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).

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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.

You can watch Sheryll Durrant’s full conversation with Iris M. Crawford-Maskell here.

The USDA puts back missing webpages. What happens next?

Patrick Hendry via Unsplash

While the USDA agreed to restore critical USDA webpages that farmers and the entire agricultural industry depend on, what happens next?   

Since the start of the Trump Administration, farmers and the entire agricultural industry have been under siege. Alongside the administration's cuts to critical grants, by mid-February, the USDA had removed essential information from its main website and 18 subagencies, including the US Forest Service and Rural Development (RD), such as grants, technical resources, and interactive tools like the Climate Risk Viewer.  The Trump Administration targeted Inflation Reduction Act-supported programs, as well as those related to regenerative agriculture, organic farming, and climate resilience. However, a swift lawsuit quickly exposed the wrongdoing, and the missing content is now being restored.   

In February, Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, and the First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The lawsuit cited that three federal laws were violated: the Freedom of Information Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. All of these laws require adequate notice before changes can be made to official government websites. The laws also state the right to access key information and documents before they are removed.   

"One harm that has come out of the web page removals is that it significantly undermined an organization's ability to trust USDA, digital resources, to trust that they're up to date, [and] that they're accurate," says Jeffrey Stein, an associate attorney at Earthjustice in an interview. 

Farmers no longer had access to the information they needed to make informed decisions related to climate change risks, such as wildfires, extreme heat, and floods.   

NOFA-NY, one of the leading plaintiffs in the case, said that the removal of USDA webpages immediately impacted organic farmers. It also undermined NOFA-NY's work as an organic certifier. As a certifier, NOFA-NY has the authority to label a food producer's product as organic by verifying whether the producer meets the strict National Organic Program standards. Just as importantly, NOFA-NY acts as a liaison between farmers and federal resources.  The organization's technical advising team, which works directly with farmers in the field, had suddenly lost its ability to advise on specific practices and refer farmers to additional resources.

"Especially for [organic farmers] in meeting and maintaining farming practices through the National Resource Conservation Services (NRCS)—a lot of it was just gone," said Marcie Craig, executive director of NOFA-NY.  While the organization worked to pick up the pieces, "It's really educated us on exactly how farmers are accessing and what resources they're accessing," said Craig. Craig makes clear that these impacts hit farmers across the board.  

What was most unclear from the removal of webpages was the availability of funding. Farmers could no longer apply for or access funding programs. For example, with NRCS funding, farmers are expected to cover upfront costs and then receive reimbursement later following an official USDA inspection. "With all of the layoffs happening, who's going to do that?" Thus far, nearly 59,000 federal jobs have been lost since the start of the Trump Administration, NPR reports. At the USDA, 15,000 positions have been shed, reports DTN Progressive Farmer.    

For the USDA, some employees in mission-critical positions were offered resignation packages with five months' pay and benefits. Just shortly after, the agency began scrambling to fill those key positions. Late last month, a California federal judge blocked the USDA, alongside other agencies, from continuing its unlawful firings and department restructurings. However, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins firmly stands behind the belief that these layoffs will be about "realigning and refocusing USDA around its original intended mission." However, it is clear that many of the agency's moving parts are no longer functioning.   

Critical Webpages Return 

In mid-May, the USDA reversed its decision and restored the critical web pages that it removed. The agency announced its decision in a letter to the US District Court.  The reversal came as both a surprise and relief to the plaintiffs and farmers everywhere. On Wednesday, June 12, the plaintiffs provided an update to the court regarding whether the USDA is restoring the missing webpages in a timely and accurate manner, as promised by the agency.   

"As of right now, the USDA has restored all of the web pages and interactive tools that were identified in our complaint," said Stein. However, Stein explains that the restored web pages have a disclaimer stating that the content is under review and subject to change.   

On June 11, the plaintiffs filed a status report updating the court on the progress of the USDA in restoring climate change-related web content and data. The update also includes two critical requests from the plaintiffs—NOFA-NY, NRDC, EWG, and their legal team — which are for the government to provide a list of all the content that was removed, as well as an explanation for the declaimers.  As of now, the plaintiffs have no information on what the review process, conducted by the USDA, actually entails.   

Currently, the plaintiffs await the next steps.  Despite the uncertainty, the plaintiffs are grateful that there is some light at the end of the tunnel.