East Point Mayor Deana Holiday Ingraham has set out to tackle food access challenges in her city, “understanding that our health is our wealth.”
That’s led to the city, dubbed “Healthy Point” by the mayor, working with residents and other partners to create a local food system that “promotes health and makes health attainable, affordable and fun for our residents.”
East Point residents can participate in everything from opportunities to work out with the mayor and City Council to shopping at the farmers market. In 2018, the city, with funding from Morehouse School of Medicine, began East Point Eats Well, offering quarterly cooking demonstrations. Residents can pick up produce from local farms, and chefs demonstrate recipes and offer samples of dishes that are healthy and taste good.
Shelbia King of the East Point Main Street Association estimated 3,000 people attended East Point’s recent Indie Green Vegan Festival, visiting the more than 50 vendors and food trucks, including East Point-based Arden’s Garden.
East Point has become a hub for food-based companies. In addition to Arden’s Garden, the city is home to Common Market Southeast, a distributor of sustainable, local farm foods, and CompostNow. Also, the city will be the new home for the Atlanta Community Food Bank.
The East Point Farmers Market is approaching its 10th season, occupying a central city block shared by the Grady East Point Neighborhood Health Center, just north of City Hall. The market started small in 2011, open for just a few summer weeks, then expanded to a longer season, eventually becoming a year-round market that plays host to at least a dozen vendors each week. The market will cut back to a 10-month season beginning in 2020.
“All the produce we sell is grown within 12 miles of East Point,” market manager Sissie Lang said. “For example, Bobby Wilson is selling produce from his Metro Atlanta Urban Farm, grown just a mile from the market.”
Indeed, East Point is working toward becoming not only a place to access healthy food, but a place where healthy food is grown. Already, Truly Living Well and Working Hands Enterprises are farming land in East Point. And, the city recently received a grant to develop metro Atlanta's first city agriculture plan.
The grant comes from Food Well Alliance, an Atlanta nonprofit that partnered with the Atlanta Regional Commission to create a program to bring growers, community leaders and city officials together to find ways to implement urban agriculture in their community.
“We see this program as an incentive for cities to take the long view in planning food access and urban agriculture in their spaces,” said Kim Karris, executive director of Food Well Alliance. “We envision cities planning for food-producing spaces in the same way they plan for green space for parks.”
Seven metro Atlanta cities applied for the inaugural grant, and Karris said East Point was chosen, in large part, because of the interest shown by the residents. “We wanted to be sure the plans had community support, and when we came to East Point, there was a huge turnout. Young people, older people, white people, black people, all engaged and passionate and speaking up about the future they wanted to see.”
Lang, an East Point native, is one of the two residents who submitted an application for the grant. “I applied because I think the city of East Point is ready for something like this,” she said. “There’s so much development going on that we need a program like this to help us bring the city together to talk about green space, and how we can grow our own food and how we can teach kids where food comes from.”
The community will spend a year identifying potential spaces and working with ARC to plan how those spaces can be used. “We are capturing hyperlocal data from the residents,” Karris said. “What do you want to see? What would make your life better? If you are a young farmer, what would you need to bring your own urban farm enterprise to the city of East Point?”
At the end of the planning process, the city will receive $75,000 to begin the implementation.
“We are being proactive about the future we want to see,” the mayor said. “I believe we can be a model for cities around the country on how to create ordinances and policies that support our vision.”
IF YOU GO
East Point City Agriculture Tour
9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Oct. 26
Tour farms and visit food-related businesses in the East Point area.
Free. Registration information at foodwellalliance.org/east-point.
East Point Farmers Market
2757 East Point St., East Point
4-7 p.m. Wednesday, March through November; 3-6 p.m. December
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