In our new section, area growers discuss their gardens and growing projects. This week Willie Jones, an AmeriCorps VISTA with Western Carolina University’s Center for Service Learning and Food Security Partnership and founder of the Jackson County Glean Team, tells us about gleaning and how it can be used to combat food insecurity.
In order to help strengthen the networks between growers and food assistance and resource centers, Xpress is working to map food pantries, share markets, community gardens that offer free produce, welcome tables and any other community resources that increase access to healthy foods.
The WNC area is rich with community gardens of all sorts — from CSAs to donation gardens that grow for area food banks to education gardens for public schools. Xpress is working to compile a database of community gardens to help interested neighbors find and support these community efforts.
Western North Carolina is an area rich in agriculture, which means there are many regional tailgate and farmers markets to enjoy. With the help of ASAP, Xpress is providing a roundup of regional markets, including markets accepting food assistance programs.
Western North Carolina features the greatest variety of flora and fauna north of the tropics, which makes Asheville an ideal place for those who forage for food. In fact, foraging can begin as close as your own backyard.
Feeding America, a nonprofit, national network of food banks that is the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released their 2014 Map the Meal Gap study, which maps food insecurity in the United States down to the county-level. The study found that for Western North Carolina food insecurity has increased slightly since last year, reaching a rate of 15.3 percent and affecting approximately 38, 420 children in WNC.
The USDA has identified several areas in WNC, and Asheville, as places without access to healthy, affordable food. But three different mobile food markets are aiming to launch this year — reducing the distance between healthy foods and communities in need.
YMCA of Western North Carolina is holding their annual Healthy Kids Day today, April 12, in Pack Square until 3 p.m. The YMCA designed the annual event to “inspire more kids to keep their minds and bodies active.” This year’s event also marks the launch of the organization’s new mobile food kitchen and pantry.
In our new feature, area growers introduce their gardens. This week Adam Bigelow tells us about the Cullowhee Community Garden in Jackson County
A celebration of locally grown food and neighborhood relationships, the Oakley Farmers Market and the adjacent Oakley Community Garden are giving a much-needed boost to a predominantly low-wealth community that the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers a food desert. But what brought them all together was as simple as a sign.
Feeding America estimates that 100,000 people in Western North Carolina are experiencing food insecurity. Winter heating bills, new restrictions to food stamp eligibility and rising medical costs may be increasing situational poverty. But if a lack of access to food is a growing problem, some across the region are working on a growing solution. Read more in part two of our series looking at how community gardens are fighting hunger — from the ground up.
Each year, area food assistance programs seek out locally grown produce in their fight against food insecurity. But as some services struggle to provide enough food, some growers face an overabundance of certain crops — which may end up in a compost pile or rotting on the stock. Part one of our two-part series on community gardens looks at how growers are working together to eliminate food waste — and fighting hunger from the ground up.
Tupelo Honey Cafe is partnering with the Shiloh neighborhood to build an amphitheater and outdoor kitchen for the South Asheville community.
Asheville City Council is thinking about your stomach — and stomachs all over town, in fact. On Jan. 22, Council members voted 6-0 to adopt the Food Action Plan, drafted by the Asheville-Buncombe Food Policy Council.
Fresh from City Hall, here’s some food-policy news you really ought to know.
Three years ago, Robert White and his wife, Lucia Daugherty, sized up an abandoned baseball field at Pisgah View Apartments, the West Asheville public-housing complex they call home, and envisioned a beautiful communal green space. From that prodigious act of the imagination sprang the Pisgah View Community Peace Garden, which today teems with life.
