Christopher Peak file photo
Trimming a tomato plant at a Goffe Street community garden.
The city has been awarded two federal food grants worth a total of $590,000, which will be used to develop a local urban agriculture master plan and build out a citywide community composting program.
City Food Systems Policy Director Latha Swamy announced the city’s recent receipt of those two food sustainability awards during a Tuesday morning press conference held on the second floor of City Hall.
She was joined by Mayor Justin Elicker, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, state Commissioner of Agriculture Bryan Hurlburt, and a host of local food justice advocates from such organizations as Witnesses to Hunger, the Food Policy Council, Love Fed New Haven, and Gather New Haven.
Thomas Breen photo
Swamy with Mayor Elicker, U.S. Rep. DeLauro, and Commissioner Hurlburt.
“We hope to bring food closer to the people who need and want it, and right in their neighborhood, with gardens and farms that the community has ownership over,” Swamy said about the vision for an equitable local food system that these grants should help foster. “This is not just about food provision. This is about [community members] owning the production of food themselves.”
The two grants come from the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Office of Urban Agriculture & Innovative Production.
They consist of a $500,000 award through the Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production Competitive Planning Grant, and $90,000 worth of funding through the Community Compost and Food Waste Reduction Projects.
Swamy said that the city plans to spend the $500,000 grant over the next three years on developing a local urban agriculture master plan. She called it “an effective, responsive, transparent, fair, efficient, user-friendly, and predictable but flexible plan to access land and opportunities in order to support the production and sale of locally grown foods, build community, improve public health and wellbeing, and provide economic opportunity,” particularly in areas with high concentrations of vacant and underutilized land.
Sophie Sonnenfeld file photo
At a Growing Entrepreneurs program held in a Fair Haven community greenhouse.
She said part of that money will be used to pay for a new city staffer in City Hall’s food systems policy division, which was established in 2016. Swamy said that staffer will oversee the plan development process. The bulk of the money, she said, will go towards paying community advisory board members who will be compensated for their time over the next three years for participating in community workshops and providing their input on changes in zoning law, community land policy, and access to fresh foods citywide.
Swamy said that the community advisory board will consist of “neighborhood experts, community health experts, youth experts, and farming experts,” and that the city is currently setting up a process for soliciting applications for that board.
“We want to talk to the grandpa who has been farming in his backyard for 20 years,” she said, as much as the city wants to talk to any other kind of food policy expert.
The $90,000 grant, meanwhile, will be spent on support compositing initiatives already underway at Gather New Haven, Common Ground, and Peels on Wheels. It will be also used to establish a new site somewhere in the city for that can host a new citywide composting program.
Thomas Breen Photo
State Rep. Robyn Porter (pictured) said that coming up with new, sustainable, community-owned ways to produce and distribute healthy food is critical for neighborhoods like hers in Newhallville. She has spoken to a mother who said that she and her children have been eating just once a day during the pandemic because of their inability to pay for and access enough food.
“We talk about neighborhoods where all you have is liquor stores and corner stores that are selling things that drive diabetes and high blood pressure,” she said. “This is going to make a direct impact on people who are struggling. … You are what you eat. And you’ve got to be well in order to fight a fight.”
DeLauro (pictured) agreed. “To think that in the United States of America, that people are going to bed hungry tonight,” she said.
“We have an abundance of food in our country. We are blessed. Why should anyone have to go to sleep hungry at night because they just don’t have enough food.”
Kim Hart (pictured), who lives in Beaver Hills and is an organizer with the group Witnesses to Hunger, said she would like to see the city’s new urban agriculture master plan “let people know where they can garden. Not everyone’s backyard is conducive to gardening.”
“Make it accessible to people in the community,” she said.
New Haven Food Policy Council Chair Raven Blake (pictured at left with Porter), who also helps lead Love Fed New Haven and CTCORE-Organize Now, lauded the grants, and the coming urban agriculture master plan process, as following through on Swamy’s stated commitment to fostering an equitable food system grounded in community control.
“Community ownership of the land,” they said, is a critical starting point for improving everything from food access and security to creating new jobs to encouraging community development.