State officials have released a draft of Rhode Island’s first comprehensive food plan. The strategy tackles food insecurity and seeks to market the state as a leader in various food industries.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 12 percent of Rhode Islanders are food insecure and don’t have access to adequate quantities of food or access to enough nutritious food.
Those numbers led Gov. Gina Raimondo to hire the state’s first Directory of Food Strategy, Sue AnderBois, last year.
AnderBois and health policy experts have divided the state’s food system into three components- health and access, economic development, and agriculture and fisheries. The food plan they’ve designed aims to strengthen those components, and now AnderBois says the proposal needs public input.
In a public forum yesterday, Providence residents raised questions and offered suggestions for the plan. Most feedback focused on health and access.
Ashley Speckman studied culinary nutrition at Johnson & Wales. She attended the forum hear how the plan would tackle food education.
“Food can be intimidating to people. You see all these foods you don’t know, and you’re like, I’m not buying it. They can educate people on where it grows, how to use it, what it takes like,” said Speckman.
Speckman says a person shouldn’t have to major in nutrition to learn about healthy eating. She’d like to see more programs that would educate people on food.
Eliza Lawson was another attendee. She recently took a job with the Rhode Island Public Health Institute, one of the partners that helped design the food strategy. She wants to find ways child care providers could have access to nutritious foods.
“I’ve heard from a lot of child care providers that they’re not really able to offer healthy food because they don’t have the funds to purchase healthy food,” said Lawson.
Lawson says federal meal programs reimburse child care providers at such low rates, providers often opt to go to a BJ’s and buy noodles or graham crackers to keep children full. She’d like to see more partnerships between farms and child care providers so children- a group vulnerable to food insecurity- could be afforded more fruits and vegetables.
Although hunger and nutrition took most of the discussion time Wednesday, the food strategy also aims to make the Ocean State a leader in various food industries.
The plan wants to promote sustainable fishing and agriculture. It also wants to market Rhode Island as one of the friendliest states for food businesses, like restaurants.
The public comment period technically ends Friday, but AnderBois says she’ll continue accepting informal feedback until the plan is published in May.
