Located in eastern Brooklyn, a culturally diverse and underserved community, East New York Farms! (ENYF!) operates two farms and two community gardens that work to provide solutions to pressing food-justice issues by promoting local, sustainable agriculture and community-led economic development. This pioneering project, founded in the late 1990s, sits under the umbrella of United Community Centers (UCC), a social justice-driven community center that has been serving the East New York neighborhood for more than six decades.

“ENYF! is the only urban agriculture, food justice-led project in East New York,” explains project director Iyeshima Harris. “We have started multiple community gardens in the area and help community gardeners with the process of starting their own gardens.” The initiative offers extensive support to new gardeners, providing them with seeds and the option to sell the produce they grow at the ENYF! farmers market. It also offers training opportunities for gardeners in the form of weekly workshops that teach different gardening skills and techniques.

Advocating for healthy eating is an important part of ENYF!’s mission and the main focus of their community education program. “We hire community members, and we train them—people who love food and want to learn how to cook,” says Harris. “They then go out into the community and perform live demonstrations, and make recipes from the produce on the farm, or recipes from the farm’s cookbook. They basically educate the community on healthy eating or different produce that could be used to help combat a disease they might have.” The service is particularly crucial in their neighborhood, which is a victim of the contemporary destructive pattern seen in many low-income urban areas: the harmful combination of lack of access to affordable, fresh produce and the abundance of nutritionally poor fast-food options, both major contributors to high rates of food-related health problems such as obesity or type 2 diabetes. According to data from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, East New York suffers one of the highest incidences of type 2 diabetes in the city, with almost 15% of the population affected.

Read the full article about food justice by Mónica R. Goya at YES! Magazine.