Food for All: An Interview With Sam Springs of Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture

Introduction

As of 2019, 16% of North Carolinians were not living in close proximity to a grocery store; the “Healthy North Carolina 2030” goal is to reduce that percentage to 5% [1]. Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture is one North Carolina organization that has been doing this work since 2003, working to provide equitable access to high-quality local food and deepening consumers’ relationships with farmers and other food producers in the Western part of the state [2].

Sam Springs is the distribution coordinator for Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, working with its Food Hub Satellite Program and designing its expansion with a focus on reducing food disparities and improving accessibility. This issue’s guest editor, Greensboro Housing Coalition Executive Director Josie Williams, talked with Springs about her work supporting equitable and sustainable food systems in North Carolina.

Josie Williams (NCMJ): How does access to food—or the lack of access to food—impact health?

Sam Springs: Everyone has different nutritional needs, but everyone needs access to healthy food. That’s just the physical aspect of it; there are so many other aspects of health. Not having reliable access or dignified access ... that does affect your mental well-being, your social well-being. You should not have to worry whether or not you can get fresh, healthy food.

Americans consume too much saturated fat, and we eat processed food full of preservatives, but that’s what you find at the corner store. Those foods are more accessible than healthy foods since they are less expensive and more convenient. There are barriers to keeping healthy food around all the time. For example, many foods have to be refrigerated because healthy food is inherently perishable.

There’s no lack of healthy foods; we grow more food than we need, by far, but we waste most of it. It’s because systemically, it’s not accessible enough yet. I feel like this is a really good time to start laying those foundations, because if we don’t, the [disparity] grows wider and wider, and that comes with a whole other host of issues. Just bringing it closer to home is a big thing. That’s something we focus on at Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture.

JW: Let’s talk about how Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture is addressing food access. What does that look like?

SS: Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture operates the High Country Food Hub, which is an online farmers market. If you live somewhere in the High Country—including Watauga County (Boone, Blowing Rock) and surrounding counties—customers can order online and go and pick it up once a week in Boone. We communicate with over 100 local farmers who all live within 100 miles of Boone. They bring us their produce on Tuesdays. We have staff and volunteers who help us pack it up and put it into customer orders, and then people come and pick up their order on Wednesdays.

I was brought on due to a Golden Leaf Foundation grant that is helping us expand the Food Hub by establishing satellite pickup locations. Our Satellite Program Coordinator and I designed this program, which will to allow us to have five (or more) satellite locations around the High Country. We tried to place them strategically—away from the main Hub in Boone, but in places where people live, especially rural areas that are considered food deserts. Our slogan is “Local Food, Closer to Home.”

We’ve gotten a pretty good response from it so far. We’re bringing local food closer to people. Some of the directions that we really want to go in are getting deeper into the rural areas and working with specific communities to find out what their needs are and make healthy food a little bit more accessible to them. Being able to afford healthy food is only one barrier. You might be able to afford it, but not have transportation, or perhaps you don’t have the time to drive to pick it up because you work two jobs to support your family.

The other main project that I have the opportunity to work on is our LocalFAM (Local Food as Medicine) program. This is our food access program, which enables community organizations to help out their neighbors with fresh, nutritious free food on a weekly basis, supplied by local producers. The food is free to our recipients, but producers are paid full retail for their products. Funding is provided by grants and donations. So far, it has been operated as three separate projects across two counties, partnering with five local organizations to redistribute the food to their communities. Some of our recipient organizations give their customers the food in boxed shares containing a variety of healthy foods, and some of our partners receive the food in bulk and redistribute it from their food pantries, such as the client-choice pantry in Blowing Rock that allows its customers to shop for themselves. I like that model because it supports that idea of dignity—being able to choose their own items empowers folks to feel more positive about accessing food via pantries. We’re formulating new projects for 2022 that will help us bring food to Alleghany and Ashe counties, extending to Avery County and Caldwell County in the future. I’ve been really grateful to work with a lot of awesome people who really care about what they’re doing.

JW: You just light up when you talk about it.

SS: I love being able to connect folks to healthy, accessible food. My grandma was one that was willing to feed anyone who came to her doorstep. If she had three of something, she’d give you two. The people in her neighborhood always knew they could come talk to Ms. Sadie, and she would make sure they had what they needed. In return, they would make sure she was taken care of, too. That’s part of what really influenced me growing up. We’re all the same. Why should some people be unable to afford things that are basic rights, like being able to feed themselves? People with access to healthy food are happier, more productive, and have more time to engage with their communities instead of constantly struggling to make ends meet.

JW: Can you talk more about the results you’re seeing in the lives of people, their overall well-being?

SS: On average, 1 in 6 people in the High Country region are food insecure [3]. Since the beginning of the LocalFAM program, we have provided more than 3700 boxes of local food, totaling more than 24,000 pounds of fresh, healthy food put on our neighbors’ tables. Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwestern North Carolina shared some feedback with us after the end of our project in Wilkes County. One of the quotes that stood out to me the most was, “I didn’t think I deserved to get the very best stuff from the farmers.” I think it’s a shame that anybody should ever have to feel that way. Our farmers were able to receive really great support from our LocalFAM program, too: since 2020, we’ve generated over $88,000 in revenue for local farming families. Farming is not easy, nor is it a get-rich-quick scheme. People do it because they love it, or because it’s what their family has done for generations.

Our goals in the future include supporting our producers even more by providing a reliable market channel throughout the year and opportunities to expand their operations even more.

JW: What are the challenges in this work that you see at the policy level?

SS: One thing we’ve noticed that has been a barrier to success is permanent funding. When grants run out, that’s an immediate gap. There’s enough food to go around, but there’s not enough money. Also, receiving funding that would allow us to work with systems that cook the food would help us address other barriers to food access. It’s hard to give a box of fresh veggies to an unhoused person if they lack the means to cook it, but that doesn’t mean that unhoused people don’t also deserve to eat healthy food.

Another systemic issue is the inability to use food assistance programs like EBT/SNAP and WIC with our online system. High Country Food Hub uses an online farmers market software that does not currently accept EBT online (though we hope to have that function available in 2022). We welcome EBT customers and are able to process their payment separately, but that presents a different set of issues and makes it so that our ordering system is not truly equitable. We still don’t have the ability to accept WIC vouchers, even though we offer foods that are eligible for the program. These are federal programs meant to help people access healthy food, but there are still practical everyday issues that keep people from being able to use them easily.

JW: What do you think we need to do to achieve the Healthy NC 2030 goal of shrinking the percentage of the population with limited access to healthy food?

SS: I think consolidating community networks so that fewer people fall in the cracks is essential. Food access programs can’t benefit people who don’t know about them. Expanding the scope of food access programs is important, too. If a food pantry is only open for three hours on a Monday afternoon, it might as well not be open for most people. Food access groups can work together to share resources and strategies.

People who are fortunate enough to not currently experience food access issues have an opportunity to share their privilege by offering their time and resources to their local food access organizations. Food pantries and programs need volunteers.