Food Access - Austin Brewer - 2017 Intern
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Austin worked with God's Storehouse to look critically at food access in the region and develop new strategies for improving access.
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Food Access - Austin Brewer - 2017 Intern
- 1. Food Access By Austin Brewer 1
- 2. Terms Food Access Food System 2
- 4. Best Practices Healthy Corner Stores Farm-to-Schools Growing Young Farmers Mobile Markets Food Hubs 4
- 5. 5
- 6. Example Local Food Hub Charlottesville, VA Began 2009 Serves 70+ public schools in 8 districts Detroit Public Schools 6
- 7. Education Impact ↑ grades ↑ school attendance ↑ cognitive performance ↑ classroom behaviors 7
- 8. Health & Wellness Impact ↑ healthy food access ↑ eating habits ↓ risk for diet-related diseases 8
- 9. Economic Impact ↑ living wage jobs ↑ career pipelines ↑ local economy 9
- 10. Community Impact Revitalizing Action ↓ violent crime ↑ cohesion 10
- 11. Recommendation Danville Food Enterprise Center Institutional Home: Collaboration Facility Site: Woodrow Wilson Elementary 11
- 12. Next Steps Local Foods Policy Council Local Food System Coordinator 12
- 13. Food Access By Austin Brewer 13
Editor's Notes
- My name is Austin Brewer and I am a Master’s Candidate at the University of Tennessee studying Public Health My project this summer was to analyze existing food access points in the city of Danville to identify areas of greatest need and to present a strategy for creating a healthier, more equitable food network.
- Food access refers to the accessibility and affordability of food retailers—travel time to shopping, availability of healthy foods, and food prices. A food system is the path that food travels from field to fork. It includes the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming, and disposing of food. It also includes the inputs needed and outputs generated at each step.
- To demonstrate food access in Danville, I created a map. Using client data from God’s Storehouse, I created a heat map so that brighter areas on the map represent areas with a greater density of households receiving food assistance from God’s Storehouse. I then added food retail data. Purple stars represent grocery stores; Yellow dots represent convenience / corner stores; Green markers represent community gardens; and Orange diamonds represent feeding programs This map demonstrates the greatest need to be in CTs 4, 5, 6, & 10 – areas also identified by the Health Equity Report with greater economic and health disparities. The map shows that these areas are not close to grocery stores and have an increased number of feeding programs and convenience stores than other areas.
- I began researching the best national practices that improve healthy food access in communities with low food access. One practice is to encourage convenience stores to offer high-quality, affordable produce Farm to School initiatives strive to increase access to fresh, healthy and local food in schools. Growing Young Farmers trains and mentors young farmers to create future growers. Mobile Markets are sell produce out of trucks, vans or buses and make regular stops in underserved communities. A food hub is a business that collects and distributes source-identified food products within a specific region.
- Food hubs can improve access to healthy foods in low-income or underserved areas by making it easier for farmers to offer their products in these areas by assuming costs associated with infrastructure and logistics. I believe a food hub in Danville would have the greatest impact on food access because it can incorporate or facilitate some of the other initiatives. For instance, a food hub could facilitate the healthy corner store and farm-to-school initiatives and could offer training to young farmers.
- One example of a food hub is the Local Food Hub, a nonprofit organization based out of Charlottesville, VA that began in 2009 and serves more than 70 public schools in 8 school districts, as well as other institutions. Their mission is to partner with VA farmers to increase community access to local food. They provide the support services, infrastructure, and market opportunities that connect people with food grown close to home. Detroit Public Schools is a great example of a school district taking a stand on the nutritional content of their school meals. DPS Office of School Nutrition operates a farm-to-school program which incorporates a school garden at every school. It operates its own farm which grows food that is incorporated into the district’s school lunch menu and is beginning to launch its own food hub, which will create a sustainable community development program that provides access to healthy foods, employment opportunities and quality of life enhancements for students, families and community stakeholders in Detroit.
- A food hub in Danville would have several positive impacts in Education, Health & Wellness, Economic Development, and Community Development Improving access to healthy foods and physical activities is linked to healthier students who are also better learners I.e., a lack of adequate consumption of specific foods, such as F & V or dairy products is associated with lower grades among students. Students who are physically active tend to have better grades, school attendance, cognitive performance (memory), and classroom behaviors (on-task behavior) than students who are not physically active. A food hub along with a school garden initiative has the opportunity to increase physical activity in school children. A Cornell study found that kids at schools with gardens were moderately physically active at school for 10 more minutes a week than before their school had gardens.
