At first glance, America’s food system appears to be exemplary. We can head down to the local supermarket almost anywhere in the country, and generally purchase whatever we want at any time — Mexican mangoes in May, Chilean grapes in March, or even organic tomatoes in January. And prices are largely affordable.  Of all industrialized countries, Americans spend the lowest percentage of their income on food.  

There is a cost to this cornucopia.  Small and medium farmers are regularly squeezed out of business by high input costs, low prices for their products, and poor access to markets. An increasingly globalized food system not only provides unfair competition for the nation’s growers, but is energy inefficient, threatens regional self-sufficiency, and discourages consumer acceptance of regional and seasonal foods. Suburban sprawl threatens prime farmland in many of the nation’s metropolitan areas. After decades of struggle, farmworkers continue to earn poverty-level wages while suffering from high rates of tuberculosis and pesticide poisoning.

Low-income urban areas are often marginalized by the mainstream food system. Supermarkets abandon the inner cities, making access to healthy and affordable food difficult for the transit-dependent. Transportation planners rarely design bus routes around community food shopping needs, leaving residents little choice but to carry their groceries long distances, use precious resources on taxi rides, or make multiple transfers. Even those supermarkets that remain often charge far above the prices of their suburban counterparts, due to higher operating costs and a lack of competition.

Despite these obstacles community-based ventures such as farmers’ markets, urban gardens, & community supported agriculture (CSA) are flourishing. There are now more than 600 CSA farms and 2,000 farmers markets in the U.S. In Los Angeles County, CA, farmers’ markets bring in over $25 million in annual sales. Urban agriculture, touted in a new United Nations study, is enjoying revived interest. Together, these efforts comprise the beginnings of community-based food systems, powerful examples of alternatives to the dominant corporate model.

Linking these efforts together, both politically and conceptually, is the community food security (CFS) movement. Building upon the rich history of international development and domestic anti-hunger struggles, “community food security” was first conceptualized in 1994 by a broad coalition of advocates seeking comprehensive solutions to the nation’s food and farming crises. It integrates aspects of many different fields, such as public health’s prevention-orientation, ecology’s system analysis, community development’s place-centered focus and emphasis on economic development, into a comprehensive framework for meeting a community’s food needs. Central to this approach are five basic principles:

Low Income: Like the anti-hunger movement, CFS is focused on meeting the food needs of low-income communities. Unlike the anti-hunger movement, however, its goals tend to be much broader, including such objectives as job training, business skill development, urban greening, farmland preservation, and community revitalization.

Community focus: A CFS approach seeks to build up a community’s food resources to meet its own needs. These resources may include supermarkets, farmers’ markets, gardens, transportation, community-based food processing ventures, and urban farms to name a few.

Self-reliance/empowerment: Community food security projects emphasize the need to build individuals’ abilities to provide for their food needs rather than encourage dependence on outside sources, such as food banks or public benefits.

Local agriculture: Protecting local agriculture is key to building better links between farmers and consumers and gaining greater consumer knowledge and concern about their food source.

Food system: CFS projects typically are “inter-disciplinary,” crossing many boundaries and incorporating collaborations with multiple agencies. Fundamental to this approach is an analysis of a community’s food system, and the need to plan for its food security.

The national Community Food Security Coalition, has united diverse constituencies — community gardeners, farmers, anti-hunger advocates, food bankers, nutritionists and dietitians, public health advocates, environmentalists, churches, and community development corporations — into a single movement for a socially just and ecologically sustainable food system. Its primary accomplishment has been the passage of a new grants program in the 1996 Farm Bill for non-profit organizations to undertake community food security projects. Authorized for seven years at $2.5 million per year, the USDA-administered Community Food Projects Program received over120 requests for funding totaling more than $21 million in 1996.

While the development of the community food security movement has generated great enthusiasm among food and farming advocates, and led to many new initiatives benefiting low income communities and local farmers, great inroads remain to be made in its institutionalization. For example, the idea of planning for food security remains foreign to most urban planners. While virtually every city or county has departments that address residents’ basic needs, such as water, housing, health, and transportation, no municipality in the U.S. has a department of food. Food-related policies and programs instead are embedded in virtually every city department, unarticulated and disconnected, making food system planning at the municipal level very difficult. The need to develop comprehensive food system planning will only become more urgent as welfare reform forces cities and counties to take a front-line role in averting hunger. Community advocates and planners will need to collaborate and educate one another on the issues, resources, and opportunities available to work towards a more equitable and ecological food system.

The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) is a national alliance of 275 organizations dedicated to the creation of comprehensive solutions to the nation’s nutrition, farming, and hunger problems. Our mission is to bring about lasting social change by promoting community-based solutions to hunger, poor nutrition, and the globalization of the food system. The CFSC promotes food self-reliance and local food systems through federal policy advocacy, training and technical assistance, organizing, and dissemination of successful models.  Visit their web site, http://www.foodsecurity.org/.