Local Foods Movement Making Progress- Trend Seen as Good for Health, Economy

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1 By KATHRYN EASTBURN Staff Writer Greenwood Commonwealth Local Foods Movement Making Progress- Trend Seen as Good for Health, Economy From the seed of Greenwood s first farmers market 10 years ago, cultivated by local growers and those who love eating fresh, locally grown food, a quiet movement has taken root and appears to be bearing fruit. A local foods movement seems to be taking root in Greenwood, said Sarah Hazelnis, who came to Greenwood two years ago with Food Corps and left this summer to take a job near Jackson. Through programs at the public schools and at a garden behind the Greenwood-Leflore Recycling Center, Hazelnis taught local kids how to grow vegetables, where food comes from, its nutritional value and how it enriches their lives. I m not sure what the climate was before I arrived, but I saw an uptick in interest in local foods, Hazelnis said. Mississippi State sociology professor Leslie Hossfeld, head of the Local Food Systems Research Group that came to Greenwood this year to assess local needs and interest, said she is encouraged, too. We re making headway in Greenwood, Hossfeld said. With the information she and her team have gathered, county by county, local foods are being incorporated into the state s food policy decision-making. We ve made a huge push to grow the farmers market and we want to continue on that path, said Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams, citing the city s major contribution to a local food scene. If we build it, they will come, said Beth Stevens, director of the Downtown Greenwood Farmers Market, referring to the new Johnson Street pavilion at Rail Spike Park, where the farmers market is now headquartered and has seen great growth this summer. The farmers market is objectively better in its new location, said Hal Fiore, a local grower who this summer has had two of his best selling days in 10 years. With the long growing season we have here, we d like to see the farmers market extended later in the year, said Rachel Harvey, who works with local grower Leann Hines at Levee Run Farms and is the Leflore County Food Policy Council coordinator helping to organize Hossfeld s efforts locally.

2 Farmers market vendor Hallie Streater brings her fall crop to downtown from her Carroll County farm and sells it down by the railroad tracks throughout October and into November each year. But with coordinated interest and efforts among other growers, and with growing interest from buyers, a movement is afoot to organize a market for that later crop as well as the summer crop. For some growers, raising and selling produce is a way to make a living. For others, it s a time-honored tradition of growing and making things. For some, it s a relatively untapped area of economic development. For everyone, it s a matter of having more healthy, locally grown fruits and vegetables available to stem chronic health problems that are growing like a plague in the Delta childhood obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. Just this month, the city of Greenwood was awarded a $16,875 grant from the Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi Foundation that will support healthy eating habits among school kids and provide a cash infusion to the city-run farmers market. Called the Healthy Heroes Initiative, the program has been instituted in Laurel and now will come to Greenwood, thanks to the grant. It calls for local police and firefighters to train in nutrition and healthy eating habits and then make appearances at local schools sharing what they ve learned. In exchange for implementing that educational aspect of the program, the city will receive cash to use as it sees fit on a health initiative. Greenwood has chosen to use its grant proceeds to continue expansion of the farmers market. The thinking is that public servants in the community are heroes in the eyes of kids, and if your hero comes and tells you it s important to eat fruits and vegetables, maybe you will, said Thomas Gregory, Greenwood s departing chief administrative officer, who applied for the grant. Gregory said the funds will allow the city to pay Stevens and her husband, Glen, a fee for running the farmers market. This is work that Beth Stevens does separately from her job as executive director of the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce. Some other ideas include installing speakers and a sound system to provide music at the market; new equipment such as tables and chairs; and promotional materials for the market such as posters, banners and T-shirts.

