Food As the Entry Point
Voices from the Land is a collaborative op-ed and video series between Farm School NYC (FSNYC) and the New Harvest Project (TNH) that highlights urban and rural farmers, policy that impacts their work, and what we can do to uplift legislation reflective of their needs to direct future policy decisions.
This project is funded by the Regenerative Agriculture Foundation (RAF) through the Rural Advancement Foundation International - USA (RAFI).
Food is the entry point to advancing justice as it is communal, cultural, and conversational.
It’s also a critical part of breaking down barriers and a way for people to get to know themselves. Food may seem like a simple entry point, but it is also a part of a fundamental truth: food is infrastructure.
It is as essential to a functioning society as housing, transportation, and energy. But often, food and these very same issues are thought of, solved for, and regulated in silos. This also contributes to the failure to treat the city’s deepening inequality, worsening public health, and accelerating climate vulnerability.
But there is a different model we can turn to, as I am living it.
My food justice work takes place in two primary spaces. The first is that I’m the food and agriculture coordinator for the IRC New Roots Program, a green space program open to refugees, immigrants, and recent asylum seekers, focused on food access and education. Alongside free educational workshops, the program also holds community-based farms. The first is a half-acre farm in the South Bronx, off the Grand Concourse, and a smaller community garden in Woodside, Queens. All community members in the New Roots Program are welcome to come and get free produce, no questions asked. Sometimes people approach with a kind of shame in the fact that they are food insecure, and we want to dispel that. Many people,across New York City, particularly those in my community of the South Bronx, are food insecure. I want to make clear that these people are the working poor—meaning we work and are employed, but still have to juggle expenses such as rent, utilities, medical bills, and groceries.
The other space I tend to is the Kelly Street Garden, which is where I call home. The garden runs along the back of four affordable housing buildings and is embedded in the community. I extend the same level of care and programming here as I do with the IRC New Roots Program. Growing up in Jamaica, my mother would tell us to go pick something in the yard for dinner. I never realized then, but looking back, we were wealthy because we were on our own land. My father would grow watermelon, mangoes, oranges, lemons, corn, breadfruit, and so many other vegetables and fruit. Now as I steward the Kelly Street Garden and work with the New Roots Program, I remember how privileged I was growing up.
But outside of those spaces, nowhere is the food system disconnect more visible than in the South Bronx.
The Hunts Point peninsula is home to one of the largest food distribution centers in the country, with 4.5 billion pounds of food passing through its Food Distribution Center each year. Yet much of that food never reaches the people in the immediate area. While the center is critical to the entire region, its aging infrastructure, the pollution it brings to the surrounding area, and its location in a flood zone make it no longer sustainable. The environmental pressures it imposes on the South Bronx exacerbate many of the area’s health issues. Heavy-duty trucks come and go from the hub at all hours, and just a few blocks away is the Bruckner Expressway, which adds further environmental pressure.
This is not an accident. Intentional policy decisions have concentrated these burdens in already marginalized neighborhoods.
Climate Policy Must Include Food Systems and Land Access
Urban agriculture is also climate policy.
New York is a concrete jungle. And we continually prioritize this kind of landscape despite intensified heat, flash flooding, and increased air pollution impacting the city. Community green spaces counteract these effects. We know that these green spaces absorb stormwater, reverse the heat island effect, and improve mental health—so why aren't we building that way?
To me, this is a policy failure.
If lawmakers are serious about climate resilience, they must move beyond siloed approaches. It's not just about affordable housing or maximizing land use. It’s about paying attention to what makes a livable city. When you integrate the natural environment, we can then begin to properly address housing, education, and public health. My request for urban planners is to think about how you can push the boundaries of greening a building. How can vegetation grow on the side of a building? How can we have more permeable surfaces for water to penetrate? This is how we move toward climate adaptation.
Climate adaptation directly connects to a more just and sustainable system. This can start with food sovereignty. Land should be for the commons, and farmers and communities should have control over how food is grown, distributed, and consumed. All of us should have access to and be able to steward land and grow the types of culturally relevant food we need. This kind of sovereignty would require us to be in deep community. But as of now, the only way to have access to land is through monetary gain. That is part of a larger conversation of colonialism and capitalism.
Access to land is the foundation of any community-led food system. Without it, food sovereignty is impossible. Yet here in New York City, land access remains one of the greatest barriers to scaling community agriculture. We cannot continue to have just a few people owning the means of production. Even farmers who believe in mutual aid, are mission-aligned and justice-oriented, have a hard time embracing food sovereignty because the current system just does not favor it.
One promising concept introduced by Mayor Mamdani is the city-owned grocery. This aligns with my belief that food should be free or, at the very least, low-cost and accessible. However, will these grocery stores be connected to the local food system? Local and regional farmers need to be brought to the table as this could be a critical entry point to make the city self-sufficient. City-owned grocery stores could also be what takes the food and agricultural economy out of corporate hands.
Investing in the Next Generation
We need to equip the next generation with the tools and lessons to achieve community-led food systems. More intergenerational spaces and more opportunities must be created for young people to lead. The community gardening movement in New York has long been sustained by grassroots organizers—many of whom are now aging out of leadership roles. Without intentional investment in younger leaders, knowledge and infrastructure could be lost.
A more just and sustainable future will not come from maintaining the systems we have—it will come from having the courage to dismantle them and build something rooted in land, care, and collective responsibility.
