The History & Impact of Urban Agriculture in NYC
There exists in New York City a groundswell of green. It’s not located in Central or Prospect Park, nor is it located in the forests of The Bronx. This green lives in...
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Food Insecurity |
The History & Impact of Urban Agriculture in NYC
There exists in New York City a groundswell of green. It’s not located in Central or Prospect Park, nor is it located in the forests of The Bronx. This green lives in...
There exists in New York City a groundswell of green. It’s not located in Central or Prospect Park, nor is it located in the forests of The Bronx. This green lives in the nearly 100 acres of community gardens and farms planted across the five boroughs of the city. Rooted on rooftops and vacant lots, these greenspaces are vital sources of food, fellowship, and education for the communities they serve. They’re also in constant danger of being destroyed from gentrification, displacement, and development. In this blog post, we’re going to explore the history of urban agriculture in New York and talk about why it's so important to the fight against hunger in our city. We’ll also chat with The Campaign Against Hunger, a Food Bank member agency that currently operates two farms in Brooklyn. ''They were getting ready to take something away from our community, something too important to lose... I told them I was born poor, I live poor, and I’m going to die poor. I don’t beg. But these are for the community. I asked [the city] to help me.” Out of context, these words from a 1982 New York Times interview could be about anything: affordable housing, local grocery stores, schools, churches. But spoken by then 82-year-old activist and environmentalist Hattie Carthan, they were about trees, specifically the 1,500 trees she had spent her twilight years planting as the leader of the “Bedford-Stuyvesant Beautification Committee.” When Carthan first moved onto Vernon Avenue in 1953, it was a beautiful tree-lined street in the heart of Bed-Stuy. But over the course of a decade, all but three of the trees had died, thanks in large part to neglect from the city. To fight back against this deterioration, Carthan organized her neighbors into the T&T-Vernon Block Association. Together, they held a BBQ to raise funds for four trees, which, when planted, quickly died. But thankfully, a much sturdier seed had taken root. By 1966, the Beautification Committee was in full swing and breathing new life into Bed-Stuy. At its height, it powered over 100 different block associations, each of which took ownership of its respective trees. In addition to her duties as Committee chair, Carthan also taught classes on tree care and conservation to students in the neighborhood. She would then hire and pay these same students to be part of her “Neighborhood Tree Corps,” which oversaw the maintenance of the hundreds of ginkgos, sycamores, and honey locusts blooming in the borough. Though Carthan received occasional grant support from the city, the Committee was always run by and for the community. In truth, her trees didn’t just beautify the neighborhood... they saved it. Carthan’s work marked a major turning point for urban agriculture in New York City. Though victory gardens had been popular throughout the 1940s (yielding some 200 million pounds of fresh produce for New Yorkers during the war), they mostly faded away by the early 1950s. After that, the only farm gardens left were owned and operated by city parks. Carthan, then, was one of the first to bring the practices of conservation and environmental education out of the bureaucratic system and into the streets. In many ways, she identified something that would come to inform the movement for years and decades to come: Greenspaces could revitalize and sustain historically underserved communities. This idea was put into practice throughout the 1970s by a variety of groups, most notably Liz Christy’s “Green Guerillas,” who planted sunflowers in traffic medians and threw seed bombs into vacant lots along the Bowery. The group blurred the lines between private and public space, seeing every crack and crevice as an opportunity to grow something beautiful. As the still operational collective writes on its website: “The green guerillas began rallying other people to use community gardening as a tool to reclaim urban land, stabilize city blocks, and get people working together to solve problems.” And work together they did. As the financial crisis of the 1970s left public and private lands abandoned by NYC developers, groups like Christy’s moved in to transform and repurpose these plots for the good of their surrounding communities. There was such a gardening boom at this time that the Department of Parks and Recreation established the GreenThumb Program to provide resources, licenses, and protection to these spaces. But as the green revolution began to feel more and more unstoppable, the economic prosperity of the 90s and early 2000s brought things to a screeching halt. Gardens were razed to make way for storefronts. Farms were decimated to grow high-rises instead of neighborhood-sustaining produce. Though coalitions were formed and lawsuits were leveraged against the government, there was little that gardeners and farmers could do to safeguard their land. As recently as last November, a group of 54 organizations came together to present the city with “From the Ground Up: A Petition to Protect New York City’s Community Gardens.” In it, they make a clear argument for why these spaces are so important: Community gardens alleviate food insecurity by providing folks with ready access to fresh, nutritious food. By increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables, community gardens help to confront public health disparities caused by racial and socioeconomic injustice in historically marginalized Black and Latinx communities throughout the city. Community gardens are a community-led response to environmental racism, helping to curb disproportionate air pollution and susceptibility to illness. Community