This uptick in sales has been attributed to a number of factors, including an increase in Firehouse membership enrollment, building buzz following the first market, and the upcoming end of FMNP season, prompting folks to spend down their vouchers. The staff at the Firehouse has been very creative with their Food Bucks distribution, as well, using many as prizes for raffles and bingo.

The Food Trust and Hayday Farms plan to host one final pop-up farm stand of the season at the Firehouse later in November. We’ve been so happy to deepen this partnership over the last several months and look forward to finishing up the seasons strong with these wonderful seniors!

Gardening & Agriculture: Teaching sustainable practices and community preservation.

Youth Development: Building skills and offering stress relief through practical learning.

Community Engagement: Creating safe, shared spaces for food security and neighborhood beautification.

Environmental Impact: Promoting sustainability practices to enhance neighborhood vitality.

A New Dawn’s youth programs are centered around addressing stress and trauma through mentorship, hands-on learning in gardening and agriculture, and the maintenance of our community garden and greenhouse. By empowering youth, they aim to rehabilitate and prepare them to preserve public safety and neighborhood vitality.

To these ends, A New Dawn offers a variety of programs aimed at fostering community growth, resilience and education, including Hydroponics and Soil-Free Farming, Nutrition Education/Cooking Classes, Technology Integration (incorporating AI and drone technology in farming to modernize traditional agricultural practices), Financial Literacy, and other wellness related programming like yoga.

Here’s just one success story of many that Dawn and Patrick were happy to share with us:

“One of our most successful initiatives was a nutrition class held at the Lucien E. Blackwell Community Center. We enrolled 20 students from diverse backgrounds to enhance their understanding of healthy eating while also improving their literacy skills. The program, led by a nutritionist and educational specialist, successfully bridged the gap between everyday language and academic excellence by incorporating SAT vocabulary into the curriculum.

The class was so well-received that many students returned for subsequent programs. The SAT instructor involved has since developed a separate program, continuing to promote literacy alongside nutritional education.”

The Food Trust has been excited to partner directly with A New Dawn in a number of ways, such as connecting them with opportunities to vend their produce at markets, providing promotional support through the Nutrition Navigator, and utilizing their networks as a method to distribute Food Bucks to the community.

In addition to the wealth of programming currently offered, Dawn and Patrick are always looking to the future.  Prospective new programs include:

Aquaponics Classes: We plan to offer hands-on learning experiences that combine fish farming with plant growing in water, creating a symbiotic environment.

Expansion of Farmers Market Offerings: We aim to sell fresh fish, such as tilapia, alongside our produce, further enhancing our market’s offerings.

Technology in Agriculture: We will continue to integrate advanced technologies like AI and drones, helping participants learn how to apply these tools in modern farming.

Dawn and Patrick are also particularly interested in acquiring a building or lot to expand their aquaponics system, not just for educational purposes but also to develop a more comprehensive system. The Food Trust and A New Dawn have also discussed a potential new mode of partnership in arranging Sunday field trip to the Headhouse Market, offering a guided tour and introduction to our vendors to give participants a firsthand experience of the market environment.

The Food Trust looks forward to such new partnerships with A New Dawn, as well as simply continuing to watch this vibrant organization grow and serve the community!

Mi Salud’s programs and services include: Healthy Lifestyle Workshops covering topics like diabetes prevention, cancer awareness, healthy eating, and exercise; Pop-Up Workshops on mental health, family and parenting; a Food Pantry; Health Screening Events; Community Health Fairs; a Youth Sports Program, which offer gym space for volleyball for ages 10-18; “Senior Tuesdays” a dedicated time for seniors to come in, attend food distribution, screenings, and see other resources; and Cooking Classes.

