When the pandemic hit in March, the small restaurants supplied by Lively Run Goat Dairy in Interlaken, New York, closed, and the family-run operation lost the lifeblood of their existence overnight. Brothers Dave and Pete Messmer, who run the small dairy, looked around and saw others in their community struggling, too; supermarket shelves were empty because of panic buying and distribution disruptions, people were going hungry, and the larger dairies around them were dumping millions of gallons of milk. It felt like everything was collapsing.

Empty shelves at Whole Foods in New York City.

When the brothers started talking to the nearby dairymen, they learned the producers wanted to feed people, but they couldn’t deliver milk to supermarkets and pantries. Most specialized in large-scale production and were making “the kind of 20-pound tubs of sour cream that ended up at Chipotle,” Pete Messmer said. “They couldn’t switch over to retail.” With cows needing to be milked daily and storage at capacity, they had no choice but to dump the milk, much to the detriment of their local groundwater.

Then, Pete had an “a-ha” moment: Lively Run was perfectly suited to process the excess milk. That night, he and Dave decided to buy it and make cheese to donate to food banks. “Bigger businesses have a much harder time [pivoting] because they need so much more infrastructure in order to be efficient,” Pete said. “A business like ours can be nimble and switch over quickly.”

This new model would prove to be a win-win for everybody; Lively Run could start making cheese again, farmers would get paid for their surplus milk, and those in need would get fed. To raise funds, the brothers set up a GoFundMe campaign with an initial ask of $20,000. They blew past that goal in three days. To date, they’ve raised nearly $50,000—and donated 6,000 pounds of cheese within the Finger Lakes region and 7,100 pounds to food-insecure neighborhoods in New York City.

The distribution challenges on display in New York and across the U.S. at the beginning of the pandemic have roots that stretch back decades. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon’s Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz said farmers needed to either “get big or get out”—and that’s exactly what’s happened as farms, processing facilities, and supermarkets consolidated over the next 50 years. Now, for example, California farms produce more than one-third of the vegetables and two-thirds of the fruits and nuts grown in the country. And there are fewer choices on the grocery store shelf.

“We have this massive, centralized food distribution network. It’s very efficient, but when there’s a breakdown, it causes massive reverberations. And it’s very fragile,” said Pete.

In creating a new model, the Messmers and their partner organizations played an essential role in strengthening distribution systems and feeding their community. And, as the latest COVID wave grows worse and disruptions due the climate crisis increase, their efforts illustrate how vital small farmers are in ensuring local food distribution.

A visualization of the U.S. food distribution system. (Map credit: Xiaowen Lin, et al.)

Their work hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. The brothers’ work was cited by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in one of his daily updates. Dave believes that their efforts helped the governor see the potential for a much larger program. On April 27, Cuomo announced the Nourish New York Initiative, a $25 million project that connects upstate farmers to food pantries all across the state.

Other similar efforts have simultaneously taken root around the nation, and there’s now a federal version of the plan called the FEED Act waiting to be voted on in the House. If enacted, the legislation would allow “FEMA [to] approve plans from state, local, and Indian tribal governments that (1) establish contracts with small and mid-sized restaurants and nonprofits, including faith-based organizations and soup kitchens, to prepare healthy meals for people in need; and (2) provide for partnerships with nonprofits to purchase directly from food producers and farmers,” after major disasters.

One of the FEED Act’s sponsors is Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. Her support for small farmers resonated with voters in the Finger Lakes region.

Supporting a Local Food Hub and Pantry

One recipient of Lively Run’s cheese is the PressBay Food Hub and Pantry in Ithaca. Like Lively Run, PressBay is a small and nimble operation. It’s run by the Messmers’ longtime friend and colleague Melissa Madden, pictured below at right, who also makes it her mission to rescue food that otherwise would go to waste.

Along with the Messmers’ cheese and donated fresh produce, PressBay offers food pantry clients packaged goods donated by the local Wegman’s supermarket that are past their sell by dates, but are still edible.

Some of the pantry customers have underlying health issues such as diabetes, hypertension, and lactose intolerance, so the ability to choose diet-appropriate foods is crucial. “I have a lot of strong social justice leanings,” Madden said. “One thing that was really important was the decision to [either go] pre-boxed and pre-determined versus the customer choice model. And we went with a customer choice mode.”

PressBay volunteer Kadie Salfi got involved in March, when it was still snowing. “Some days, it was cold and no one was out. Some people said we were the only people they saw in a given week. It was pretty heartbreaking, but also pretty special to be that person” who helped provide for them, she said.

Kadie Salfi.

“Volunteering is healing. And I’ve been going through my own hard times; I lost my dad a month ago,” Salfi continued. “But every day that I came here, even if on the way I felt sad, or I was crying, I was just like, ‘Gotta pull it together.’ There are other people who are way worse off than I am. And I’ve got to be here to be a spark of happiness for them. I feel so much better at the end of my shift.”

The PressBay Food Hub and Pantry has started a GoFundMe campaign so that they can continue to provide the community with uninterrupted service.

Need for Local Aggregators

As promising as the Nourish New York Initiative was, it has presented difficulties for small farmers. Although they believe they helped inspire the program, the Messmers never received any direct funds from the initiative. The way it’s set up, funds first go to food banks in the state, so they can buy the surplus food, says to Hanna Birkhead, a public information specialist at the New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets. All too often, this means that smaller farmers are overlooked.

Only after the Messmers consulted with numerous pantries and state senators did they finally manage to get connected to World Central Kitchen (WCK), which received Nourish New York funds. WCK bought 7,100 pounds of cheese from the brothers at cost and distributed it to food-insecure communities in New York City. (WCK’s founder Chef José Andrés is also a sponsor of the FEED Act.)

