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FOOD FUTURE WESTERN NEW YORK
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Where healing the inner child meets healing WNY’s food system: Meet Kristin Heltman-Weiss

6/7/2023

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What does it take to invest in the vitality and longevity of a sustainable, just regional food system?
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The Western New York Regional Food System Initiative study, informed by stakeholders in all areas of the region’s food system, reveals some of the many answers for Western New York: the creation of land succession plans, feasible funding streams for infrastructure, and access to knowledge of sustainable farming practices.
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But as Providence Farm Collective’s Kristin Heltman-Weiss imparts in a conversation with Food Future Western New York, personal reconciliation with and healing from the traumatic effects of the current system goes hand-in-hand with on-the-ground communal action to build a system that is of and for all its stakeholders. ​
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As a young girl growing up in the largely affluent village of East Aurora, Kristin was one of the few in her community experiencing food insecurity. She shares, “In elementary and middle school, I was one of a handful of kids in my community who qualified for [food stamps and] free lunch, but I never got [lunch] because I didn’t want to be judged by the kids I grew up with. I chose to go without eating than to be embarrassed.”
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Fast forward to her 30s, Kristin began to recognize that it was not her responsibility to harbor shame or embarrassment about her experience. Rather, that she was harmed while at the intersection and mercy of several dysfunctional systems—including the food system. “No one should have to feel that way. Because we all need food, and healthy foods should be available to everybody. It should be done with dignity, not shame attached to it.” She shared. 

Even in light of her individual and familial struggles, Kristin recognizes the privileges that she simultaneously held during that time that helped keep her and her family afloat. “I had good access to education. I lived in a walkable community. I started cleaning houses at 11 [in my community] to be able to afford things. So, in many ways, I look back and think, ‘Oh, I was lucky’.” 
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Now, Kristin carries these experiences with her every day as Executive Director of Providence Farm Collective (PFC), where tackling food insecurity is a large part of the organization’s purpose. PFC sprouted from the Somali Bantu Community Farm established in 2017; a grassroots, Black immigrant and refugee-led project whose mission was to increase food security and access to fresh, culturally relevant crops. 

With the Somali Bantu community members welcoming five additional communities on board, Providence Farm
Collective formed two years later and now owns 37 acres of fertile, second-generation farmland in Orchard Park. Their mission of cultivating farmer-led and community-rooted agriculture and food systems to actualize the rights of under-resourced peoples comes with only three requirements:
  • Organize community members through Providence Farm Collective;
  • Address communal food insecurity;
  • Reinvest any profits from community plots directly back into the community it serves. 

​“This system honors that every group comes from different cultural traditions and practices surrounding how they organize, how they share, and how they support one another. And that's not on us to tell them to do it differently.” Kristin says. “The current system operates under the idea that farmers are donating surplus vegetables or foods. And the thing is, no farmer, [especially those facing one or more forms of systemic oppression], can afford to do that.” 
Given her tremendously positive impact on the Western New York food system and early involvement with Food Future Western New York (FFWNY), Kristin will now be serving on the initiative’s Regional Leadership Team.

“Get behind it. This is a really great opportunity to implement some of the actionable items that came out of the [Western New York Regional Food System Initiative] study, rather than just put another study on the shelf.” She says about the work ahead. “Knowing that hundreds of people across the entire region are committed to this, I feel like there is more of an opportunity to move [our local food system] forward than ever. And that, that’s really promising."
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Select quotes have been edited for clarity. 
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Fueling a Community through Food Future WNY: Meet Alex Wright

2/23/2023

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Buffalo faced one of its darkest days on May 14, 2022, when the only grocery store in a historically Black neighborhood was the target of a racist mass shooting. Long before that horrific day, Alex Wright saw clearly how institutional racism led to disinvestment and a lack of access to healthy, affordable food in his hometown and was doing something about it. Alex has been developing solutions and building community around his vision - and that vision stretches far beyond East Buffalo. 
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"Food fuels a community in so many ways, it goes far beyond having access to healthy and affordable food. Food can propel economic development and create economic empowerment."
 
