Florida Food Forum: Strengthening Southeast Florida's Food System: Partnerships and Policies

Florida Food Forum - August's Topic: 
Strengthening Southeast Florida's Food System: Partnerships and Policies

Join us online from 12-1:30pm (EST) on Friday, August 27th, for a special session of the Florida Food Forum on "Strengthening Southeast Florida's Food System: Partnerships and Policies." Arely B. Lozano Cantu, Senior Program Manager in Health and Community Development at Urban Health Partnerships, Commissioner Sabrina Javellana from the City of Hallandale Beach and Commissioner Sandra Welch from the City of Coconut Creek, and staff from both of these municipalities will be speaking on this important topic. Following the presentation municipal leaders and community-based partners will be engaging in an informative discussion and Q&A session with attendees to further explore the connections between food system action, policy and collaboration.

Guest Speaker Information: 

Arely B. Lozano Cantu is the Senior Program Manager in Health and Community Development at UHP. She possesses over 9 years of experience in community organizing, grass-roots and community-based approaches in education and research, management and development, community health, and in programming support and solutions. Having gained her skills through grassroots organizing, youth and justice advocacy, and professional community and public health work, she holds a strong passion for amplifying people’s voices and building, developing, and supporting strategic and impactful action towards improving health-empowerment and all opportunities in underserved communities. Arely leads UHP' Food Access, Security and Justice work and manages the Food for All Broward initiative, the South Broward Community Health Hub Collaboration, and the Go for Healthy Growth Campaign projects; she also guides and supports the implementation of the Community Liaison Framework for the organization. Arely is fluently bilingual and holds a B.A. in Psychology and a M.A. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of food, health, race, class, immigration, and gender.

Broward County Food Access Champions: 

Commissioner Sabrina Javellana and the City of Hallandale Beach Team

Sabrina Javellana, working with the City Mayor, Joy Cooper, the City Manager’s office, and the Public Works Department/Green Initiatives staff have been leading important policy changes in support of increased food access for their residents, more specifically, by connecting food security and access with development and built environment improvements. Working with Food for All Broward, Commissioner Javellana and the City's team identified important code updates that will allow for expanded urban agriculture in the municipality and will be introducing a resolution and an ordinance which further expands residents’ ability to grow, get, and sell healthy foods right in their community. City staff also proposed regulations about the tree canopy to include fruit trees in their landscape policy. The City developed and implemented a zero food waste policy under the Community Redevelopment Agency and they encourage community gardens in multi-unit residences by incentivizing developers through their green building code.

Commissioner Javellana, recognizes the connection between food access and equitable development, serving on the Broward Solid Waste and Recycling Working Group, establishing and supporting food distributions during COVID-19, and taking the time to learn more about equitable development noting in a Facebook post that “I’m going to continue doing my part to make sure we are most successful in seeing through affordable housing and infrastructure improvements for families and seniors, public art, food accessibility, and local job generation (reference).” Commissioner Javellana and other Hallandale Beach leadership understand that we cannot separate food from the built environment, and they have taken steps to ensure development planning incorporates aspects of the food systems to best serve their community in an equitable and just way.

Commissioner Sandra Welch and the City of Coconut Creek Green Team

Under the leadership of previous Mayor and Commissioner Sandra Welch, the City of Coconut Creek Manager’s office and staff from the Department of Sustainable Development have helped improve food access for their residents by more effectively connecting food security and access goals to their green plan and other sustainability focused efforts. In 2019 the city passed a resolution expressing their commitment to establishing policy to promote a healthy environment with food access, food security, and cleaner air for all. As part of that they committed to: considering food system efforts as part of the planning process, updating municipal plans or codes as needed; recommending green policies for increasing government procurement/processing of locally produced foods and access to healthy foods within government buildings and public institutions; and to help improve soil and air quality through green development, composting, increasing local access to healthy foods, and by promoting alternative transit opportunities. All to help prevent hunger and other environmental- and nutrition-related issues.

Working with Food for All and with Commissioner Welch's leadership, the City has led important changes including making fruit trees the trees that are provided to community members for planting during the City's annual tree giveaway, updating the Audubon International recommendations and implementing some of these sustainable food system elements and changes into their Green Plan. In addition, they have made a commitment to composting education to help reduce food waste and to support and expand their farmer’s market thus addressing several different aspects of the food system through policy, systems, and environmental changes. Commissioner Welch also serves on the county Climate Change Task Force, and as a Food Access Champion consistently brings to the Task Force's attention that climate and food are interconnected and that there are effective, evidence-based food and climate access solutions available. This and the other changes the City of Coconut Creek has supported are helping break down the silos that separately address inadequate food systems and environmental challenges and this has allowed food access to become a more central focus for their community and the entire county.

Forum Host: Erica Hall has an extensive background as a community organizer, advocate, trainer, Board member, and Senior Legal Professional who has worked in urban agriculture, food policy, community engagement, neighborhood revitalization, historic preservation and community economic development. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors at the Florida Food Policy Council.

The Florida Food Forum is a free event and a recording will be made available to the public after the webinar. To support our work, please consider becoming a member or making a donation.

For questions or more information, contact us at: info@flfpc.org

Disclaimer: The views of the presenters do not represent the views of the Florida Food Policy Council. We are a forum for the offering and sharing of information and encourage diversity and communication within the food system.