Food Sovereignty,Food Access,and the Local Food Movement in Southeastern North Carolina

Personal Reflexive Statement

It is our belief that all persons should have access to fresh and nutrient-rich foods, no matter their income. It has been our experience that resource-limited communities, when engaged and empowered, are a vital asset to any community building initiative.

Food sovereignty is about the right to food and the right to have control over one’s access to food. It is about the “right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agricultural systems” (Declaration of Nyeleni 2011). The concept was embraced by international organizations in the late 1990s and quickly became one of the pillars of the global food movement (Gordillo and Jeronimo 2013). In thinking about food justice and access to healthy affordable foods, communities across the United States have recently embraced this concept and have been working tirelessly to identify strategies for low-income neighborhoods to access healthy, affordable foods.

Feast Down East (FDE), a local food systems movement in Southeastern North Carolina, was one of the first organizations in the United States to develop a Food Sovereignty Program that linked limited resource consumers and growers in an effort to provide access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate foods in a low-income community. Since food sovereignty necessitates community input and governance, communities are the central mechanism in programming aimed at food sovereignty. This article examines this community-based project and looks critically at opportunities, barriers, and struggles in one food sovereignty effort in the United States.

Background

Food insecurity, the lack of access to enough food to sustain an active and healthy life, is an issue for 12.7 percent of Americans (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2016). Those who are food insecure are more likely to have incomes below the poverty line, with 38.3 percent of households with incomes below the poverty line reporting food insecurity (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2016). Participation in federal nutrition assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can alleviate some of this food insecurity. However, the limited amount of SNAP benefits leaves recipients with difficult choices, such as purchasing fewer fresh fruits and vegetables because of their cost. Lack of monetary resources act as barriers for low-income individuals in purchasing healthy food, leading to a paradox of food insecurity being associated with obesity (Hartline-Grafton 2015).

Another problem low-income residents face is accessing grocery stores. Even if the funds were available to purchase healthy food, there may not be a grocery store that is geographically accessible to those residents. This lack of access to a grocery store is typically referred to as a food desert. It is defined in the 2008 Farm Bill as an “area in the United States with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, particularly such an area composed of predominantly lower income neighborhoods and communities” (Title VI, Section 7527, in United States Department of Agriculture [USDA] 2009:1). Those living in food deserts are more likely to be food insecure, and residents often have higher levels of obesity (Morton et al. 2005; Schafft, Jensen, and Hinrichs 2009).

Several programs have attempted to bridge this gap of affordable access to healthy fruits and vegetables for low-income populations. Programs that allow the usage of SNAP at farmers’ markets, even doubling the purchasing power of SNAP dollars, have been widely implemented (King et al. 2014). While this solves the problem of monetary access, it does not solve the problem of geographic access. There may also be other barriers to the low-income population participating in farmers’ markets, including the largely white affluent customer base (Kato 2013). Another way to increase access is through the use of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), paid for with grant funding, which gives fresh produce access to participants (Andreatta, Rhyne, and Dery 2008).

The third issue is lack of knowledge of the nutrition benefits of certain foods and how to prepare them. Even if consumers had both monetary and geographic access to food, they may not have the knowledge of why they should be purchasing these healthy foods, or what to do with them once they are purchased. Indeed across the country, Americans, regardless of socioeconomic background, score pretty low on the Healthy Eating Index (59 of 100), so more programs targeted to helping Americans eat better, cook more, and become more aware of nutritional value in food are needed. Cooking and nutrition classes have been shown to increase the knowledge and skills of participants, enabling them to prepare healthy meals, especially if combined with affordable access to fresh produce (Dannefer et al. 2015). Programs like the nonprofit FoodCorps successfully increase knowledge and consumption of healthy foods in schools, especially through more hands on learning, which tripled students’ consumption of fruits and vegetables (Koch et al. 2017).

Some of the programs described above have been less successful because they are not run by low-income consumers most affected by food insecurity; indeed, those individuals may feel like these programs are being forced on them. This is where key issues of food sovereignty and community building come into play. Programs must begin with and develop connections within communities in order to be successful. Particularly in low-income areas, where residents are likely to feel disenfranchised already, those community members must maintain agency in building their own food sovereignty. Past research has shown the need for and effectiveness of Food Sovereignty Programs like the one described below (Alkon and Mares 2012; Block et al. 2012; Carney 2012).

