All posts by Doug

Buffalo Public Schools receive a Farm to School Planning Grant: Formal Announcement and Public Info Session to be held on February 23 and 24

The Buffalo Public Schools is one of 82 projects receiving support this year through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm to School Program, an effort to better connect school cafeterias and students with local farmers. The district received a $45,000 planning grant that will positively impact over 34,000 students in its schools.

Farm to School Planning Grants, according to the USDA, are intended for school districts just starting to incorporate farm to school program elements into their operations. With a goal of bringing healthy, local, and fresh food to schools in Buffalo, this initiative will:

Connect schools, farms, and community partners to improve student nutrition through agriculture, health, and nutrition education; and
Strengthen our economy by supporting local farmers and food producers.

The formal announcement be held on Monday, February 23, 2015 at Public School #32, the Bennett Park Montessori School, which is located at 342 Clinton St. in Buffalo. The announcement will take place in the school cafeteria, where a salad bar will be set up, from 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM. Elected officials and BPS leaders will address the students at 10:30 AM. Students and elected officials will go through the salad bar line and have an opportunity to eat together in the cafeteria.

On Tuesday, February 24, from 5:00 to 7:30PM, the general public is invited to get involved in the Farm to School initiative by attending a Public Info Session. The public info session will take place at PS #99 Stanley M. Makowski, Early Childhood Center, located at 1095 Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo. Students, parents, cafeteria managers, BPS Board Members, farmers, food processors, and all others are invited to attend. A light dinner will be provided, first-come, first-serve. Register online at http://bit.ly/1KoJiPe or get more information on the Buffalo Public Schools website at www.buffaloschools.org.

The Food Systems Planning and Communities Lab is excited that this initiative will bring healthy, local, and fresh foods to Buffalo schools, and wish to thank the Buffalo Public Schools and its partners, Cornell Cooperative Extensions of Erie County, Massachusetts Avenue Project, and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus for their efforts to improve student nutrition and access to healthy food.

Buffalo Neighborhood Food Project Evaluation Study

The Buffalo Neighborhood Food Project builds on the past successes of Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo (GGB) and the Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) in improving local food systems in the City of Buffalo. In the Buffalo Neighborhood Food Project, these organizations are partnering to achieve four goals:

1) To meet the food needs of low income youth and families in Buffalo

2) To advocate for policy in support of food systems development

3) To increase the self-reliance of our community in providing for our own food needs

4) To create a comprehensive and replicable school garden program

The Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab is partnering with these two organizations to evaluate the programs each organization has implemented to meet these four goals. This involves data collection on food cultivation outcomes at GGB’s 76 community gardens and five school gardens in the City of Buffalo, and at MAP’s urban farm on Buffalo’s West Side.

This project is funded through a competitive grant awarded to GGB and MAP by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture.

Project Lead: Jenny Whittaker

Active Commuting in the Sweet Home Central School District

Safe Routes to Schools programs seek to foster improvements that facilitate active commuting in five thematic areas: education, encouragement, engineering, enforcement, and evaluation. The Town of Amherst, New York is the lead sponsor of a Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program that builds off a successful 2008 SRTS program in the Williamsville Central School District. This project, funded through the United States Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, facilitates infrastructure and non-infrastructure improvements to increase active commuting to schools in the Amherst Central and Sweet Home Central school districts.

The Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab is actively involved in the education, encouragement, and evaluation components of this program in the Sweet Home Central School District and the Amherst Central School District through events such as Walk to School Day and other active commuting events. The Town of Amherst Engineering Department is our partner in engineering, and the Town of Amherst Police Department is our partner in enforcement.

Team Members: Samina Raja, Sora Baek, Bumjoon Kang, Jeanne Leccese, Elizabeth Machnica

Resources

The Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab has developed a number of resources in partnership with the Sweet Home Central School District and the Town of Amherst. These resources include maps for each district elementary school that indicate safe walking and bicycling routes to school and infographics with useful information and facts about walking and bicycling for parents, students and school administrators. In addition, we have published the results of a survey of parents from the Sweet Home Central School District. These resources can be found below.

