Project

Food Equity Advisory Committee

We established a Food Equity Advisory Committee, which comprises multiple organizations including emergency food organizations, community garden representatives, developers, town officials, departments of transportation, retailers, food distributors, institutional food service operators, farmers, and policymakers. The Committee has worked to identify initial issues in food access on Long Island and think through project strategies.  Advisory committee members were important partners in the Farmers’ Market pilot project, identifying the need for local food access mapping and also recently discussed the New York Healthy Food & Healthy Communities Fund, part of the State’s Healthy Food Healthy Communities Initiative and created a set of recommendations to make sure the program met the needs of Long Island. The committee proposed continuing the work of the advisory committee, expanding it to include additional members, making policy recommendations to the LI Regional Planning Council’s regional planning process LI2035, additional mapping of Long Island’s food access needs, and formal recognition of the group as a Food Policy Council.

Sustainable Long Island’s Food Advisory Committee was the first time the spectrum of LI’s food system, from farmers to food rescue convened  to discuss issues related to  access to fresh, healthy food for everyone on Long Island.  We have built momentum for the project and a greater understanding that this is a regional issue, not isolated to a community here or there. Sustainable Long Island has continued convening the Committee and bringing additional business perspectives (ie supermarket and food distribution executives) and government to the table, which has helped spark cross-sector dialogue and solutions and bring essential context to policy and advocacy work moving forward. 

What's Next?

Developed in partnership with Adelphi University, Sustainable Long Island is launching a Food System Report Card; an ambitious indicator project to assess the state of Long Island’s food system, focusing on agricultural production, food distribution and retailing, environmental protection, food access, and community health. The project will draw on “Cultivating Resilience: A Food System Blueprint” from the Iowa Food Systems Council as a model for the report. A cross-section of food system stakeholders, including Sustainable Long Island’s Food Equity Advisory Committee, will help select indicators and provide input on strategies for their assessment. The Report Card will inform recommendations for a safe, fair, and sustainable food system and serve as the platform for subsequent community discussions about policy and program development.