gardens help to correct unequal access to greenspace in NYC by providing low-income New Yorkers with space to learn from and connect with nature. At Food Bank, we recognize the vital role that urban agriculture plays in the fight against hunger in our city. That’s why we partner with organizations across the five boroughs that operate their own community gardens and farms. One of these member agencies is The Campaign Against Hunger, which currently has two farms in Brooklyn: Far Rock Farm in Far Rockaway and Saratoga Farm in Bed-Stuy, not a stone’s throw from where Hattie Carthan planted her first tree nearly six decades ago. Like Carthan, TCAH takes a community-first approach to everything it does, which Director of Programs Tamara Dawson told me is what makes its farms so special. “For us, it’s important to understand our community and what it needs,” explained Dawson. “Before every growing season, we do a survey with our clients to figure out what they want to see, what they want us to grow. This is why we grow things like callaloo, snowy eggplant, and dwarf okra... we grow over 100 different species of produce because we want to meet the needs of individuals. It’s so nice when you see a family come in from wherever they’re from and say, ‘Oh my God! You have this?!’” It’s a transcendent moment, one that speaks not only to the importance of access and representation, but to the very power of food itself to affirm who we are and where we come from. By planting vegetables, fruits, and herbs from all over the world, TCAH builds an instant bridge to home for its neighbors, a bridge that might otherwise not exist at all. Aside from growing culturally appropriate food, TCAH also educates and employs students from the neighborhood to run and operate its farms. The Green Teens Program hearkens back to Carthan’s Neighborhood Tree Corps in that it empowers kids to give back and protect their communities. It also pays them, which allows them to support local businesses, take care of family, and live their lives with more dignity and freedom. “We are a product of our environment and of what we eat, [which is why] it’s so important that our farms are youth-run. It’s important for us to educate our youth not only on how to grow food, but how to stand up and be an advocate for food justice. Our green teens go out and partner with seniors in the neighborhood, show them different plants they can grow in their apartments, show them how to grow a tomato plant on the fire escape. It’s important that we give back to our community and that we educate from within.” Now more than ever, we must do our part to protect these invaluable spaces. As the New York City Community Garden Coalition (NYCCGC) and Earthjustice write in “From the Ground Up,” the way to do this is to increase legal protections for community gardens and farms by designating them as Critical Environmental Areas. That way, farmers will be able to grow food, educate the public, and sustain neighborhoods without fear of having their livelihoods destroyed. So spread the word, contact your local councilperson, and visit a garden in your neighborhood today! Taking the time to connect with the land and the people who work it will undoubtedly change your relationship with whatever city you call home. -
Food Insecurity |
Ramadan and the Importance of Culturally Appropriate Food
Happy Ramadan to all who celebrate! This month-long season is a sacred and important time for Muslim communities around the world, including the ones we serve here in...
Happy Ramadan to all who celebrate! This month-long season is a sacred and important time for Muslim communities around the world, including the ones we serve here in New York City. Though perhaps best known as a time for fasting, it’s also a time for gathering with family and friends around an Iftar meal. It’s a time of charity, of giving back. And, most importantly, it’s a time to reenergize for the year to come, to set intentions and manifest abundance for your neighbors and yourself. How does all of this connect back to Food Bank? Well, the spirit of Ramadan is baked right into our mission. As the Director of our Community Kitchen & Food Pantry Sultana Ocasio recently told me, “During Ramadan, I could walk into a mosque where no one knows me and get fed... [and that] informs my work throughout the year in terms of serving folks in a way that’s not prohibitive or judgmental. It’s about welcoming people to the Community Kitchen the same way you’d welcome someone into your home.” As practicing Muslims will know, this idea of open-hearted charity (or Zakat) is a major tenet of Islam. Though required year-round, the practice takes on new meaning during Ramadan. For many, performing Zakat through food is an important rite of the season, whether by providing dried dates and rice to loved ones at an Iftar meal, or donating time, money, and resources to food pantries and soup kitchens. Though fasting during Ramadan isn’t necessarily about reflecting on the systemic nature of hunger, it does provide folks with an opportunity to think critically about their relationships with food. “It gives you empathy, though that’s not the purpose,” explained Ocasio. “Feeling your body weak with hunger and thirst, you can’t help but think of those who don’t have a choice, who don’t know where their next meal is coming from.” At Food Bank, we’re in a unique position to mobilize that empathy in service of one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States. According to a report from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, nearly 800,000 Muslims live in NYC, which means that approximately 22% of all of America’s Muslims live right here in the Big Apple. This diverse populace includes descendants of Muslims who have lived in the US since before its founding as well as immigrants from over 75 different countries. To serve our Muslim neighbors, we provide halal meat at our Food Pantry and also partner with halal agencies across the city to get culturally appropriate food into the hands of those who need it most. But having the food