City and County Commissions discuss food system initiatives, hear update on emergency food assistance

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the December 10 Joint City of Gainesville/Alachua County Commission meeting, Commissioners discussed the County’s food system initiatives and heard an update on their efforts to provide emergency food assistance in response to an early-November suspension in SNAP funding.

County Commissioner Anna Prizzia: “[The food system] is very exploitive. That system is exploiting our environment, it’s exploiting people, and it’s exploiting our economy in ways that are mostly hidden from us.”

County Commissioner Anna Prizzia led off by saying the agenda item was originally intended to provide an update on the emergency food assistance provided by both the City and the County after SNAP funding was suspended for about two weeks in early November. She said, however, that County Commission Chair Ken Cornell added an update on the County’s food systems initiatives, so she wanted to give an overview of those initiatives: “We have sort of three pieces. We have the land piece… — like, without the farms that grow our food, we don’t have food. And so we’re working on the agricultural lands easements program, which will help protect that piece of it.”

Prizzia said the second piece is the “food piece: We have the farmers who are growing the food, the people who are in the food system itself,… and the food system is farms, but it’s so much more than that. It’s really about what I call the man behind the curtain,… [the pieces that] get your food from the farm to the plate. And right now, that system is very exploitive. That system is exploiting our environment, it’s exploiting people, and it’s exploiting our economy in ways that are mostly hidden from us.”

Prizzia said the County’s goals with the Food Hub are “to change that trajectory, to have a conversation about relocalizing our food system,… but also that we are bringing the conversations about food as medicine, food is health to our bodies, back to the center of the conversation, and that everybody that’s a part of that system has just as much right to that as the people who are eating it at… their dinner tables… In order to do that, we have to change that system.”

Prizzia: “When we talk about food being cheap,… I want people to understand that we’re still paying the prices. We’re just externalizing those prices right now.”

Prizzia said it’s “insane” for institutions like schools to charge $1.25 for a lunch, “so when we talk about food being cheap,… I want people to understand that we’re still paying the prices. We’re just externalizing those prices right now. We’re paying them to environmental destruction. We’re paying them in terms of healthcare dollars at the hospitals and diabetes care and heart disease, and we’re paying them in terms of people not getting paid fairly and people being exploited and people not being able to take care of their families because they’re working in these jobs that nobody else wants to do.”

Prizzia said the County also wants to support “the eaters” by doing education and outreach and making sure that everybody has access to healthy food; she said that conversations “around the grocery store and the work that we’re doing with the farmers’ markets, and the work we’re doing with the small farmers’ grant… is a big piece of this, as well.”

Emergency food assistance update

Bailey McClellan, Agricultural Economic Development Coordinator for Alachua County, reviewed the County’s emergency food assistance efforts, beginning with a November 4 vote to allocate $100,000 to Bread of the Mighty for boxes of staple foods and $100,000 to be split between farmers’ markets for fresh produce voucher programs and family resource centers for purchasing fresh local food. The County also sent letters to the City of Gainesville and the Children’s Trust of Alachua County (CTAC) to request an additional $100,000 for Bread of the Mighty and $100,000 for the family resource centers.

McClellan said the City allocated $100,000 to Bread of the Mighty (BOTM) and CTAC gave $100,000 to the family resource centers to purchase farm products. She said Bread of the Mighty has not yet received the full delivery of the products needed to complete the food boxes, “so to date, there has not been a distribution of food products throughout the county from Bread of the Mighty, specific to this funding.” She said BOTM anticipated receiving the food on December 15 and planned to start making deliveries after that. 

26 people served through farmers’ market vouchers

McClellan said her team contacted all the farmers’ markets across the county to determine their capacity to implement a fresh produce voucher program. The Grove Street Farmers Market said they could manage $5,000, and the High Springs Farmers Market said they could use $1,000. She said shoppers facing food insecurity can receive $25 per market day per week to purchase fruits, vegetables, and other high-quality farm products. She said Grove Street had served 15 people for $375 and High Springs had served 11 people for $275. 

McClellan said her team worked with Frog Song Organics to deliver food to the family resource centers, and they’ve delivered about 8,500 pounds of food to six centers so far. The program will also provide commercial refrigerators to at least two of the centers. 

SNAP came back online on November 12

City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut said, “When the County came to the City, we were told that 42,000 people were on SNAP and needed help immediately. So we’re saying that those people did not get the service?”

McClellan responded, “That’s an update we’ve received from Bread of the Mighty, that they have not received their shipment of food.” Chestnut asked whether SNAP is operating again, and McClellan said, “Yes, ma’am. SNAP came back online November 12.”

CTAC Director Marsha Kiner: “I think we were all disappointed that the turnaround wasn’t as fast as we thought it would be.”

CTAC Executive Director Marsha Kiner said, “I think we were all disappointed that the turnaround wasn’t as fast as we thought it would be.” She said boxes of food were delivered by Frog Song Organics to five of the six family resource centers, but “that, literally, was this week.”

Prizzia said, “When we made the motion, our understanding from Bread of the Mighty was that they were ready to go with their food box program,” and it sounded like they would be able to deliver food boxes the next day, “so we were frustrated to find out that that wasn’t the case.”

Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward said, “The SNAP issue created an enormous food insecurity demand… across the nation,… so it’s not like this is going to waste, and there’s no end to the current need.”

Prizzia said that before SNAP was suspended, “we were already seeing a 100% increase in demand for food assistance programs and a 30% reduction in the funding available… due to federal cuts that had already come down the pike.” She said additional cuts will come in 2026, “but we did think it was going to be immediate, and we’re disappointed that it wasn’t.”

County Commissioner Mary Alford said, “It wasn’t for lack of effort on their part. It was because there was so much demand across the country.”

