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We are urban and rural farmers and organizers.
During harvest season ’09 we launched the Urban/Rural Exchange. We started with a food delivery from farmers in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York’s Hudson Valley to Mothers’ On the Move in New york City’s south Bronx. This was a joint-effort between MOM, a community-led organization in the South Bronx, and our rural farmers. Most of these farmers are working hard to keep their farms going and barely making a profit. Some of them cultivated the seeds just for this delivery and harvested the vegetables especially for Mothers on the Move.
MOM is working in their community where there is less access to healthy, affordable food by stepping up education and asking their members what they want. They want, among other things, healthy food, and MOM is moving forward with organizing ways to get good food circulating into the community. MOM is working for their neighborhood by listening and acting to what they hear, on the terms of the community they work in.
It is important to everyone that their neighbors have healthy foods of their choice to eat. There’s no such thing as food security for one person or one town Unless we have a strong system with the means to feed everyone then how can we be sure any of us will be fed tomorrow? The food system has to work for everyone, or it’s not working for anyone, so it’s in all of our best interest to see that it’s awesome for everyone, not just adequate for some.
Since that first delivery the Farmers and MOM have stayed in touch:
- Farmers and organizers from around the Northeast, including MOM members and staff, all attended the 2nd Annual Growing Food and Justice Initiative Gathering in Milwaukee, WI in October, ’09.
- Mothers’ on the Move Housing Organizer, Nova Strachan, taught an Outreach training to farmers and organizers at MOM Headquarters and then took us out to practice a health and food survey in the neighborhood.
- MOM is spearheading a push to start a cooperative project between MOM and a group of FSR farmers to sell fresh, homegrown vegetables directly to the people in their neighborhood. They are writing grants, organizing, and meeting their rural partners more than half way. This will be a great example of a food system built “working people to working people”.
- We are also organizing trips for MOM youth groups, staff, and membership to be able to visit farms and food & agriculture education projects upstate and around New England.
- Wanda Salaman, MOM’s Director, was the first interview for an FSR food justice documentary project. A collaboration with this years NYU classShifting Focus, the movie should be out this summer (2010)!
The Urban/Rural Exchange is a first step in creating dialogue and common goals between urban and rural food justice organizers and grassroots community groups about the politics and strategy for local food control based on mutual support and respect. There is no end to developing this economy or these relationships. Get in touch.
MOM is working for economic justice, education justice, environmental justice, and immigration justice, in step with Youth on the Move and Tenants on the Move. They received part of the food shipment from the ’09 harvest season, as did the attendees of Mama Iya Olatundi’s 80th birthday at Hattie Carthan Community Garden Bedstuy, Brooklyn and other food justice organizers and community members around the city. We are now working with MOM to get some great things off the ground for the 2010 season.
- We are doing further outreach to build the volume of our shipment(s) this year and collaborate with more groups in New York City and other areas of the Northeast
- We are currently looking for farmers and distributors who are interested in selling their produce in the South Bronx, benefiting socially and economically from the food justice network we are building
We hope soon we can include more farmers and more organizations we have met with that are working to meet the needs of their communities and doing food and social justice work “from the ground up”. Through this project and the Roundtables we are building relationships and projects. We’re also helping people understand the power of communities working together to get their food systems back in their own hands, for the benefit of everyone.
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Henry Harris
Food Security Roundtable
www.foodpower.org
henry@foodpower.org
917 922 5430
