Agriculture secretary talks food access across state
The easiest day in the garden is when you plant the crops, and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture will soon plant another funding seed.
Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding met with the Butler Community Action Partnership on Monday on his first day of a tour of urban gardens addressing food insecurity in counties across the state.
Redding said the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated more than just food insecurity itself, but the awareness of how many people are impacted by it.
“Part of this is the product of COVID, where there is a greater sense of awareness of food and food security, so folks are more aware of the issue,” Redding said. “There is a desire by more people to be involved in community gardens both in participation and recognition of the need, but there are also more people in need.”
Redding said the department soon will open applications for another round of the Urban Agriculture Infrastructure Grant Program, which has helped organizations across the state improve garden programs and food security with $500,000 available a year since 2019.
Sandra Currie, executive director of the Community Action Partnership, said the Pennsylvania Farm Bill is the nearly three-year-old organization’s biggest funding source.
Through state funding, the partnership has grown plants from turnips to tomatoes that help mitigate food insecurity in Butler County and beyond.
“We did this all with grant dollars,” Currie said. “You just have to be really cognizant of what funding you are using to do what project.”
Redding walked among garden rows planted by Community Action Partnership employees at the Hillcrest Baptist Church while Currie explained how the grant money had been used. She said the partnership has grown almost 2,000 pounds of food from the garden since the project started.
One major project in the works by the partnership is a mobile food bank, the Produce Cart, which will be used to deliver products grown by the partnership and Butler County Master Gardeners to organizations that can distribute it. Redding commented that transportation is one of the biggest barriers residents of food-insecure areas face.
Currie also cited Katie’s Kitchen and the First United Methodist Church as organizations that get a majority of the product so far.
Redding said funding programs that respond to food insecurity can address a number of issues, which he has seen proven by visiting recipients of the Urban Agriculture Infrastructure Grant.
“In each of the visits we have made, either they are solving a problem in workforce issues, it could be food security, it could be food access,” Redding said. “Others, they have tied it into education, so they are not only looking at the workforce, but using food and (agriculture) to teach science, technology.”
Having toured gardens around the state each year for five years, Redding said, agricultural opportunities have expanded over the years. He said the opportunities are in part a result of the farm bill, which he said is the only state-level farm bill in the country.
“We’ve done 96 projects, $1.5 million in the last four years, and this is just one of them,” Redding said.
The funded projects were aimed at improving agriculture infrastructure in urban areas, the aggregation of product, sharing of resources and support for community development efforts, according to a news release from the department of agriculture.