One notable success story Mi Salud shared with us was from their diabetes prevention program:

“A gentleman, initially weighing 300 pounds and at high risk for diabetes, joined the program. He was skeptical at first, but with encouragement from our lifestyle coach, he committed to the program, setting goals around exercise, stress management, and physical activity. Six months in, he lost 35 pounds, and by the end of the year, he lost 50 pounds, significantly reducing his risk for diabetes and improving his cholesterol and blood pressure levels. He was thrilled with the results and even shared a heartfelt testimony in Spanish during his graduation, highlighting the positive impact on his health and life.”

Mi Salud staff, on their partnership with The Food Trust:

“When we first opened we reached out to The Food Trust, particularly for the Farmers Market program. We have since collaborated on various initiatives, including nutrition education, pop-up events, and even receiving a HIGI station at our site that is open to the community! We’ve even been able to provide resources in Spanish, reaching our community members more effectively.” 

Looking forward, Mi Salud aims to include more workshops around mental and social health, focusing on whole-person health: mind, body, and spirit. They also plan to start a support group around mental health to connect community members, especially the large immigrant population they serve, with necessary resources addressing issues like trauma.

The Food Trust is incredibly grateful for our partnership with Mi Salud and we look forward to watching their continued success, and supporting in whatever way we can!

The seniors loved having their “very own farmers market” which had been heavily promoted by Tyra Elam, the activities director at Firehouse. We served many individuals with mobility issues, for whom it would have been challenging to walk to our nearest farmers market at 52nd and Haverford next to Spectrum Community Health Center. This event was also a fantastic opportunity to raise awareness of the Spectrum market and cooking demonstrations hosted by The Food Trust. At this pop-up market, seniors were able to see the produce, the prices and forms of payment, which created quite a buzz.  Some quotes from the seniors in attendance included:

“This is fun!”

“What a gorgeous tomato!”

“When are you coming back?”

As to the last question, we’re happy to report that The Food Trust and Hayday Farms will be returning to Firehouse on Wednesday, October 16, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tomato season may be over by then, but we look forward to providing this lively group with a fall bounty of delicious, nutritious produce!

By Wayne Williams, Program Manager, Community-Based Programming

In the United States, there are more than 1.5 million people behind bars, many of whom suffer from various diet-related diseases while incarcerated. Here in Philadelphia, 1 in 6 individuals have been incarcerated, which is the highest per-capita incarceration rate among the 10 largest cities in the nation, according to The Reentry Project. In 2019, to address this important health issue, The Food Trust began offering weekly nutrition education classes for justice-impacted individuals, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Department of Prisons’ Office of Sustainability, and at halfway houses and community-based programs.

In 2021, the program was scaled up to include free produce, grown at the prison orchard, and delivered to halfway houses and recovery houses where The Food Trust offers nutrition education programming. Now in its sixth year, the program is active in over 11 locations providing nutrition education, prison-grown fruits and vegetables for community settings, food safety certifications, and culinary skills training.

Now, thanks to The Food Trust’s new partnership with Philadelphia’s Office of Reentry Partnerships and their upcoming Neighborhood Resource Centers, we can offer nutrition education, ServSafe certification, and employment opportunity programming to even more justice-impacted individuals.

For more information about The Food Trust’s re-entry and recovery work, please visit our website.

A few weeks ago, I had the incredible opportunity to represent The Food Trust at a Mini Convening for GusNIP (a USDA program that provides grants to projects that help low-income people buy fresh fruits and vegetables) grantees in O’ahu, Hawaii.

The topic was Food, Land and Culture, and the goal was twofold: 1) to experience how GusNIP projects in Hawai’i are contributing to the health of the land and culture, and the intersections with individual health; and 2) to share successes and challenges of connecting GusNIP projects to land and culture, and come away with new ideas and approaches to try.

During the four-day convening, fellow grantees (all doing some version of SNAP-incentives or produce prescriptions) and a few partners from the Nutrition Incentive Hub visited healthcare settings that are using farms, cultural foods and edible forests as a vehicle for food access and healing, redefining what health is in the process. A central thread in our reflections was the role of local/regional food production in food security and resilience, and the many ways our programs can help strengthen them and bring equity to the forefront.

