Heinz Endowments $267K grant round fuels urban farming, food access efforts

Nearly 175,000 Allegheny County residents — that’s 14% of the county population —struggle with hunger according to the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council.

In response to the region’s food insecurity woes, the Heinz Endowments approved $267,500 in new grants to pay for urban agriculture and better food access.

“We believe that all in our region deserve the benefits of good nutrition,” said Endowments Vice President of Sustainability Andrew McElwaine in a news release.

A large portion of the nearly $270,000 from the Endowments’ latest round of grants set aside for shoring up local food security — $190,000 — was awarded to the Community Foundation for the Alleghenies to help execute the Greater Pittsburgh Food Policy Council’s Food Action Plan.

The plan, devised through community input, has 150 approaches for shrinking food insecurity gaps. Pittsburgh Food Policy Council interim Executive Director Karlin Lamberto said the nonprofit is “focusing their efforts” on a subset of strategies at a time.

“One of the priority strategies is about improving equitable access to land for food growing and supporting community sovereignty to control land, have access to food, to be able to feed themselves,” Lamberto said.

The Food Policy Council has engineered a tool for identifying potential lots of land in Pittsburgh ripe for city farming. The process is more involved than spotting a stretch of grass.

“Oftentimes folks think that any vacant land can become a farm or a garden,” said Lamberto. “While in theory that’s true, we live in a city that has a history of a variety of types of contamination. And demolition practices impact soil quality and health.”

Beyond finding tenable dirt, the mapping project, said Lamberto, brings together the urban agricultural community, learns what their needs are and finds ways to send funding and resources their way.

Another Food Action Plan effort is to improve access to more locally grown food for students and teachers in the Pittsburgh Public Schools system. The Heinz Endowments’ most recent grants aimed at food insecurity — on top of the $1.5 million the foundation has committed to the cause in the past year — strives to provide greater access to not just any kind of food, but “fresh, high-quality and affordable food in the region,” according to the Endowments’ news release.

Also receiving grant money is the Millvale Development Corp., which will use the $42,500 it received to pay for updates to its urban farm, Gardens of Millvale, including a root cellar for food storage, and an event space for food education workshops and community dinners.

And $35,000 was given to the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture to fund scholarships, travel, lodging and child care so that local farmers can attend the 2023 Sustainable Agriculture Conference, in Lancaster, where they will learn best farming practices and network with food distributors who focus on food deserts.