In New York City, structural inequalities have helped neighborhoods that are predominantly low-income communities of color to have less access to healthy food and to suffer from greater food insecurity and food-related diseases. The city should fund an incubator of community food centers to coordinate interested communities to develop more local food businesses and farm-to-city food projects. The City Council will consider legislation requiring city agencies with food purchase contracts to create food waste prevention plans. City Limits uses investigative journalism through the lens of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions and equip communities to act.
A “food swamp” is an area where unhealthy foods, such as high-calorie fast food and junk food, are more available than healthy foods. The City should fund an incubator of community food centers to coordinate interested communities to develop more local food businesses and farm-to-city food projects. Each year, 35 young adults from Eastern New York are selected as interns on the farm and learn about health, nutrition and food justice. Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York's fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a fairer city.
If you are interested in working on the New York City Council, please submit your resume and area of interest here. Establish a city-wide food plan that provides a strategic framework, goal-oriented planning and coordination to key areas of the food system, such as hunger, nutrition, access to healthy food, food waste, food and agricultural economies, and urban agriculture and sustainability. In New York City, one of the richest cities in the world, everyone must have equitable access to healthy food, each community must have greater control over their food choices, each person must have enough nutritious food to live a healthy life, and every neighborhood must have food businesses that reflect the cultures and diversity of that community. New York City's food insecurity rate is 12% higher than the national rate and 21% higher than that of New York State.
In recent years, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) has made significant progress in ensuring that all children have access to nutritious food during the school day. No person in New York City should go hungry; however, New York City faces a “food gap,” that is, the number of people missing meals due to the lack of family resources to buy food from nearly 208 million meals. Food swamps typically exist in food deserts, which are neighborhoods with limited access to grocery stores and healthy food options. On the other hand, fast-food chains in New York City are especially prevalent in the low-income suburbs of Brooklyn.
An estimated 1.09 million New Yorkers are “food insecure,” meaning that they struggled at some point during the year to access sufficient food due to lack of resources.
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