Growing Pains: Lack of affordable and accessible nutritious food poses questions to residents of Central and Northern New York
By Kristina Atsalis ’18 and Caroline Bartholomew ’18. Courtesy of 360 Magazine
Winter is coming soon, and for many people that means breaking out winter coats and boots. However, for many Syracuse residents the arrival of winter brings additional stress in the search for fresh food. Although farmers are finding new ways to continue food production year-round, it still isn’t always easy for people to find access to fresh food in this city.
According to the Food Bank of Central New York, one in every seven people in central and northern New York live with food insecurity. Three out of every ten households in Syracuse qualify for food stamps and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, according to CNY Fair Housing.
In addition to its high poverty levels, Syracuse is also considered a food desert, which the United States Department of Agriculture defines as areas “vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas… largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.”
To help combat the city’s lack of fresh food, several organizations have initiated programs. Syracuse Grows, a group that aims to make fresh food more accessible through community gardens and urban farming, was founded in 2008. It works to provide people with various ways to get involved in the development of the community, according to Dr. Evan Weissman, co-founder of Syracuse Grows and assistant professor of food studies at Syracuse University.
“It takes existing resources in the city of Syracuse and leverages those and puts them into conversation,” he says. “It’s a strategy for addressing vacant land and for increasing democracy in the food system.”
Syracuse Grows does not own and did not start any of the community gardens, but instead is based entirely on partnerships with neighborhood groups, local foundations, Syracuse University and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Since its founding, the number of gardens has expanded from three to at least 25. Syracuse Grows is considered an expert in central New York in terms of food justice and community gardens, Weissman says.
Supporting food justice, the idea that a community should be directly involved in their local food system, is one of Syracuse Grows’ main principles. Food justice also addresses the idea of democracy in the food system and prioritizing public health and sustainability before profits.
“We sort of take it as a notion that people should have adequate access to healthful foods,” Weissman says. “But food justice also includes labor inequality in the food system, and that access to food should not be dependent on other people’s charity. It’s about a food system that is resilient and oriented towards people’s needs, not towards profit.”
In addition to growing food, many of the community gardens offer employment to teenagers in the neighborhood and programming for children and senior citizens.
Another strategy to address the problem is mobile markets. Like grocery stores on wheels, mobile markets are essentially food trucks that travel to food desert areas, but instead of selling fast food, they sell fresh produce. One of Weissman’s primary areas of research is mobile markets in Syracuse and the effect they’ve had in increasing accessibility to fresh and healthy foods. He is currently working on a survey to see how mobile markets operate across the country.
Weissman said that as of now, the results are mixed. On one hand, people who take advantage of the mobile markets benefit greatly, especially senior citizens and people who don’t have cars. On the other hand, the costs to start and keep the markets running is not always offset by the profits from selling healthy food. While major grocery stores sell all sorts of products to generate profits, the profit margins for healthy foods is very thin, which makes it hard for the mobile markets to make enough money to keep running.
“Like other sorts of non-profit food system interventions, they become reliant on grant dollars and philanthropy,” Weissman says. “The model itself was created initially to sort of move away from those sorts of charity-based models, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be economically viable for mobile markets to sustain in the long term without outside capital.”
On the other side of food insecurity is the many farmers in the Syracuse area who don’t always have a place to sell their produce. With a lack of grocery stores, farmers are having to find alternative ways to sell food differently than large chains like Wegmans. As part of the solution, farmer’s markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs have been popping up to provide a direct connection between farmers and the people buying their food.
“CSAs are a way to address both consumers and farmers in that are traditionally in places considered food deserts,” says Chris Fowler, executive director and founder of Syracuse First, a non-profit organization that works with over 400 local businesses, many of which are food and farm based. “New York state, the USDA and other philanthropies have tried to help bridge the gap and to subsidize some of that by creating CSAs for people who don’t have access to grocery stores and full-service produce markets.”