itself is just one piece of the puzzle – we’re also doing the work to build trust within these communities to let them know that our halal meat actually adheres to halal requirements. “I wear a scarf and approach people with the greetings of Salaams. When I approach to offer halal meat to clients, there’s still a level of doubt. They can’t believe it’s really halal," says Ocasio. “If you normally get halal meat, you usually go to a specific halal butcher, so coming to a place like Food Bank, you may not trust that it’s actually halal.” To get the word out, Ocasio has spoken to local Imams to let their congregants know about the halal food available at our Kitchen, but says it’s been a slow process. In her words: “It takes time to develop that trust, it really takes time.” But for Ocasio, and for us, it’s time well spent. By developing that trust, we’re not only able to better distribute our halal resources, but we’re also able to destigmatize some of the shame associated with standing on a pantry line, which Ocasio says can be challenging for certain communities. “I think a barrier for some folks is the actual visibility of going to a food pantry. In some cultures, going to a food pantry is not considered a big deal at all. But for other cultures, folks will get talked about in their community. For a lot of people who are immigrants, coming to this country meant that they’re supposed to be making money and providing resources to their families back home... [so the question becomes] how could you come to this country and go on a food line? The visibility of receiving food or admitting it can be extremely difficult for some people.” Though we can’t dismantle this shame overnight, we can do our part to chip away at it over time. We do this by providing resources that affirm the cultures, beliefs, and traditions of the folks we serve. We do this by training our staff to be sensitive to the unique needs of our clients. And we do this by centering and prioritizing the dignity of everyone who walks through our doors. Whether you observe Ramadan or not, these questions of inclusion, equity, and access are important ones to think about. They’re certainly ones we ponder throughout the year, and ones we hope to answer in tandem with you. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to fighting hunger, and so our work must be nuanced and hyper-focused on the lived experiences of our neighbors. In truth, there is simply no replacement for meeting people where they’re at, asking what they need, and delivering it to them without judgement or shame. To support us in this work and to get involved yourself, click here. And feel free to join us for “Iftar on the Go” an initiative with NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer and Islamic Relief in which we’ll be providing free halal Iftar meals at our Community Kitchen in Harlem. Distributions will be on April 15, April 22, April 29, and May 6 at 4 pm. -
Food Insecurity |
6 Ways to Volunteer to Fight Hunger
It’s National Volunteer Month, which means it’s the perfect time to join us in the fight against hunger! Thankfully, there are a ton of ways to get involved, from...
It’s National Volunteer Month, which means it’s the perfect time to join us in the fight against hunger! Thankfully, there are a ton of ways to get involved, from putting in shifts at a local soup kitchen to advocating for hunger relief on social media. For a little inspiration, check out our guide below, which outlines some easy ways to leverage your talents to combat food insecurity. Join a Virtual Service Event Though not all onsite volunteer opportunities are back up and running yet, there are still a number of ways to get involved with hunger relief virtually. In fact, many organizations like ours have been holding virtual volunteer events throughout the pandemic to connect folks and galvanize for action. Click here to join Food Bank’s next virtual service event on 4/21! Support a Local Pantry When giving back, it’s always best to keep things local. So, use our Food Finder Map to locate one of our member food pantries or soup kitchens in your neighborhood that you can support. It’s a great way to fight hunger and show up for the folks in your neck of the woods. Write a Letter to a New Yorker in Need During challenging times, a kind note can make a huge impact in someone’s life. While we're not currently accepting onsite volunteer assistance at our Community Kitchen, our “Dear New York” program allows you to interact with our clients in a safe, socially distant way. Simply write a letter and we’ll slip it into one of our to-go pantry bags. To get started, check out our “Dear New York” toolkit. Use Social Media An easy way to make a difference in the fight against hunger is to get the word out on social media. Our Social Media Ambassador Program encourages volunteers to use their platforms to educate people on our mission and the state of food insecurity in NYC. As we’ve seen throughout 2020, social media has transformed into a lifeline for folks looking to start important conversations and share resources. Go on a Food Rescue Mission There are many restaurants, cafés, and grocery stores that throw away perfectly good food at the end of the business day, either because it’s not shelf-stable or because it’s company policy. As you can imagine, this creates a huge surplus of food that’s completely going to waste. To help save these resources and redistribute them to organizations that can use them, consider going on a food rescue mission! Groups like Food Rescue US can help you come up with your rescue plan. Advocate for Hunger Relief There’s never been a better time to advocate for hunger relief at the federal level. President Biden has made it clear that combatting food insecurity is a major priority for his administration, which presents a great opportunity for you to use your voice to impact national policy. Join our action team to send letters to your members of Congress in support of legislation that expands food assistance nationwide.
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