Even if you couldn’t put a name to them, you’d immediately recognize the low-slung, long-handled carts moving packages and pallets on their forklift-like tines.
The same is true for many New Yorkers and GrowNYC; even if they’re not thinking about the organization’s name, the services it offers—farmers markets and farmstands, composting, community gardens, and education—are an essential part of how they interact with the city’s food systems.
GrowNYC’s food access programs help connect New Yorkers with family farms across the region to make fresh, local produce widely available at markets citywide, at farmstands in underserved communities, and through grassroots partner organizations. Unlike wholesalers delivering large loads of produce to commercial operations, GrowNYC’s distribution requires smaller-scale deliveries to smaller recipients through the clogged city streets.
To aid in this logistical challenge, where small is mighty, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) recently made a grant to GrowNYC for the purchase of half a dozen electric handtrucks, a forklift, and three refrigerated delivery trucks. SNF has also provided support for GrowNYC’s food access programs during the height of the pandemic and for its work establishing learning gardens at public schools across all five boroughs of New York City.
The organization is on the verge of dramatically scaling up its capacity with the forthcoming opening of its New York State Regional Food Hub in the Bronx. Its focus on each part of the food system—from who grows it to what happens to the scraps and all the people it interacts with in between—will remain. In the meantime, the handrucks SNF supported are already in use easing the strain on GrowNYC staff as they deliver delicious produce to New Yorkers.