Annual Food Report

Looking for the recently published 2009-2010 Annual Report on the Detroit Food System?

• Click on the link below or copy and paste the url into your browser, you can then view and/or download a copy of the full report: http://www.clas.wayne.edu/multimedia/usercontent/File/SEED/2DetFoodReport_2009-10lores.pdf

• Or, read an embedded version of the report below.
  

About

This report is the first of an annual series released by the Detroit Food Policy Council  (DFPC), which first convened in 2009. It fulfills a key goal of the DFPC, which is to:

produce and disseminate an annual City of Detroit Food System Report that assesses the state of the city’s food system, including activities in production, distribution, consumption, waste generation and composting, nutrition and food assistance program participation and innovative food system programs.

The other goals and a summary of events that resulted in the formation of the Detroit Food Policy Council are described in Section 1. Sections 2, 3 and 4 present substantive information about the community, Detroit’s food system, and innovative activities to repair gaps in the food system and build more sustainable and just alternatives.

Although the most recent data available are provided in the report, the baseline year for the report was 2009.  Also, wherever possible and relevant, data are offered in a comparative light, relative to a few years ago, or to the region and the state, or to the rest of the sector of which they are a part.  Because this is the first such effort of the DFPC, the report relied entirely on pre-existing sources of data and analysis, and in some cases derived estimates for Detroit based on national averages; no primary research was undertaken for this report.  We expect that future reports will incorporate more recent data unavailable to this one—such as from the 2010 Census—and findings from primary research to answer questions specific to Detroit and for that time. 

We also expect that future reports will contain a more detailed listing and systematic assessments of both the conventional and “alternative” food systems in Detroit.  For example, many Detroit organizations collect data on their programs for internal purposes and data in categories of interest to the general public may or may not be available.  Hopefully the need for more consistent data for future annual reports will contribute to the development of uniform data-gathering and related tools in the community.  The DFPC should take the lead in designing such tools.

The 2010 report’s compilation of data and analysis and writing were done entirely on volunteer time and effort primarily by a Wayne State University urban planning faculty member (Kami Pothukuchi) with assistance from a student (Annette Stephens) over ten months.  We anticipate that future DFPC reports will have a budget associated with research and analysis to enable research on emerging questions and the compilation of the report itself.  I am grateful to council members, community-based experts, and the DFPC coordinator, all who contributed data and analysis, and/or chased down sources of data, for this report. 

It is no secret that these are hard times for Detroit’s residents.  Even prior to the economic downturn that hit the country hard in 2008, Detroiters suffered through a higher rate of unemployment than the region or the state.  In 2009, the official unemployment rate jumped to 28 percent.  The federal stimulus helped the city somewhat through jobs in shovel-ready projects and food assistance, among other things, but many schools were closed or consolidated, and talk of rationalizing neighborhoods to provide services more efficiently was everywhere, engendering both fears about losing even more ground as well as hope for meaningful reorganization of resources.  During the same time, leaders of neighborhoods and food organizations organized more residents to grow their own food and sell to their neighbors, developed initiatives to increase access to healthy food in neighborhoods, and fostered a lively debate on needed changes in the city’s food system. 

The Detroit Food Policy Council is one outcome of such debates.  We hope that this report will inform future initiatives and help in the coordination existing ones, assess initiatives for outcomes and impacts identified by DFPC goals, and enhance synergies between those in community food security and broader community empowerment and development.