- A food hub would increase access to healthy foods in communities underserved by grocery stores through partnering with corner stores to offer fresh and healthy snacks, through the farm-to-school initiative that will increase healthy school meals, and through economic development that will occur with a food hub. Increase healthy food access is also associated with better eating habits and decreased risk for obesity and diet-related diseases.
- The immediate impact of a Danville food hub is the creation of 10 to 15 living-wage jobs that mostly do not require a high level of education or training that can be sourced from the local community The long term impact is the creation of a food and agriculture career pipeline by providing a space for food entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, providing farmers the tools and resources needed to market their produce, and by establishing a culinary program that creates a professional food workforce. By supporting local farmers, the food hub puts more dollars back into the local economy. VCE estimates that if every household in VA spent their total food budget on fresh local food and farm-based VA product, it would generate $1.65 billion in annual community food dollars; approximately $12.1 million would be generated in Danville.
- Schools are often focal points of community development so the repurposing of a vacant school with historical ties to its surrounding community would be a revitalizing action to a population. Studies have shown that food insecurity is significantly related to the violent crime rate and that FI has the most significant effect on the rate of burglaries per 100,000 residents in a given community. Thus, establishing a food hub in Danville that works to combat food insecurity and food access issues could reduce crime. A food hub has the opportunity to bring community members together and increase cohesion. By community cohesion, I mean working towards a society in which there is a common vision and sense of belonging by all communities; a society in which strong and positive relationships exist and continue to be developed in the workplace, in schools and in the wider community.
- Based upon my research and the map demonstrating food need in Danville, I recommend that a food hub be created. I believe bringing in an external food hub organization, such as Local Food Hub, is the most sensible solution to running facility operations because of the organizational experience they would bring with them. However, significant collaborations and partnerships need to be made with other local institutions, such as the school system, in order to have the most opportunity for success. While conducting my research I examined three different sites—all vacant school buildings—to determine the most feasible and impactful location for a food hub in Danville. The three sites were W. Townes Lea Elementary, Glenwood, and Woodrow Wilson. After examining the food access map and census tract statistics, it seemed that Woodrow Wilson would have the greatest beneficial impact to the community. Woodrow sits on a 6 acre lot which could be used for growing produce for the hub and a 33,000 sq foot building which could be repurposed to include a food processing center, culinary program, and rentable tenant space for food entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. Now, if the school desires to reopen Woodrow as a school, opportunity still exists to use the lot to grow produce and to make the school into a Agriculture and Natural Sciences Magnet Academy which would allow students in the school the opportunity to earn college credits and various industry level certifications while still in high school. A program of this nature exposes students to a wide variety of careers in Large Animal / Equine Sciences, Plant Sciences, and/or Natural Resources Sciences. Furthermore, an agricultural magnet academy connects students back to the vibrant agriculture community of the Dan River Region.
- To see this idea through, and undergo the necessary planning and research necessary to implementing a food hub, I recommend creating a Local Foods Policy Council or steering committee that would be responsible for examining policies in the Dan River Region that are barriers to this idea or policies that should be in place that would improve the local food system. This council should work to identify any barriers to healthy food access, as well as barriers to accessing locally grown foods. From this council or from another entity, I recommend hiring a Local Food System Coordinator who would assist the Council in their works, but be more responsible for transforming the local food system and implementing the food hub. I recommend this position because transforming the local food system will not be an easy task, and needs an expert dedicated to this work for 40 hours a week. A strong local food system is integral to the future of Danville. In 10 or 20 years, sourcing food locally will be the norm across America instead of the current food distribution system. Thus, if Danville is an early adopter of the local food system model, it would put the city, the region, and the school system on the map as national leaders in the local food movement.
- My name is Austin Brewer and I am a Master’s Candidate at the University of Tennessee studying Public Health My project this summer was to analyze existing food access points in the city of Danville to identify areas of greatest need and to present a strategy for creating a healthier, more equitable food network.