Food Access & Community Gardens
Access to safe, healthy, and affordable food is a topic that’s been a highlight of conversation in the Northeast Ohio community for generations. Quite simply, food brings people together. It has the power to connect, to provide a standard of health, and shouldn’t be limited based on neighbors’ zip codes.
Let’s meet two of Akron’s leading food advocacy organizations: Summit Food Coalition, led by Executive Director Beth Knorr, and Let’s Grow Akron, led by Executive Director Lisa Nunn.
The Summit Food Coalition is an alliance of people and organizations committed to building a just, sustainable, and vibrant local food system. As an organization, the Summit Food Coalition is encouraging and supporting those entities that are making our community aware of where they can use their benefit cards and where they can purchase fresh fruits and vegetables.
Its collaborative work builds a system with a focus on four main areas: access, advocacy, education, and entrepreneurs. The team:
Facilitates conversations to educate partners, stakeholders, and community members on emerging issues, opportunities, and active local work.
Supports local food entrepreneurs and encourages the development of infrastructure and opportunities to aid in their success.
Provides support to organizations and people seeking to increase access to nutritious and local food in our communities.
Recommends and advocates for policies that support access to nutritious local food, sustainable land use, and food as a means for economic development.
Through the work of partners like Summit Food Coalition, a growing number of community members are connecting with local produce and food in new ways.
Let’s Grow Akron is a nonprofit organization that creates and supports community food gardens in neighborhoods where access to fresh food has been unfairly limited. Let’s Grow Akron has a 32-year history of community organizing around food and providing technical assistance in utilizing urban land for food production. Its team has a collaborative education program that provides opportunities for people to grow their own food, prepare healthy meals from the harvest and preserve the surplus.
When connecting with both Lisa Nunn and Beth Knorr, they both clearly shared a passion and two common missions: 1) connecting people with local produce and 2) amplifying the power and importance that food can bring to a community.
Nunn shared, “It’s said that community gardening is 10% gardening and 90% community; a lot of community work is involved. We offer community garden leadership training programs for all neighbors, but especially for neighbors in food deserts. Currently, we have over thirty established community gardens, a mix of personal gardens, market gardens, and food pantry gardens for community meals.”
With the help of the City of Akron, programs are available like the Seniors Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, which provides $50 vouchers for eligible seniors and the WIC-eligible families that receive additional dollars or “carrot cash” to purchase local fruits and vegetables. Local farmers’ markets also accept EBT payments to encourage families to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.
Additionally, Nunn is an avid canner, and her community of gardens and volunteers at places like Karder Community Market Garden grow food for the market and also offer canning classes to help those trying new varieties of foods for the first time or store food for longer periods of time.
A list of available gardens in Akron is available at www.letsgrowakron.org/gardens, while a list of farmers’ markets can be found on the Summit Food Coalition’s website, www.summitfoodcoalition.org/farmersmarkets.
Knorr from the Summit Food Coalition shared with us the benefits and growth they’ve seen because of partners like Civic Commons and Let’s Grow Akron.
“COVID put into a stark reality that people really were struggling to provide for their families,” shared Knorr. “Years ago, thanks to partners like the Civic Commons, we were one of the dozen organizations that spearheaded the Summit Lake Farmers’ Market. The goal of the Market (that is still in action!) was to make food accessible, and we were able to bring many people together.”
What started out as a monthly market is now weekly, thanks to the management by Let’s Grow Akron and investments from Civic Commons that helped to build momentum.
“Our members are the ones doing the work,” shared Knorr. “They have the relationships and are making it happen, and that allows us to see where the opportunities are for other programs and other spaces to help people around these issues.”
When asking Knorr about any other areas she thinks are important to discuss, she shared her passion for the issues of justice surrounding the local food movement.
“I think it’s important to talk about how we cannot separate issues of justice. Food justice, racial justice, environmental justice—food is a place where all of these things intersect. It’s about access to green space that we know that lower-income communities don’t have a lot of, and that impacts how our food is grown, and the health of an entire community. As an organization, we look at different communities, like Summit Lake and look at the discriminatory red-lining maps of Akron’s past, and if we overlay the maps of the food deserts, and they are almost identically aligned.”
Summit Lake is a community that was historically disinvested in—through generational policies and systems. Today, Knorr encourages us to see food as one of the integral investments to make back into the neighborhood.
“Supporting these community gardening efforts including human-intensive—not chemical-intensive—farming methods really impacts the environmental health. It impacts water quality, air quality, soil quality, and what it does to property values and what happens with a strong community base in a neighborhood. Green space increases the value of a community and the opportunities for people to have mental health implications and physical health, and as a community, I’m so proud to come together for this work.”
For more information on being a member of the Summit Food Coalition, please visit https://www.summitfoodcoalition.org, and to learn more about Let’s Grow Akron’s food accessibility and other programs, visit LetsGrowAkron.org.