The New York State Food Policy, the creation of which was a long time Hunger Action priority, held its first meeting on October 15. 2007. A Food Policy Council is intended to help end hunger; promote better nutrition; and support small family farms.

We believe that a critical role for the Council is to help convene the multiple stakeholders in our food system, bringing together individuals and government agencies which do not typically work directly with each other nor are they asked to be involved when farm and agricultural policy is discussed. Such councils in other states have provided a mechanism to discuss emerging issues such as local foods, direct marketing, small and mid-sized farms and other "new agriculture" developments which fall outside traditional "farm" programs.

One step that should be taken short-term to involve more stakeholders is to establish advisory committee(s), ensuring that the diversity of the community food security movement in our state has a formal place in the Council’s discussions. We believe it is important to bring in organizations and individuals who have a demonstrated track record of working on the interconnected issues of hunger, nutrition, and agriculture policy.

The Food Policy Council was a major focus of Hunger Action’s recent annual membership meeting.

Many suggestions were offered as to what NY could do to ensure access to quality food for low-income New Yorkers, including increasing access to fruits and vegetables in inner city communities, while helping to strengthen local farms and the agriculture community. Suggestions included: expand the use of CSA’s; create city gardens; encourage landlords to allow rooftop access for gardens; make it easier to use food stamps at CSAs and Farmers Markets; force developers to set aside space for community gardens in new development projects; create a NYS processing center to process excess produce; expand wholesale farmers markets; expand supermarkets into urban areas; and create agricultural opportunities and incentives to immigrants.

Hunger Action has also urged the state to require expedited food stamps to be distributed in emergency by the day after applications, which was done during the Cuomo administration.

There is strong sentiment across the board in increasing the amount of locally grown food consumed by New York residents. We hope that the Council will both assess the extent to which this already occurs and establish a series of increasing goals for the state (e.g., 25%) as to the percentage of the state food supply that is locally grown. It would be helpful for the Council to document the barriers that would impede us from achieving an even higher goal. On a related issue, what can the state do to help train and support new farmers to meet the demands of local markets?

One barrier to increased consumption of locally grown food is distribution and transportation problems, particularly for smaller farmers. This also includes access to small scale food processing. The Council should help make it easier and more profitable for smaller farmers to diversify what they produce, which would assist in making more locally grown food available.

We look forward to the Council leadership in developing new state initiatives to reduce hunger in our state. As a society New York is too well off to continue to tolerate such high levels of food insecurity in our state. At the same time, we need to ensure that the food accessible to low-income consumers are high in nutrition values rather than calories.