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Q&A
New York City Regional Food Working Group: Purpose and outcomes
0:34:56
ยท
115 sec
Council Member Brewer inquires about the New York City Regional Food Working Group, its activities, and outcomes. Kate MacKenzie provides information on the group's origin, focus, and current status.
- The working group started during the pandemic to address interstate food transportation issues.
- Current focus includes maximizing the use of certain crops grown in New York State for city institutions like public schools.
- The group has evolved into the City Food Policy Project, looking at ways to improve the local food supply chain.
Gale A. Brewer
0:34:56
I I believe there's a, as a result of the report, the New York City regional food working group that you convene.
0:35:04
And I wanna know more about what they do.
0:35:06
I guess there are about a hundred regional partners.
0:35:09
You focus on things like, my favorite topic, agriculture in the watershed, infrastructure issues which you have mentioned, and other long term topics.
0:35:19
So I just didn't know what can you share about any takeaways from those meetings.
0:35:24
Did they meet?
0:35:25
What do they talk about?
0:35:26
What can we do to add to this discussion today from that discussion?
0:35:29
Discussion?
Kate MacKenzie
0:35:30
Sure.
0:35:31
So just for context for others, the regional food working group started during the pandemic early days when we were thinking about, like, interstate travel and you needed something to put in your windshield that you could move from one place to another and having think it was long haul storage for so that some of our trucks could stay at Hunt's Point overnight.
0:35:51
So just talking across state lines seemed so obvious and something that we continued throughout certainly the pandemic and I would say into and until about 2023.
0:36:01
Now we've taken a lot of those conversations and some work that my, team is working on with something called the city food policy project, which is looking at, certain crops that are grown in New York State and really finding ways that we might be able to maximize things like cabbage or things like
Gale A. Brewer
0:36:21
Lettuce.
0:36:22
Lettuce.
0:36:22
Lettuce.
Kate MacKenzie
0:36:23
Things like lettuce and leafy greens to find ways to get them into a washed and bagged facility that could come into New York State, into our public schools.
0:36:33
But there's a lot of, you know, certainly with DCP and looking at ways in which some of these, like, not one off at this point, but what that did, and again, I'll refer to the soft infrastructure of simply maintaining relationships, has really proven, successful in ways that, we see a lot
Gale A. Brewer
0:36:50
of fruits to their labor right now.