GrowNYC

Q&A with senior attorney and director of NRDC’s New York urban program, spearheading its regional food initiative.

Urban agriculture can clearly provide food to disadvantaged populations in African cities. What is happening here in the United States?

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 23 million people in America live in food deserts -- areas, often in low-income communities and communities of color, where healthy and affordable food is hard to get. And studies have shown that limited access to healthy food choices often leads to poor diets and high levels of obesity and other diet-related diseases. Eliminating food deserts is therefore a vital issue for reasons of health and social justice.

One of our main goals in our effort to boost the production, distribution, and consumption of sustainable local food in these communities is to create a wholesale farmers’ market at the massive Hunts Point food market in the Bronx. This would establish for the first time a distribution hub where small- and medium-size growers would be able to sell directly to supermarkets, restaurants, and other food outlets. An important consideration in creating the wholesale market is to help scale up the availability of fresh food in disadvantaged neighborhoods that are considered food deserts. By the way, the folks who run the city’s more than 50 retail farmers’ markets, GrowNYC, are key partners in pushing for this project. Another great initiative, which is already underway in some neighborhoods, is to bring local produce -- and free small refrigerators to keep it fresh -- directly to small bodegas that have never offered such healthy food. In Chicago, to cite another example, community organizers have developed the idea of a mobile supermarket to bring fresh, healthy produce to underserved areas.

What other initiatives are you working on to get more healthy local food to the residents of New York City?

We are working with a grassroots group called Catskill Mountainkeeper to protect and expand farming in the nearby Catskill region so that it can become a larger source of fresh, healthy food for the city. At the same time, we’re working to ensure a steady demand for local food. One way to do this is to push for new laws and policies that would leverage the enormous purchasing power of New York City agencies -- including our more than 1,500 public schools -- to boost demand for food from nearby farms.