Aside from the learning and discussing, we also got knee-deep in the mud and helped weed traditional kalo (taro) patches and harvested a few things for our lunches.

I’m so deeply thankful for the opportunity and humbled by being able to represent the organization among such wonderful thought leaders in our field. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this was the experience of a lifetime.

As we reflect on our second annual Fresh Picked, held May 16, 2024, at the amazing BLDG39 event space, we are filled with gratitude: From our incredibly supportive guests to our all-star roster of sponsors and event partners, the room was filled with people and organizations coming together to celebrate the power of delicious, nutritious food. Together, we raised critical funds to lift up communities in Philadelphia and across the country. (Check out our Fresh Picked webpage for a full listing of our sponsors, in-kind partners and event partners!)

This year, we chose to spotlight “Healthy Families, Healthy Futures” by lifting up the myriad Food Trust programs and initiatives that help children access, afford and learn about the nourishing foods that are crucial for a thriving future. One of our favorite activities of the evening, “Are You Smarter Than a First-Grader,” challenged guests to a blindfolded produce guessing game — it was surprising to learn which fruits and vegetables are easiest (and hardest) to identify using limited senses!

We were honored to host a special guest, Dr. Jamie Green, who serves as Eastern Regional Director of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. An eighth-generation grower, Dr. Green advocates for land access, controlled environment agriculture, emerging technologies and energy as key ingredients for local communities to produce what they need to sustain quality of life. Thank you so much to Dr. Green for joining us to share powerful words about the importance of food sovereignty to communities in Pennsylvania and nationwide!

We also honored the impact of the late Richard Jaffe Esq., who, with his firm Duane Morris, has provided The Food Trust with incredibly meaningful pro bono legal services for over three years and counting. Richard’s legacy of leadership and steadfast stewardship of our mission will always be remembered by our staff, and we were so happy to have his family join us at Fresh Picked to share memories of his lasting impact.

Front and center for the evening was a beautiful, carefully curated garden table brought to life by our catering partner Olive & Shea, flanked by Natalia from Midnight Pasta, making fresh pasta onsite and talking guests through the process. The night also featured local food truck Jerry’s Homemade, along with Frost 321‘s ice cream and sorbet frozen at the perfect temperature using liquid nitrogen. The bar was stocked with local options from our generous beverage partners, Penn Beer, Cellar Beast Winery and Top Dog Cocktails.

The evening also offered a Time Capsule Entertainment photo booth, curated silent auction, live auction of Food Trust services, and live music from local band Chuck Darwin and the Knuckle-Draggers, fronted by Ben Wenk of Headhouse Farmers Market favorite Three Springs Fruit Farm!

Thank you again to everyone who gathered with us to celebrate the work of The Food Trust! Keep an eye on our website and social media for updates about future events.

According to the USDA, 34 million Americans suffer from food insecurity and poor grocery access in the United States. However, nearly 20% of Black Americans reside in households grappling with food insecurity, a rate almost double the national average of 10.2%. Moreover, they are three times as likely to experience food insecurity compared to their white counterparts (Coleman-Jensen et al., 2021). In the United States, 81% of Black Americans live in urban or suburban communities, which indicates that levels of food insecurity are higher in those areas (Cox, 2022).

But why are Black urban neighborhoods subject to high levels of inadequate grocery access? The answer is both simple and complicated; while many factors compounded over time to bring about the kind of disinvestment we still see today, lack of supermarket access in urban areas can be traced back to race- and class-based discriminatory government policies. It was home lending practices that laid the foundation for the pervasive economic inequalities that deeply affected America’s food landscape.