The Messmers hope Nourish New York becomes permanent because they say it could help strengthen the distribution systems that have formed during the pandemic.

If the FEED Act is enacted—or if there’s a second round of Nourish New York funding (all funds were spent by the end of October)—the Messmers’ difficulty in tapping funds illustrates the need for an organization like WCK that is grounded in the community and won’t go away.

Liz Karabinakis, a community food educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension and director of Healthy Food for All, helped create a hyper-localized version of Nourish New York in Tompkins County, which was based on the state model. “[It] allowed us to tap into a $5,000 FEMA CARES Grant to compensate local farmers for produce,” Karabinakis said.

A Spirit of Interconnectedness

Liz Karabinakis on the West Haven Farm in Ithaca.

Historically, pandemics have resulted in innovations that have pushed society forward, and redesigning local food distribution systems might just be one of COVID’s silver linings. And nowhere is connecting farmers to community more important than in food-insecure communities that were in need even before the pandemic hit.

Small farmers like the Messmers provided a spirit of interconnectedness in the most precarious parts of the first wave of the pandemic. If shelves are to remain fully stocked, those same regional farmers will need to become more involved.

“We will continue to fight to get local food to be a bigger portion of people’s plates and refrigerators,” Dave Messmer said.

Dave Messmer, second from right, with his family.

All photos by Jake Price.

The post The New York Farmers Responding to Food Insecurity appeared first on Civil Eats.

Nearly a dozen people—chefs and staff—from RiseBoro are working with Citymeals on Wheels to cook and package meals for delivery to homebound, elderly New Yorkers who are no longer able to shop or cook for themselves.

The walls of the senior center are painted with brightly colored murals dedicated to Puerto Rican pride: flamboyant flowering trees, scenes of community building, and people dancing and celebrating in plazas in front of elegant colonial buildings.

But the room is now dark for most of the day. When the lights are on, the only sounds to be heard are voices of staff and volunteers diligently packing meals for delivery to their frail neighbors.

The city’s senior centers closed to the public in mid-March due to the pandemic, leaving many older New Yorkers with no place to go for breakfast or lunch. Practically overnight, a huge number of them became homebound, isolated, and unsure where their next meal would come from.

Following the first wave of the pandemic, demand for food among the city’s seniors has been and remains unprecedented. Before the crisis Citymeals served more than 18,000 homebound elderly. Since March, Citymeals has added 3,000 recipients to its weekend meal route. They have also served another 34,000 older New Yorkers who are not on a regular delivery route.

A dining room for seniors at Borinquen Senior Center in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Many seniors haven’t left their homes since March. As dangerous as malnutrition is, social isolation can be equally detrimental, leaving many with anxiety and depression.

These are seniors who were not homebound prior to the crisis, but now face food insecurity. Before the pandemic, these new recipients might have gone to a local senior center for a daily meal. But now, even a trip to the corner bodega is too risky for those with chronic illnesses.

What Disasters Reveal

I have spent much of my career covering ecological disasters, and it has prepared me for the civil unrest we’re reeling from. From the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima to the abject failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, these disasters all reveal the underlying needs of society, and the true character of those tasked with responding.

When these photos were taken, New York City was experiencing two social tsunamis: the pandemic and the protests against police violence following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. During that time, I spent my mornings and afternoons with Citymeals staff, seeing in a new way the acute need for food and decent housing for the elderly, including many older people of color.

A meal recipient in the South Bronx. Before COVID-19, one in five New Yorkers over 65 were living below the poverty line and likely facing food insecurity. When the city shut down, efforts to protect vulnerable seniors also left them isolated and at even greater risk for food insecurity and malnourishment.

The people delivering meals featured here put their lives on the line each day to check in on their neighbors and ensure they get fed. Even at the height of the surge in COVID-19 infections and deaths in New York in March and April, they continued to make deliveries uninterrupted. They walk many miles each day, ride dozens of elevators, press hundreds of doorbells. For increased safety, they now place each meal in a plastic bag, hang it on the doorknob, and stand back six feet until the door is answered and they can make sure their recipient is well.

As I followed meal delivery staff in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, another element of need quickly became apparent: the psychological stresses older people endure due to poverty and isolation.

In pre-COVID times, food helped bring people together, including the elderly. They met on benches outside their apartment buildings and greeted one another in community centers. Grandchildren stopped by with necessities and treats. But that has all stopped. Given the risk of this virus, the only contact these meal recipients have with other people is the brief exchange when food is delivered to them by staff and volunteers.

Deliveries on Manhattan’s Lower East Side

Linda White has been delivering meals to the elderly for the past five years. A designated essential worker, she is part of the city’s home-delivered meal program, supported by Citymeals. Over the past five years, White has gotten to know the elderly recipients well. As she makes her way through her route on the Lower East Side, she greets them with warmth and a gracious spirit. She’ll ask the older men she sees, “How’re you doing, Pops?” The work she does is as much social as it is about nourishment.

Linda White delivers food on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

During the protests, businesses were boarded up after nearby establishments were looted, and some of the streets were closed. White remains undeterred. “Regardless of what’s happening,” she said, “we’re gonna make it work, even if we have to park three blocks down and have to walk. You gotta take the good and the bad. Not every day is gonna be smooth sailing.”

She considers these seniors family. “They know my knock,” she adds. And it’s evident meal recipients are not just numbers to be checked off on a delivery sheet. They’re all individual people with their own needs, histories, and tastes.