Project Background

Local food systems programs are an important component in addressing food insecurity (Scanlan 2009). Indeed, supporting local community food systems initiatives holds the greatest likelihood of creating substantive, meaningful, long-term change in food insecurity (Hossfeld, Kelly, and Waity 2016). FDE is a local food systems program that developed in 2006. Its founding focus was on economic development through the creation of a local food system that would link rural limited resource farmers to institutions and markets with the hope of a multiplier ripple effect that would boost local economies and help small, family farmers build their farm capacity.

The project started off as a partnership of public and private institutions and agencies among 10 counties in Southeastern North Carolina. Southeastern North Carolina is the most racially and ethnically diverse region in North Carolina and in rural America (Hossfeld, Legerton, and Kuester 2004). The most diverse county in the project area is Robeson County, where 30.1 percent of the population is white, 24.1 percent of the population is black or African American, 37.8 percent is American Indian, and 8.2 percent of the population is Hispanic or Latino (of any race) (Comparative Demographic Estimates). Southeastern North Carolina is also one of the two major regions of persistent poverty in the state, the other being in the upper Northeast part of the state (Sirota 2012). Robeson County has the highest poverty rate at 31.6 percent, followed by Bladen at 27.4 percent and Columbus at 23.5 percent (selected economic characteristics). The remaining counties in the region all have poverty rates well above the national average of 13.5 percent (Proctor, Semega, and Kollar 2016). The project region includes both rural and urban counties in order to maximize market opportunities and profits from the sales of local farm products for both local and regional markets.

As the project began to unfold, it joined public and private agencies together to create a regional food system that sought not only to increase the sales of local farm products but also to sustain and expand farm employment, profit, and ownership, particularly among limited resource farmers. Limited resource farmers is a USDA term defined as socially disadvantaged farmers; and in Southeastern North Carolina, this included minority African American farmers and women farmers. Small family farming was once the backbone of Southeastern North Carolina agriculture, yet this particular type of farmer began to rapidly disappear with the fast-paced growth of big agricultural, monocrop commodity farming, that changed the landscape of agriculture across the United States since World War II (Ferris 2014). Southeastern North Carolina was no exception to this change in agriculture that left small family farmers, and particularly limited resource farmers, marginalized from big agriculture and the new mode of production. Indeed, a cursory glance at the agriculture census reflects this dramatic downturn of the number of farmers in the region, particularly the precipitous decline in the number African American farmers (Ferris 2014; Hossfeld 2009).

Faced with these challenges in the agricultural sector, the visioning of FDE hoped to expand local and regional markets for local farm products and develop a system of institutional buying and expanded direct farm to market sales. In doing this, FDE worked to educate and train limited resource farmers in alternative and niche market production and develop programs of mutual assistance among farmers and consumers. Long-term goals included implementing agricultural and food system development strategies that focused on job creation, market expansion, and alternative crop production

Throughout its work, FDE focused on being democratic and farmer-driven. The counties involved in the project began establishing local food systems councils that work with the regional council of FDE. The underlying principles of these councils involved being racially, geographically, and sector diverse that included farmers, institutional buyers, farmers' markets, service providers, educators, policymakers, and consumers of all socioeconomic backgrounds who were directly engaged in local and regional planning, service provision, and governance. The long-term objective included keeping a greater percentage of the food dollar within Southeastern North Carolina and increased local and regional wealth through the multiplier effect of expanded markets, sales, and profits. FDE remains committed to increasing the capacity of limited resource farmers in becoming resourceful farmers and in supporting low-income communities in advancing their own food security.

Overall, the organization has experienced great success. It has nurtured and solidified a buy local movement in the region and is recognized in the state as a leader in the local food systems movement. In documenting the impact of its efforts, FDE reports a close to US$50 million multiplier effect of economic influence due to food and farm-related job creation and sales of local farm product and public and private support.