In the early 1930s, the federal government created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in response to the Great Depression with the intent to prevent home foreclosures across the country. HOLC purchased at-risk mortgages and offered them back to homeowners with 10 to 20 year extensions and lower interest rates. Given that this was a significant federal government investment, HOLC needed to establish a system for identifying areas where residents were most likely to be able to repay loans. The agency considered several neighborhood characteristics, like access to public transportation and the quality of the homes, but they gave the most weight to racial-ethnic compositions (Meisenhelter, 2018). HOLC created color-coded maps that determined “risky” versus “safe” neighborhoods to engage with, based on racist assumptions about who lived in these areas and their ability to repay loans, regardless of income level. This is now known as the practice of “redlining.” The agency created a map for every major metropolitan area in the US that outlined lending recommendations with 4 different designations: “Best,” “Still Desirable,” “Definitely Declining,” and “Hazardous” (Rothstein, 2017). The more industrial urban areas, where low-income and people of color made up most of the population, were almost always deemed “Hazardous.”

Redlined maps were used for decades by private and public banking institutions to determine areas to invest in and areas to avoid. It’s important to note that redlining was primarily created on the basis of race; a middle-class Black neighborhood was still designated as “Hazardous” to lenders even if residents were in good economic standing. Therefore communities of color, primarily Black neighborhoods, were legally and strategically prohibited from obtaining affordable mortgages.

Over time, the impacts of unaffordable mortgages compounded. For decades, while other communities were given the opportunity to purchase or preserve their homes at lower interest rates, residents in “hazardous” areas struggled to meet monthly payments — taking on second jobs and living in overcrowded homes as a way to cut costs. Under these adverse economic circumstances, home maintenance became unaffordable in these distressed communities, which perpetuated the stereotype that neighborhoods of color were naturally riskier lending areas (Rothstein, 2017).

Other policies contributed to the disinvestment in poor Black communities. In 1934, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was created to back lines of credit to buyers as another way to support homeownership and boost the national economy during the Great Depression. However, the FHA only supported homeownership for white Americans. For decades the agency “discouraged banks from making any loans at all in urban neighborhoods,” (Rothstein 2017) which were primarily neighborhoods of color, and encouraged white residents to move to the newly developing suburbs. Further, after World War II, all returning veterans were supposed to be guaranteed homeownership by the Department of Veteran Affairs and the FHA. In practice, however, only white veterans were afforded this benefit. Veterans of color or people interested in buying homes in urban areas were unable to do so because the FHA would either not provide assistance or instead offer loans with prohibitive, astronomical interest rates (Rothstein 2017).

What do historical home lending practices have to do with supermarkets?

These discriminatory lending practices in homeownership not only created segregated communities, but reinforced those that already existed. As white residents were able to purchase homes in the rapidly expanding suburbs, the property tax base for urban areas decreased and inner-city conditions deteriorated. Over the next few years, more policies and practices, such as the establishment of industrial and manufacturing zones in proximity to already disadvantaged communities, perpetuated neighborhood blight and furthered racial isolation (Rothstein 2017).

The deterioration of the quality of life for the urban poor and residents of color led to widespread disinvestment, which is the reluctance or reversal of developers to invest in certain areas. The disinvestment in urban supermarkets started with suburbanization. White, affluent residents, encouraged by federal policies, relocated to the suburbs, taking with them the resources they had historically enjoyed (Eisenhaur, 2011).

Private investment caters to those who can afford it, so large grocery stores, who had already been putting smaller stores out of business, left urban neighborhoods and relocated to the suburbs (Eisenhaur, 2002). From the 1950s to the 1970s, big box stores’ presence in suburbia grew exponentially, and by the 1980s, supermarkets were closing their doors in cities. For example, between 1978 and 1984, Safeway closed 600 stores in urban areas, claiming these locations were subject to high labor and utility costs, theft, and low profit margins (Eisenhaur, 2002). Apprehension to open new grocery stores in urban areas spread throughout the industry.

Today, “when comparing communities with similar poverty rates, Black and Latino neighborhoods tend to have fewer supermarkets that offer a variety of produce and healthy foods, and have more small retail (i.e., convenience and liquor) stores that have fewer produce options than in predominantly white neighborhoods” (Eisenhaur, 2002).