City Commissioner Casey Willits: “I think we understood… that this wrench in the system was going to have months’ worth of fallout.”

City Commissioner Casey Willits said he was also disappointed, but “I also know that we were making a decision to hold our community together, not just over one or two or three weeks, but I think we understood… that this wrench in the system was going to have months’ worth of fallout.”

Overview of Alachua County food system

Going back to her presentation on food system initiatives, McClellan said Alachua County had 1,712 farms in 2022, with top crops of blueberries, bush beans, cucumbers, peppers, potatoes, squash, sweet corn, and watermelons; Alachua County ranks 6th in the state for hogs and pigs, 26th for chickens, and 28th for cattle.

McClellan said a Food Hub provides coordinated services, such as aggregation, sales, distribution, and marketing, to connect small and mid-sized farms with high-volume buyers. These buyers would be institutions such as the University of Florida, Santa Fe College, the hospital systems, the jail systems, community resource centers or food banks, and the school district. 

Food Hub pilot project

The County has now issued a Request for Proposals for a Food Hub Pilot Project to test the primary function of a Food Hub: aggregating and distributing local farm products to institutional buyers. 

When asked whether the County had any entity in mind for this, FrogSong Organics was mentioned as a company that is already aggregating food for local producers, but Prizzia said, “My hope is that there’s a number of organizations that are working in these arenas, already in our community, in very small ways, that can come together and build a collaborative model to do a pilot that would scale up what they’re doing a step and prove that this is possible.” She said there is an opportunity “from the City side” to think about existing partnerships and initiatives, including GCRA funding “to look at a retail grocery — we’ve had very little success with that, to date.”

Mayor Ward said, “Maybe [a grocery store on the east side] will happen, one day, but the grocery store chains have made it fairly clear at this point” that they’re not interested, “even with support, you know, with dollars.”

Prizzia said her “dream world” would be for the pilot to be successful, followed by a Phase 2 expanded pilot with state and federal appropriations and grant funding to build the infrastructure to have “a real-world Food Hub.”

County Commissioner Prizzia: “I’m talking about the ability for families to go and buy fresh food for their families on the eastern side of our county, besides Walmart on Waldo Road.”

Prizzia said she would like the City and County teams to work together to “see some real progress on food access… I’m talking about the ability for families to go and buy fresh food for their families on the eastern side of our county, besides Walmart on Waldo Road.” Prizzia also said she hadn’t had a chance to bring the idea forward yet, but she was interested in having a Community and School Gardens Coordinator position, possibly as part of the UF Extension program. She said the office could include, for example, a tool rental program and a seed library, along with bulk purchases of compost and other materials: “It is an idea and a vision, and I will put it out there… I do think that could be a really, really powerful resource as we think about food security, as we think about the challenge with people having access to fresh, nutritious foods. And so that’s just another piece of the puzzle.”

Ward said he saw opportunities for the City to partner on distribution of fresh food, at least, and he wanted “to put in a plug for… the EHEDI (Eastside Health and Economic Development Initiative) site; it is available, the infrastructure exists now… And there’s a lot more to be built there, and we need to find a way to make sure that that happens,.. because this is where most of the people are in the city, and the most unserved part of our city is right there, where EHEDI is.” He pointed out that City Manager Andrew Persons “did academic work on food systems as part of his Master’s program.”

Mayor Ward: “We are facing, I believe, a whole lot more people living on the street in our community, in every community in America; that is going to happen. The changes in federal funding for housing are going to impact people who are currently homeless in drastic ways.”

Ward added, “We are facing, I believe, a whole lot more people living on the street in our community, in every community in America; that is going to happen. The changes in federal funding for housing are going to impact people who are currently homeless in drastic ways,… and we have to talk more about how we approach that… As I have said many, many, many times, if we expect that the City of Gainesville and GRACE Marketplace will solve homelessness, we’re all going to continue to be disappointed. If we approach it together, we have a fighting chance.”

Ward continued, “It cannot be just the City and County. It’s got to be more. The school system has a stake in this, Santa Fe College, the Children’s Trust, the Community Foundation, etc., etc., have all got to play a part in this, because it is going to get worse, and we need to be aware of that.”

Updates since the December 10 meeting

Since the December 10 joint City/County meeting, Children’s Trust has announced the allocation of $150,000 to support Alachua County families impacted by the recent lapse in SNAP benefits. Of this amount, $125,000 has been designated for emergency food distribution. Bread of the Mighty has received an initial payment of $20,000 to begin supplying Children’s Trust-funded Family Resource Centers with up to 150 food boxes a week.

Patrick Dodds, from Bread of the Mighty: “To date, we have delivered over 1,400 boxes, accounting for over 26,000 lbs of food and 21,000 meals for our community.”

Patrick Dodds of Bread of the Mighty sent an email to City and County Commissioners after the meeting, saying the “notion that Bread of the Mighty has not distributed any boxes is inaccurate. To date, we have delivered over 1,400 boxes, accounting for over 26,000 lbs of food and 21,000 meals for our community. This effort is due in large part to the food bank expending its own funds and the rapid response of the City of Gainesville providing funding without delay and without reservation. It’s important to note that these boxes are in addition to the 800,000+ lbs of emergency food we distributed during the month of November.”

Dodds added, “It is true that Bread of the Mighty has been unable to distribute County-funded food boxes.” He wrote that this was due to County requirements that no funds could be reimbursed for any products purchased before the County issued a purchase order, and the first purchase order was provided to Bread of the Mighty on November 20, two and a half weeks after the County Commission’s motion to allocate funds for food boxes. 

Dodds concluded, “All of this is to say, this emergency food program has not been a disappointment on any front. We built a new program procuring, boxing, and deploying hundreds of thousands of pounds of food from the ground up in 25 business days during the holiday season and in response to a nationwide crisis.”