A group of volunteers and organizations spent almost two years building a roadmap to establish an equitable, resilient food economy in Louisville by 2030 — one that supports workers and ensures all residents can reliably get healthy meals.
This fall, they created the Greater Louisville Food Council, a 22-member team that will lead the charge to accomplish the plan’s ambitious goals.
“Everybody has the passion about this vision,” said council co-chair Eneitra Beattie, a chef and founder of Greenz N Tingz.
A major aim is to remedy the city’s “racialized food gap,” where majority Black neighborhoods have much worse access to grocery stores and other sources of quality meals than majority white neighborhoods do, according to the report.
“There has been a huge struggle with getting access to fresh food,” said Beattie, who lives in west Louisville.
Dubbed “Food Vision 2030,” the group’s plan lays out three visions for the future: healthy local food for all, environmental justice and a just, resilient and sustainable food economy.
They’re examining every part of the food system — the farmers who grow food, the distributors and the buyers, even the composters who recycle the leftovers.
Amanda Fuller is on the steering committee for Food in Neighborhoods, a coalition that led Food Vision 2030’s development.
She said community volunteers and organizations worked together to create the plan, with support from roughly $240,000 in federal grant funding. They hosted a pair of “people’s summits” on food issues and gathered community input in other ways, such as focus groups.
To transform Louisville’s food economy, Fuller said they want to diversify and decentralize the production and distribution of food, with bigger opportunities for businesses owned by people of color. This, she said, will help spread profits and create more local control.
“We can nibble away at the monopolies that have really built up through all levels of the food system,” she said.
Improving local residents’ access to healthy food requires having more options, Fuller said, pointing to farms that do direct delivery and cooperative grocery stores as examples.
“How do we move food around to people through other channels, so that, you know, people who aren't close to Kroger still can have access to food through lots of other ways?” she explained.
The goals set by Food Vision 2030 range from changes to individual programs, like increasing the cap on financial incentives offered to restaurants through the Kentucky Department of Agriculture’s “Buy Local” program, to large-scale policy shifts, like boosting the statewide minimum wage to $20 an hour. (The Kentucky Legislature has repeatedly rejected minimum-wage increases.)
“If we apply ourselves to it, all of this is achievable,” Fuller said of Food Vision 2030’s goals. “There's nothing in here that's pie-in-the-sky.”
Dozens of goals are part of the new plan
Each of Food Vision 2030’s “principle visions” for Louisville’s near-future is broken down into goals. The roadmap identifies which proposals can be led by community members, which require action by Louisville Metro Government and which need backing from the state government.
For example, one goal is to “increase choices and dignity” for people with limited resources seeking food.
To do that, the plan says local partnerships can set up community kitchens where unhoused people can cook their own meals. Meanwhile, Louisville Metro Government can make policy changes that help people turn more vacant lots into gardens where food is locally produced.
At the state level, officials can make public benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly called food stamps — more robust and accessible to Kentuckians.
That last target could be a tough sell in the Kentucky Legislature, though. Lawmakers considered a move earlier this year that would’ve made it harder for people to qualify for SNAP benefits. The legislation ultimately didn’t pass.
Fuller, of Food in Neighborhoods, said one Food Vision 2030 proposal that would make a big difference is if Louisville Metro Government mandates that a percentage of all the food it buys must come from local sources.
“When anchor institutions like city governments or universities or hospitals institutionalize a local food purchasing policy, that can have a huge impact on local growers and producers,” she said. “So that's something that we're going to be looking very hard at.”
Next steps
Next month, the Greater Louisville Food Council will formally present the Food Vision 2030 roadmap to the Metro Council, said Beattie, the group’s co-chair.
“It’s a movement,” Beattie said of their mission. “We come together as a collaborative to present to Metro Council, like, ‘Hey, this is serious. And this is our vision, and it's going to save a lot of people's lives.’”
Beattie said they want to bring neighborhoods together, knock down political barriers between residents and push forward to make healthy meals accessible to everyone.
Local residents are invited to get involved in the initiative by helping pursue the plan’s community-led goals, which include creating more community gardens, especially in low-income and majority-nonwhite neighborhoods, and developing educational workshops on how to waste less food by composting.
People can also join one of the working groups that are brainstorming how to put Food Vision 2030’s strategies into action.