According to a study conducted by Bruce Mitchell and published by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in 2018, racial and economic segregation brought about by redlining in the 1930s still permeate American cities today. The study shows that 64% of neighborhoods of color are still in areas that were labeled “hazardous” by the HOLC and 74% are low-income. By comparison, 91% of neighborhoods that were labeled “best” are upper-income, and “almost entirely white” (Meisenhelter, 2018).

“The study shows how policies that influence access to capital and credit can have a lasting impact on housing patterns, the economic health of neighborhoods, and who accumulates wealth – for decades. That means new policies to boost access to capital, including in low- and moderate-income communities can also have a lasting impact” (Meisenhelter, 2018).

The Role of HFFIs: Reinvesting in Communities

Healthy Food Financing Initiatives, or HFFIs, are grant and loan programs that support healthy food retail development and preservation in under-resourced areas by funding projects across the food system like grocery stores, corner stores, distributors, mobile markets and farmers markets. Typically, funded entities must be located in a low-income area that otherwise does not have healthy, affordable or culturally relevant foods already available. Funding for these programs can come from many different sources, but is commonly the result of partnerships between public and private organizations.

The First HFFI

The first HFFI began with The Food Trust in the early 2000s after hearing concerns from Philadelphia residents about not having year-round access to fresh produce in their low-income neighborhoods. Since this was not an issue that was being addressed by policymakers at the time, in 2001 The Food Trust published Food For Every Child: The Need for More Supermarkets in Philadelphia, a report which mapped which areas around Philadelphia were affected by low supermarket access, low incomes, and high rates of diet-related deaths.

The map resonated with Philadelphia City Council, who asked The Food Trust to convene a task force, the Food Marketing Task Force, to come up with solutions. The Food Trust brought together representatives from the civic sector, public health, economic development, city government, and even grocery stores to best understand the challenges to investing in these underserved communities. After one year, the task force presented City Council with 10 recommendations for increasing supermarket investment across the city.  One recommendation was the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, the first HFFI in the country. The state then adopted the program in 2004; the first iteration ran from 2004-2010 and had $30 million in funding. The program was recapitalized in 2018 and continues to this day with management by The Food Trust.

If one thing is clear, it’s that programs that promote investment in historically redlined neighborhoods are one way to help bridge the racial wealth gap that has been perpetuated by discriminatory lending policies. And if one solution is obvious, it’s HFFIs. By directly funding stores in low-income areas without existing grocery access, two indicators of historical redlining, HFFIs not only provide financial capital to businesses in areas that have been excluded, but help create and retain quality jobs, reduce tax leakage and encourage further investment into that community. In addition, many HFFIs place an emphasis on community-informed project development. Supporting stores that are connected to and supported by their communities helps ensure the long-term sustainability of both the store and the neighborhood’s access to fresh and affordable foods.

Today, there are two federal iterations of the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative and more than 20 HFFIs operated by individual states. Since 2018, the PA FFFI has granted out over $2.8 million to 70 grocery stores and other food retailers and leveraged over $38 million in funds to support these projects. Over 1,600 jobs have been created and retained, and funded projects have reached almost 1 million residents. The program provides grants, loans and funding for business assistance to eligible projects; most projects can qualify for up to $50,000 in grant funds, and high-impact projects can qualify for up to $150,000. If interested in a loan, applicants are connected to a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) in their area. Funding for the HFFI administered by the Food Trust, the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, comes from the state’s Department of Community and Economic Development.

Information on upcoming funding rounds and eligibility criteria for the PA FFFI can be found here. Applications are encouraged from grocers and other healthy food retailers in economically depressed areas of Pennsylvania that lack adequate food access.