Check our current opening for an Undergraduate Intern

We’re looking for an advanced undergraduate student to assist with research in our lab. Find out more here.

APA Planners Training Service Announces Workshops

The American Planning Association’s Planners Training Service (PTS) will be offering three new workshops on current topics in planning during their November event in Washington, DC. Workshops will run from November 10-15 and will focus on Community Food Systems Planning, Transportation Innovations in Biking and Parking, and Suburban Redevelopment. Dr. Samina Raja, of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab, will be presenting with Kara Martin, AICP, on advanced planning and policy techniques for launching and strengthening food systems. The two day workshop earns AICP members 14 credits and will focus on using community food systems planning to promote pubic health, economic development, and quality of life.

Walk to School Day in Sweet Home School District

The Safe Routes to School Project, coordinated by Travis Norton of the UB Food Lab, recently launched a successful Walk to School Day in Sweet Home School District. Part of a larger national campaign to improve infrastructure around schools to encourage students to walk and bike to school, the event took place at several elementary schools in Amherst on October 8th. Read more about the event featured in the Buffalo News.

‘Rust Belt Radicals’ Paper featured on UB News Center

Dr. Samina Raja’s newly published paper, ‘Rust Belt Radicals’, was recently featured in the UB News Center. The article features an interview with Dr. Raja discussing how Buffalo, one of the country’s most impoverished cities, became a leader in urban agriculture. Through the work of many activists focusing on engaging policymakers and amending local laws, Buffalo has made extraordinary strides in the past decade. Read the full article here and find out about seven ways to get food noticed in your city.

Faith and Hunger Conference

Food For All and the Network of Religious Communities are hosting the Faith and Hunger Conference on Thursday, November 6th at 5:30, at St. Gregory the Great Parish. The presentation will focus on how the Roman Catholic, Ahmadiyya Muslim, and Jewish communities have responded to hunger in their communities.

Dr. Dennis Castillo from Christ the King Seminary in East Aurora, will be the keynote speaking on the Catholic Church’s response to hunger from a global and local perspective. Dr. Nasir Khan will speak from the Ahmadiyya Muslim perspective.

There will be time allotted for questions.

Space is limited. Those who wish to attend need to RSVP to Kelly Kowalski of the Network of Religious Communities at KellyAnnKK@aol.com or (716) 882-7705.

The event will be held in the Gathering Room of St. Gregory the Great Parish located at 200 St. Gregory Court, Williamsville, NY 14221.

Two Food Lab Papers Published

The Food Lab is pleased to announce two members of the lab were published this fall.

Dr. Samina Raja’s paper, “Rustbelt Radicalism: A Decade of Food Systems Planning Practice in Buffalo, New York” has been published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.

Dr. Solhyon Baek’s paper, “Park Design and Children’s Active Play : A Micro-Scale Spatial Analysis of Intensity of Play in Olmsted’s Delaware Park” was published in Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design.

We congratulate both researchers and encourage you to read and share the articles.

David W. Wolfe, Ph.D., keynote speaker, presents Climate Change and the Future of Food on October 10th, 2014 at UB.

The Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab presents Climate Change and the Future of Food on Friday, October 10th at 2pm in 114 Wende Hall on UB’s South Campus.

Dr. David W. Wolfe is Professor of Plant and Soil Ecology in the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University, and a leading authority on climate change impacts on natural ecosystems and food security. He has co-authored several influential reports for policy-makers, such as the 2014 National Climate Assessment sponsored by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. He currently leads a $5 M USDA project focused on new tools for greenhouse gas management in agroecosystems, and contributes to several soil conservation and climate change adaptation projects in the Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania. At Cornell he teaches “Climate Change and the Future of Food” and chairs the Atkinson Center Climate Change Focus Group. He has been featured on National Public Radio and other news media outlets, and is author of the award-winning book on soil ecology for general audiences, Tales From the Underground: A Natural History of Subterranean Life.

Following the presentation, a facilitated Q & A session will take place. Please direct questions to Subhashni Raj at subhashn@buffalo.edu