How Do We Create a Hunger-Free Community?
What if Poughkeepsie was known as a food city?
Think about the example of Beacon that has worked intentionally to make their City vibrant through the arts. What if we built on Poughkeepsie’s strengths to become a vibrant food city?
What would this vision look like?
- As a food city, Poughkeepsie’s children are nourished as they learn and develop.
- As a food city, Poughkeepsie’s people feel good and stay well.
- We have opportunities to learn more about nutrition.
- In our food city, Poughkeepsie’s environment is healthy.
- Poughkeepsie’s youth have opportunities.
- Poughkeepsie’s economy is diverse and strong.
- In Poughkeepsie, people of all income levels can get healthy food.
- No one goes hungry.
- As a food city, we enjoy and celebrate life with food.
Who is thinking about this vision?
Prompted by the purpose of our organization – to build just and sustainable food system that nourishes all people by providing healthy food, building a strong community and stewarding the environment – the Poughkeepsie Farm Project recruited several partners to start the Poughkeepsie Plenty project.
Poughkeepsie Plenty is thinking about a people-centered vision for our food system, with a goal of ensuring that all residents of the City of Poughkeepsie can secure nutritious food.
What is a food system?
These two words are used to describe how people eat. Through this system, food is produced, distributed and accessed for consumption through retail, cooperative or emergency food outlets. The kind of food system we envision puts people at the center to make sure that all of us can have a nutritious diet.
Poughkeepsie Plenty is asking – What changes can we make to our food system to ensure good food for all?
Too many people in our city are at risk of going hungry. We’re finding that 1 out of 5 City of Poughkeepsie households are skipping or cutting the size of meals. The food that is easiest to get is not making us healthier. Almost half of the students in the Poughkeepsie City School District are overweight or obese, placing them at risk for developing serious illnesses.
The real problem is poverty
The name Poughkeepsie Plenty refers to the widespread myth that says there is not enough food to go around. In reality, abundance, not scarcity, best describes our nation’s food supply. The real problem is poverty. Hunger is sometimes a hidden problem in the US, because it may look different here than the images we see on TV in other countries. Hunger in the US may manifest as a choice to eat cheaper, less nutritious food; to choose between spending money on food, medicine or heat; or to turn to stigmatized sources of emergency food. Poughkeepsie Plenty would like to get beyond food handouts as a solution to hunger, as this doesn’t solve the fundamental issues that prevent people from eating well.
Poughkeepsie Plenty is advancing a collective approach based on the belief that food should be distributed fairly, and with dignity, and that no one should live without enough nutritious food because of economic constraints or social inequalities. We envision a city where everyone has the ensured ability to obtain, in socially acceptable ways, enough nutritious food for an active, healthy life, through a system that maximizes community self-reliance, social justice and environmental well-being.
We need you!
We are planning to facilitate forums with groups all over the city to envision ways we can change our food system. These Community Food Forums will culminate in an all-City planning meeting that will be held in 2012 to draft a Poughkeepsie food system plan. We would like YOU to participate in one of these gatherings to help us generate ideas.
Is this even possible?
There is some good news to share – there is so much going on to eradicate hunger in sustainable ways. Many people are doing good work to build food systems that ensure access to nutritious food for all people at all times. They are using their community strengths and assets to build up their food resources to meet their own needs. At Community Food Forums, we share many inspiring examples from all across the US to help us envision possibilities for Poughkeepsie.
I’d like to share one example of a food city in Brazil that has achieved amazing results by bringing many efforts together. In the early 1990s, Belo Horizonte, Brazil decided to act on the idea that food is a basic right and redefine urban hunger as a problem not of food supply, but of access.
Sixteen years ago, the first "people’s restaurant" opened in Belo Horizonte. Today, more than 15 thousand people get meals at the city's 4 "people's restaurants" every day. Anyone, rich or poor, can eat there. Municipal workers, who consider themselves defenders of the right to eat, serve fresh and healthy meals costing the equivalent of 85 US cents. Financed by property taxes, these meals cost each of the city's 4 million inhabitants about five cents a week in public money.
Belo Horizonte’s anti-hunger plan goes beyond affordable meals to the production and distribution of food. The government helps to sustain more than 100 community gardens, providing access to water and fertilizer. In low income areas throughout the city, neighbors can get organic fruits, vegetables, and medicinal herbs grown literally around the corner.
The city of Belo Horizonte gives away land plots in impoverished areas to entrepreneurs who agree to build markets. They must offer at least twenty items of produce at a subsidized rate of no more than 38 cents per kilo. The low cost markets have flourished, earning profits on high volumes despite low mark-ups.
Belo Horizonte's food security policies have had real results. Since 1993, the city has had a 60 percent drop in infant mortality and a 75 percent decrease in children hospitalized for malnutrition.
If a city in Brazil can achieve amazing results, I believe we can work together to accomplish similar outcomes here. Our vision for Poughkeepsie can unfold over a period of years. We have the opportunity to plan and lay the groundwork for it now, and you can be directly involved in generating ideas for changes we can make for Poughkeepsie to become a vibrant food city.
For more information on Poughkeepsie Plenty:
Participate in a Community Food Forum
For more information about Belo Horizonte:
