Louisville Skyline
Louisville skyline photo courtesy of Bryan Peabody

Tuesday night I went to the third forum in Louisville’s “Sustainable Cities Series” at the Glassworks Urban Design Studio. This one focused specifically on Local Food and Agriculture. I was impressed with the turnout. I met up with John, the leader of a local co-op here in Louisville, and he said that the two previous forums had been limited to 200 people and interest was low. With this one, the first 200 seats filled quickly, so they added 50 more, then added another 30. It was standing room only and I was glad to see lots of people with an interest in local foods. All races and ages were represented.

I know that most of you aren’t from Louisville or even from Kentucky, but some of this stuff is pretty interesting and is stuff that could be of benefit to your communities. The first speaker was Susan Hamilton of the Louisville Metro Economic Development Department. She spoke about the government grants that are driving a study that is intended to determine some ways of improving distribution of local products. Some of the suggestions thus far are pretty obvious, such as expanding the farmer’s market and CSA systems. One that I thought was neat was the idea of a year-round indoor public market in downtown, similar to The Findlay Market in Cincinnati. Hopefully that would be a place where grass-fed meats would be sold as well. I did notice that the grant total was rather small compared to what big businesses receive in tax incentives, only $75,000 with an additional $75,000 coming from local businesses.

Next up was Ivor Chodkowski, a member of the Community Farm Alliance and partner in Grasshoppers Distribution LLC. Ivor is a big proponent of small farms and urban markets and is one of the most influential growers in the region. The Grasshoppers Distribution company is a farmer-owned distribution center, basically a wholesale co-op servicing area stores and restaurants. He also discussed the passing of Kentucky House Bill 611, which allocated money from a tobacco settlement to tobacco-dependent counties in an effort to turn them into agricultural areas. A total of $1.7 billion will be allocated over 25 years (starting in 2000). At the end of his talk, he had an interesting question: “What would happen if every billboard you passed urged you to be a better citizen rather than a different consumer?” Defining what makes a “better citizen” is important, but I found the question interesting.

The third speaker was Bill Huston of Urban Fresh. This is a group that’s doing some really cool things, specifically delivering food into “Urban Food Deserts”. An “Urban Food Desert” is basically an area where it is extremely difficult to find fresh, healthful foods. Bill showed some research from the Community Food Assessment conducted by the Community Farm Alliance. These are some scary, though unsurprising, statistics. Louisville’s food deserts are invariably poor, with triple the poverty rate of Greater Louisville (~38% vs ~12%). In these areas, there is one grocery store per 20,000 residents, compared to one per 6,100 residents elsewhere. In fact, only two grocery stores serve West Louisville. However, West Louisville does have the highest “fast food restaurants per capita” in the entire state. It’s unsurprising that the poorest areas are the ones with least access to real foods and most access to junk. Here’s another ugly fact: citywide, only 26.6% of all residents get 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily and some 60% of the population is overweight or obese.

So anyway, back to Urban Fresh and the things they are doing. Working together with Grasshoppers Distribution, Urban Fresh has created several CSAs and farmer’s markets to serve these low-income areas, providing access to the healthful fruits, vegetables, and pastured eggs and meats necessary for healthful and vibrant lives and communities. They are working hard to get the youngsters in these areas involved in the change. I assume that Mr. Huston would agree with Gandhi, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

The fourth and final speaker was Chef Mark Williams, Executive Chef of Brown-Forman Corporation and founder of Slow Food Bluegrass. He basically discussed the Slow Food movement and its ties to historic places and communities. Slow Food is a great movement which really jives with the idea of eating locally-produced real foods. To paraphrase Mr. Williams, “growing your own food is the ultimate slow food.”

Also, John mentioned Acres Magazine to me and told me to check it out. You can go to that link and get a free issue. He also mentioned that demand for local food in Louisville is growing faster than supply, an issue that is both good news and bad news. That means more people are interested in where their food comes from. It also means that at the current rate, supply will eventually be eaten up.

All in all, it looks like there are some exciting things going on in the region to promote local agriculture. The government is involved, which may or may not prove to be a good thing. The farmers are active and a grassroots effort seems to have formed with plenty of people backing it. What kinds of things are going on in your communities to improve the food systems?


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