ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The City of Rochester has launched a new community food system plan to combat food insecurity.
Nearly one in every five people in Rochester are food insecure, according to the latest Feeding America report. Food insecurity rates had been declining before the pandemic, but several major events have caused it to spike since then, said Elizabeth Murphy, Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development.
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“Unfortunately, the reality is, even before that spike, Rochester, because of our challenges with poverty and concentrated poverty, had high food insecurity rates even prior to the pandemic, that were made only more complex by that environment,” she said. “Today, we’re seeing with federal policy changes and the rollback of SNAP benefits, a continued and maybe even exacerbated challenge when deciding Rochester’s needs.”
How the program works
The city’s new food map is designed to help large organizations like Foodlink and local community groups better plan how to feed Rochester. The map is organized into four main groups, based on risk factors like poverty and a lack of nearby healthy and affordable food options.
“You’ll see areas are either kind of shades of orange or shades of purple. The shades of orange are the highest need areas,” Murphy said. “Those are areas that high poverty, high food insecurity, no large format grocer within a half-mile radius, but also no small or medium format grocer within their area. So they have very, very limited physical access to healthy food retail. The areas in purple meet all of the high need criteria, but do have access to a smaller medium format grocer within a quarter mile, which is about a 5 to 10 minute walk.”
Those purple areas still need help, but residents can walk to a local grocer or market for fresh food. News10NBC’s Kristi Blake was there as workers loaded fresh vegetables onto a truck at the community market, aiming to use the map to know exactly which neighborhoods to serve.
Murphy said the city took inspiration from Baltimore, Maryland, which was one of the first cities to hire a food policy director and develop a community food plan.
“They created a locally defined methodology for identifying, healthy food priority areas,” she said. “We, in our Community Food System Plan, developed a method specific to Rochester to identify areas of relatively high need that we’re calling food access priority areas. And so that’s our own, with inspiration from Baltimore. But to meet the needs of our community, what we have done with this plan.”
Community gardens come into play
Community gardens across Rochester are also playing a role in improving access to nutritious food. Kristi spent time at the Foodlink Community Garden on Lexington Avenue last week, speaking with Candice Williams of the Rochester Food Policy Council about the project’s goals. The Rochester Food Policy Council is a 13-member, resident-led group.
“We bring together our neighbors from different areas of the city, different zip codes, different backgrounds. You don’t have to be an expert at food policy. All you have to do is have a passion for food,” Williams said.
The council focuses on three main policy priorities: urban agriculture and community gardens, youth and food, and municipal plans and policies. Williams said their goal is to create a more equitable and accessible food system for Rochester.
“Because as we’ve gone through this process, we’ve discovered that one of the major barriers to food access in our city is transportation,” Williams said. “And so when you look at that, food mapping tool, that’s part of the community food system plan, you can layer where the bus routes are. And what’s interesting is that there’s areas where there is no bus route, there is no food, there are no pantries. This mobile garden or their mobile units can specifically target those areas using the map.”
The approach is not new, as similar efforts have been made in surrounding counties to address transportation barriers to food access. The city hopes the plan will help lower the percentage of food-insecure residents in Rochester.
Impact of zoning alignment
As News10NBC has covered, the city is holding several public forums to allow the public to learn about and weigh in on a plan to overhaul Rochester’s zoning laws for the first time since 2003. Williams said these forums give people a chance to advocate for making community gardens more accessible.
“For those who care about food access here in the city of Rochester, please make sure you go out to the various public forums that are happening across the city. That’s the perfect place where you can advocate for the way the land is being used in terms of community gardens. Take a look at the language of the code and see if there’s things that you think should be different, and make sure your city council hears about it,” Williams said.
In-depth on food insecurity
Over 12% of people in the 10-county region around Rochester faced food insecurity in 2024, according to the latest Map the Meal Gap report posted on Foodlink’s website. That amounts to over 155,000 people, including over 42,000 children.
The City of Rochester is home to four zip codes with food-insecurity rates more than double the region’s average. The 14605 zip code had the highest at nearly 37%. Although the latest report shows a slight drop in food insecurity from 2023 to 2024, data collected by Foodlink showed a sharp rise in people seeking food assistance during the same time period.
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