Local Food: Equity in Actions & Truth

Last weekend, Ted and I attended a Community Food Forum. A small online notice caught my eye a while back. I posted it to the Sustainable Food for Thought Facebook page (mostly as a more-reliable-than-a-bookmark reminder to myself) and was grateful to be able to participate in the Saturday morning event.

Individuals from local non-profits and churches, the Montavilla, Lents, Cully, and Parkrose Farmers Markets, the Multnomah County Chair's office, and the community at large filed in to the meeting held at a neighborhood church just a handful of blocks from our home. The discussion revolved around equity of access to healthy food for for east Portlanders, in particular, our disenfranchised and low income neighbors in Montavilla.


As Ted and I have been seeking to engage and build camaraderie with the under resourced members of our community, the event's conversations were timely.

Kyle Curtis, the Associate Manager of the Montavilla Farmer's Market, opened the morning asking, "How can we make healthy food more accessible and affordable in east Portland?"

We were asked to consider:

What kind of food system do we want, and how can we encourage it through policies, programs, and partnerships?

How do we ensure equity in the new food systems we create?

Can small farmers make a decent wage selling affordably priced food to low-income customers without subsidies?

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And he shared with us a number of telling maps from the Portland Plan from the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, showing recent inventories of neighborhood access to grocery stores, community gardens, Oregon Food Bank food assistance programs, fast food establishments, and changes in food stamp usage over the past few years.

Karol Collymore of county chair Jeff Cogen's office shared about the health disparities related to the way we currently offer the "least of what we have" (i.e., packaged, processed, nutrient-void foods from corner markets, gas stations, and the like) to many or our resource-isolated areas. She raised questions of of how to incentivise healthy business development in neighborhoods where current economic viability is questionable. She spoke of New Seasons' practice of locating grocery stores in areas of high college education rates and the trouble of under resourced areas remaining so in the face of improvements in more affluent areas of town. She shared about the Multnomah Food Initiative and gave avenues to educate ourselves and become a part of the dialog.


Did you know that if you spot a vacant plot of land within the urban areas, there are mechanisms in place to work with the county to do a tax and title search and then transform that space into a spot for growing healthy food? Check out Groundwork Portland and Janus Youth Programs' urban agriculture projects.

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Kyle Curtis relayed to us that the recent Montavilla Food Co-op survey taken over this past summer had a very small percentage of respondents from non-white, low-income zip codes, despite the high rates of those populations within geographic proximity to the Montavilla Farmers Market, local food buying clubs, and other neighborhood food initiatives. Clearly, there is much to be improved in the way our food system engages and supports families of diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds...

Did you know that there is a 2-3 year waiting list for the Vestal Elementary School community garden here at NE 82nd and Couch? It's discouraging to see the sky-high numbers of fast food and chain restaurants up and down 82nd and the surrounding thoroughfares...and to see the high prices at the farmers markets that can be luxuriously justified to me, but sincerely unapproachable by my dear neighbors here at Stepping Stone Apartments.

Many members of the local community shared their experiences over the past few years here in the Montavilla area. Progress is being made. Positive changes are happening. Areas for work and improvement are being identified and addressed.

Encouraging, yes.

But also a strong reminder that care and concern require hands and feet.

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At the conclusion of the event, we were given additional ways to be involved. I'm happy to share them here as well, in hopes that word will continue to go out...

Volunteer at local markets - Montavilla, Cully, Lents, Parkrose (or one in your own back yard!)

The Lents International Farmer's Market

Attend the various upcoming Multnomah Food Initiative Workshops (10/19 Healthy Eating, 10/28 Local Food, 11/1 Social Equity, 11/3 Economic Vitality)

Consider applying for a seat on the Portland-Multnomah Food Policy Council

Participate in local food buying clubs: Lents Grocery Co-op, Lents Food Buying Club, Lents Grocery Buying Club, Montavilla Buying Club, Portland Eastside Buying Club (or, added plug, our Sustainable Food For Thought group!)


Connect with Friends of Family Farmers

And I would add a few more ideas to the list...

~Share a meal, in your home, with your neighbors. Learn about their stories and their needs and desires. Learn about the foods that they enjoy most! Seek out opportunities to share resources that are meaningful and practical to them in their particular circumstances.
~Check with your local CSA or farm stand and ask if they have sponsorship opportunities for reduced cost subscriptions to be made available to low income participants.
~Grow a garden and share your bounty with people up and down your street.
~Eat with gratefulness, and share your best.

As Ted and I have chosen to change our habits of purchasing and consuming, and as we've conscientiously used our dollars to vote for changes in the food system, it still comes as a deeply troubling reality that so very many of our fellow Portlanders are without a voice, without the luxury of dollars to vote, and without the access to foods that promote health and nourishment.

We've not come to answers yet. Only to continued questions and invitations to conversation. I am challenged to put my blessings to work...to revel in the goodness and bounty of the seasons and to participate in restoring the Creator's hope and vitality to the neighborhood in which we live.

Leviticus 23:22 When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 14:28-29 At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year's produce and store it in your towns, so that the...the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

Proverbs 21:13 If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.

Luke 14:13-14 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

1 John 3:17-18 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Join me as we learn to carry the truth and live out the calling?

~Bethany