Nevertheless, leaders of the organization felt great concern that as a poverty alleviation project, FDE was falling short in its outreach to low-income consumers. As witnessed through the growth of the local food systems movement across the United States, identification with local foods was increasingly becoming considered an upper- and middle-class phenomena, indeed an “experience” evidenced in the growth of Whole Foods–type establishments, targeted primarily to those with discretionary funds. FDE leadership felt compelled to remain true to its mission to ensure everyone has access to healthy, affordable food and redirected its focus to low-income consumers in the region.

In response to this growing concern, the Food Sovereignty Program was founded in 2012. This innovative project linked rural limited resource farmers to urban, low-income public housing neighborhoods (situated in USDA-designated food deserts) through what is called “fresh markets” in the Wilmington, NC, public housing communities. Public housing resident leadership coined the name, Fresh Market for the project and created a weekly, consistent market that ensures that healthy, affordable, fresh, and local food is placed and kept on the shelves of low-income consumers while also directly generating additional income that assists limited resource farmers in becoming resourceful farmers. The goal of this project is to connect and unite the rural supplier of food with the urban consumer of food.

Farmers’ markets are often seen as a way for people to get access to fresh produce, yet barriers exist that prevent some people from using farmers’ markets, such as location and lack of income. Some farmers’ markets accept electronic benefit transfer (EBT) of SNAP as a way to overcome one of these barriers, but other barriers remain. The Food Sovereignty Program seeks to address some of these barriers by accepting EBT at the Fresh Markets as well as offering nutrition and cooking classes based at the Wilmington Housing Authority (WHA) market sites.

In all aspects of the design of this program, the organization tries to ensure opportunities where farmers and consumers meet, prepare, and share the local foods that provide mutual support and bounty, along with creating nutrition and stewardship education and leadership training for the Fresh Market participants.

The overall goal of the Food Sovereignty Program is to ensure positive changes in knowledge, skills, and empowerment of low-wealth public housing residents through nutrition workshops and a leadership training certification program for the program participants and leaders. The goal in creating a leadership program was to ensure sustainability of the project and increased community ownership over food access and demand for food security.

The Food Sovereignty Program also has the goal of providing increased revenue for limited resource farmers that ensure sustainability of their family farms. The desire of the program is to build on local assets of African American heritage farming through farm tours/farm dinners and agritourism convenings. Most importantly, the goal was to ensure that relationships between growers and consumers develop.

It should be noted that low-income consumers and farmers have been actively engaged in FDE since its beginning. Both limited resource farmers and low-income residents benefit from this project through increased partnership and fellowship between the two groups. In addition, the multiplier effect from increased sales for local low-income farmers positively impacts the regional economy. Low-wealth consumers gain access to healthy, affordable, and local food. Low-wealth urban residents learn about sustainable agriculture and the heritage of African American farming in Southeastern North Carolina. The project goals create a win-win system for both limited resource farmers and low-income consumers.

The Study

Since its inception, FDE has collected data on various elements of the Food Sovereignty Program. Sales and customer counts at Fresh Markets and attendance at nutrition classes provide an indication of the frequency of use of these programs by residents. However, such numerical counts do not tell the whole story. To further examine the impact of such programs, 16 residents who had participated in nutrition classes and the Fresh Market were asked about potential changes in their food purchasing and eating habits.

To further examine the complexities of neighborhood effects, we also conducted semistructured interviews with low-income community members and individuals who participated in the leadership development program. The recruitment strategy employed the use of snowball sampling, a nonprobability technique which gains access to residents through referrals (Seale 2004). An interview guide was created to structure the interview while allowing participants to reflect on open-ended questions about what defines leadership, what qualities a leader possesses, and evaluation of leadership performance and impact.

Five residents, from four different neighborhoods, were recruited and participated in the leadership development curriculum. Four residents completed the development and one resigned from participating due to health reasons. All willing leadership development participants were interviewed. Additional interviewees were recruited from the community to provide an additional perspective on how leadership is conceptualized, the impact of leadership development, and experiences working with the community. All semistructured, in-depth interview participants were African American females over the age of 40 and residing in a WHA community at the time of the interview (in total, five residents were interviewed). The interviews lasted approximately one hour, and all interviews were conducted at public housing neighborhood community offices.

