It’s the Friday before Labor Day weekend and I’ve had a number stuck in my head for quite some time: 287,240. That’s how many people are facing hunger in Nebraska. Lots of libraries already work closely with their local food bank, or grow food in a community food garden. This is good, rewarding labor.
Seeing a headline about a community garden or partnership with a local university to grow a love of the land gives me the warm fuzzies. But sometimes if feels like we’re barely making a dent in the number as whole. I wanted to know why this number is that high, and what it takes to solve food insecurity and erase that number.
That’s when I found Building Community Food Webs by Ken Meter. He’s been exploring food systems for 20+ years, and it shows. This book digs deep into the problem, looking at it through multiple lenses. Pairing stories with data, he puts the big picture together and offers a path towards a comprehensive solution.
He traveled the country and the world to understand how food is grown and moves through food production, distribution, waste, and reuse. Along the way, he found what worked in different states, syncing up the role of agriculture, food processing, government programs, safety and regulation, education and training, and a wide range of organizations. He explored what it takes for all these organizations to work together in a community food web to make sure everyone can put good, healthy food on the table. Right now, that’s not always happening. 287,240 means the web has gaps and spoilage.
Meter concludes that: “at the heart of every effective community food web is a group of people who trust each other. They share information openly, discuss differences respectfully and honestly, and learn together over time”. I read that and began to understand why that number is so high in Nebraska, and around the nation. More importantly, I grew hope that there is a solution if we dig deep. I’ll spare you the poetic seed, growth and root system phrasing.
You get the idea. Give it a read. I’d love to hear if your library is already embedded in a food web. It’s the Midwest, I know food webs aren’t new. They also go by many names. Share the seeds.
