Food Solidarity: Lessons from a Farmworker Community's Food Pantry Garden

Those that harvest our food often are nutrition insecure. Cultivate Abundance, a Florida-based nonprofit organization that partners with immigrant farmworkers, is helping to solve this problem by improving access to culturally important foods in their local emergency food system. Their work also highlights research on biodiversity of garden spaces and how it is used for food sovereignty within immigrant farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida. This session explores barriers to food access for these communities and how RDNs and NDTRs can both partner with and serve their nutrition insecure clients.

Planned with the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group

CPE Level: Level 2 (intermediate knowledge/experience)
CPEU: 1

Performance Indicators

• 1.8.5 Recommends sustainable diets and meal plans that are healthy, culturally relevant, accessible, economically fair and affordable, and respectful of their impact on land, water, air and energy use.
• 12.1.1 Advocates for and promotes food and nutrition programs and resources to address issues of food insecurity, nutritional health and overall health and wellness.
• 12.4.5 Identifies and creates partnerships with local and global food growers and producers to increase access to nutrient-dense food/crops that are affordable, culturally relevant, environmentally friendly, efficient, resilient and substantiable.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze barriers to food access for farmworker communities
• Evaluate the expertise of immigrant farmworkers to address nutrition insecurity
• Describe opportunities with community gardens to support local food pantries

Moderator

• Fadhylla Saballos Tercero, MPH, RD, CDN, IBCLC

Speakers

• Rebecca Garofano, MS
• Helen Midney, MA