Local Food Distribution — Building a Youth Led Food Movement in the Twin Cities
How YFMP sells and distributes our produce while addressing local food access
Food from the Roots is an innovative cultural communities production and distribution system focusing on local food access, which is designed to 1) engage low-income residents through a neighborhood based buying club, and 2) sell to ethnically specific restaurant or grocery businesses.
Informed by youth initiated community food assessments, Food from the Roots pools the financial resources of lower income families to purchase community defined culturally appropriate produce at an affordable price and will engage neighborhood ethnic restaurants and/or grocery businesses in the local food system.
Both aspects have been developed from current community partnerships and have already heighten the impact of locally produced produce in our neighborhoods. Food from the Roots seeks to knit these two experiences (youth driven community food assessments and locally focused urban produce growing and distribution) together to improve access of culturally appropriate food to low-income communities, build youth entrepreneurial capacity, and prototype a new model for providing food to cultural communities.
As a result of our community food assessments, the youth in each neighborhood program has come up with a distribution plan that fits their neighborhood needs the most. Information on how each neighborhood YFMP program distributes its produce, see the Neighborhood Based Programming description of each neighborhood.
