalyst by providing hands-on assistance in the form of information, linking groups involved in similar activities, facilitating planning sessions, community capacity building and suggesting new ideas. Anan Lololi from the AfriCan Food Basket who is working on community gardens showed us around the Lawrence Heights Public Housing estate where they had begun 6 small community garden projects. A number of local people who were involved with the project came out to share their experience of the gardens. We were struck by the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of these small and simple gardens that cost less than A$2000 to establish. PAR GAR PAR GAR is an acronym for Plant A Row Grow A Row, a volunteer based program that invites community gardeners to grow an extra row of vegetables for donation to their local food bank, soup kitchen, school or shelter. Established by the Canadian Association of Food Banks, the Composting Council of Canada and the Garden Writers Association of America the program builds on the long standing spirit of gardeners loving to share their harvest with others. In 2005 the program boasted a whopping 1.5 million pounds of donated produce since its inception in 2000. PARGAR lets participating gardeners know what vegetables and fruits keep best (root vegetables, broccoli, cabbage, peas, tomatoes, onions, apples, pears etc) and are therefore the most appropriate for donation. We attended a monthly PAR GAR committee meeting and were impressed to see so many representatives from local agencies and local government (including FoodShare, the Stop, Making Connections, Canadian Composting Council, Food Animators and Daily Bread Food Bank). PAR GAR was an overlapping layer on many of the urban agriculture projects that we saw – most gardens had some PAR GAR rows and were participating in producing food and contributing towards their community’s food security.
8. New York They say, (especially New Yorkers) that New York City is the greatest city in the world and they just could be right! When we go to a meeting at Just Food’s city office emerging from Times Square subway station, seeing the old skyscrapers, the yellow taxis, and sirens going off every few minutes; it feels like we are drifting through every New York movie we’d ever seen plus episodes of Seinfeld, Sex in the City and Law and Order all rolled into one. Luckily for us there was a community garden around every corner and a fantastic network of inspiring urban agriculture and food security projects to explore. Just Food “Just Food envisions a strong regional food system -- incorporating a diversity of rural farms and a robust urban farming component -- that preserves ecosystems, reduces pollution, promotes social justice, provides education about the environment, and invigorates rural and urban economies.” www.justfood.org Starting out in 1994 as a volunteer group made up of food-system leaders promoting a holistic approach to food, hunger and sustainable agricultural issues, Just Food now has a paid staff supporting community gardens and championing the local food movement with manuals, gardener training workshops, food research, a well as a farmer’s market program run from community gardens and a Community Supported Agriculture Scheme supplying 37 different sites around New York, many of them in low income areas. CSA’s in NYC Community Supported Agriculture Scheme (CSA’s) are food buying clubs also known as subscription farming. At the beginning of the season individuals or groups prepurchase a share of the farmer’s harvest ensuring that the CSA members receive fresh produce at affordable prices and that the farmer has a guaranteed market who will share the risks growing the season’s crops. Regional farmers are linked with city communities promoting a direct relationship between grower and consumer. Over the past 10 years, Just Food has helped get over 30 CSA programs started in NYC and continues to work with new groups and new farmers. The City Farms During World War Two small urban Victory Gardens provided 40 percent of the nation's fresh produce during times of food shortages; Just Food believes urban agriculture projects have the capability to achieve similar successes to combat hunger and malnutrition in NYC today. The City Farms program works to increase access to fresh food for food insecure neighbourhoods. Just Food have developed and coordinate an extension service to assist people in growing, marketing and distributing more locally, community garden-grown food. Working in partnership with Green Guerrillas, Heifer Project International, Cornell Cooperative Extension-NYC, Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, City Harvest and GreenThumb, Just Food offer community gardeners workshops, training materials, and networking opportunities in the areas of horticulture, marketing, garden preservation, leadership development and emergency food relief. Community education and training is a major part of Just Food’s success allowing them to focus their energies on mobilising community leaders who can take on the onground responsibility of garden projects. This in turn means more projects can be
established not being dependant on paid workers from outside communities for their survival. Community gardeners who had taken part in training and development are now running their own workshops on topics such as preserving, preparation and storing of food and cooking demonstrations for which they are paid. Just Food believes that improved food security can only be achieved when access to food is increased as well as when information about how to prepare food is made available. About 30 urban farms and community gardens are members of The City Farms Program and Just Food have helped to start four urban farm stands which are independent farmers markets run by the community. The day that we visited the East New York Farmers market, located in an economically depressed area, we walked through town from the train station noticing that there wasn’t anywhere to buy fresh produce. At the end of the street we found the bustling market bursting with affordable and fresh produce grown by local people just down the road in community gardens. The stall holders we talked to, ranging from local youth to senior citizens, all expressed that a little bit of extra income was a good incentive, but the main reason they lovingly grew the food and ran the market stall was to address the serious issues of food insecurity and limited access to fresh food of their neighbours and friends.
