What is Your Foodscape?
Does your neighborhood have a grocery store? Not all do. What if that store actively supported local farmers and carried fresh fruits and vegetables from around the state? What if your neighborhood had its own farmers’ market and you could get to know the farmers directly? What if there was a community garden down the street where you could grow your own vegetables-tomatoes and tomatillos for salsa, green beans for Thanksgiving casserole?
If your neighborhood doesn’t have these things, what would it take to create them?
These are the questions the Food Policy Council is asking. How do we make sure that fresh, nutritious, locally and sustainably-grown food is affordable and available for everyone? How do we make food planning an integral part of urban planning, right along with transportation and affordable housing?
The Council, a citizens’ advisory group to the City of Portland and Multnomah County, is charged with helping the city and the county build a sustainable food system. This means that we eat what’s grown closest to home, we support our local farmers who steward the land and we make sure that fresh food is available and affordable for everyone.
Focusing on whole food systems from farmers to consumers, the Council finds ways to remove barriers and take advantage of opportunities. Some solutions are relatively simple, like changing the zoning laws to allow a neighborhood to block off a street on Saturdays for a farmers’ market. Or setting up the Debit Food Stamp Program in the farmers’ markets. This was recently made possible when wireless technology eliminated the need for telephone lines and power cords.
Other problems are harder to solve, such as the fact that some neighborhoods just don’t have the economic base to support a grocery store. But even there, creative solutions are possible. New Seasons Market, for instance, has opened stores between neighborhoods with different income levels. The mix of incomes serves the lower income neighborhood with the support of the higher end. The store is successful and both neighborhoods have access to good, local food. Farmers’ markets are discovering similar strategies.
Urban renewal projects provide excellent opportunities to reassess the availability of good food. When the Hope VI New Columbia housing project was being designed, a group of food advocates helped integrate a community garden, a plaza for a future open air farmers’ market, and a grocery store in the business center.
Urban agriculture is just starting to attract renewed interest. During World War II, Americans were encouraged to grow “victory gardens” in their yards and vacant lots. (See Victory Gardens) Today there’s a long waiting list for community gardens in Portland. The Council has started the Diggable City project to identify tillable land within the city and start pilot projects of small-scale urban farming so people can grow their own food.
Looking for ways to increase the demand for locally-grown food, the Council approached the corrections system in Multnomah County, asking that they purchase 3 produce items locally. Aramark, the food service provider, came back and said “We can do better than that, we can buy 12.” Not only that, the company has contracts with six other counties and plans to explore implementing the same strategy in those counties as well.
Conversations are just starting around “farm to school” and “farm to hospital” programs. What if the hospitals in your city actually served delicious food from seasonal fruits and vegetables grown locally? What if your kids knew the local farmers because they delivered directly to their school? What if the kids grew the food themselves?
What does the foodscape look like in your neighborhood?