Meal deliverers encounter all kinds of situations on their route. As frontline workers they are in proximity to those not wearing masks, such as this moment when a man was receiving physical therapy. However, they are careful about their own safety and make sure best practices are followed when delivering meals.

During the height of the pandemic, “They were scared for their lives,“ White says. “They made sure they social distanced because they didn’t want to get sick and they also wanted to protect me.”

“Before it used to be a warm welcoming when I came to the door,” White continues. “‘Hey, Linda,’ they’d say, ‘Come in for a second!’ Now, we have to be so distanced from each other. It’s like we’re missing that passion that we have for each other—and they definitely miss that intimate communication. . . . They’re like moms and dads to me. I really cherish them and look up to them.”

She says that loneliness and depression can be as detrimental to their health as going hungry. “A lot of these clients don’t have family, they’re alone. As long as I can protect them and myself, I will try anything to see a smile and just say hi.”

Putting Their Hearts Into the Meals

Another thing disasters reveal is that life is not just about surviving—it’s also about living.

Chef Jeffery Stewart.

Jeffrey Stewart, the chef at the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center, sees cooking as a source of psychological comfort. Stewart crafts menus and selects ingredients with flavor as a priority.

While staff at these meal centers show the care given to homebound folks, the Citymeals’ Emergency Meal Distribution Center in the Bronx also illustrates the immense need for emergency food.

Fourteen percent of Citymeals’ recipients live on just one meal a day. Emergency meal boxes ensure they have additional food on hand, in case regular deliveries get interrupted.

Boxes of food aren’t just inanimate objects, they’re care packages for hungry individuals struggling to stay safe. Each one was headed to a person in need.

Delivering with Care in Brooklyn

Andrew Smith rises early each morning at 4:30 a.m. and makes his way to RiseBoro in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn to pack up his delivery truck. With a concentrated intensity, he counts each meal and tunes out distraction. Like a surgeon working on a heart patient, he knows time is of the essence

Andrew Smith arranges a combination of hot meals and cold foods.

Originally from Jamaica, Smith has traveled the world as a sprinter so he moves quickly and with precision. After packing the meals, he brings that speed and efficiency to his route: He usually ends his day at 2 p.m., while most others would finish hours later.

On his route in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, Smith has a recipient on almost every block.

Smith is as personable as he is swift, and, like White, he spends time with each recipient, acknowledging the women with a charming, “Greetings to you, my lady.”

He sees more than a hundred people on his route—and he has memorized where each and every one lives. He does not rely on a map, which he said would only slow him down. Memorization, he said, enables him to make changes quickly when a recipient needs a meal at a certain time—to take their medication on a full stomach, for example.

The recipient in this building has problems with his foot. Concerned for him, Smith devised this pulley system.

New York yesterday entered Phase 4 of its reopening, with zoos, gardens, and outdoor bars and dining opening up; the bleakest days of the pandemic are starting to recede into the past.

A wheelchair-bound client signals to Smith that he’s at home and can receive a meal.

However, as COVID-19 cases rise dramatically in other states, White, Smith, Stewart, and the organizations they work for know this may be only a brief respite—and the economy is a long way from recovery. The newest volunteers are still needed—and more are likely to come. The isolation, hunger, and need for care among seniors will continue and grow, especially with the potential for a second wave of infections this fall or winter.

A son with his mother who received emergency meals in the South Bronx.

All photos by Jake Price.

The post Meet the People Who Bring Food and Comfort to NYC’s Homebound, Food-Insecure Seniors appeared first on Civil Eats.

When the clapping dies down and the windows close to keep out the persistent late-April chill, we return to our disparate existences. Many wonder what we can do besides clap.

As we saw after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, New Yorkers help one another in times of need. And with each successive disaster, the need to aid our neighbors further embeds itself into our collective DNA. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has challenged that identity, as many living in quarantine have found themselves unable to help—at least initially. This forced isolation has given many of us a sense of uselessness and despair, especially given just how long the food pantry lines are getting.

For example, the Agatha House food pantry in the Bronx has seen the number of people waiting in food lines double since the pandemic began. And while the mayor’s office says it doesn’t know how many people are waiting in similar lines, the mayor and city council announced that they would provide $25 million in emergency funding because of the increased demand.

With their establishments closed, some out-of-work entrepreneurs and food industry startups have struggled with the same feelings of helplessness. However, some have found a way around the constraints imposed by the quarantine. One example is Lemon Tree, a nonprofit food delivery service that, pre-pandemic, delivered healthy, low-cost meals to schools and senior centers in Brooklyn.

“When the coronavirus started getting serious and they closed public schools, we knew we couldn’t keep delivering like normal, and it forced us to pause our services,” said Kasumi Quinlan, Lemon Tree’s community manager. “But we wanted to continue having an impact in the best way we could. And after talking to people we knew who were also working in emergency food and food insecurity, we realized a big need was the lack of volunteers.”

In an effort to bridge that gap, Lemon Tree launched In It Together, an online platform that pairs volunteer with nearby food pantries. (The volunteers are deemed essential workers and allowed to leave their homes to perform these services.)

Civil Eats spoke with a series of volunteers to find out what inspired them to get involved, what the work has been like, and how their lives have changed as a result.

Shakeyra Stewart
Volunteer with Golden Harvest Food Pantry, Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

Shakeyra Stewart was a waitress before the pandemic forced her restaurant to close. Though she describes herself as a homebody, she started looking for ways to get out and help. “I’d been sitting at home feeling hopeless, because you see so much happening, and [it feels like] there’s nothing you can do,” she said.