Sources:
Eisenhaur, E. (2002). In Poor Health: Supermarket Redlining and Urban Nutrition (pp. 125–133). Kluwer Academic Publishers. 
Rothstein, R. (2017). The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation. 
Meisenhelter, J. (2021, September 23). How 1930s Discrimination Shaped Inequality in Today’s Cities. NCRC. https://ncrc.org/how-1930s-discrimination-shaped-inequality-in-todays-cities/
Coleman-Jensen, A. (2022). Household Food Security in the United States in 2021. U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/104656/err-309.pdf?v=6952.4
Greenwood, S. (2023, May 1). Black Americans’ Identity and Connection to Community | Pew Research Center Pew Research Center Race & Ethnicity. https://www.pewresearch.org/race-ethnicity/2022/04/14/black-americans-place-and-community/#:~:text=Roughly%20equal%20shares%20of%20Black,new%20Pew%20Research%20Center%20survey

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The Food Trust launched its first farmers market in 1993 with a simple mission of making healthy foods accessible and affordable. Three decades later, as we celebrate National Farmers Market Week, our goal remains the same: delicious, nutritious food for all.

In the early 1990s, Duane Perry, a Philadelphia native, worked as a manager in Reading Terminal Market where he recognized the power of marketplaces in the city to bring nutritious foods to community members. However, he noticed that opportunities to buy fresh foods from nearby farmers were largely limited to the suburbs. He spoke with patrons during his time at Reading Terminal Market and learned that for most communities around the city, farmers markets were largely non-existent. Eager to fill this gap, Perry began The Food Trust — then called the Reading Terminal Farmers’ Market Trust — and opened its first market in Southwest Philadelphia’s Tasker Homes housing development. Soon after, The Food Trust opened seven more markets around the city, in neighborhoods like Mantua, Graduate Hospital and West Philly (where our Clark Park market began in 1998 and continues to operate today as one of the city’s largest farmers markets). The markets quickly became beloved neighborhood institutions: Community members described attending the market with their children, some to purchase food, but some to simply learn and socialize with the vendors and other patrons.

“People have really flocked to the market,” said Perry in an interview with Good Food in 1994. “It’s like a little mini-community center. It functions like the Reading Terminal Market. People sit, have coffee, talk. It brings a lot of warmth to the place.”

Recognizing the potential for community outreach and nutrition education at market locations across the city, The Food Trust expanded programming to include nutrition education at farmers markets and schools. We began working with schools in Philadelphia to host nutrition education lessons, provided handouts and resources for children to learn about healthy eating, and ran public campaigns to promote nutritious foods. In 2008, the Food Trust was also featured in a special features piece on childhood health in Time magazine for our work increasing access to fruits and vegetables, and advancing nutrition education. Since then, the reach of our comprehensive programming around access, education, and affordability has expanded across the state, and even across the country — as far away as San Jose, California.

Since that first farmers market in the early ’90s, we’ve also found new ways to enhance our markets’ role as hubs for fresh and local food. In 2010, we launched the Food Bucks program to help market shoppers using SNAP bring home free fruits and vegetables. Today, Food Bucks can still be earned and redeemed at all Food Trust markets, and the program has also expanded to retail sites across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 2021, with the support of the USDA, we launched a citywide billboard campaign, featuring market vendors, shoppers and staff, that touted the benefits of shopping local at farmers markets.

We continue to launch new markets across the city of Philadelphia, carrying on Perry’s initial vision for farmers market access throughout the city. We currently work with about 85 farmers and producers, who provide their offerings to more than 300,000 market shoppers each year. This May, we launched a year-round market in Northern Liberties, the latest addition to our network. This year, we’re launching a new cohort of our Farmers Market Advisory Group, consisting of key farmers and community members, who will focus on uniting farmers markets across the city, beyond Food Trust markets.

As our programs and outreach continue to grow, this National Farmers Market Week we reflect on the single market that started it all. Farmers markets have been and will continue to be a crucial part in our mission to deliver delicious and nutritious food for all. As we think about what is next for The Food Trust, history proves that while much has changed, our mission has always been the same, serving as the crucial connection linking our past, present and future. Over 25 years later, our team continues to recognize the same community connection at Food Trust Farmers Markets that Perry saw at his first farmers market.

“Everyone comes out to the farmers market- older folks, younger folks, babies,” says Jonah Hudson, market manager at Headhouse Farmers Market. “It’s a place to build relationships.”