In an odd sort of way, Hurricane Katrina helped to make New Orleans an incredible laboratory not only for understanding the role and importance of a city's food system but for recognizing the importance of food as an essential tool for community building.
Two thousand homes were lost in the storm and over 66,000 lots were left vacant or blighted (compared to 19,000 before Katrina). There were no grocery stores, food vendors or gardens. Fishers were lost, their boats wrecked and farmers had no crops, said Poppy Tooker, culinary activist, local food preservationist, founder of Slow Food New Orleans and a Times-Picayune "Hero of the Storm."
The city looked as though it had been through a nuclear explosion. Everything was brown and gray and there was no green to be seen. But a few restaurants remained open.
"That was a beacon of hope," she said at the 14th Annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference held in New Orleans recently.
The food distribution system had collapsed, she said, however, it provided the opportunity to start all over again with a clean slate.
A month after the storm Tooker talked with regional farmers and vendors about supplying fresh food to restaurant chefs rather than rely only on national food distributors.
Gradually, little cafes opened. Some chefs used coolers for refrigerators. Café registers put the farmer's name on an envelope in order to pay for their food products.
Then, grocery stores began to re-open but the struggle to find quality products continued. For instance, when Tooker looked for butter and could only find margarine, she "burst into tears."
Slow Food USA wanted to help and by 2006, through the fundraising efforts of Tooker, the Terra Madre Relief Fund was established to assist Louisiana food communities hit by Hurricane Katrina. Now that fund has evolved to lend a hand to farmers and food artisans struck by natural disasters on the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
Evacuees and foodMany evacuees, who were scattered all over the country, swore they would never return to New Orleans after they saw Katrina's destruction on television. However, some found that food comforted them in their homesickness.
Pam Broom and her family lived in Chicago for 18 months and sorely missed their native cuisine. They'd get together with other evacuees and tell stories of home around a delicious Orleanian meal.
Food had other effects. Broom said she once saw a man with a basket full of green peppers and suddenly became extremely happy. Green peppers along with celery and onions are part of the "trinity," the base of New Orleans cooking.
Broom began gardening in Chicago through Growing Power, an urban garden program started by MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient Will Allen. One day as she harvested collard greens in an icy rain, she discovered that she really loved this work--but had had enough of Midwestern winters. She decided to go home.
"Flying into New Orleans is like no other place in the world," said Broom. "It's full of mangled landscapes of wetlands and swamp, but I feel excited and blessed. It's a spirit that grabs you and holds you."
Broom is now executive director of the Women and Agriculture Network, a group of New Orleans organizations that strategically think and plan for food justice in urban areas.
