This Urban Farm Director Wants Philly to Prioritize Food Access and Green Space
Meet Meg DeBrito, one of our 2020 Health Hero semi-finalists.
By Gina Tomaine
Philly Mag
9/28/2020
Excerpt:
What policy would you institute to make Greater Philadelphia a healthier region?
It would be twofold. I would suggest we offer all 415 farms and gardens in Philadelphia an opportunity to become part of the Neighborhood Gardens Trust to make sure that we preserve green space that has been in many neighborhoods for generations, when the land was undervalued by civic government structures. Many neighborhoods now depend on small farms and gardens for community engagement and meaningful green space allowing for shade, cooling, peaceful interaction and learning about plants.
I would look to the city to help resource more urban farms so that they can grow into stable entities. We subsidize large-scale architecture through our farm bills, in many cases these subsidies are for corn, soy, and sugar — crops that take a lot of space, cause toll on the soil and are bad for our bodies. If local governments started prioritizing nutrient-dense food growers and small-scale agricultural entities we would see increased possibility come out of the all the urban growing spaces that are tended to in the city. So many farms do huge things in communities, but do not have enough resources to scale up. We should prioritize land and land practices to lead the way to health in our communities.
