Episode 117: One Food Market with a Big Mission
About the Podcast
What do you do when you identify that the basic needs of your community are not being met? You act. That’s how City Greens Market, a non-profit grocery store bringing food sovereignty to a neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, was born! You won’t want to miss what their executive director and sustainability expert, Lacy Cagle has to share!
About Lacy Cagle
Lacy Cagle is the Executive Director of City Greens Market, a nonprofit neighborhood grocery store that makes fresh, affordable, and (mostly) local food accessible in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, and promotes healthy living in that community. After working for a national sustainability education organization for 10 years, she's thrilled to be grounded in food justice work and furthering the vision of the Midtown Mamas (the founders of City Greens Market) in her own community.
For the last 15 years, Lacy has managed nonprofit programs and operations, edited course books, taught sustainability and systems change, and developed sustainability leaders. She holds a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and Policy with a focus on Leadership in Sustainability Education from Portland State University and a Permaculture Design Certificate. She is also a sustainability consultant and principle of Blackrock Consulting, an employee-owned consulting firm building capacity for progressive organizations in St. Louis. Lacy teaches Foundations and Practice of Sustainability, a required class in the Sustainability Degree program at Washington University in St. Louis.
Discussion Takeaways
- The goal of City Greens Markets is to provide fresh, quality food to neighbors, promote healthful cooking options, support the community’s empowerment, and buy from local producers and farmers.
- As much as possible, City Greens sources their produce from small, regional farms that utilize sustainable growing practices. The goal is to provide food sovereignty to the region, basically a community-powered food system.
- When people come to City Greens, a nonprofit grocery store, to shop for their family, they can either purchase food every week like you would at a typical grocery store. However, there is also a sliding scale membership available based on a family’s income. People can get up to a 30% discount because of this membership. They have just under 400 households involved in this program.
- Complex systems, like a food system, have emergent things that happen to it that you can’t predict. Food access, racial equity, the likelihood of experiencing certain diseases, community empowerment, violence and more are all linked to food justice.
- Food sovereignty ensures that communities decide, produce, support, ensure cultural traditions live on and are strengthened by the food that is in their community. Listening to what community members want is a big part of this picture.
- City Greens sees long term food security as an investment in farmers, food distribution networks, food ecosystems, the community, and more! They’re essentially looking beyond immediate food needs and focusing on long term health and empowerment of the local food system, the individuals that live near it, and the community at large.
#1 tip to improve access to healthy food
- Eating healthy isn’t easy, convenient or affordable in our culture. It needs to be. We must make it the best option for people.
Each week on the Food Dignity® Podcast, the Food Dignity® Movement's Clancy Harrison hosts a wide variety of hunger experts and other people making changes on the frontlines. Join us as we dive deep into conversations that will change the way you think about food insecurity.
Listen to our trailer!
Want to learn more about how we might work together?
Fight hidden hunger by becoming a
Food Dignity® Champion and take the HIDDEN HUNGER PLEDGE >
