Category Archives: News and Events

UB alumna leads Buffalo Freedom Gardens

UB alumna leads Buffalo Freedom Gardens.

If you listen to the people and use your education, you can make change happen. You can be a community asset. ” Gail V. Wells, founder Freedom Gardens

By CHARLOTTE HSU Published July 13, 2022

Summer is here, and with the arrival of the growing season, an initiative called Buffalo Freedom Gardens has given dozens of residents of Buffalo’s East Side neighborhoods a free raised bed garden.

On a Saturday in June, volunteers including UB Food Lab members joined Freedom Gardens founder Gail V. Wells to make the last of this year’s deliveries.

The team packed cedar wood planters, each expected to last at least a decade, into a U-Haul truck, along with bags of soil. Freedom Gardens recipients also get seeds and vegetable seedlings, garden gloves, a bright green watering can, and instructions on caring for the plants.

Each garden is a thing of joy — and an act of liberation, says Wells, a UB alumna who remains connected to the university community.

She points out that food has long been central to movements for freedom: “For Black people who are descendants of kidnapped and enslaved Africans, the way we could secure our safety and our families and build an economy for ourselves was first based on us being able to feed ourselves,” she says.

The Idea That A (urban) Planner Is A Genius With Grand Ideas Is Bogus

By Masood Hussain 12:33 pm January 28, 2023

Dr Samina Raja plans cities, towns, and regions to promote health and food equity. An award-winning professor and founder of a globally recognized Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities laboratory, operating from the University of Buffalo, she and her team conduct research on how to develop equitable, sustainable, and healthy cities. Her research has been used to advise local and national governments within and outside the US, and international organizations like the UN’s FAO. In a freewheeling interview with Masood Hussain, she offers her ideas about Kashmir of her imagination.

Andrew Galarneau: Grassroots efforts help water seeds of food security on East Side

June 5, 2022 | Buffalo News, The: Web Edition Articles (NY)

Author/Byline: Andrew Galarneau | Section: Local

Samina Raja, an internationally known University at Buffalo expert on building sustainable food systems and healthy communities, has spent more than 20 years studying how to help feed people living in neighborhoods without groceries, concentrating on Buffalo’s East Side.

The solution, in her estimation, is a classic case of something being simple, but not easy.

“The city’s Black neighborhoods need sustained structural investments, not fly-in, fly-out charity,” she and other UB Food Lab researchers said in an op-ed published at CivilEats.com.

“We are unlikely to remedy food inequities” without a greater understanding of what causes poor food environments, says Samina Raja, associate dean for research and inclusive excellence, and principal investigator of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab at the University at Buffalo.

Allison DeHonney is shown making a food delivery in August 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Buffalo News file photo

What do people need to know before they can transform municipal food policies?

New research by UB Food Lab member Carol E Ramos-Gerena in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2023.122.008

INTRODUCTION

Food policies should be informed by those who they intend to serve, but policy-making processes remain exclusive to privileged voices, knowledge, and experiences. This article bridges food and policy scholarship with the critical literacy work of Paulo Freire to answer: how do we understand literacies tied to food policy? What does (or, what could) it mean to be food policy literate? In a new JAFSCD article, Carol E. Ramos-Gerena proposes five principles for conceptualizing critical food policy literacy that support food system transformations.

KEY FINDINGS

The paper suggests that efforts to promote critical food policy literacy must facilitate communities to (a) “read the world,” (b) “read the word,” (c) be critically aware of food policy processes and systems, (d) learn contextually and through authentic practice, and (e) enable people to negotiate and transform the world (their context) collectively.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY, PRACTICE, AND RESEARCH

Possessing knowledge on engaging with food policy processes is not commensurate with actual engagement. Thus, structural barriers to community participation must also be addressed. Food system planners and educators, particularly at the municipal level, should support locally-based citizen food organizations to engage in food policy. This support must go beyond assessing communities’ food policy literacy. Instead, it must intend to bridge the gap to ensure critical readiness for food policy engagement.

For questions and suggestions, contact us at foodsystems@ap.buffalo.edu.

Building Capacity for Food Equity Research in Crisis Settings

How do scholars co-produce knowledge with community partners and early career researchers? How can this work happen in an equitable way in cities and regions that are in the throes of conflict? A panel from the UB Food lab tackles this question drawing on their collaborative research in Jammu and Kashmir. Speakers Insha Akram (Fellow and Trainee), Athar Parvaiz (Research Affiliate), and Samina Raja (Director, Food Lab) will share insights from their collaboration as part of the Building Blocks of Equity Series hosted by the Community for Global Health Equity.

The aim of the larger series is to encourage participants to:

discover how co-produced knowledge can promote health equity for individuals;
understand the importance of training students to ethically and responsibly work with community partners;
learn how to develop reciprocal partnerships early on in academic careers;
discuss barriers to educating students on how to co-produce knowledge.

The event will be held on May 5, 2022 at 3:00 PM via Zoom.

For more information and registration click here.

