TESTIMONY
Compost Program Manager at East New York Farms on the Impact of Budget Cuts on Community Composting
1:56:01
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145 sec
The Compost Program Manager at East New York Farms discusses the detrimental impact of New York City budget cuts on community composting, particularly in East New York.
- The manager highlights the importance of community composting in addressing food justice, soil restoration, and creating a resilient food system in East New York.
- East New York Farms' compost program collects and processes food scraps locally, significantly reducing landfill waste and supporting gardeners with nutritious compost.
- The testimony emphasizes the challenges faced due to budget cuts, including the program's highest achievement year followed by the threat of discontinuation.
- East New York's unique position with the largest concentration of community gardens and issues of contamination and food insecurity is underscored.
- The manager concludes with an appeal for continued funding to preserve New York City's pioneering status in community composting at a national and international level.
UNKNOWN
1:56:01
Good morning, city council.
1:56:03
I'd like to start by thanking those council members thus far that have supported the funding of community composting.
1:56:10
Thanks again.
1:56:11
I'm here today to adjust address the city's decision to cut New York City's set of the art community conferencing program by 100% and report on the community impact that has had thus far, specifically in the community of East New York.
1:56:23
Who has suffered heavy loss by your cuts, please allow me to share.
1:56:26
For context, I'm the Compose Program Manager at East New York Farms, a nonprofit organization located in East New York, Brooklyn.
1:56:33
Our mission is to organize youth and adults to address food justice in our community by promoting local, sustainable agriculture, and community led economic development.
1:56:42
East New York has the highest concentration of community gardens in all New York City, and they also have disproportionately high levels of contaminated soil food and food insecurity.
1:56:52
Due to historic redlining civic divestment and environmental racism and injustice.
1:56:56
Now for composting, the Eastern Air France compost program collects foods graphs locally from residents and community based organizations, and we process them into rich nutritious black gold compost.
1:57:07
We distribute compost directly community members and gardens in our neighborhood to help restore their soil and supplement organic nutrients for gardeners, to allow their own resilient food system without pesticides or chemicals.
1:57:19
Our compost operation is small.
1:57:20
However, we process about £6000 of food scraps by hand each season.
1:57:25
We are also currently the only available food scrap drop off site in East New York as growing IC was forced to close their Cypress Hills operation this past week.
1:57:35
Big ReUs, who has supported our capacity limitations for producing compost, has helped us collect well over £12,000 of foods to food scraps this season from drop off site station in East New York, meaning the New York City compost project has tripled the amount of food scraps that East New Yorkers diverted from the landfill meeting community members increased demand to compost in East New York.
1:57:56
With their support, 2023 was our most successful year on record for community composting just in time for city budget cuts to take it all away.
1:58:04
I'd like to conclude by reinforcing that New York City has one of the oldest and certainly the most impressive community composting initiative in our country.
1:58:13
Our organization has a 10 conferences and events where New York City Compose programming is presented as an example for the rest of the US and world to follow is in possible for New York City to maintain this title without continuing to fund community composting.
1:58:26
Thank you.
