Locally grown, healthy and fresh foods were the central concern of a group that met last week in an organizing session at the Greenwood Leflore Recycling Center.
Rachel Harvey brought together a small cadre of concerned local citizens and two others who work statewide on helping communities obtain a healthy food supply.
Johnny Gary, health educator across many North Mississippi counties for the Mississippi Delta Health Collaborative, goes to towns and works with mayors on setting up Health Councils. Gary’s office also supports community gardens and farmers markets as well as smoking cessation programs.
Langston Moore, communications director of the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi, said he works primarily as a grant maker for healthy food initiatives and has worked on legislative measures concerning the food supply.
Harvey said she hopes to gauge how much interest there is in increasing the supply of locally grown fruits and vegetables in the Greenwood community, where, as in the rest of Mississippi, more than 90 percent of the food supply is imported from someplace else.
Harvey works for Leann Hines’ Levee Run Farms, a growing operation in Leflore County, and teaches gardening classes for local nonprofit ArtPlace Mississippi, in addition to volunteering in a number of healthy food initiatives.
Vanessa Leinert, who lives in Itta Bena and came to Mississippi from Delaware, heads an organic food-buying club that purchases from wholesaler Azure Standards. She said her interests include healing through food, educating people on the benefits of eating healthy, fresh, minimally processed foods as well as organically grown produce.
Derek Hinckley, director of the recycling center, said he began paying attention to food choices when he lived in Alaska.
“I was surprised to find when I came to the Delta that there were more choices of healthy foods available in Fairbanks, where everything had to be flown in, than here in this rich farming area.”
Discussions arose about how best to identify sites for community gardens and how those could be organized; the availability and non-availability of organically grown foods in the area; and education as a key component of building a healthy local foods system.
The next step is to continue meeting and reaching out to others in the community who would like to see increased efforts toward growing and consuming more fresh foods in and around Greenwood.
Group members will research other efforts around the state that have proven successful and determine whether they might work here.
To learn more, contact Harvey at 662-722-0433.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
