Fertile Crescent 2013 Summer Retreat of Food Commons Atlanta

Agribusiness and its affiliated large-scale food corporations control our modern food system.  We are looking to replace this unsustainable system which diverts money out of local economies and dumps unhealthy food into our communities with an approach we call the Food Commons. This model improves access to nutritious foods while developing local business enterprises. Three core elements (Trust, Hub, and Fund) work together to ensure that local foodshed-based businesses can be successful and beneficial to our neighborhood.

• Food Trust - an organization that will acquire and steward critical foodshed assets, particularly land assets
• Food Hubs - a locally owned, cooperatively integrated business enterprises that build and manage foodshed-based physical infrastructure
• Food Fund - a community-owned financial institution that provides capital and financial services to foodshed enterprises.

We have designated a twenty-neighborhood area of Southwest Atlanta, the "Fertile Crescent," as the prototype for the Food Commons Atlanta model. This community is coping with devastation born from decades of systematic disregard from outside entities. The Food Commons reverses this trend and will allow this traumatized community to become a model for food sovereignty. 

When all elements are operating, the Commons will:

• Improve access of local Atlanta residents to healthy foods,
• Create and preserve green space for urban gardens and farms
• Provide employment and self-employment opportunities within the “Fertile Crescent”
• Provide would-be growers with the tools (training, access to funding, land and tools) that they need to be successful.

A coalition of community volunteers and non-profit community based organizations has been meeting since November to develop the Food Hub, Fund and Trust components of the Commons but our work is fragmented. It is not easy to create three new organizations while only meeting together once a month!

We want to get together to develop an action plan for our path forward for the next year. This IOBY project will fund costs for the meeting venue, food, and facilitators for our day and a half workshop. The workshop is scheduled to occur at the end of September.  We anticipate that a host of IOBY-fundable projects will be spearheaded through this initial planning activity.

The USDA has designated over half of the Fertile Crescent community in southwest Atlanta as a food desert.  Our goal is to improve our access to fresh, local food and create economic opportunities.  This is effectively done by utilizing assets already present within the community. 

Local food production is thriving in southeast Atlanta.  There are approximately 15 community gardens, 5 market gardens and around 10 non-profit and for-profit urban farms within  the Fertile Crescent and yet there are still a host of vacant and underutilized properties where food could be grown.  The area is also home to a number of warehouses as well as other food production and processing infrastructure that could be repurposed as neighborhood-scaled “food hubs.” 

Our Food Commons initiative will identify, connect and leverage these assets to build a foundation of a new local food economy in Atlanta.  Many organizations and individuals have expressed interest in this initiative.  Before we can move forward however, we first must solidify our organization.  Funding the “Fertile Crescent 2013 Summer Retreat of Food Commons Atlanta" project through your tax-deductable contribution is the first step of this process.