Community Leaders Mull Local Food Movement at WHY Forum

By Ellie Hurley

If you're reading this, you're probably already aware of the local food movement sweeping the country. You probably already know about the vast health benefits behind eating locally, the overwhelming economic benefits of keeping trade within the community, and the social improvements seen when a community shares a common cause. What we don't often see are the people behind these movements ... those organizing the farmers market, those promoting good eating in immigrant communities, and those encouraging children to pick up a shovel and dig a garden.

On March 13 at an event titled "Taking Health into Our Own Hands: A Forum on Community Grown Solutions" WHY brought together some of the minds behind the local food movement here in New York. A diverse panel of grassroots leaders representing the city's various boroughs shared their experiences from growing food in the city to drawing on cultural food traditions as ways of mobilizing their communities around healthy food. Panelists included Abu Talib, one of the head gardeners and founders of Taqwa Community Farm in the South Bronx; Reverend Robert Jackson, the co-executive director of the Brooklyn Rescue Mission ; Flor de Maria Eilets who heads the Community Life Program for the Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service in east Harlem and Jason Thomas the Marketing Manager at East New York Farms.

WHY's forum was a unique experience for guests and panelists alike. Moderator Lynn Fredericks, the founder of Familycook Productions - a national educational organization offering creative nutrition and culinary education, led the panelists through a lively discussion that didn't just cover the how-to of starting a community garden. Fredericks encouraged the panelists to explore the passion that led them to gardening, the dedication they felt to their communities, and the improvements they'd seen as a result of local food.

Fredericks opened the discussion by asking the panelists to discuss their "eureka" moment, the moment they realized that this type of work was their calling. Jason Thomas, who has worked with East New York Farms since he was a youth Intern, said that participating in East New York Farms farmers market gave him a sense of importance in his community. "I started feeling like a person in my community not just a statistic," said Thomas. Rev. Jackson agreed, saying that food empowers people and noting that in his community he sees people "using food as a source of power strength and creativity."

For Flor de Mariea Eilets, her eureka came not so much in one moment, but through watching her community, largely Mexican, gradually become more unhealthy. She realized that parents, strapped for resources, stretching food stamps and unable to find foods native to their countries, were letting their children dictate what they were fed. This meant sweets, fast food, and replications of the poor school lunches they were receiving. "They came from Mexico healthy," noted Eilets, it was only in America that they got sick.

For Abu Talib there was never one moment, but a lifetime of knowing poverty "we grew up poor" he said, but noted that he was never hungry. "How did we get off track?" asked Talib, "How did we begin to put money before food?"

How we got off track, especially in New York, a city that once embraced its cultural diversity and the ethnic cuisine that went along with it, has its roots in racism, class-ism, politics, and global free trade … just to name a few of the potential culprits. What was uplifting about WHY's forum was how tangible our ability to get back on track is, because it starts right in our own communities.

"There's more community Pride," said Rev. Jackson when talking about how their farm in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn brings the normally isolated immigrant community out of their homes. For Thomas, still in his teens, his work at the East New York Farms didn't just create a new community that relied on the farmers market, it changed the way the community was currently operating. "It's really broken the stereotypes adults have against children," he said as he discussed his own early involvement in the movement.

What's so important about these food movements is that they aren't so much allowing communities to re-invent themselves, they're allowing communities to return to themselves. People are growing good food, they're growing culturally appropriate food, and they are passing this knowledge down to their children. Entire families are changing the way they look at their health and they look at their eating and seeing that sometimes, the old way was the best way. "If you want to feel good," said Talib echoing a sentiment he grew up with, "go to the drug store, but if you want to get well, go to the garden."