In It Together helped connect Stewart with the Golden Harvest Food Pantry. “The whole point is to help people in need because you realize how bad it is and how bad it’s getting, and you realize all the people who are left out by the government, [who] are just not covered well enough,” she explained.

“Volunteering saved me from the spiral of depression and hopelessness.”

Many people in her borough were struggling before the pandemic, Stewart said: “A lot of the people in Bedford Stuyvesant were low-income to begin with, or have since been laid off, so this is just another thing [for them to deal with].”

Volunteering in the pantry has been important for her on a personal level, she said. “I’m horribly antisocial, and last week, I’m like, ‘Who am I?— I’m just out all the time, either doing a delivery or working at a pantry or something.’” Stewart has found helping out to be reassuring and uplifting: “It saved me from the spiral of depression and hopelessness,” she said.

“I’ve made lots of friends, and it’s so great now, because I know all my neighbors,” she continued. “I know all these new routes through my neighborhood. I went to the supermarket doing another grocery run, and I saw this other volunteer who I’d never met in person, but we’d seen each other online. There are so many of us, so many people helping.”

Robin Kassimir
Volunteer for Encore Community Center, Manhattan

On April 20, Robin Kassimir delivered more than 300 meals to community centers and churches in Manhattan. “I’m one of these cautious but fearless people. I’m not frightened by what’s going on at all,” she said. “I know what I need to do to protect myself and to protect other people, and that’s what I do.”

Kassimir says that she feels her role is more than just about delivering food. It’s also about connection. “We’re social people. We need that, you know, and many of the people I’m delivering to are alone in their rooms.”

She has experimented with ways to bring humanity to the exchange. “[First,] I just said, ‘Meal delivery.’ And then when I said, ‘Judy, it’s Robin—I’m here with your meal today,’ there was a much different response than if there was just an exchange of the food and I shut the door. There was this two-second pause. In the old days when I did this, I actually spent time with a meal recipient—there was no risk of disease back then. But, but this little pause, it’s very nice.”

Delivering food is a demanding process, and even in the midst of an epidemic, New York City isn’t an easy city to navigate. Resting against a catering box in the trunk of her SUV, Kassimir said, “I will be perfectly honest and tell you I’m exhausted. [All day], you’re parking your car running in and out. The last delivery really wiped me out, because I came out to some guy screaming, ‘Move your fucking car.’ And I just lost it. And then after five more deliveries, I parked my car and [an ambulance] couldn’t pass, and I said, ‘I can’t take this anymore… Help!’”

Despite the demands, Kassimir adds, delivering food feels good. “It’s just like anything else we do in work—there are frustrating moments. But at the end of the day, I have to say to myself, I am so fortunate that I am brave and physically strong and healthy [enough] to help someone else.”

Tyron Rampersad
Volunteer with In It Together, Manhattan

In October 2019, Tyron Rampersad had an operation for upper respiratory problems, which left him particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus, but he’s still committed to helping others. Every Saturday, he takes the subway from his home in Elmhurst, Queens, to hand out bags of food to those in need in Manhattan.

After registering with In It Together, he said his family questioned the choice. “They were like, ‘What are you doing? You’re gonna get the coronavirus!’” Despite their concerns, Rampersad says he’s healthy and able-bodied, and he’s observing all the safety precautions.

“My background was in corrections so I did the crowd control [at the pantry]. I welcomed the people—you have people from every age, every ethnic background, and it’s hard for some of them to come. [It’s important] how you welcome them. [Making] eye contact is like saying, ‘Look, you’re welcome; we’re here; and we have to give you what you need.’ Somehow that does something for them, and they return a smile.”

“To be amongst other like-minded individuals that share a common vision right now in New York, that is a blessing.”

Volunteering has meant a lot to Rampersad. “To be amongst other like-minded individuals that share a common vision right now in New York, that is a blessing. There’s this camaraderie. You don’t become best friends and go hang out together, but while you’re there doing this, there’s an energy. It’s almost therapeutic.”

Kasumi Quinlan
Community Manager at Lemon Tree, Brooklyn

Kasumi Quinlan says the community’s response has been inspiring: between April 6 and 13, In It Together saw its volunteer membership grow from 600 to more than 1,300.

“It’s been really amazing and impressive to see that people are willing to go outside and volunteer, because they understand that volunteering is just as essential as [working] at a grocery store, especially for a lot of people who can’t go to their grocery store.”

In It Together tries to making sure its volunteers follow appropriate safety recommendations. “But every time you go outside,” Quinlan acknowledges, “whether it’s just for a walk or to volunteer, you are taking a risk. It’s been really heartening to see that people are still working for the greater good.”

Jeanette Joseph-Greenway, Founder of Agatha House Food Pantry, & Winnie Parnes, Volunteer, Bronx

Jeanette Joseph-Greenway (left) started the food pantry Agatha House in 2014 after the death of her mother Agatha. The Wakefield section of the Bronx where the pantry is located has been hit particularly hard by the virus. On April 18, despite cold, wet weather, lines at the pantry stretched around the block three times.

“When we first started, we were feeding maybe 200 people a week. We counted 397 people last week,” Joseph-Greenway said. “On top of that, there are the deliveries for the seniors. My phone doesn’t stop ringing. By June it’s going to be worse, to be honest with you.”

Despite the ever-present hardships, Joseph-Greenway has met the crisis—and those waiting in line—with a generous spirit and a warm smile. Although the pantry is struggling for donations, Joseph-Greenway has also seen incredible support from the community. Last week, for example, a woman donated her entire stimulus check to the pantry.

