During Sunday’s meeting, we discussed how bringing fresh fruits and vegetables to an impoverished area, like Detroit, isn’t necessarily enough to get the area’s residents to eat these foods. Fellow blog posters have highlighted that this might be the result of access. Local and organic foods are often grown on a smaller-scale and require more labor inputs, resulting in higher costs. Logically, a number of impoverished populations don’t have the financial resources to purchase more expensive food, even if it is available in their area.
However, in working with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and the various stakeholders of the Farm-to-School and Farm-to-Institution initiatives I realized that in addition to access, education plays a motivating role in establishing the relationships that connect the farm gate to the dinner (or school) plate. The Farm-to-School initiatives across the state work to bring more healthful, local produce and foods into the cafeterias, while also educating the students on what types of vegetables exist and how they are grown, often through lesson plans and the creation of a class garden. This education component is critical to helping kids get excited about eating fruits and vegetables. This excitement will hopefully hold through the lifetime of the child and continue to motivate them to purchase healthier foods instead of more readily accessible processed foods.
In my mind, I see the intersection of access and education in farmer’s markets, food stamps and community kitchens. Increasing the number and quality of farmer’s markets ensures a community’s access to fresh, locally produced food. At farmer’s markets there is an increasing accessibility to healthful foods. Individuals with more substantial incomes can afford the higher sale prices associated with this type of food, but now those who are issued food stamps have a new way to purchase food at farmer’s markets at no additional cost to themselves. Using a government issued debit-like card, card holders can purchase wooden tokens from an ATM-like machine at markets, which can be used to purchase food from market vendors. Debit card holders can similarly use the machines to purchase wooden tokens if a conventional ATM is not available. These machines allow for increased access, but require that card holders be educated that they can use their food stamps at farmer’s markets and what health benefits this can confer. Similarly, community kitchens provide access to healthier and increasingly local foods through the donations of gleaned crops or donated produce. The community kitchen model is quickly replacing food shelter one, as community kitchens seek to educate lower-income families on how and what to eat rather than just providing them with non-perishable foods.
Like the Chinese proverb says “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. Establishing local and regional food access for all does require making the food available locally. However these efforts would go largely underutilized should those located near the new food systems go uneducated about the benefits of consuming such food and the ways in which they can procure it.