“Thankfully, regional food systems are resilient. Our community partners are resilient,” Smith says. “It’s about feeding people and providing nutrition, and it’s also about quality, having our produce boxes communicate ‘you matter’ to families.”
Jesica Medellin, project director for Galveston Independent School District’s Texas Afterschool Centers on Education program, carries a box of fresh produce to a car Tuesday. Medellin helped distribute 140 boxes of fresh produce from The Common Market to students and their families in need following the freeze last week.
Each box brimmed with cabbage, carrots and other vegetables grown at local farms throughout southeast Texas. The farms provide food for La Porte ISD year-round, through The Common Market Texas.
“We’re going to be able to feed thousands of people by the end of the week,” said Margo Robertson, outreach coordinator at The Common Market Texas.
1,000 boxes total were donated and they’ll be distributed throughout the area, helping area families as well as farms.
“Texas farmers are tough, and we stand together to help our neighbors,” continues Smith. “We are grateful to World Central Kitchen. Together, we are bringing relief to often-overlooked communities as well as a boost to our local economy.”
"Overnight, our drivers became frontline workers; our teams, spanning all departments, and our farmer partners became more essential than ever."
"As we transform the food system, we must consider a proper scale... where we're not repeating the same mistakes that the industrial food system made."
"In 2020, The Common Market, a Philadelphia-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) grantee, found a way to distribute 1.1 million emergency food boxes and at the same time support the viability of 132 family farms.
'This work develops a degree of mutuality and respect between urban and rural people,' Johnston explains. 'We’ve built relationships in every kind of community, with every kind of people you can imagine.'"
"Bridgeton Public Schools are also working to increase local partnerships. This work is a continuation of a project that has been underway since the implementation of the Community Eligibility Provision – a program that allows schools to feed all students breakfast and lunch for free – in 2017. The county currently works with local producers The Common Market and Seashore Fruit & Produce. “[We] pride ourselves on being a nutrition hub for our students,” says Warren DeShields, Director of Food Services at Bridgeton Public Schools.
When the pandemic hit, The Common Market was able to pivot quickly and redirect its supply chains to areas of greatest need by leveraging federal and local government emergency food response funding and existing relationships between local growers, community organizations, local government, such as the cities of New York and Atlanta, and their regional food hubs.
"The pandemic has underscored the importance of fostering a more resilient food system. As we near the end of 2020, we’re asking, what are the top policy priorities as we look towards the new year and the new administration? This podcast looks closely at the connection between federal policy and local food. Hear from experts, including The Common Market co-founder Haile Johnston, about their proposals for forging more holistic government contracts that prioritize regional, independent and sustainable farms; deferring principal payments on Farm Service Agency loans as a means to support native farmers and stimulate tribal economies; and passing the RESTAURANTS Act to help independent restaurants make up for lost revenue.
"Being able to connect to a distributor and an organizer like The Common Market - that allows us to reach a local food producing community in a major way - is for us, a dream come true."
— Lucy Kerman, Ph.D., Vice Provost, University and Community Partnerships, Drexel University