By Crystal Swann and Patricia Carter
October 12, 2009

Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett led a one-day meeting in Seattle prior to the start of the USCM Leadership Meeting to discuss and strategize on ways to address creating more ways to access fresh food in cities. The meeting which was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation engaged researchers, activists and mayors in discussion about the key role that cities play in ensuring access to fresh food and financing options that might be available to create public private partnerships to address food deserts in urban areas. “Food Deserts” are district areas with little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet, but often flushed with the packaged and fried yield of convenience stores and fast food outlets. “As mayors, part of our job, as I see it, is to make it as easy as possible for anybody with the will to live healthy to have the option to live healthy. With regard to healthy eating, this means: If you tell people to eat more fruits and vegetables, then we need to make sure that within our cities, people have access to fresh food,” remarked Cornett.

healthy eating, this means: If you tell people to eat more fruits and vegetables, then we need to make sure that within our cities, people have access to fresh food,” remarked Cornett.

Judith Bell, President of PolicyLink and her colleagues Patricia Smith from The Reinvestment Fund and John Weidman from The Food Trust presented a powerful model for fresh food financing that was created in Pennsylvania in 2001. Bell presented compelling research that demonstrated that food is a commodity that is not equally distributed across communities. Bell and others are working to expand the Pennsylvania model nationally. According to Bell, “Food access is too important to be left solely to market forces. Public financing and tax credit programs should be reconfigured so that they can be made available for supermarket investments. These investments should include new stores and existing stores looking to expand their offerings.”

Columbia (MO) Mayor Darwin Hindman and others discussed how to use farmers markets and community gardens as a venue to provide fresh food across communities. In fulfilling his commitment to getting fresh food into his community, Hindman recently used his bicycle to deliver produce bought at local farmers markets to his constituents. Conference of Mayors President Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels led a tour of a successful local community garden that provides fresh food as part of Seattle P-Patch Program.

Livia Marques, Director, The People’s Garden Initiative at the US Department of Agriculture, highlighted how community gardens can be used not only as a vehicle for fresh food, but also as a community development tool that can bring together people of different cultures, ages and economic levels. Ann Carroll, Senior Policy Analyst with the Office of Brownfields & Land Revitalization at the US Environmental Protection Agency, discussed how cities should evaluate and site community gardens to ensure that soil used to grow food lack contaminates.

Somerville (MA) Mayor Joe Curtatone, member of the recent Institute of Medicine Committee that has issued a new report on Childhood Obesity Prevention Actions for Local Governments, urged meeting participants to think carefully about both the intended and unintended consequences of community development policy decisions. According to Curtatone, given the magnitude of the obesity problem, “Taking action is what is really important.”

To join the USCM Healthy Cities Campaign and learn more contact Patricia Carter @ PCarter@usmayors.org.