Volunteer Winnie Parnes (right), a single mother, has lived in the South Bronx for seven years. As a freelancer, she quickly moved from financially stable to a precarious place when the pandemic hit. “I realized I didn’t have the resources to help monetarily, and that made me feel even more trumped,” she said. Parnes eventually found In It Together, and through it, Agatha House.

She lives near the Lincoln Hospital and has heard sirens all day and night since the pandemic hit her neighborhood. Bagging groceries for those in need, in the company of others, has been a much-needed lift in her life, she said. “There are so many factors that are overwhelming,” Parnes said. “At least on Saturday, I can put my head down and bag groceries. I can enact a small change for someone.” She has been particularly impressed with how the women in the neighborhood have volunteered their time at the pantry, she said, “Women are the glue that hold it together, honestly.”

Parnes hopes the pandemic will shine a light on the long-standing lack of equity in New York City. “For so long, we’ve had haves and have-nots, and we don’t have the middle,” she said. “We have a large population of super-affluent people, and then we have this really huge number of people who are living barely paycheck to paycheck, without basic necessities.”

If there’s one good thing that comes out of this, Parnes continued, it’s that people who normally can’t see beyond their own lives may realize the financial tightrope that many others in their community are walking. “This didn’t come about overnight,” she said. “Most of these people were already going to the food bank because they didn’t have enough to get to the end of the month.”

Doreen Davis, Director of Community Programs, and Dagmar Kostkova, Food Justice Program Director, at Golden Harvest Food Pantry in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

Golden Harvest Food Pantry, a project of Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation, is grappling with a complex set of issues, including a drop volunteers. “We have a large number of elderly [people] who are Asian, and they are really frightened to leave the house,” said Doreen Davis (above at right). “They’re being discriminated against. The xenophobia that they’re experiencing is horrendous.” While Golden Harvest tries to reach out to them, Davis said, the language barrier can make it difficult.

While the Asian community faces racism, poverty and the underlying health conditions it causes have also complicated the response to the coronavirus. “We see a disproportionate lack of medical care, no medical care, and inadequate medical care [in communities of color],” Davis said. “I know people think that America is great because they have all these safety net programs. But you know what? It’s a net, and people fall through the cracks. So we’re either going to have to weave a tighter net, or we’re going to do some social repairs.”

Dagmar Kostkova (above left) agrees. “A lot of our clients have underlying conditions. We have a big population with diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. They are essentially in the high-risk categories [for coronavirus]. We’re trying to educate and feed people, but there are definitely issues with eating healthy,” so having access to healthy and affordable foods is important.

Juan Cayetano Jr., AKA King Tiger
Volunteer at Agatha House, Bronx

The first time Cayetano volunteered to work at a food pantry, it was with his father, a survivor of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. “When I was younger, I’d go with my father to the pantries, and he would also help out. I used to think, ‘Why are people getting their food for free?’” Now, as a father of three in the Bronx, Cayetano understands how hard it can be to put food on the table, especially in this time of crisis.

“I just like giving back to the community,” he said of his work at Agatha House. “[It’s] part of my DNA.” But with the possibility of getting sick or infecting others, especially his family, he must weigh the cost of helping. “When my wife and I spoke, she was like, ‘You know, babe… I don’t know. You’re going to help the community and whatnot, but there’s a risk of you coming home and spreading it all over the family.’”

After volunteering three times at the pantry, King Tiger had to put his work there on hold.  “Sometimes, when I do go [to Agatha House], they don’t have masks, and it’s hard for me to actually order any or buy one because the stores are always sold out.”

The lack of access to masks or other PPE at the pantry made the risks to his family too great. COVID-19 has also touched his family directly: King Tiger lost an uncle to the virus, and a cousin survived a life-threatening bout with it.

“I feel a bit disappointed that I had to discontinue, but it’s such a risk.”

As a musician, however, he still feels that he can contribute to the community. Before the pandemic hit, King Tiger wrote “I Made It,” a song that was originally about his making it as a recording artist in the Bronx. But with all the hardship he and his community have gone through, the song has taken on new meaning.

“This song, it’s not only about achieving success, it’s also about people surviving. It’s a kind of dedication for what’s going on right now.”

On the Street: Agatha House Pantry

The Wakefield section of the Bronx, where Agatha House is located, is one of the hardest hit COVID-19 hotspots in the nation, and even before the pandemic created widespread unemployment it was one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. The severe economic hardship has left many individuals and families unable to afford food.

Volunteers there see hunger, fear, resignation, and despair in people’s eyes. And every weekend the lines continue to grow.

Manal Kahi
Co-Founder and CEO of Eat Offbeat Catering Service, Long Island City, Queens

As a caterer who saw her clients disappear overnight, Manal Kahi has transformed her operation to feed those most in need.

Kahi’s company, Eat Offbeat worked to help refugee chefs share their culinary heritage with New Yorkers. Before the pandemic, it offered diverse meals as a kind of cultural culinary exchange. The chefs cook out of a Long Island City industrial kitchen, where they prepare thousands of meals throughout the day. Today, their meals are funded by nonprofits and individual donors, and the chefs’ children are delivering them to hospitals throughout the city, including Harlem Hospital in Manhattan and Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn.

“As refugees, [our chefs] have probably gone through way worse than what we’re going through right now, and they’ve already rebuilt their lives—not once, but a couple of times over,” Kahi said. “I’ve heard that from some of the chefs, ‘We’ve gone through it. We want New Yorkers to know that it’s really bad today, but things will get better. And we’re here to hold their hands and take them through the process.’”