   - Alexander Wright, Founder 
  African Heritage Food Co-op
When Alex graduated from law school, he felt a calling to the nonprofit world to make a difference in his community rather than practice law. His "aha" moment came when helping run a nonprofit on Jefferson Avenue. There were three generations from one family - a grandma, mother and daughter - all coming in as clients of the food pantry and Alex realized the nonprofit wasn't doing its job if there were three generations in need. It was in that moment in 2016 that he knew his community needed an economic engine that would feed - and fuel - itself and so he started the African Heritage Food Co-op to provide access for residents in East Buffalo to nutritional and affordable food, while building ownership.
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A few years later he took his idea one step further by creating Blegacy Farms when he bought a 22-acre parcel of land in Franklinville, NY, and started offering people of color the opportunity to grow fruits and vegetables on a plot of the farm and work towards ownership of that land. The risk was low knowing the Co-op would be an immediate customer and would link them to other potential customers. 
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Alex's regional understanding of the simplicity - and complexity - of how food fuels our economy brought an important perspective to the Regional Advisory Council (RAC) for Food Future WNY. This 9-county planning effort was created to strengthen the region's food system to achieve resilience, equity, strong economic performance, and reduced food insecurity. Alex jumped right into the collaborative work of the RAC and joined both the Access, Equity and Sovereignty (AES) Work Group and the Farmers & Producers Work Group. The AES work group is diving deeper into the programs, policies, systems and practices that create barriers to inclusion and food access locally and regionally. 
"The Food Future work is so important to me because I want to make sure that as we're building, and as we're thinking about the future of food, we are doing it in an inclusive way. This group had real conversations about that," said Alex.​
If you get a chance, sit down and have a conversation with Alex over a cup of coffee to hear his detailed ideas about the future of our food system that start with the Co-op but extend much further into our region. 

​"I hope that we can provide an economic engine in the community that becomes self-sustaining and will outlast me and my children." 
For more information on the African Heritage Food Co-op:
​African Heritage Food Co-op
Facebook
Email

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​This storytelling project was made possible through funding from the WNY Foundation
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Unlocking a Diverse Food Future: Community Self-Reliance and Social Justice as Drivers of Change

4/25/2022

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Euneika Rogers-Sipp for SCALE consulting team, April 2022
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​In this blog, the first of a series, I will highlight community-based organizations in Western New York that are creating and expanding innovative models of care - beginning new efforts and nurturing long-standing food sovereignty initiatives that are committed to improve health equity and support transformative system-level change. 
 
The Food Future WNY Initiative is learning that forming the right partnerships with these community-based actors will address many of the underlying issues impacting our ability to effectively respond to local community needs for healthy food.  Partnerships working at the intersection of farm enterprise, public health policy and racial justice aim to build a solid foundation for the future of food systems, thereby providing opportunities for mutual healing. 

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The Native Farm Bill Coalition meets at Gakwi:yo:h Farms in Cattaraugus County, April 12, 2022. Territories represented: Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Seneca, Allegany, Seneca Cattaraugus, Tonawanda Band of Seneca, Tuscarora, Ganondagan, Cayuga, Onondaga, Akewesasne Mohawk, Kahnawake Mohawk, Eastern Band of Cherokee North Carolina. Photo by Mike Snyder.
An affirming, growing life force is generated by partnering with the Seneca people. ​Among the growing field of food system actors, who center Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI), in this potential accord is held in the greatest respect. As recently as 20 years ago, the Seneca experienced systematic destruction of their agricultural traditions, from how they butchered their animals to how they sowed, harvested, and distributed their crops. According to Mike Snyder, Director of the Seneca Nation Agriculture Department and Manager of Gakwi:yo:h Farms (good food in Seneca), a Seneca Nation farming enterprise, did not exist because in an ecosystem of traditional foods and medicinal practices farming was irrelevant in that iteration of Western New York’s food system culture. 

