Just Food, Just Communities event will feature civil rights leader

Civil rights movement leader and food justice advocate Shirley Sherrod will be the keynote speaker for an event happening Tuesday on Buffalo’s East Side that is designed to engage the community in a conversation about food justice.

Just Food, Just Communities will run from 4 to 6:30 p.m. Nov. 10 at King Urban Life Center Church, 938 Genesee St., Buffalo. The event, which is free and open to the public, is being organized by the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab (Food Lab) housed in UB’s School of Architecture and Planning. Event partners include Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo, Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP), the Buffalo Public Schools and UB's Civic Engagement and Public Policy research initiative.

Just Food, Just Communities will bring together community partners, scholars, students and residents to discuss the links between racial, economic and food injustices, and strategies to address them. The event will include a panel discussion featuring leaders who are transforming Buffalo’s food system from the ground up.

“The food system does not work for low-income consumers and small and medium-sized farmers. Healthier food costs more to purchase, and low-income consumers live in neighborhoods where there is limited access to food,” says Samina Raja, associate professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and director of the Food Lab. “A disproportionate burden of poor food access is borne by people of color. Our lab is interested in ways that public policy can help create a more just food system for low-income communities of color and small and medium-sized farms.”

Sherrod, who co-founded the New Communities Land Trust — a collective farm in Georgia that was owned and operated by black farmers in the 1970s and early ’80s — will talk about food as an economic driver. Her talk, titled “Building a Local Food Economy,” is scheduled to begin at 5:20 p.m. “Her work is powerful in demonstrating that African-Americans are agents of change in the food system,” says Raja.

While food insecurity is difficult to measure, Raja notes the issue affects many people in Western New York. For example, 12 percent of the region’s households are enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and some 56,000 households in Erie and Niagara counties that lack a vehicle live farther than walking distance from a supermarket, according to Raja’s research.

Buffalo has a strong community of food-advocacy organizations, including Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo, MAP and the Food Bank of WNY, all of which work with UB’s Food Lab to develop a food system that serves all constituents, Raja says.

“To build a just food system, we need to attend to food issues throughout Buffalo’s neighborhoods, not just in particular areas of revitalization,” says Subhashni Raj, a doctoral student in the UB Food Lab who helped organize the event. “More importantly, to move toward a food system that is equitable and just, we need to build connections and collaborate to leverage resources, knowledge and best practices. We are hoping this event serves as a catalyst for these connections and conversations.”

Along with its community partners, UB’s Food Lab has been working on food systems issues for more than a decade. In 2011, a community-university coalition organized the first-ever food policy summit in Buffalo, called the Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities-Buffalo Partnership. The Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities Coalition organized a second food policy summit in 2013 and formally announced the creation of a new food policy council in the region — one of only two in New York State.

This past summer, the Western New York Environmental Alliance sponsored the People’s Food Movement event, which was attended by more than 100 people. Event participants developed a list of priorities that was submitted to the Buffalo and Erie County Food Policy Council. They include development of a healthy corner store program, implementing long-term leases for community gardens on publicly owned properties, and ensuring that all farmers markets have EBT readers.

For more information on Tuesday’s event, visit the Food Lab website.