All of the authors are white females working on food insecurity in Southeastern North Carolina; three are researchers and one a graduate student working with the researchers. One of the authors, the graduate student, was directly involved with the leadership development program in her role as coordinator for the Community Campus based at the public housing neighborhood and through an internship with the Food Sovereignty Program. Through this role, she built trust and reciprocity in her work over the two years on-site at the public housing neighborhoods. Yet, we recognize that she had the potential to influence participants’ responses. Special efforts were taken to inform participants of confidentiality, and they were made clear the purpose of the research and the importance of candid, honest responses in hopes of alleviating any apprehensions associated with participating in the research.

Interviews were recorded using a digital recorder and institutional review board information was reviewed and signed by each participant prior to beginning the semistructured interview. Interviews were transcribed and coded for themes. The transcription of the interview occurred within two weeks of conducting the interview. The transcriptions were printed and coded by the graduate student author based on research questions and for emerging themes. Transcripts were revisited and recoded by one author and another one of the authors more recently with a focus on foodways and inequalities.

Findings

Quantitative data on sales and attendance at programming reflect a general trend of increasing support for the Food Sovereignty Program. Sales data show a steady increase in sales at the market from 2012 through 2015, with sales beginning at US$704.25 in 2012 and steadily increasing to US$2,165 in 2015. In 2016, sales dipped slightly to US$1,865, primarily due to the sales and programmatic work with NourishNC that temporarily boost 2015 sales. Sales with SNAP/EBT reflect the temporary NourishNC project as well.

Attendance at cooking classes also reflected growing interest in the program by residents. Attendance at adult classes increased from 42 attendees in 2015 to 76 in 2016. Attendance at adult/child classes was more mixed with 19 adults and 26 children attending in 2015 and 10 adults and 24 children attending in 2016.

Nutrition classes were held at the public housing community centers through North Carolina Extension offices through the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). After EFNEP classes and participating in the Fresh Market, the EFNEP Extension leader surveyed the participants (n = 16). From that group, almost two-thirds of the participants indicated they were less likely to run out of food before the end of the month. When deciding what to feed their family, 30 percent of the participants reported an increase in how often they think about healthy choices. Over 60 percent of the participants reported an increase in their use of the nutrition facts on the food label when making food choices. About 40 percent of the participants indicated an increase in their physical activity. Lastly, 23 percent of EFNEP course participants reported an increase in the variety of fruits and vegetables they were able to serve. Such research indicates that FDE’s Food Sovereignty Program cooking classes, nutrition classes, Food Corps inputs, and after school programming at the WHA Community Campus have helped to bridge the gap between food provided at the market and what was consumed at home.

Yet, the project has had ups and downs in terms of its success. In the early months of its development, there was clear excitement and buy in from residents. Years of working in public housing communities by the leadership of FDE provided the necessary trust and belief that projects would be developed that would stay in place over the long-term and not a short-term project by a group of students from the university for one semester only. Through the implementation of the WHA Community Campus, residents recognized that FDE was committed to the long haul and certainly to sustainability of the project (Nyden, Hossfeld, and Nyden 2012).

Due to this perceived commitment and trust by public housing residents, the leadership training was developed and conducted and four community resident leaders received the complete training and certification. The informant interviews from the leadership development program highlight neighborhood effects such as living conditions, politics of place and broader inequalities as barriers for community building, and cultivating food sovereignty in WHA communities.

The interviews explore reasons why community members and service providers may be hesitant to participate in initiatives to increase community well-being. The area is a high-crime area in Wilmington. One resident identifies crime as a reason and goes on further to say, “fighting, um we don’t have that much shooting out here, but it’s mostly fighting.” Another neighborhood effect identified is the potential impact that the appearance and stigma of living in public housing have on a community and their members, as described in this quote:

If you look like a ghetto, you going to act like ghetto, that is what I always tell people because that is our little word we use in our community, “don’t act ghetto”. That mean you is misbehaving, you not focusing on respect, where is your decency about yourself? So we use the term ghetto to get their attention, it is not to pick. It is to let them know you are acting up, you out of place, you disrespectin’, so you acting ghetto.

