https://reasonstobecheerful.world/local-food-movement-mississippi-delta/
"Dorothy Grady pulled at a tuft of green fronds sprouting from one of an array
of soil-filled buckets sitting in the driveway of her house. A plump carrot,
five inches long and brilliant orange, popped out.
Nearby, a sage shrub grew from another bucket, and scallions crowded a squat
grow bag. In about three weeks, Grady would kick off the spring growing season
on the land she cultivates around Shelby, Mississippi, including two plots at
the now-closed middle school across the street, a small grove of peach and pear
trees up the road, and five acres outside of town. She was ready to start
planting eggplants, melons, tomatoes and a cornucopia of other produce that
would soon end up in the homes of 127 nearby residents.
Shelby, a few miles east of the Mississippi River, is surrounded by flat,
fertile farmland. But Grady’s vegetables and fruit are some of the only crops
around that make it to local plates. The vast majority of Mississippi Delta
farms are devoted to commodity crops like soy and corn.
Grady is one of almost a dozen local growers supplying produce to Delta GREENS,
a collaborative research project that is delivering fresh ingredients to
residents of Bolivar, Sunflower and Washington counties with diabetes and
monitoring the health impacts. This “food is medicine” project is one of a
number of initiatives that are supporting farmers and expanding the market for
locally grown produce in this western Mississippi region. The benefits run in
both directions: At the same time that community members are getting access to
these nutritious ingredients, the small-scale farmers who grow them are getting
a leg up.
“What we’re trying to do is build cooperative development amongst the farms,”
says Julian Miller, founding director for the Reuben V. Anderson Institute for
Social Justice in Jackson, a co-principal investigator for Delta GREENS, and a
long-time local food advocate in the Delta region. “Ultimately, we want to be
able to give them the capacity to scale and capture the broader market.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
