Closing the Food Gap– Food Security Partners event

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - On Thursday, July 24th at 6pm the Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee will host a book talk and signing with Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty. The event is free and open to the public and will be held at Second Presbyterian Church, 3511 Belmont Blvd, Nashville. The event will be followed by a light reception featuring locally-grown foods.

Winne will read from his book, Closing the Food Gap, in which he chronicles the beginnings of the food movement and the crippling effect Regan-era cuts to federal food assistance programs had on the poor and elderly. He charts the role “supermarket abandonment” and the proliferation of fast-food chains have played in the growing obesity and diabetes crisis among low-income Americans. Winne provides an insider’s look at strategies employed by those working to close the food gap in communities across the country, from New Orleans to Brooklyn to Oregon. Food banks, community gardens, farmer’s markets, cooperative supermarkets, community supported agriculture programs, and nutrition programs are just a few of the models he discusses

A book signing and reception will follow the reading.

Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace states: “Closing the Food Gap reveals the chasm between the two food systems of America-the one for the poor and the one for everyone else. Speaking from his decades of political activism, Mark Winne offers compelling solutions for making local, organic, and highly nutritious food available to everyone. It’s heartening to find a book that successfully blends a passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor.”

ABOUT MARK WINNE

From 1979 to 2003, Mark Winne was the executive director of the Hartford Food System, a private non-profit agency that works on food and hunger issues in the Hartford, Connecticut area. During his tenure with HFS, Winne organized community self-help food projects that assisted the city’s lower income and elderly residents. His work with the Food System included the development of commercial food businesses, Connecticut’s Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, farmers’ markets, a 25-acre community supported agriculture farm, a food bank, food and nutrition education programs, and a neighborhood supermarket.

Winne is a co-founder of a number of food and agriculture policy groups including the City of Hartford Food Policy Commission, the Connecticut Food Policy Council, End Hunger Connecticut!, and the national Community Food Security Coalition. He was an organizer and chairman of the Working Lands Alliance, a statewide coalition working to preserve Connecticut’s farmland, and is a founder of the Connecticut Farmland Trust. Mark was a member of the United States Delegation to the 2000 World Conference on Food Security in Rome and is a 2001 recipient of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary’s Plow Honor Award. From 2002 until 2004, Mark was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a position supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Mark currently writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community food assessment, and food policy. His essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the Hartford Courant, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Nation, In These Times, Sierra Magazine, Orion, Successful Farming and numerous organizational and professional newsletters and journals across the country. Winne now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. More information at www.markwinne.com

ABOUT THE FOOD SECURITY PARTNERS OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE

The Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee brings people together to create a more healthy, just, and sustainable food system for Middle Tennessee. The organization has over 100 Partners and Members representing all parts of the food system, from farm to fork. The Food Security Partners is a project of the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies and is funded through community support. More information at www.foodsecuritypartners.org.