California Farmers of Color Need More Support During the Pandemic. Can Private Efforts Help?

Brazil's small farmers can now directly supply the country's school meals programs. It's been a big boost for local farmers, and it's helping the schools too.

After incarceration, Black men and women have a difficult time re-integrating into society without financial and educational resources. A former Black Panther activist has created the non-profit Oakland &the World Enterprises to offer an urban farm as a prisoner re-entry program and community center. The Oakland project supports self-sufficiency, self-determination, and empowerment for Black people.

A national census of farm-to-school lunch programs said the kids ate more healthful meals and threw less food in the trash than kids not on the program. In D.C., by law, schools must incorporate some local food.

Organizations in Detroit are piloting a program to apply food stamp credits in grocery stores towards the purchase of nutritious produce, in order to increase access to healthy items. The initiative can also help the local economy prosper through increased promotion of locally grown produce.

In an agricultural system designed for big-industrial growers, many farmers struggle to bridge the relationship between their produce and consumers, as well as strengthening local economies. The food hub is a collection of buildings that process and distribute the sale of local food. Eastern Market in Detroit is an example of a food hub that makes local produce accessible to low-income neighborhoods.

Culinary and agricultural education can sometimes take a backseat to the more academic side of high school. But Blue Hill is teaching high school students the importance of healthy cooking and home grown produce through a cooking class that was recently instituted in Manhattan high schools.

Immigrants to St. Louis are capitalizing on urban gardens and helping to revitalize the city by repopulating it. The program enrolled 31 refugees and their families who plant food for their own household and to sell them. While the profits aren't huge, the entrepreneurial program offers refugees who may speak little or no English a chance to learn how to operate in the local economy.

After the success of North Carolina pork in Japan, the NC department of agriculture aims to help other local producers try their products in this foreign market to stimulate the state's economy.

Programs to get fresh produce carts to areas with no access to healthy food work best when government and determined entrepreneurs team up. Success from this model is evident in New York City, where the city has incentivized the selling of fruits and vegetables by street vendors in areas that are in the most need of the produce.

By the 1980s, Roxbury and north Dorchester had been devastated by the disinvestment and white flight of the 1960s and 1970s. Racist banking and housing policies (“redlining”) had segregated people of color from opportunity, barring them from getting home loans except in certain neighborhoods. So the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) brought together residents to develop their own comprehensive plan to revitalize their community, building a community food system along the way.