AFUA ASANTEWAA

Get Healthy!: Innovative Public Market Strategies and Programs to Increase Access

to Fresh, Healthy Food

Mobile and Good Food Market Senior Coordinator

FoodShare

AFUA ASANTEWAA MOBILE & GOOD FOOD MARKET

& COMMUNITY ANIMATOR SENIOR COORDINATOR

•  Canada’s largest food security organization

•  Working with communities to improve access to affordable healthy food and to reduce hunger

•  Programs include GF Box, cooking, GF & Mobile Markets, school nutrition and community gardens

•  Although our Mission is “Good Healthy Food for All, and that our doors are open to customers from Toronto’s

•  richest neighbourhoods, our priority is low-income communities

•  In 1985, at the inception of FoodShare, Toronto City Executive Committee adopted key recommendations towards alleviating hunger based on FoodShare’s report, A Concept to Help Fight Hunger in Toronto

•  The recommendations included: City of Planning and Development Department provide incentives to encourage supermarket space in neighbourhoods lacking such spaces

•  The latter was slow in coming and farmers market began popping up in neighbourhoods lacking grocery stores

•  Historically farmers markets have been supported by the municipality and operated weekly at the old Toronto City Hall

Model of the St. Lawrence Market buildings. The large building at the front of the market, with the three archways, was used as Toronto’s first City Hall

•  when the farmers markets moved out into residential communities none of them were being hosted in low-income communities, which continued to have no supermarkets

Riverdale Farmer’s Market: first organic market in Toronto

•  In 2002, FoodShare in partnership with local community organizations secured City funding for a farmers market in two low- income communities: Flemingdon Park and Parkdale Liberty

•  In 2003, affordable food began selling in these markets

•  You’re listening and thinking ‘what is so innovative about that?’

•  It was innovative because these were not farmers market—they were called Good Food Markets

•  By definition, the US Department of Agriculture, refers to a farmers’ Market as “an association of local farmers who assemble at a defined location for the purpose of selling their produce directly to consumers”

(USDA, 1996; Lauren Baker 2005)

•  At the Parkdale Liberty and Flemingdon Park markets fresh produce were being sold, but there were no farmers

•  FoodShare had instead innovatively used it’s purchasing power as a wholesale supplier to buy produce directly from farmers and Ontario Food Terminal

•  This model bypassed the middle-man and allowed FoodShare to sell the produce simply at cost to Parkdale and Flemingdon Markets

•  FoodShare had instead innovatively used it’s purchasing power as a wholesale supplier to buy produce directly from farmers and Ontario Food Terminal

•  This model bypassed the middle-man and allowed FoodShare to sell the produce simply at cost to Parkdale and Flemingdon Markets

•  The markets were operated by local community residents:

1.  to improve health (access to healthy food)

2.   for affordability (reducing the cost of healthy food)

3.   for accessibility (locating markets in food deserts)

4. for community-building (through social interaction, networking, volunteerism, education and celebration)

5. Supporting local farmers (buying food directly from farmers at a fair price). (CANADIAN POLICY RESEARCH NETWork)

•  By 2007 the GF Markets had expanded to 12 across the City; today, it’s at 17 markets

•  For a comprehensive understanding of the impact that GF Markets are having take a look at one in an indigenous community in a typical isolated Northern Ontario community that goes beyond the term Food Desert

Fort Albany Good Food Market

•  Along with Fort Albany, FoodShare provides produce to 5 other Northern Ontario indigenous communities by exactly the same mode of transport

•  Debbie Field, FoodShare’s ED, had to obtain an exemption from our board of directors to service the northern communities, since we’re mandated to only serve the Toronto area

•  FoodShare’s more recent market program is the Mobile Market

•  Initially started with a delivery truck mounted with an awning and removal table attachments

•  The Mobile Market is modeled on Chicago’s Fresh Moves project to service inner city tower building communities with no or little access to grocery stores

FoodShare Mobile Good Food Market

•  In Toronto, approximately 1 in 3 children (age 2-11) is either overweight or obese

•  According to a 2010 report from Statistics Canada, children as a group are “taller, heavier, fatter and weaker than in 1981”

•  This may lead to accelerated “non-communicable disease development, increased health care costs, and loss of future productivity”

•  The risk is higher in low-income communities due to poor diet