This combined experience makes the operation more flexible. “They’re incredibly resilient—that’s something we have seen in each and every single one of our chefs and [members of] the delivery team. They had to pivot overnight. I’m not gonna say it was easy. We changed everything about us as a company … and people just adapted. They showed up the next day at 6 a.m.”

“What our chefs are doing today is flipping the table on the status quo. We as immigrants and refugees are the hosts, and we want to invite New Yorkers to come join us at our table,” she said. “That’s a way for us to return the favor with flavor, right? Because New York has been such a generous home to all of us. It offered us a home when we needed it most, [and] right now, we feel like New York needs us most.”

The post Meet the New York City Volunteers Risking Their Lives to Feed People appeared first on Civil Eats.

Organized by Ian Pagan-Roig, a farmer and a collective recipient of the 2018 Food Sovereignty Prize for his work in agroecology, the congress took place at Hacienda La Esperanza, a former sugar plantation lorded over by a slave-owning sugar baron named José Ramon Fernández in the 1800s.

After 200-plus years of operating as a plantation, it was fitting that the space hosted the progressive farmers who are turning around many of the economic, social, and environmental injustices that originated with the Spanish conquest and have persisted through decades of U.S. policy, culminating in the multiple crises following Hurricane Maria.

Pagan-Roig founded The First Congress—as well as the agroecological farm El Josco Bravo, located in the mountains along the northern coast of the island—in response to climate change. “Because of the climate emergency, we truly believe there is a sense of urgency,” he said. “It poses a serious threat to humanity, and agroecology offers alternatives. If we want to stop and reverse what is happening, we have to take drastic measures.”

The farmers at the Congress were largely young and stylish, their bodies adorned with tattoos and body jewelry, attendees understood how diversified small-scale farms work and how, by planting biodiverse crops, they can help address the climate emergency. Throughout the day, they met and shared techniques and then presented their ideas in a series of spirited presentations.

Yami Callazo, left; a mother of two and a farmer, at the Congress.

The hurricane—what it did was that it lifted up the pot and all the crickets were cooking,” said farmer Suley Angélica, of El Josco Bravo, implying that the hurricane revealed all the previously unseen problems already simmering in Puerto Rico After Maria, the first thing the farmers did was to repair their farms and grow food to feed their communities. But there were still a lot of crickets cooking after the farms were functioning, and the farmers started addressing the underlying social issues in Puerto Rico.

Before Maria hit, Puerto Rico imported approximately 85 percent of its food from abroad, mostly from the mainland U.S., because of colonial policy. Pagan-Roig wanted to put a dent in that number that because food imports left them dependent and without food sovereignty. His greatest concern was that Puerto Rico might be cut off in the case of a disastrous event like a hurricane.

After Maria, that’s exactly what happened: The island’s ports were so badly damaged ships could not dock. With no food coming in after the storm, people went hungry, and it’s believed that it contributed to the deaths of the elderly. However, farmers like Pagan-Roig were able to recuperate and start feeding their communities in the aftermath.

Pagan-Roig knows that more hurricanes will come, and he never wants to be dependent for outside help again. And many young people who will live their lives bearing the brunt of the climate emergency feel the same.

Ian Pagan-Roig

Pagan-Roig is a big believer in agroecology, a holistic approach to farming that takes into consideration the well-being of the earth, those who work it, and those who eat the locally grown food. Farming and land use account for approximately 23 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and Pagan-Roig thinks farming with agroecological methods can draw down our carbon footprint in a variety of ways, in particular, by returning organic matter to the soil and drawing carbon out of the atmosphere. “This way of farming needs to be scaled up if it’s going to make an impact,” he says.

There has been plenty of discussion of the rise of young farmers in Puerto Rico since Maria. But the revival has done more than just bring food security to communities. The revival is also playing a transformational role in addressing many of the underlying social issues that have historically fallen under the radar.

Farmers rest and socialize during the Congress.

Many of the farmers are enterprising young women and they are bringing the culture of inclusion, tolerance, and social justice fostered in urban areas to a countryside that was once the provenance of industrialized farming dominated by men. Their bold approach to farming is having a transformative impact on Puerto Rican society at all levels, especially for women in need of safe and inclusive spaces.

“In commercial, industrialized farming, you’ll see men leading the way,” said Stephanie Nohemy Monserrate, a co-founder of Güakiá Colectivo Agroecológico, a collective of five young farmers in Dorado, along Puerto Rico’s northern coast. “That’s the difference here [on our farm]. We make it a safe place not only for women, but a safe place for children, the elderly, Black people, and immigrants. It’s safe for the whole world.”

Ivonne Ariana, another farmer with Güakiá, views the agroecological movement as vital for women on the island—and as a type of resistance. “Women haven’t found other spaces where we can develop ourselves freely,” she said. “It makes sense to have a lot of women here, because … women are needing these spaces, and we can find [them] here. Farming right now in Puerto Rico, the way we are doing it through agroecology, is a way for us to step out of the box.”

Ivonne Ariana

“Farming is very hard,” said Ariana. “It takes a lot out of us, and it takes us out of our comfort zones constantly. You have to really maintain yourself to stay strong. In this capitalist system, [it’s important to] stay strong and understand that you’re giving your life for something you believe in.”

The involvement of women in Güakiá—and in the agroecological farming movement more generally—has had a profound effect on what participants have been able to achieve. “When you have women on the farm, certain topics tend to have greater value, and these conversations become priorities to us,” said Monserrate, who helped found Güakiá. “When I was with a group of women, they were saying ‘We’re in a safe space. We feel safe.’ So when we have more women around, we are going to feel safer doing the work we do. And it creates more clarity for young girls—they’re wanting to do something, [and] they can see what we do as an option.”

