From Field to Fork: Food Security in Oklahoma

--Maura McDermott

Secure: Free from danger or risk of loss; safe. Not likely to fail or give way; stable. Assured, guaranteed.

Homeland security. Household security. Personal security. No doubt about it, security is on the minds of Americans these days.

What about food security? What is it? And do we have it, in America, in Oklahoma, in our communities?

How you define food security determines the answer. People define it in a number of different ways-- some definitions are narrow, some broad.

To some people food security simply means protecting our food supply from terrorist attack.

Others see food security as the need to protect our agriculture from diseases such as hoof and mouth or mad cow, or the need to protect our food from contamination by food-borne pathogens such as E coli, or by hazardous pesticides.

Many equate food security with food abundance: if America’s grocery shelves are full, our food supply must be secure.

Still others say that only adopting a more sustainable agriculture will guarantee we have food security, especially in the future. They say we need more farmers on the land, more local markets for locally-grown foods, more contact between farmers and consumers, more diversified farms, more profitable farms, more environmentally friendly farms-- if we want our food system to be truly secure.

Others see food security through completely different glasses. To people who work in the social services, food security means that people have physical and economic access to sufficient food to meet their dietary needs.
In fact, the numbers of people who are food insecure are regularly counted: in Oklahoma, 14.1 of Oklahoma households have “limited or uncertain access to nutritious, safe foods…; households that experience food insecurity have reduced quality or variety of meals and may have irregular food intake.”

In about five per cent of households, (the most in the nation) people are going hungry on a regular basis.

Food security: same term, varying points of view. In recent years, people working in disparate fields (public health, sustainable agriculture, anti-hunger, community nutrition) have attempted to tie many of these interpretations together, setting forth a new concept: community food security.

Community Food Security (CFS)
According to the USDA there is not yet a universally accepted definition of community food security. One popular definition is:

A situation in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food systems that maximizes self reliance and social justice. i

Another: A sustainable community food system improves the health of the community, environment, and individuals over time, and involves a collaborative effort …to build locally based, self reliant food systems and economies.ii

It means fresher, tastier food for everyone who eats, and a style of economic growth whose benefits stay home, rather than vanishing out-of-state or overseas.iii

The key words are self reliant, health, and local— the goal for any given community being an increase in food-based economic development that maximizes production and consumption on the local level, close to home.
I like to think of community food security as a jigsaw puzzle—with each piece of the puzzle contributing to community food security.

So, one piece might be farm-to-school program—where kids of all income levels are eating fresh, nutritious food grown at a nearby farm. Another piece could be a farmers’ market, where farmers sell direct to consumers and make retail profits.

Yet another might be a class in a community center where folks learn how to cook a healthy, tasty meal. Still another might be a program providing grants to farmers who want to add value to their crops and bring dollars into their communities.

I could go on— the puzzle has many pieces. It’s one of those big jigsaws that might take some time to complete.

Still, it’s a puzzle worth working on.

i Hamm, MW, Bellows AC. Community food security and nutrition educators. J Nut Educ Behav. 2003;35:37-43
ii McCullum, C., et al. Evidence-Based Strategies to Build Community Food Security. J Amer Diet Assoc. 2005:105 #2:278-283.
iii Harris, Wylie N. Rx for a Failing Food System: Community Food Security.

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