Resolution to make food access a human right faces County Board

Z! says the resolution lays the foundation for a system that gives low-income communities and communities of color access to growing spaceM Adams grew up poor in inner-city Milwaukee amidst liquor stores, fast food restaurants, and hyper-policed recreational spaces.

“A lot of the statistics that we hear when health disparities are brought up, around obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes...directly affect my community, and also affects me,” said Adams. “I lived a lot of things that we’re trying to end.”

Adams works for the Health Justice Project at Freedom, Inc., which addresses health-related inequalities in Dane County. Their goals include tackling the health needs of African American and Southeast Asian communities by expanding access to “affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food.”

Recently, the group has been working to declare access to healthy food a human right.

Through meetings with elderly, adult, and youth community members, Adams and other leaders in the Health Justice Project identified land access as a key component of healthy food production, food economy, and recreation.

Z!, a consultant with Freedom, Inc., was one of the members who approached the Dane County Food Council to address these issues in fall 2011. They proposed a resolution stating that all county residents deserve access to land to grow food for consumption or to sell, regardless of race or income.

The council took up the resolution and sent it to a sub-committee over the winter for review. The committee made some changes to the language, but maintained the principle that all Dane County residents have a right to healthy food production.

“There is a vast majority of people that have challenges in finding land to grow on,” said Melissa Sargent, Dane County supervisor and Food Council chair. “We are very aware of poverty within our county.”

The resolution requires the council annually report statistics relevant to racial disparities in food production and access in the county. It also acknowledges that the county has a responsibility to make unused county land accessible to low-income communities for food production.

In addition to access to healthy food, the resolution also proposes two other priorities: access to land for food production, and access to the local food economy.

“I think it lays a foundation for us to go back and say, ‘you agreed that it’s important for land to be used for communities of color and for local communities to have access to farm or garden,’” Z! explained.

Adams said access to land also serves a cultural purpose. Many southeast Asian elders came to the US, and Dane County in particular, as refugees. They brought a lifestyle that relies on gardening for recreation and exercise, food to eat, and food to sell.

“It’s not only physical benefits, in that they’d be able to grow their own food," explained Adams. “But there’s also this cultural piece, this healing piece, this emotional and spiritual piece.”

Not everyone is satisfied with the Council’s revisions, however. Adams said the council’s version watered down language specifically related to low-income communities and communities of color.

“If you were to look at the laws and policies in Madison, I think a lot of them appear to be really progressive, but they don’t really impact communities of color,” Adams said .

Z!, who served on the sub-committee within the Council, sees the new draft as a compromise, a balance between the goals from the Health Justice Project and the requirements of the food council.

Z! and Adams are currently working on a similar effort with the City of Madison. They are in touch with alders regarding a resolution analogous to that facing the county. In efforts to expand access to community gardens, they have established a garden at Bayview and hope to establish garden plots at Brittingham Park.

Sargent said she received positive feedback on the resolution throughout its journey to the County Board. Board committees are now reviewing the resolution, which will face the full Board in four to six weeks.

 “There are people who are hungry. And we can do better,” said Sargent. “Our basic values in Dane County show that we need to do better.”