How can good food and urban agriculture contribute to increased community food security and to the strength and cohesion of a community?
Community and regional food systems projects improve access to healthy food and contribute other benefits: the promotion of healthy life styles, opportunities for community building and neighborhood renovation, education and job training, exercise, reestablishing and honoring cultural practices, promoting beauty, providing a refuge of nature within the city. Innovations in community food system projects often emphasize these benefits in addition to improved food access.
As we visit community food projects in our pilot cities – starting with Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit – we are witnessing how good food, food production, and improved food access contribute toward building better communities, in multiple ways. This section of the blog will spotlight some of the many innovations in community food systems, and will highlight how these projects build community cohesion, opportunity, power and sense of place. The variety of food system initiatives speaks to the uniqueness of each place and how project innovation is adapted and appropriate to the community in which it takes place.
Follow the links on the right to read our blog posts about food system innovations. We’ll be writing posts as an introduction to projects and organizations that we come across as we embark on our research in various cities.
