Food Summit aims to fix Birmingham’s broken food system
By: Molly Folse

The dinner bell is a piece of the past that doesn’t get its due. Long before BlackBerrys and iPhones, stern songs from a cast iron bell and the simple twangs of a triangle created an efficient line of communication, calling in fathers from the field and children from the creek with the promise of freshly prepared food straight from the ground they walked on.

It’s an idyllic tapestry, and, like so many other traditions, left only for the oldest generation to wax nostalgic. Today’s food culture is dramatically different. In a country dubbed the “Fast Food Nation,” meals are a mere pit stop on the way to something else.

“People are not eating the right kind of food,” says Edwin Marty, executive director of Birmingham’s Jones Valley Urban Farm, a non-profit urban farm that promotes sustainable agriculture and alternative land use. But individual choice is often not the reason why people aren’t eating healthy food, especially among low income populations, he goes on to explain.

Food accessibility in Birmingham, especially in communities like the one that surrounds Jones Valley Urban Farm, where revitalization efforts have resulted in not only an increase in population but also in community diversity, will be the focus of Food Summit 2008, presented by the Greater Birmingham Community Food Partners, a project of Magic City Harvest, and JVUF on Saturday, June 21 at the YMCA Youth Center.

“The food summit presents an opportunity to start looking at how the Birmingham food system works or doesn’t work,” Marty says. “Access to good, healthy food is an issue to everyone in the community. Individual choice is part of it, but as a society we can set people up to succeed or set them up to fail.”

The program is the second gathering of its kind in the city and seeks to bring the community together around food. The summit gives farmers, farm group leaders, neighborhood association presidents, community activists, nonprofit advocates, religious and city leaders and Birmingham residents the opportunity to discuss the growing demand for locally produced food and the issue of food insecurity, with opening remarks from Odessa Woolfolk, founder and board president of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and presentations from representatives of regional food security initiatives in Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas. Sally Allocca from the East Lake Farmers Market will join Olivia Thomas of Girls, Inc. and Toni Hendrix of the Greater Birmingham Community Food Partners on a panel of members from local initiatives already in progress. In attendance will be city council president Carole Smitherman and District 2 representative Carol Duncan, among other neighborhood and religious leaders.

Terms and conditions
As part of the summit’s opening presentation, Keecha Harris, president of Harris and Associates, a Birmingham-based food systems and public health consulting firm, will answer the question, “What is food security?”

“People don’t go hungry in the United States anymore. That is, terms like ‘hunger’ and ‘malnourishment’ aren’t used to describe the conditions of poverty characterized initially by rumbling stomachs and ultimately by an obesity epidemic,” wrote Weekly editor Glenny Brock in a February 2007 article on the then-fledgling Food Security Coalition of Jefferson County, now known as the Greater Birmingham Community Food Partners. “But as Orwellian as the terms ‘food security’ and ‘food insecurity’ might sound, the government has good reason for insisting on their implementation. The labels make it possible to describe complex socioeconomic conditions with considerable accuracy.

Moreover, ‘security’ is a word with considerable traction in the current political climate.”

For a quick lesson in food security, here are some definitions of terms, as stated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

Food security – Access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.

High food security – No reported indications of food-access problems or limitations.

Marginal food security – One or two reported indications — typically of anxiety – over food sufficiency or shortage of food in the house. Little or no indication of changes in diets or food intake.

Low food security – Reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake. Formerly labeled “food insecurity without hunger.”

Very low food security – Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake. Formerly called “food insecurity with hunger.”

The GBCFP is conducting a pilot food assessment in East Lake to determine which condition best describes that particular community. Marty says the GBCFP is a little over halfway through with its assessment, which so far includes, among other methodology, door-to-door surveys and mapping of grocery store locations compared to households without vehicles conducted by Luci Davis, an urban regional extension agent for the Alabama Department of Wildlife and Natural Resources. As a preliminary part of her assessment, Davis drove around East Lake with two friends, counting grocery stores along the way.
At the time, she found only three grocery stores in one ZIP code. Marty says results of the East Lake food assessment could lead to the establishment of community gardens or bus routes that pass grocery stores every thirty minutes as opposed to every six hours. The ultimate goal is to conduct assessments for other areas of Birmingham and Jefferson County following the pilot assessment.

