Rx for an Ailing Food System:
Community Food Security

A farm family in Oklahoma faces rising costs, falling prices, and a developer's tempting offer for their land as a way out.

Supermarket chain stores all over the state sell produce to most of those cities' residents, but none of it comes from that struggling family's farm – or anywhere else nearer than a thousand miles.

The Oklahoma families who shop at those stores eat fewer fruits and vegetables per head than any others in the U.S. – and nearly twenty percent of their children are overweight.

Most of these children have never visited a farm or seen a tomato growing on the vine.

All of these scenes are symptoms of an unhealthy food system. Well-meaning people have been trying hard to treat each of those symptoms separately for decades. Now, a remedy that could potentially cure them all has appeared on the horizon. It's called "community food security."

There's nothing new about the term "food security" by itself. It's the standard measure of how many people are able, physically and financially, to get enough food to meet their dietary needs.  In Oklahoma, 15 % of households don't reach that bar (increased from 13% in 2003). This compares to about 12 % for the US overall.

Traditional remedies are to put emergency food supplies in the hands and mouths that need them at the moment. These services are worthwhile, but community food security offers a more long-term solution. Advocates say that the key to ensuring a stable, safe, and secure food supply for everyone is to grow and process the food as close as possible to where it's eaten.

The community food security solution is so appealing because it has something for everyone. It goes beyond food handouts to the hungry, or subsidies for farmers. It means fresher, tastier food for everyone who eats, and a style of economic growth with benefits that stay home, rather than vanishing out-of-state or overseas.

But just as a doctor orders x-rays of a patient with abdominal pain before deciding whether to treat for appendicitis or kidney stones, Oklahoma needs a good picture of its ailing food system—where it is weak and where it is strong-- in order to identify the cures that will do the most good.

That is precisely the goal of a new project, called "Building a Foundation for Food Security in Oklahoma," by the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture, in partnership with several state agencies and groups.

The project is funded by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service Community Food Projects program – the first federal funding for community food security in Oklahoma.

X-raying an entire state's food system, though, is more involved than a trip to the clinic.  It requires collating and compiling information from existing sources, and tracking down new facts to fill in the gaps.  Once the pieces of that puzzle start to come together, prescriptions can begin to emerge. 

What's needed are ways to move the food system from its current code-blue status towards a state where everyone – young and old, rich and poor, city and country – has a ready, steady supply of wholesome food, grown and raised by fellow Oklahomans at an economic and ecological profit.

It's hard to say, ahead of the diagnosis, what the right prescriptions will be. But just as no one faults a doctor for advising patients to eat more fresh fruits and veggies, some sure bets for Oklahoma community food security are already obvious.

One is the state's Farm-to-School program, feeding Oklahoma-grown produce to Oklahoma schoolkids – a two-year old success story. Another pops up every week of the growing season at the thirty-five farmers' markets thriving around the state.

Oklahoma farms are also pioneering community supported agriculture (CSA), in which customers purchase a season's worth of produce from a local grower. Other food shoppers get sustainably-grown Oklahoma food delivered right to their doors year-round, through the Oklahoma Food Co-op.

All of these existing sources of local food can serve as "over-the-counter" remedies to Oklahoma's ailing food system, while the full prescription for community food security is in the works. The Oklahoma Community Food Security Assessment is just one of many activities of the grant project.

Others include educating policy makers and the public about nutrition and local foods, showing teachers successful small farms, expanding farm-to-school programs, and informing low-income families where to buy the freshest Oklahoma-grown produce and how to cook it.

To learn more about all of these, as well as the state of community food security in Oklahoma, stop by the Kerr Center website at www.kerrcenter.com.

– Wylie Harris

This project is supported by the Community Food Projects Program of the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, grant # 2004-33800-15141

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