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FOOD FUTURE WESTERN NEW YORK
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Mapping the Future of Niagara Falls' Food System: Meet Tom Lowe

5/1/2023

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If you ask where to find the region’s best shepherd’s pie, Tom Lowe will point you straight toward the kitchen of his childhood home in Niagara County--where his mother serves as executive chef. And if you need someone to point you toward where to buy all the ingredients from vendors local to the City of Niagara Falls, Lowe also happens to be the one in the know.  

Lowe, Project Director of the Niagara Falls Local Food Action Plan (NFLFAP) at Field & Fork Network, has a love for Niagara Falls and the greater Niagara County region that runs deep. Raised on a two-acre property surrounded by farmland in Northern Niagara County, Lowe grew up surrounded by access to bountiful farm stands and markets. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in English at SUNY Fredonia, he returned to his roots and served as an AmeriCorps VISTA for Niagara University’s ReNU program. 
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It was during this time that Lowe—a fundraiser for a community garden that supported an under-resourced elementary school in the city—began to ponder his own upbringing and further understand that the area’s food system in its current state is fundamentally flawed.  

​“This made me realize that I had a different experience growing up. I had access, and the kids I worked with didn't know that the tomato that they're using for meat sauce came in from the dirt—not just the corner store.” Lowe shared. ​
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One year after his time with AmeriCorps, Lowe returned to ReNU as a Program Coordinator. He later became the program’s director, which led him to his current work heading up the Niagara Falls Local Food Action Plan.  ​

According to Field & Fork Network, the Niagara Falls Local Food Action Plan is the product of a one-year, resident-driven process grounded in the belief that all residents of Niagara Falls should have access to nutritious and affordable food. Further, this plan provides a framework of common goals and actions that serve to bring together residents, schools, community organizations, businesses, and local government in supporting a healthy, strong, and resilient food system. ​
Lowe asserts that identifying policy weaknesses and gaps, as well as recommending change at a local and municipal level, is the most sustainable way to address food system failures and improvements. “Our ultimate goal is to create ownership of the local food system to allow for residents to enter this space of owning their own food system,” he said. 
 
The NFLFAP became the official food plan of Niagara Falls in 2018. “I always joked that there wasn’t a whole lot of competition for that title. But it’s ours, and we’re proud of it.” Lowe noted with a smile. 
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​For his expertise in the Niagara Falls and greater Niagara County food system and his gift of community building, Lowe was asked to participate on the Regional Advisory Council the WNY Regional Food System Initiative, now known as Food Future WNY.

​“I think it’s a great initiative, and the sky’s the limit with what we can accomplish,” Lowe said. “The right people are around the table.”  

At the core of what guides his work both in the NFLFAP and for Food Future WNY is the crucial focus on grassroots representation and leadership by those who are a part of the community it affects—especially those who face systemic exclusion and oppression.  
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He shared, “If [the food system] doesn’t represent the people it’s supposed to serve, it’s going to start prioritizing profits over people. Then, there’s no difference between the current food system and the one we’re working toward.” 

Select quotes have been edited for clarity.  


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Regional Food System Mapping Project

2/24/2022

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Nathanial Mich, Univ. at Buffalo Food Lab - February 18, 2022 

​The Community-Centered Health, Equitable, Ecological, and Regional Food System Mapping (CHEER) project seeks to make spatial data regarding the regional food system of Western New York more accessible to the public and a wide range of stakeholders through the creation and management of an online GIS mapping dashboard. This project builds on, expands, and formalizes the Buffalo food system mapping done by the Seeding Resilience project in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Food Lab members research, collate, and map data that pertain to the nine domains of the food system in Western New York, as well as summative data about the regional food system and emergency food system. The nine domains are 1) food production, 2) aggregation and wholesale, 3) food processing, 4) food retail, 5) food service, 6) institutional food procurement, 7) transportation and logistics, 8) management of wasted food and food loss, and 9) acquisition, preparation, & eating.
 
The CHEER mapping dashboard is participatory and interactive: community members can submit their “food system stories” to the dashboard, ensuring that the maps reflect Western New Yorkers’ lived experience of the food system. Furthermore, computer science researchers in the Food Lab are developing machine-learning programs that can identify fruits and vegetables in photos of produce displays. This will allow the dashboard to create a real-time image of the available foods in a community based on user-submitted photos.
 
The CHEER project supports Food Future Western New York, a regional food system assessment and planning initiative (part of Build Back Better WNY) for the nine counties of Western New York: Allegany, Cattaragus, Chautauqua, Erie, Genesee, Monroe, Niagara, Orleans, and Wyoming. As part of the CHEER project, Food Lab researchers are conducting a social network analysis to understand how the regional planning process built and strengthened personal and professional networks within the Western New York food system.


Product: A publicly-accessible website composed of interactive maps and visualizations of the nine-county regional food system of Western New York, that illustrates several domains:

  • Food Production
  • Aggregation & Wholesale
  • Food Processing
  • Food Retail
  • Food Service
  • Institutional Food Procurement
  • Transportation & Logistics
  • Management of Wasted Food & Food Loss
  • Acquisition, Preparation and Eating
  • Emergency Food System
  • Summary Statistics on the Regional Food System
 
The website will also present profiles of organizations working to build a stronger local or regional food system throughout the mapping area, and short research-based essays on the features, challenges, and opportunities of each domain. Users will be able to submit their own “food system stories,” such as information about their business, relevant images, or personal narratives.
 
A soft opening of the website is expected in early spring of 2022.
 
Purpose: To collect spatial food system data in one location, make it publicly accessible and actionable for stakeholders and the broader community, and support the work of Food Future WNY and its Working Groups. As part of a regional, nine-county, community-led effort, the UB Food Lab is building a regional-scale mapping system using inclusive planning processes where stakeholders in a region's food system co-design the portals that map and monitor problems.
 
Team: UB Food Lab: Samina Raja (Director, PI), Nathaniel Mich (Coordinator), Eric Hughes (GIS Specialist), Oliver Kennedy (Co-I). Supported by a data advisory group composed of stakeholders from the FFWNY process.
 
The Food Lab is also conducting a social network analysis as part of the FFWNY planning process, to understand how FFWNY strengthens professional and community networks in the regional food system. Emmanuel Frimpong-Boamah (Co-PI), and Zachary Korosh (researcher).
 
Partner Input: Working groups and food system businesses and organizations are encouraged to submit information such as: contact/website, specific products and services, and relationships with other food system organizations once the website has launched. Information about specific businesses that is available through government sources is usually limited to name, location, and business type. Community and partner input will enrich this data and make the portal even more useful.
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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
fr2021

Western New York Foundation

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