City Harvest Programs

Advocacy

Our Policy Work

By keeping close relationships with our agency network and the low-income New Yorkers that benefit from our programs, City Harvest has a unique perspective on the needs of communities affected by hunger and food insecurity. We use this experience to advocate at the city, state, and federal level for programs, policies, and actions to change the conditions that result in food insecurity and hunger, and mobilize affected communities to advocate on their own behalf.

We work to connect low-income New Yorkers with access to federal nutrition programs, a safe and diverse regional food supply, equal opportunities to consume healthy and affordable food, and economically viable and environmentally sound communities.

We offer testimony to government bodies on problems and solutions related to hunger in NYC, educate elected officials on the underlying causes of hunger and how public policy decisions can alleviate hunger, and work in partnerships with government agencies to expand the reach and quality of food programs.

The goal of this work is to achieve community-based solutions to food insecurity and create large scale change in the food system to benefit the communities we serve.

Why City Harvest Is Involved

Rates of hunger have remained high for the more than 25 years that City Harvest has been working to alleviate it, and diet-related diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension have become increasingly prevalent in food insecure communities.  In the current economy, with high unemployment and high cost of living, nutritious food is out of reach for many New Yorkers. City Harvest’s public policy initiatives focus on the long-term goal of creating a just, functional, and healthy food system that provides enough good food for all.

Goals

The goals of our advocacy work are to ensure equitable access to healthy, safe, affordable food for all people, and a healthy, economically viable food system. Two concepts at the core of this work are:

Food Security: Access by all people at all times to enough food for an active healthy life. Food security includes at the minimum the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways. Conversely, people who do not meet the above definition are considered “food insecure.”

Community Food Systems: A community food system is comprised of the all those parties involved in different functions from food producer to consumer, and how their interactions affect food security and the nutritional status and health of the community. This includes, for example, how those involved in producing, marketing, processing, distribution, and consumption of food (both emergency food and marketed sources of food) function and interact.

City Harvest works with communities to improve the food system to achieve food security for all people.  

For more information contact Kate MacKenzie, Director of Policy and Government Relations at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).