To supplement her farming, Monserrate has also become an entrepreneur. Her current endeavor is making kombucha and teaching workshops to create additional income. She’s well aware that a modern farmer has to be as savvy about marketing trends as she is about understanding how the changing climate affects her crops.

“There’s so much more we can do to generate income to be self-sustaining, which is a lot of hard work,” she said. Having done the hard physical work on the farm, the possibilities that farming can generate is something she feels compelled to pass on to future generations through education and workshops.

“That was my first time giving a workshop to kids,” said Monserrate after leading a session on kombucha production at an elementary school in Orocovis, in the central mountains. “Kids can see [farming] as a future, or at least as a possibility. One phrase you say to a kid can stick to them and take them so far. It can change their whole lives—and for the better.”

Mariemines Ortiz-Torres (pictured above) is a 19-year-old agriculture student who arrived for a farm workshop after Monserrate’s talk. Ortiz-Torres was originally going to study orthopedics, but seeing an onion seed transform itself into something living was a transformational moment in her life. When she saw the seed for the first time, she thought it was a rock. Her teacher, Dalma Cartagena said, “No, sweetheart. Those are seeds, and you will see the magic and the power of nature in some months.”

“I saw how those seeds started to grow, and we were taking care of them with all the love and patience that we had, and yesss, finally that seed was turned into food,” Ortiz-Torres said. “When you treat nature with love, patience, and enthusiasm, you will have a reward.”

Torres also made sure to emphasize, “We all depend on farmers to eat three times per day. So if you think that this is your profession, go for it. It’s wonderful when you get paid for playing with the soil, water, sun, wind, and taking care of those plants waiting for that magical transformation.”

“We have a lemma, a saying: sueña e trabaja—dream and work,” Monserrate said. Her dreams are embedded in the land that she tends, but the future of her land is an uncertain one: “It’s getting hotter and hotter, making it more difficult [to work] and [giving us] less hours to be outside working.”

After Maria, it’s impossible to talk about farming without talking about the climate emergency, Monserrate said. She sees the role of her collective as building pre-resilience before another storm hits.

“Anything that comes our way, we’re going to be able to get through it and get past it,” she said. “In Puerto Rico, we’re seeing that climate change is really bad. The government’s response to [Maria] was bad as well, so we have to create a really good base, not only for farmers, but for the people who are doing the really hard and good work for the island.”

Some of the people doing that really good and hard work are also the ones that were marginalized by society before, such as the immigrants and women Monserrate now welcomes to her farm. By bringing everyone into the fold, these collectives are strengthening their communities. And when the next storm hits, they will all work together to recover using the skills and knowledge they’re currently developing and sharing. They see it as a kind of open-source version of farming, with acceptance and tolerance as its base.

Hurricane Maria destroyed the forests that surrounded Pagan-Roig’s farm, El Josco Bravo, creating a cascading set of problems that have lasted more than two-and-a-half years. Where trees once grew, acting as a buffer between the farm and its surroundings, there is now a jungle that constantly encroaches on his farm. The new jungle is also a place for iguanas, which eat his crops, to breed.

“For us, this is a matter of survival,” Pagan-Roig said. “We are still suffering [from the hurricane], and the country shows that … and we will continue to suffer going forward.”

Maria decimated many of the coastal mangrove forests—and the great egrets, cormorants, shrimp, starfish, crabs, and snails that lived in the ecosystem they created. Iguanas now use the wastelands that remain as breeding grounds.

“The iguanas survived the hurricane quite well, and the weeds that have sprung up are perfect for them to breed in,” said Pagan-Roig. “They’ve eaten up almost everything that we sowed.” There are about 3.2 million residents in Puerto Rico. By comparison, there are an estimated 4 million iguanas, which are often referred to as the green plague.

In Puerto Rico, there’s a saying that if you drop a few seeds into the land one evening, by the following day, you can have an entire garden you can live off of for a lifetime.

“People are simply used to going to the supermarket and buying what they need—they don’t see themselves without it,” said Angélica of El Josco Bravo. “But the moment you don’t have it, there’s no certainty. We’re trying to educate the people—ever since the storm, everyone [has] to be responsible. We have to build food certainty for our families, for our communities and the whole country.”

A fraction of one day’s harvest at El Josco Bravo.

After a long day’s work, there is also a lot of joy, lightness, and solidarity amongst the farmers. Angélica said of farming, “It’s a dream that will allow us to save our land, our natural resources, and our humanity.”

Top photo: Stephanie Nohemy Monserrate, right, and Ivonne Ariana, left, of of Güakiá Colectivo Agroecológico. All photos © Jake Price.

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With these events in all too recent memory, New Yorkers know how susceptible they are to climate change and are at the forefront of developing new approaches to the climate crisis, with the city’s young people getting especially involved. As the recent youth climate strikes that brought hundreds of thousands to New York’s streets attest, the younger generations—those who will be most affected by climate change—are taking concrete steps to try to turn back the tide, quite literally.

One of the programs that is engaging youth is the Billion Oyster Project. While the project’s founding goal aimed to to make the “waters surrounding New York City cleaner, more abundant, more well-known, more well-loved,” it has a more pressing role in the time of accelerating climate change: creating oyster reefs that can help blunt storm surges that accompany hurricanes by breaking up the waves before they hit land.