The Earth Day Network, a group founded by the organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970 that promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide, issues an annual Urban Environment Report (UER) that scores the current environmental performance of 72 cities based on more than 200 indicators. The report takes into account those populations which may have greater sensitivity or susceptibility to environmental, health and social problems.

Cities are scored in seven categories, including human and public health. Under this category, the network scores on a scale of 1-5, one being the best and five the worst, the number of small, local, sustainable food sources – farms, farmers’ markets, restaurants, grocery stores and others – available to a city’s population, as well as the cost of living associated with food. Birmingham scored a five for farms, farmers’ markets and grocery stores, and a four for restaurants. However, the cost of living associated with food in the Magic City was given a two.

Despite the Alabama Farmers Federation report that grocery costs were down in the state this month, food costs still prove too much for families at or near the poverty line who struggled to purchase food even before prices increased. The state’s largest farm organization, Alabama Farmers Federation volunteer members conduct the informal monthly market basket survey as a tool to reflect retail food price trends. The report states that, “While the food price survey shows that Alabama grocery prices have increased about 1.7 percent during the first six months of 2008, farm level production expenses are up 8.6 percent from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2007 projections. For every dollar spent on food, the farmer receives about 19 cents, from which he must pay all of his expenses.”

The federation’s report recorded a 32-cent decrease in the average cost for a bag of 20 staple items – which does not include fruit or whole grains - averaging close to $52 per basket. Eggs and bacon were down 30 and 17 cents respectively, while tomatoes and sweet potatoes both increased by 12 and 6 cents.
The report indicates that milk prices fell for the second straight month. A half-gallon averages $3.04, down 4 cents from May. Although the change may benefit those living in areas where grocery stores are plentiful, those living in the inner city may still pay more for milk.

“Healthy food in the inner city costs more than in the suburbs and rural areas. Many people in the inner city shop at corner stores. Corner stores don’t sell gallons of milk; they sell pints,” says Marty. “If you’re a single mother and only have $80 a month for groceries, you can’t buy enough pints for the entire family. In that case, Coke is cheaper than milk.”

Digging up culture
There are several local entities that successfully provide access to fresh, local food to many members of the Birmingham community. In addition to the programs of GBCFP and JVUF, the Pepper Place Farmers Market, East Lake Farmers Market and the Alabama Farmers Market, which operates year-round, host a variety of food vendors from all over the state.

And with the addition of Slow Food Birmingham, spearheaded by Frank and Pardis Stitt, the Magic City’s own chapter of an international, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life is a testament that interest in nutrition and sustainability can continue to grow in Birmingham. Slow Food combats the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how food choices affect the rest of the world.

Jones Valley Urban Farm recently held a Slow Food supper in its Gardens at Park Place, featuring local ingredients from local establishments such as beets from Salt Fine Catering, and an arugala and spring lettuce salad from Highlands Bar and Grill.

“We don’t have a culture embedded in food anymore,” Marty says. “Slow Food is a celebration of food, of food as culture. It gives us the idea that there is light at the end of the tunnel. But we first have to fix a broken food system.”

The Food Summit kicks off the Summer Solstice Celebration at Jones Valley Urban Farm. Registration begins at 8 a.m. at the YMCA Youth Center located at 2700 Seventh Ave. North. Registration is $10 and includes a buffet-style lunch provided by Salt Fine Catering. Following the program, JVUF will host a tour of the farm at 1 p.m. with a U-Pick Sunflower Celebration with kid’s activities and music by the Heath Green Trio at 2 p.m. The day culminates with Shakespeare in the Garden presented by Muse of Fire. Tickets for Shakespeare in the Garden are $25 and only a limited number are available. For tickets or more information, visit www.jvuf.org.

Write to molly@bhamweekly.com.