Above: Volunteers with 412 Food Rescue’s Grocery Bagging Program organize donations of fresh, frozen, and non-perishable items from local grocery warehouses to provide nutrition assistance to communities experiencing food insecurity. Photo courtesy of 412 Food Rescue.
The corner of Danbury and Crispen Streets in Perry South is home to Ballfield Farm, a neighborhood project established in 2008 that turned a long abandoned baseball field into a thriving community garden.
It once provided fresh and locally grown produce to the Charles Street Farm Stand. The market was managed by The Pittsburgh Project from 2009 to 2012 and was an asset to the neighborhood during a time when around 12.5% of Pennsylvanians were experiencing hunger and food insecurity. The garden is still blooming, but the market was forced to close due to capacity restraints.
“If we could bring that back, where we have food from the local garden that we can sell at an affordable price and get kids from The Pittsburgh Project to help grow it, and get the food into their afterschool programming and summer camps. That’s kind of the dream,” said Jo Deming, Perry Hilltop resident and former executive director for Pittsburgh Food Policy Council (PFPC).
The PFPC has played a pivotal role in advancing the region’s food systems strategies and getting the Food Justice Fund (FJF) approved by City Council in 2023. The $3 million fund aims to build food sovereignty and prioritize investments in grassroots efforts to address food apartheid.
In December 2024, Pittsburgh City Council approved the first round of FJF awards for large-scale investments in the food system, including Grow Pittsburgh, Jasmine Nyree Homes, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and the Just Harvest Education Fund. A total of $1.1 million was awarded. The second round, Grassroots Grants, will open for applications on Monday, March 10, 2025. This year, a total of $1.5 million is available, with grants of up to $75,000 for eligible projects.
The hope, Deming said, is that this funding will be built upon to increase equitable access to opportunities that help people grow, learn about, and eat culturally relevant foods.
“The food apartheid issue has been central to the campaign for the Food Justice Fund committee and really, the idea of food justice acknowledges the structural racism that’s led to our communities being divested in and led to the inequality and inequities in our communities that affect access to food.”
Ending Food Apartheid, Building Food Sovereignty
Feeding America reported that in 2022, 11.4% of Allegheny County residents and 12.3% of Beaver County residents were food insecure. In total, that’s over 160,000 people out of the 1.41 million people living in Allegheny and Beaver Counties. To put that in perspective, people who are food insecure would fill 2.37x the capacity of Acrisure Stadium.
This past September, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank reported that they distributed 48 million meals and 15.7 million pounds of produce from July 2023 to June 2024, an increase from 42 million and 12.5 million the previous year.
Food security, improved nutrition and sustainable agriculture fall under Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger (SDG 2). While analyzing hunger in our region, analysis shows that Southwestern PA communities that fall within the lowest 20% of SDG 2 also rank lower for No Poverty (SDG 1), Life on Land (SDG 15), and Quality Education (SDG 4). Communities with the lowest SDG 2 index scores have 8.9x the racial and ethnic population and 16.8x higher Black populations than those scoring highest.
There are a total of 17 SDG’s, which were created globally as a call to action to raise the quality of life for all people and preserve the future of our planet.
“We deeply believe that food is a right, not a privilege,” said Greg Austin, director of distribution initiatives for 412 Food Rescue. “Pittsburgh topographically and geographically is infamously redlined, and we’re happy to do the work of trying to break those lines down and make food available where it’s not.”
According to their 2023 Impact Report, from 2018 to 2023 the 412 Food Rescue network enabled more than 228,000 people living in high-poverty areas to be within a 15-minute walk of food support. Since their launch in 2015, they’ve redirected 170 million pounds of food that would have otherwise gone to a landfill. Two of 412 Food Rescue’s programs that collect, cook, and redistribute this food, the Good Food Project and Grocery Bagging Program, operate from the Millvale Food Energy Hub.
When a basic need like food isn’t easily attainable it can become an urgent matter, and if people don’t prioritize that need, their health suffers, Austin said.
“Different disadvantages can pile up very quickly, and our goal is to free up a community’s strength by allowing them to focus on something other than meeting their basic needs.”
In the Hilltop, 412 Food Rescue participates in a monthly food distribution program called Fresh Fridays. This initiative by Hilltop Alliance and other organizations provides fresh and dried goods to 350 families from the 15203, 15210, and 15211 zip codes.
Raynise Kelly, who lives and grew up in the area, said the closest grocery stores today are one to two miles away in Carrick, Mt. Washington or the South Side, but she remembers at least three local mom-and-pop stores from her childhood that no longer exist.
According to data released in December 2024 by the Institute of Local Self-Reliance, the collapse of independent grocery stores can be linked to the government’s decision in 1981 to stop enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act – a critical antitrust law meant to ban price discrimination by suppliers.
“None of that is in our area now. People literally have to catch two buses to get to Shop & Save or Giant Eagle,” Kelly said. “The people are here, but the food isn’t.”
She and her sister TaRay Kelly opened Soil Sisters Plant Nursery in Allentown in 2020 with the mission “to ensure access to fresh food in communities facing food apartheid.” They focus on providing the resources, knowledge, and accessibility to fresh produce and seedlings to farmers, school gardens, local gardeners, homesteaders, and various organizations.
Their shop is located at 123 Beltzhoover Ave., but they’re working to expand their footprint in the community. They’ve partnered with the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Pittsburgh Land Bank to secure four properties, totaling nearly 17,000 square feet, on Beltzhoover Avenue to build an urban farm that will provide gardening education opportunities to residents and a fresh produce market that will accept EBT/SNAP benefits.
Data pulled from New Sun Rising’s Vibrancy Index indicates that 11.9% of residents, approximately 168,000 people, in Allegheny and Beaver Counties receive SNAP benefits. In both counties, 29.7% of residents, approximately 420,000 people, are considered obese. The Food Trust, a Millvale Food Energy Hub Tenant, is helping to make fresh produce and other healthy food accessible and affordable in Western Pennsylvania through their SNAP incentive “Food Bucks” program.
“If we have healthier food options, we can start to see that food is medicine,” Kelly said.
She wants to meet the community where they’re at and provide programs that are accessible and “all-encompassing” for residents of any age, but during the warmer months they want to “really focus on the youth” and strengthen their relationship with food. Last summer, she and her sister led an agricultural based summer camp at the Beltzhoover Community Center and shared their plans for the urban farm with the kids.
“We really need them to be at [the farm] to know that it happened, from dreaming it up to making it a real thing, so they know that this is possible,” Kelly said.
For Deming, she hopes the FJF is an investment in projects and programs like the Soil Sisters “who have been doing the work to make sure our neighbors can eat and understand what nutritious food is, and have opportunities to have businesses where they sell affordable nutritious food that their neighbors can buy.”
The second round of FJF Grassroots Grants will be available to 501(c)(3) nonprofits with a budget of $500,000 or less, or to individuals and unincorporated groups represented by a fiscal sponsor, and range from $2,000 to $75,000. These grants are not available to for-profit entities, and the city has partnered with New Sun Rising to manage the distribution of the $1.5 million in funding. The City of Pittsburgh will open applications on March 10, 2025 and the deadline to apply is April 14, 2025. Information about upcoming community meetings will be published soon. To sign up for email alerts when applications open, visit: bit.ly/PGHFJF
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