To date, the program has planted 28 million oysters with the help of thousands of volunteers and high school students. An offshoot of this outreach is that young people are engaging with the waterfront like never before. This has strengthened communities and led to relationships between young and old who might not have ever known each other had the climate crisis not brought them together.

Volunteer John Ribaudo of Coney Island said his work with the Billion Oyster Project inspired him to start his own programs in the waterways surrounding his home, and he’s now learning from fishermen who in turn were taught by their grandparents. With this knowledge passed on to him, he’s sharing it with friends of his generation, and young and old are now coming together on New York’s waterways to address the surging seas.

“We learn from each other in a way that isn’t really possible if we’re all just kind of trying to come in and impose the idea that we’re experts,” Ribaudo said. “We’re learning it through experience and that’s really important to connect with.”

Tanasia Swift, pictured at top, is the Community Reefs Regional Manager at the Billion Oyster Project. She grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, one of the most urban places in the city. However, for as long as she can remember, she wanted to be a marine biologist. Her inseparable bond to New York’s waterways formed when she’d go to Red Hook with her father to fish as a child. She now leads efforts to install community reefs in South Brooklyn, which was badly impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

On this day, Swift leads students from Public School 115 studying oysters and learning about the basin with a meditation. For her, the program is as much about regenerating community as it is about ecology. Before the students get technical knowledge, Swift wants them to develop a connection to the environment and gain an awareness of things they might not have been conscious of before.

Swift encourages the children to close their eyes, breathe simply, and be aware of everything their senses perceive. After they reopen their eyes, she asks what they experienced. “I didn’t know it smelled like the ocean,” one of the students says. “I didn’t know we were this close to the water.” They also talk about hearing birds and the water lapping against the nearby shore, things they were not aware of when their eyes were open.

Their exercise in sensory perception leads them to make empirical discoveries, which in the end, informs their science. No standardized test preparation could achieve the results of this exercise, Swift says, and she hopes the students depart with a living process of discovery they can carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Oyster reefs form the foundation for a vast ecosystem in the waters that they filter. Contained within them live small fish and crabs which become food for larger fish and birds above them. Throughout the day the children would shriek and exclaim with excitement when they discovered a new lifeform.

At first when children pick up crabs, they find their claws intimidating and drop them right away. Explaining that they need to respect the small creatures, instructors told the children they could freak out before and after they touched the crabs, but not while they touched them. After taking this advice to heart, the students took deep breaths and picked up the crabs, holding them in the pit of their palms. One girl, through giggles, said that once the crab was on her and scuttling across her skin, there actually wasn’t anything to be afraid of.

PS 115 Students end the day by heading down to the dock to see oysters and the creatures that live in them closer to their habitat. Though the students’ school is within a mile of the water, many had never before visited the shore. This workshop provided them the chance to enter a living laboratory.

The Billion Oyster Project has dozens of projects throughout New York City, and one is eight miles away from Canarsie in Coney Island Creek, which flows into New York Harbor. The waters there are heavily polluted, and a stench hangs all around.

For years, Coney Island Creek has been like this: home to the rotting hulls of ships and a dumping ground for discarded tires, rusting shopping carts, and the like.

The Billion Oyster Project hopes to bring life back to this body of water. They have currently planted 160,000 oyster beds in Coney Island Creek with the goal of bringing the total to 200,000.

“The motivations for installing a reef at Coney Island Creek have as much to do with awareness as with restoration,” Swift said in a blog post. “Some people go swimming in the creek at times when it is dangerous to do so, such as after combined sewage overflows (CSOs). Some shy away from the creek entirely, worrying that it’s always dangerous to touch the water. Part of this reef’s purpose is to provide a way for people to better get to know, and safely interact with, the water near their homes.”

John Ribaudo, pictured above on the Atlantic shore, lives near the polluted creek and has volunteered with the Billion Oyster Project. As a Coney Island resident, he knows how climate change threatens his community. But he is also aware of how important community is in addressing those threats.

“I’m trying to create monthly activities in nearby parks and hopefully on Coney Island Beach where we can get a lot of our people out to enjoy nature while it’s still here,” he says. “If we can invigorate a spirit within our community to care for the nature around us, we can invigorate a spirit to save it. Communities are the ones that really need to start getting their people organized to protect their areas, because the sea levels are rising and eventually our neighborhood will be underwater.”

Photo: Berenice Abbott from the collection of the New York Public Library.

In 1937, when the above photo was taken, oysters were so plentiful that they’d commonly be seen piled up along the waterways and outside of the restaurants that served them. Later, when reefs were dredged up or covered in silt and the water quality was too poor for oysters to regenerate, the reefs began to precipitously decline. Like the Coney Island Creek now, New York Harbor was toxic and nearly lifeless for more than 50 years until the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, which prohibited dumping waste and raw sewage into the harbor.

The Billion Oyster Project partners with restaurants thought New York who donate their shells to the program after eating the oysters. Once the shells are collected, oyster larvae are placed in the shells and attached to the surface where they will then grow to become oysters themselves.

Maison Premiere oyster bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn donates its leftover oyster shells to the Billion Oyster Project to support the reef.

By 2035, the Billion Oyster Project hopes to have distributed 1 billion live oysters around 100 acres of reefs, which the project says will make “the harbor once again the most productive water body in the North Atlantic and reclaim its title as the oyster capital of the world.”

Top photo: Tanasia Swift (center), the Community Reefs Regional Manager at the Billion Oyster Project takes oysters from the Paerdegat Basin in Canarsie, Brooklyn to be monitored by students who were invited to learn about the waterway and the role oysters play in it.

All photos © Jake Price.

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