Gakwi:yo:h Farms addresses food security and food sovereignty through community engagement and wellness by implementing a “Haudenosaunee” (pronounced Ho· de·no·sau·nee·ga) approach to agricultural practices. Commonly referred to as Iroquois of Six Nations, the goal is to produce healthy food, use quality food processing procedures and make these foods available to Seneca community members, from field to table. The foundation of the mission rests on the ability to positively impact the Seneca people, contribute to a conscious shift toward healthier eating habits, and change the way food is brought into homes.
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Gakwi:yo:h Farms inspecting corn grown at the Providence Farm Collective with the Somali Bantu community and sharing native corn growing traditions. Photo by Mike Snyder.
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The Seneca Nation processes white corn flour and cornmeal food products. All branding and marketing of these value-added products are done in-house. Photo by Mike Snyder.
​As an agriculture initiative, Gakwi:yo:h Farms reconnects the philosophy of their Seneca ancestors and commits to promote the relationship between the people, their lands, and the foods they eat. Just as the Seneca people have always understood and respected the value of their traditional foods, they acknowledge the value placed on healthy food, especially white corn which is an inherent part of the Seneca culture. Gakwi:yo:h Farms is thriving, developed in the ways of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which is indigenous to the exact location it stands today. 
Three phases of Community Food Sovereignty: Plans and Action in Place
  • ​Food as medicine Like many communities, the Seneca Nation suffered from high rates of diabetes and other metabolic disorders, due in part to a shift away from traditional foods.  The Healthy Corner Store Initiative in Erie and Niagara Counties confronts disparities in food access by creating a culture of health through engagement of residents in a healthy lifestyle in partnership with neighborhood stores. Organizations in the city of Buffalo’s east side such as The Buffalo Center for Health Equity, and the Matt Urban Hope Center (MUC), emphasize the importance of food systems in generating and exacerbating health disparities in urban cities and suggest avenues for reducing them. 
  •  An all-Indigenous run enterprise The Seneca focused from the start with developing an entirely indigenous run enterprise for everything from creating to branding, marketing, and packaging its own goods. The rallying cry for community-based food leaders to create, produce, and consume food and programming about themselves is one that can be heard throughout the Western New York region. The Buffalo Food Equity Network (BFEN) and Food for the Spirit, is an all people of color run organization that develops programming and services for people of color growers while centering their agency and authorship in the food system.​
PictureHealthy and culturally relevant meals prepared with produce and livestock from Gakwi:yo:h Farms. Photo by Mike Snyder.
  •  54-acre central farm hub This was the start of the Seneca efforts to expand acreage, increase the number and varieties of foods they produce, while also developing new pathways and distribution models. With the help of a council, the Seneca have gained access to unused land both on and off the reservation – and have expanded the cultivation of Indigenous crops and the raising of culturally significant animals. Grassroots Gardens of WNY, Blegacy Farms, and Providence Farm Collective have all established (as well as advocate for) reliable access to land, along with use rights, control rights, and/or transfer rights, to ensure communities a valuable means of self-determination and ability to produce food for consumption and community wealth benefits.  

The Access, Equity, and Food Sovereignty (AES) Work Group explores and embraces the transformative potential, opportunities, and wide-ranging benefits that food sovereignty and other justice-based frameworks offer. Frameworks that can benefit people living and working in rural and urban areas. We are inspired by the movement of Senecas to re-establish and control their traditional food systems while diversifying into markets, production modes, cultures, and environments. Although the Seneca are not completely food sovereign today, they are well on their way to a culturally-specific system rooted in their origins. Their self-sufficiency model facilitates direct links between indigenous farming practices and a community's social and economic development. 
 
To learn more, get involved or find contact information please visit the WNY Regional Food System ​Initiative website.
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Copyright @ 2021 NY Sustainable Agriculture Working Group
​A non-profit organization of Southern Tier West Regional Planning and Development Board

For more information about this project and how you can be involved, contact:
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New York Sustainable Agriculture Working Group
Kimberly LaMendola, Food System Projects Manager 
4039 Route 219, Suite 200, Salamanca NY 14779
716-945-5301 ext. 2211
klamendola@southerntierwest.org
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Western New York Foundation

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Lvanosten@wnyfoundation.org
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