Residents explain that the organizational strain and inconsistency in the WHA can cause resident leaders and community members to become frustrated and disengaged. One resident explains, “…it makes me feel like they (WHA) don’t want it (community) to be any better; you know they want it to stay just like this and use us…”.

In addition, the same resident comments about the difficulties resident leaders face after encouraging their community to participate in past projects that later were not seen to fruition. For example,

You know when people come out and you come out for a particular reason because when people want input on doing certain things and you get the people excited you bring the people out to a meeting and you talk with them about whatever these people get up and talk and whatever put a flow chart down say blah blah thing comes and nothing happens it makes them (community) disillusioned, they don’t want to come back.

Residents also report that certain aspects of community building can be intimidating. For example, when attending meetings and being asked to contribute, the structure and use of jargon among WHA leadership can make resident participation in meetings difficult. The residents share that when WHA leadership holds meetings and presents information, at times the process may leave resident leaders feeling left out.

Yeah when they (Board of Commissioners) have their meeting, we sitting there listening, and they ask us if we want to respond, to what?! I don’t even know what you are talking about! Well item 999 because they have a packet and I’m sitting there wonderin’, what the heck is 999? I don’t have no paperwork, all I have is agenda, why should I even participate? I’m not included, to me you say I can come but I’m not welcome that’s how I feel.

Concluding Thoughts

The Fresh Market program has seen measures of success with generally increased sales and use of EBT over the years. Fresh Market leaders attend community workshops, Food Day events at the university, conferences on food insecurity and food access, and are regularly asked to participate on professional conference panels and workshops. Through an increased commitment to the project, resident leaders began to make changes to the food orders each week, commenting on what they had learned in workshops on organic and pesticide-free food and genetically modified food. They now select the FDE Food Hub pesticide-free or organic options when available for sale at the weekly Fresh Market in their neighborhoods. The overall Food Sovereignty Program, that combines the Fresh Market program, the Holiday Produce Box, the Gleaning Program, and partnership with the BRC and NourishNC, provides examples of infrastructure development and integration of the Food Sovereignty Program within community with the goal of sustainability.

The design of the Food Sovereignty Program provides a comprehensive solution for many of the community challenges. Fresh Markets are located in WHA communities, which eliminate the geographic barriers to accessing fresh produce. The produce is sold at an affordable rate, and SNAP EBT benefits are accepted, which addresses economic barriers to access. Residents serve as leaders of the Fresh Market that incorporates the ideas of food sovereignty and community building.

Despite using an inclusive model for the Fresh Market program, we found barriers still existed. Gaining community support has its challenges. The two markets with the most resident involvement, Rankin Terrace and Solomon Towers, are the most successful with increased revenue over time. In the Hillcrest Market, sales have declined since the key neighborhood representative passed away. Additional factors may explain the limited use of the Hillcrest Market, such as neighborhood proximity to a grocery store. Cooking and nutrition classes have had mixed results, but most of the participants who attend are already interested in cooking, and those who do not cook at all tend to not participate.

While community food systems present the greatest likelihood of redressing food insecurity and food access, the realities of poverty and community, as well as the vicissitudes of local food systems development in and of itself, create challenging and at times a formidable context in which to enact a new system, especially around healthy food access and consumption.

Although the FDE Food Sovereignty Program continues to thrive, inequality and place may be why more residents are not shopping at the Fresh Markets. Interviews with residents illuminate neighborhood effects that make them cautious and reluctant to be involved in community building. While the markets represent an innovative social space around food sovereignty that helps to create an inclusive local food movement, the politics of place and broader inequality processes often serve to dismantle opportunities for food sovereignty and community building.

If food sovereignty is about the “right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agricultural systems” (Declaration of Nyeleni 2011), then many more projects and community-based initiatives are needed. Advancing opportunities for self-provisioning, leadership opportunities, and Fresh Markets are vital to meeting the healthy food needs of low-resourced communities. Food policy councils that ensure full representation of all community members may be one of the key avenues to success in the food justice movement.