Latest Podcast | Food equity in cities with Leslie Knox, Rose Luciano, and Samina Raja | Connections with Evan Dawson

How can Rochester rebuild its food infrastructure to make the system more equitable? Cities around the country are asking this question. The answers often include community gardens, urban farms, fresh food cooperatives, and more.

University at Buffalo urban planning professor, Samina Raja, will be in Rochester next week to discuss the issue as part of the Reshaping Rochester series. The podcast preview her talk on food equity by design.

Food Equity by Design

Speaker: Samina Raja, PhD
Wed, April 27, 2022 | 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EST via ZOOM

17^th Annual reshaping ROCHESTER series, Community Design Center, Rochester, NY

Dr. Samina Raja will deliver a virtual lecture at the 17^th reSHAPING ROCHESTER series. This year the series focuses on what it means for a city to be “ideal,” and asks if/how a community could become ideal. Dr. Raja will focus her remarks on the ideal of food equity in cities.

Cities around the United States are rebuilding their community food infrastructure. Community gardens, urban farms, farmers’ markets, rooftop gardens, and fresh food cooperatives are transforming food landscapes. How does this resurgent interest in communities’ food infrastructure center questions of equity and justice, if at all? Who controls food landscapes in cities? What role can planning and design play in creating a more just and equitable community food infrastructure? Drawing on community-centered research completed in US cities, Dr. Samina Raja will explore these questions in her talk as part of the Reshaping Rochester series.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reshaping-rochester-webinar-with-dr-samina-raja-tickets-244428290597?aff=site

Food Lab team member to speak at Climate Solutions Summit

UB Food Lab team member Nathaniel Mich will be speaking on a panel at the Climate Solutions Summit with a focus on the Genesee-Finger Lakes region. The Summit will focus on climate solutions, and will build skills in climate action, advocacy, organizing and leadership. The Summit will feature regional projects/programs/initiatives, barriers and challenges to achieving short and long-term progress, co-benefits, including workforce dev, and opportunities for advocacy and public engagement. At the summit, Nathaniel Mich will share his perspective on “the role of planning and policy in building equitable, healthful and sustainable food systems and healthy communities.” The panel will be held on April 23, 2022 at 10:30 am via Zoom.

Attendees must register here. https://www.climategfl.org/summit

Making Food Work Visible on International Women’s Day

The world would be better off if there was no need for International Women’s Day. Inequity tied to structural factors fuels gender-related disparities in all walks of life (including in the world of research where our lab of researchers of women of color is a rarity). Consider the following examples from the world of food systems. Women farmworkers execute the bulk of manual work — such as weeding and harvesting — in fields but do not accrue commensurate financial benefits from the sale of products. Small-scale farm households headed by women earn 30% less, on average, than farm households headed by men. In India, women comprise 42% of the agricultural workforce but own only 2% of the land. In the US, half of the graduates of culinary schools are women, yet fewer than 20% are chefs. A greater proportion of women are likely to be farmworkers or food service workers than owners of farms or food businesses, and, therefore, have limited power and material resources within the food system. Within homes, women’s food-related work (of buying and preparing food, and feeding people) remains invisible. The examples are one too many.
We hope that our readers go beyond celebrating the individual successes of women to paying attention to structural questions. Why do gendered disparities continue to exist (in the food system)? Why is there a glass ceiling in the first place? What structural and policy changes are needed at all levels of governance to eliminate gender-related disparities, especially for women from marginalized groups? What would it take for city governments across the United States to conduct an audit of their policies, programs, and budgets to discern if municipal work is truly supporting women in their jurisdictions? Sure, celebrate International Women’s Day — but also act to eliminate gender-related inequities in the food system
Authors: UB Food Lab [Women of Color] Researchers including Insha Akram, Carol E Ramos Gerena, Lorna Georges, Rachel Grandits, Shireen Guru, Samina Raja, Rose Thomas, and Atqa Qadri.
Notes.1. Data sources: Available upon request.2. Photo: Women researchers of the UB Food Lab (Yes, our skills at research don’t necessarily translate well to making a fist).

Who’s behind the research?

Food and health inequities are complex problems that cannot be addressed by a single discipline or a single individual. Our action research is made possible because of the collaborative intellect, energy, and leadership of seasoned and early career researchers from a host of disciplines. Today we introduce you to some of the lab crew students and fellows working!

Our spring 2022 team includes William Gonzales (history, undergraduate) , Lorna Gorges (environmental design, undergraduate student),Rachel Grandits (sustainability, graduate student), Shireen Guru (research fellow), Eric Hughes (geographic information science, graduate student), Zachary Korosh (urban planning, graduate student), Nathaniel Mich (urban planning, graduate student), Carol Ramos Gerena (urban planning, doctoral student), Rose Thomas (public health, graduate student), Atqa Qadri (artificial intelligence, graduate student). Students in the picture are joined by professors Drs. Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah (Co-Principal Investigator) and Samina Raja (Principal Investigator) who guide the research with other faculty and community partners (not in the photo).