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June 1997 How to be an Activist: Sustainable Sustenance By Kathy Lawrence

The fight for a sustainable world is not just about saying "no" to the bio-industrialized food system and genetic engineering, it's about saying "yes" to local farming. Kathy Lawrence of Just Food explains why and offers tips on what we can do.

Just Food was formed in 1995 to bring together organizations in and around New York City that are working on various food system issues like urban gardening, organic farming, hunger and nutrition, consumer advocacy, and social justice. We started with the recognition that there is a lot already happening in the city. There are 36 farmers' markets. There are a thousand community gardens and over a thousand emergency feeding centers in New York City alone. And there are 15 urban gardening groups and six anti-hunger organizations. Yet, no one was bringing all the pieces together and looking at what it takes to build a sustainable food and agriculture system that actually feeds people, keeps farmers in business, preserves the environment and provides good, secure livelihoods throughout the food chain.

In 1980 there were fewer than 50 emergency food centers. Even now, with over a thousand, according to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, up to 60,000 people a month are being turned away from those centers for lack of food or inability to get food to people. These numbers do not take account of the massive welfare cuts which will take away food stamp privileges from legal immigrants, a substantial part of New York City's population. Paralleling this dramatic increase in emergency feeding centers and the need for food is an alarming decline in farming. New York state loses on average 20 farms per week. From 1980 to 1985, we lost at least 20,000 farms. These are good farmers growing good food that's desperately needed in New York City, and for which there is a huge market. Seven or eight million people a day pull out their wallets to buy food in this city. Where's that food coming from and at what cost?

Bringing the Issue Home

Very few of us know where our food comes from; who's growing it; how it's grown; and how far it traveled. That knowledge can tell us what kind of food system we are investing in every single day and every single meal: either a globalized, industrialized and incredibly destructive and monopolistic food system, or a different kind of food system - one that really supports farmers and non-farmers alike.

Let me give you an example. New York state is second only to Washington state as the largest apple producer in the country. New York state produces nine times as many apples as are eaten in New York state, yet only 3.4 percent of the apples we eat in New York City actually come from our state. Most of our apples come from Washington state, California and overseas - from Chile, Argentina, and New Zealand. Most of our New York state apples are sold in the southern U.S. and the United Kingdom. This is insane! We need practical steps to support a healthy, strong, ecologically sound, local food system.

Making a Difference

1. Begin growing at least some of your own food, even if it consists only of herbs or lettuces on your window sill. Not only will you be taking a little bit of pressure off the industrialized food system, you will also reconnect with the cycles of growing life. You will have a better respect and understanding for what goes into growing all of your food when you re-engage in even a small way.

2. Buy from local farmers. There are still more than 30,000 farmers in New York state. Find out where your farmers are and where your nearest farmers' markets are; buy from those farmers. Spend at least $10 a week on food that you know is grown or processed in New York state. It's a pretty simple thing to do. Think about where your food dollars are going. To get information on New York City farmers' markets, call Greenmarkets at 212-477-3220 or New York state's Department of Agriculture and Markets at 718-722-2830.

3. Join Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). CSA is a great way for you to know exactly where your food is coming from and how it's grown. With CSA you establish a direct relationship with a farmer, by paying in advance for a share in an entire season's harvest from a nearby farm. What city folks get is weekly delivery of fresh produce to a central distribution site (usually a church or community center) from June to November or December, or sometimes to January and February. There are now seven CSAs in four boroughs of New York City. Just Food is helping to develop more CSAs for the 1998 season. [For more information on CSAs, see Constance Cornell's article in this issue of Satya.]

4. Talk to your produce manager at your grocery store or supermarket. Produce managers are required by law to know the origin of everything that comes into their store. Whether they post it or not, they are required to know. Demand that they get New York state and Northeast regional products in their store. A manager from D'Agostino's recently told me that all he needed were five requests for him to stock something. Retake that power. Refuse to buy Washington state apples, and ask for ones grown in New York state.

5. Prepare more of your own food. We need to spend more time actually engaging in the process of feeding ourselves and our families, and not waiting for an increasingly industrialized system to do it for us. Currently, we pay for the long-distance transportation of food in which all the nutrients have been completely processed out, and which has been supplemented with additives and other things. This is not the way it ought to work. We need to work more with whole foods and reclaim responsibility for our own health, rather than expecting someone else to do it.

6. Start composting your food waste. For a start, it's not "waste" - it's essential nutrients that are being taken out of the system and put into another incredibly destructive system called landfills. I have some friends in my office: about three thousand red wriggler worms that eat almost all of my food waste. These worms create wonderful worm castings for your plants. You can buy red wrigglers of your own, learn about home composting or even drop off your compostables at the Union Square Greenmarket "Compost Table" or call the Lower East Side Ecology Center: 212-420-0621. For more information on worms, read Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof. Flower Press: Kalamazoo, MI (1982), $10.95 pbk. Tel.: 616-327-0108. For a catalog on worm boxes and composting call 1-800-863-1700.

7. Support a community garden - join the fight to save New York City's gardens. The gardens are under tremendous attack from the City selling off its property and from the pending deregulation of rents. Community gardens are centers of community education, community life and community space. Just Food is leading a collaborative project to boost urban agriculture in New York's low-income communities. We're bringing organic farmers in to work with gardeners to grow food in an urban setting and get more people involved in growing their own food. We can't do this if the gardens no longer exist. To find out about urban gardening and how you can help, call Green Guerillas at 212-674-8124.

To contact Just Food, write: Just Food, 290 Riverside Drive, #15D, New York, NY 10025-5287. Tel.: 212-666-2168.

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