3 Beth Stevens said she is interested in working with farmers to get a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program going that would provide boxes of fresh produce to subscribers who pay early in the season, an idea that local growers have been talking about as well. And in an effort to make fresh food available to all Greenwood families, Stevens said she has been looking at what steps need to be taken to accept government-issued electronic benefit transfer cards for purchases at the farmers market. We just need to be sure that there s plenty of support at the city to support the administrative and bookkeeping efforts that will entail, she said. Some individual vendors already take EBT cards, but ideally the market would have a central terminal where shoppers could buy tokens with the card and use them at any stand in the market. The idea of making healthful food available to everyone is one of the philosophies that drives a program in which Rachel Harvey participates through Wesley United Methodist Church. The church is involved in the Society of St. Andrew, a faith-based gleaning network that coordinates volunteers going into fields after farmers have finished harvesting to pick up the large amounts of good produce left behind. At Wesley last fall, we went gleaning for turnip greens and turnips with kids from the church, Harvey said. Right now is the time to go gleaning for watermelons, which might be an easier sell than turnip greens. Later in the year, there will be potatoes and sweet potatoes, she said. Within an hour s drive from Greenwood, we have corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, turnips, greens and watermelon. Sometimes the produce is too ripe to take to market, and sometimes it is not cosmetically acceptable to be put on the shelves at Wal-Mart, Harvey said. According to the society s website, it has delivered more than 21 million pounds of salvaged potatoes and other food, almost 62 million servings, to the needy in Mississippi and Arkansas through its Potato and Produce Project. In addition to working with the society and Levee Run Farm, Harvey helped members at Wesley start a small community garden this summer, an oasis of squash, corn, tomatoes and brightly-colored zinnias on the flat lawn behind the church that abuts abandoned buildings on two sides.

4 This fall, she hopes to teach a gardening class for fourth- and fifth-graders through ArtPlace Mississippi. This summer she taught an ArtPlace gardening program alongside Hazelnis. It turned out to be a bunch of 5-year-old boys, Harvey said. So there was a lot of I love worms! I love corn! They seemed to enjoy planting stuff and seeing how it grew. The class made pesto from basil in the garden, built a worm farm, and capped off the program by making pickles. Harvey s role as Leflore County Food Policy Council coordinator, in conjunction with Hossfeld s efforts at Mississippi State to develop a statewide local foods policy, is just beginning, Harvey said. She hopes to have an open informational session in the fall to exchange ideas and assess the level of interest in the community surrounding local food matters. Hossfeld said the Food Policy Council model has been successful in other states and brings people from all sectors together to talk about what the county needs and how to work toward it. Thirteen such councils, including Leflore s, are in the early stages of development around the state. In the middle of Leflore County s best known food desert, the town of Itta Bena, where there has been no grocery store for the last several years, a community garden coordinated by Samuel Chapel United Methodist Church feeds large numbers of the elderly and disabled as well as families with young children each summer. This summer, the harvest at Itta Bena s Community Garden was multiplied in quantity and quality thanks to a walk-behind tractor donated by Hope Credit Union in its community development efforts. Henry Fant, who works the garden alongside John Upton and Robert Barner, on whose land most of the garden resides, said the crop this year was the best he could remember in the years since his wife, Gladys, first organized the effort. We re at the end of our first harvest right now, getting the ground ready for the fall crop, Henry Fant said. At the height of the summer harvest, over the last month, volunteers at the garden were giving away vegetable boxes to as many as 25 families every other day. Fant said the garden produced squash, bell peppers, jalapenos, cantaloupe, watermelon, okra, purple hull and crowder peas, lima and speckled butter beans, cucumbers, corn, peanuts, sweet potatoes, cabbage greens and broccoli. Timely rain and the use of the tractor made for a record harvest.

5 We used to plant a half row of squash, said Gladys Fant. This year we planted an entire row, so we gave away twice as much. The fall crop will include collard and mustard greens, turnips and greens, kale and possibly more broccoli. It is a mark of abundance in a place where fresh food is a luxury that normally requires a 10-mile trip to Greenwood to acquire. In the fertile Mississippi Delta, from the western edge of Leflore County to the smackdab center of Greenwood where the new farmers market pavilion stands, efforts to grow and distribute locally grown produce whether through selling, gleaning or giving it away know no limit of creativity and ingenuity. A local foods system appears to have taken root and is growing. With good conditions, its not unreasonable to expect a bumper harvest down the line. -- Contact Kathryn Eastburn at or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.