Community Gardens Kathleen from Just Food told us that quite a few of the 700 community gardens in New York had been built over as people moved back into the inner city. In the fight to secure the gardens, which had played their own part in making the inner city a good place to live again, the Trust for Public Land bought several hundred while 50 threatened gardens were bought for the community by a group headed by Bette Midler. Currently there are over one hundred gardens still unsure of their future.
Clinton Community Garden One of those gardens that had been saved was the showpiece Clinton community garden located in Hells Kitchen just 8 blocks from Times Square. The famously brusque Adam Honigan gave us a tour of the garden, which was celebrating summer solstice with bands, locally made foods, information stands and garden tours. Clinton, Adam explained, was built like most New York gardens on the site of abandoned apartment buildings burned down or demolished when people with money headed to the suburbs and the inner-city became a ghetto. In 1978, Adam and the other gardeners cleaned up the site removing mountains of rubbish with the begrudging help of the Sanitation Department who removed several car bodies only when they were dragged out onto the road by “garden faeries� just before morning rush hour. Clinton is split into two sections; one in the back with about 100 veggie plots open only to plot holders while the front garden with lawn, flowers, fern beds and trees is open to anybody who lives locally, 5000 people have keys and if you were walking past and wanted to go in you only had to ask someone inside to open the gate. The idea is to involve as many people as possible to keep the garden a garden in an area where some can only see it as very valuable real estate.
9. Denmark Allotment Gardens Allotment gardens have been a part of Danish culture since the late 1800’s when inner city housing density increased and large apartment buildings replaced single story homes. Many people from rural areas used to a high level of self sufficiency had come to work in newly established Copenhagen industries. The first gardens were the result of factory workers renting farm land close to the city and building small summer houses (shacks) with whatever materials they could find. Some of these original dwellings remain today and are quite kooky and delightful. During the Second World War land for growing food was made available for city people at no cost and many people began gardening during this time. In the late 1970’s, the Danish Parliament made a principle decision to protect and extend allotment garden areas. The city has since grown around the gardens which also contribute to the amount of green space within Copenhagen. There is a high demand for allotment gardens in Copenhagen and the gardens have been placed within the jurisdiction of regional planning resulting in the Ministry of Agriculture buying up land which is later leased to an allotment garden group. In Copenhagen and surrounding areas there are approximately 30,000 “spare time” gardens – these gardens usually feature a small house where people reside in the summer, creating a caravan park feel - and another 20,000 day gardens. These gardens are both productive and beautiful during the summer months and have their own very unique sense of community spirit. One site we visited even had a common hall where people would gather in the evenings to see the local children’s theatre, play bingo and take part in other community activities. Most of these gardens are managed by volunteer committees and all have slightly different rules and regulations. The plots are generally owned by individuals on leased land and can be privately bought and sold. At present there are nearly 7 gardens per 100 flats in Copenhagen and the International Allotment Garden Federation would like to see this figure increased to 10%. The Danish Parliament see the importance of these gardens and are planning to increase the number of allotments available. This is very different to the attitude of many other big cites, where the market value of the land is considered more important than the social and physical benefits of community gardens. Niels Jensen was our guide and translator and has produced a wonderful booklet on the wonders of the Danish Allotment Gardens.
