One June 17, 2010, the Hunts Point Alliance for Children (HPAC), hosted the first weekly installment of the Hunts Point FarmShare, in partnership with the BLK ProJeK and Corbin Hill Rd Farm, providing freshly picked snap peas, strawberries, spinach and more to Hunts Point residents.
“I think [FarmShare] is another way of increasing equity, in terms of bringing fresh foods and vegetables into the community,” Tanya Fields, director of the BLK ProJeK, said. “It brings people and food together, but it also brings people and people together.”
FarmShare links upstate and downstate New York through providing fresh produce to community members on a weekly basis. The model is similar to a CSA, or community supported agriculture, but varies in that members need only pay two weeks ahead of time for the produce, eliminating the high entry cost and making fresh produce available to low-income communities. For the first week, there were 31 community member participants, and in week two, this will grow to 38 shareholders. FarmShare makes healthy food alternatives, at an affordable price, available to those living in Hunts Point.
Beginning with Heather Mills’ 2008 donation of $1 million worth of food to Hunts Point, distributed by HPAC, the organization has continued its commitment to increasing access to healthy food in the Hunts Point area. Mills’ ongoing involvement in Hunts Point includes the additional donation of speaking fees to HPAC to be used as incentives to join FarmShare through subsidized costs.
Kimona Heath, a member or the Hunts Point FarmShare program, said, “Shopping for fruits and vegetables is very hard around here. All the food seems like it is rotten or stale, or like they picked it up off the side of the road and set it there for us.”
Heath said she joined FarmShare because, “I want to show my son that there is more than McDonalds fries and hamburgers.”
Fields said the community’s situation is direly ironic, yet hopeful.
“The ironic thing about this community is it’s a community that gets 16,000 diesel truck trips every day; this is the second largest food distribution center in the world, yet we don’t have access to this food traveling through this community.”
Fields added that these inaccessible shipments of fresh food are also causing health problems in the area, such as asthma, from all the pollution. She believes the FarmShare program can help to end this cycle, or at least build community bonds.
The program distributes fresh produce on a weekly basis, and depending on the crop that week, participants can choose from a variety of fruits to help them create health conscious courses for their families.
“We’ll be able to balance our budgets better,” said Judith Raphael, a FarmShare member. “It’s expensive in the supermarket to be healthy.”
