How the Rochester Food Policy Council works to amend food insecurity in the city

Five years ago, Rochester City Council took action to address a food access crisis. Nearly one in five city residents are “food insecure,” meaning they have uncertain access to adequate food. That is nearly double the number for the Monroe County suburbs. The rates for Black and Hispanic people in the city are higher, at 27% and 29%, respectively. All those figures rose sharply after the pandemic. The solution was to create the Rochester Food Policy Council (FPC) as a means of improving healthy food access for city residents. It was based in large part on recommendations included in Rochester 2034, the city’s long-term planning document. “I think there’s a — pun intended — big appetite for this,” Mike Bulger of Common Ground Health said at the time. More than 300 communities across the country have formed food policy councils, including Buffalo, Syracuse, Ithaca, Cortland and Binghamton.

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