Extension agent Cynthia Javor is part of a project working to create a community partnership to address issues affecting Allegheny County's food system. Supermarket closings in urban neighborhoods such as Braddock have become a major problem for many local residents.

Despite a seemingly abundant supply of food, 30 million Americans suffer from chronic undernourishment. As of April 1995, nearly 520,000 Pennsylvania households received food stamps, which helped 1,186,047 people buy food. A 1993 Penn State survey identified 2,176 emergency food providers in the state, suggesting a high demand for such services statewide. Particularly in urban areas, food access and affordability are growing problems. "Hunger among the poor is a very serious issue in Allegheny County, and it becomes a bigger problem the closer you get to Pittsburgh," says extension agent Cynthia Javor. "Just Harvest, an antihunger advocacy group, recently published a study that found that one in seven children under age 12 in Allegheny County is either hungry or at risk of hunger. In the city, that figure rises to one in four."

Javor participates in a Kellogg Foundation project administered by the Minnesota Food Association. The Local Food System Project in Allegheny County, one of six to receive funding across the nation, unites representatives of Penn State Cooperative Extension, Just Harvest, the Allegheny County Health Department, and the Food to Grow Coalition of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. "Our goal is to create a community-government partnership to address local food system issues, while strengthening services to hungry people," Javor says.

Food retailing in Pittsburgh has become much more concentrated in recent years, making access to food a challenge for many residents. "A&P, Kroger, and Thorofare left the area during the 1970s and 1980s," says Ken Regal, codirector of Just Harvest. "In the past 20 years, about 18 supermarkets have closed. Individual stores–generally at or near suburban shopping malls–have been modernized and expanded, but smaller stores in the urban center have disappeared. Most affected are residents of low-income communities with inadequate transportation to remaining supermarkets. Even the Strip District, a receiving and warehouse center for food suppliers from around the country that also supports a thriving retail trade, is threatened by land development pressure from nightclubs and other businesses."

In 1990, in response to pressure from Just Harvest and other groups, the city established the Pittsburgh Food Policy Commission to respond to inner-city supermarket closings. The commission, which included members of Just Harvest, was instrumental in establishing a subsidized shuttle bus service to connect isolated public housing projects with supermarkets and the Strip District, at a nominal cost to consumers. That commission has folded, however, leaving a void that the Local Food Systems Project hopes to see filled. "Most people just don't understand how the food system works, but it's vital to us all," Javor says. "We want people to start asking serious, forward-looking questions about it. For instance, the full potential for growing food in the city has yet to be realized. Could we revitalize community urban gardens? There are a lot of abandoned steel mills. You probably couldn't grow anything on the land, but what about building greenhouses? Such questions should be considered in long-term planning efforts, so we're trying to create a community-government coalition to address local food system issues."

The thriving retail trade that has flourished in the Strip District, a Pittsburgh warehousing center for food suppliers from around the nation, is threatened by land development pressure from nightclubs and other businesses.

To better understand how changes might affect the food system throughout Pennsylvania, researchers in the college are developing a quantitative model of the state's food economy. "This model will let us ask Ôwhat if?' questions and analyze the impacts of a variety of possible changes across the food system," says agricultural economist Milton Hallberg. "If the price of oil rises, or if international trade causes grain prices to increase, or if a drought occurs, how would our entire food system be affected? To answer those types of questions, our model will integrate the farming, food processing, and farm input sectors, as well as linkages with Pennsylvania's general economy. Historically, agricultural economists have focused on specific commodities, but we're increasingly recognizing the connections among different parts of the food system and the rest of the economy. The system is so complex that no one person knows everything about it. We're involving experts on various sectors, as well as faculty from food science and other departments." By the turn of the century, the completed model should help the entire spectrum of food-related businesses predict what may happen in their industries. "This could provide the basis for an annual report on the state of Pennsylvania's food economy, which would make projections about what might happen to the food system under various scenarios," Hallberg says. "No previous project has attempted to fully integrate agricultural production, food processing and retailing, and the general economy into a single model."

Meanwhile, other faculty are looking at the needs of future students who will be seeking jobs in the food system. The Kellogg Foundation is supporting KEYSTONE 21–The Pennsylvania Food Systems Professions Education Program, as part of a national effort to develop educational strategies for the professionals who will serve the food system in the 21st century. KEYSTONE 21, a partnership among Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences and Commonwealth Educational System, the Rodale Institute, and Cheyney University, a historically African-American university with an urban focus, is divided into two phases. The first, an 18-month "visioning" process, was completed in 1995. Program staff asked hundreds of food system stakeholders to imagine the year 2020 and the changes higher education should make to support food system professionals. "There should be a place at the table for everyone in any serious discussion of the food system," says agricultural economist Theodore Alter, the program's director and interim dean of the college. "In addition to farmers, processors, distributors, and food service workers, we asked teachers, emergency food workers, reporters, health care professionals, and others to consider what the food system will require from its employees throughout their careers and what changes should be made in education to better support them. It was a chance for today's food system professionals to help shape tomorrow's educational programs."


The program now is entering a five-year implementation phase, which will support multiple efforts aimed at inducing systemic and sustainable change in food systems professions education. "Education needs to help people in all walks of life understand and be more involved in the entire food system," Alter says. "We're looking for creative educational initiatives that emphasize innovative collaboration among partners. For example, our college might team up with a multimedia organization to inform the public about the food system, or the College of Education might collaborate with Cheyney University to develop a food systems education program for city kids of all ages. The key is for the program to generate real, sustainable change in food systems education in light of our vision of 21st century needs."