This common event focused on the development and current state of urban agriculture in New York City. The speakers for two grass roots community organizations, Just Food (Abby Youngblood) and GreenMarket (Liz Carlo), presented a comprehensive overview of the issues and successes surrounding the sustainable food movement, including: access to healthy and locally grown food,  farmers markets and community food education.

Abby started off her presentation with a background of obesity patterns and trends in the United States for the last few decades. The data showed plainly that: America is getting fat. The population is becoming increasingly overweight, especially in the South. Needless to say, the lack of healthy diets and poor eating habits can lead to serious public health issues. Decreasing life expectancy for children is one of them, not to mention diet-related diseases, such as cancer and diabetes. In a study, a survey was conducted in all five boroughs that asked its residents: “Have you eaten a full serving of fruits and vegetables today?” For those areas that had the highest numbers of residents who answered “No”, the rate of obesity was also the highest. Abby argues that there is a correlation between eating fresh fruits and vegetables and diet-related diseases.

To combat this explosion of the obesity epidemic, she joined Just Food, which is a not-for-profit organization that tries to increase the city’s consumption of healthy, locally-grown produce. It not only gives neighborhoods and communities the opportunity to access fresh food, but it also financially supports family farms. Abby brought up two major issues: [1] food deserts and [2] decreasing farmland.

Food deserts are basically neighborhoods that have little to no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet. Most of the food is served by fast food restaurants that are easily accessible and cheap. Imagine a street full of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, Dunkin Donuts, Dominoes, Wendy’s and KFC. This may very well be a child’s idea of paradise, but these kinds of high-calorie, low-nutrition, cheap food have loads of preservatives and unhealthy ingredients. Just Food tries to make progress in food deserts by introducing city farms and food education. In city farms, people who already know about garden-grown food participate in free and public workshops where they can teach others. Most people think raising animals are restricted to rural farming, but I learned that it’s legal to raise hens in the city for egg produce. Also, in community-based markets, farmers can sell the produce they grow directly to city residents.

In terms of farmland, the numbers are decreasing. However, we need farms in New York. They’re beneficial to the environment, public health and it offers jobs. What I found interesting are Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSA). It’s a partnership between groups in the community and a variety of farmers (dairy, produce, etc.), where the buyers directly support the farmers. It’s like a magazine subscription; you pay a fee upfront and then you receive your magazine every week–the only catch is that you don’t know what you’re going to receive. Every week, you go to the distribution site and receive your mystery bag of in-season food. According to first-person accounts, the flavors are much richer than store-bought ones. This program really piqued my interest; I’d like to try out CSA in the future.

Liz continued the presentation by speaking about GreenMarket, which is an extended program of GrowNYC that follows a similar mission as Just Food–“open-air farmers markets program in the country connects local farmers with city residents”. I always thought there was only the green market at Union Square, but there are many smaller and locally-owned ones scattered throughout the five boroughs. In fact, there are 49 markets in total. I was surprised by the amount of resources that is made available for city residents, but knowledge about them is so limited.

Overall, I thought this event was very informative and enjoyable. It really opened my eyes to importance of educating New Yorkers about healthy food through public involvement. While there are many physical, financial and knowledge hurdles we still have to overcome, I believe these two organizations serve as prime examples of community activism. The Macaulay Honors College is actually hosting a Garden Party on April 24th with hopes of teaching students the planting and growing process of vegetables.