Hydespjaeldet Hydespjaeldet is a 29 year old housing estate district in Albertslund, Denmark. Originally there were 400 small flats housing about 800 inhabitants with a transience rate of approx 20 – 30% per year and many ongoing social and economic problems. In the early 80’s something strange and wonderful began to happen – a small group of tenants got together and decided that they wanted to live in a socially and environmentally sustainable community and began initiating green projects on the estate. Their grand ambitions for windmills or a solar plant were stalled by a lack of funds so they began by building a small chicken coup. Some twenty years later there are now at least 8 chicken coupe’s attached to children’s playgrounds dotted around the estate as well as community gardens, an organic café that has affordable meals twice a week providing an opportunity for people to nourish their bodies as well as the spirit of the community. There is also a communal laundry facility that recycles its grey water, a clothing swap shop where you can bring that pair of pants that doesn’t fit you anymore and exchange them for a woolly jumper or whatever other treasures are currently in stock. There is also a comprehensive trial black waste separation and treatment program, a wonderful recycling/hard rubbish centre and an impressive market garden sized communal urban agriculture site located just down the road. There are sheep and a public bike path running right through the heart of the estate. This was a wonderful example of what could be achieved in private and public housing estates when a group of passionate and creative people get together and create the kind of place that they want to live. Helena, our guide, pointed out that most residents don’t actually participate in meetings and working bees, however there was a big enough core of about 40 interested people to share the load and the group were not too concerned with everyone having to pull their own weight, if other residents simply used the services that they had provided and in doing so reduced their ecological footprint and lived more sustainably, then they felt they had achieved what they had set out to do. Interestingly the average waiting period to get an apartment in the estate is now 25 years.
10. Conclusions and Recommendations The community gardens and city farms network in Australia is strong and established. Through developing relationships between these networks, local government planners and health workers, other agencies and organisations concerned with health and food security and local family farmers we can create a stronger, more sustainable local food network that improves access to fresh food for all and creates vibrant, strong communities. Some key features of these sustainable local food networks that we should be striving for are: • strong relationships between key stakeholders (local/state/federal government, public health agencies, education workers, urban/rural agriculture workers etc) – formation of local food networks • ongoing financial subsidies – nearly all of the projects that we visited expressed the need for ongoing financial support either through government or organisational grants. Those that received no support expressed how difficult it was and reported a high “burn-out” rate. • education, training and skill sharing – key components to many of the projects visited, empowering and strengthening communities through knowledge, employment, responsibility, meaningful activity and service to others. • community/regional food policy development – the issues of food pervade every part of our individual and communal lives and should therefore be strongly incorporated into organisational and governmental planning and policy at every level. • Establishing relationships between local family farms and low income urban consumers – this relationship can work well to support both groups through an ongoing guaranteed market for the farmers and at other times an avenue to distribute farm surplus that might otherwise be “dumped” on the market at a loss. These findings will be disseminated through: • oral presentations to local councils, relevant conferences and interested organisations. • A documentary film including key interviews and footage of projects visited. • The availability of catalogued film footage and other written materials gathered on the journey to Cultivating Community and CERES colleagues. These findings will be implemented through: • application of some findings to existing Cultivating Community programs • encouraging other organisations and local governments to adopt initiatives • research funding opportunities to implement new programs
11. Bibliography www.brazil.org.uk www.city.toronto.on.ca/health/tfpc Community Food Security Coalition (www.foodsecurity.org) Halweil, B. (2004) Eat Here, New York: Norton & Company Ltd www.justfood.org Lawson, J. Weaving the Food Web (www.foodsecurity.org) www.oaklandsol.org www.peoplesgrovery.org Vandana Shiva (www.terramadre2004.org) www.spiralgardens.org www.thestop.org www.wikipedia.org