How Arizona Farmers Survive a Pandemic Film
How has the pandemic affected Arizona’s farmers and our local food system? In this film, we take a closer look at the losses, the gains, the support, and the innovative pivots that Arizona farmers and the community took to make sure households had access to fresh food.
Learn about the Feed Phoenix Initiative, a collaborative project between Local First Arizona and the City of Phoenix. Feed Phoenix originally utilized CARES Act Dollars to bring nutritious, high-quality meals to COVID-impacted families across the City of Phoenix.
Local restaurants, caterers, and farms were united to help prepare meals with Phoenix-grown produce in order to sustain local jobs and supply chains, strengthen the local food economy, and, most importantly, help keep all Phoenicians healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meet the Speakers:
Rodney Machakoto and his family farm several plots of land in West Phoenix with the focus on growing fresh produce for the Feed Phoenix program and other programs that focus on providing food to those in food-insecure areas.
Paris Masek from Green on Purpose works closely with participating Feed Phoenix farms and restaurants, handling the weekly orders of produce and delivery of locally grown goods.
Chef Jennifer Johnson from Witnessing Nature In Food, an organic farm-to-table catering company, also participates in the Feed Phoenix program as one of the chefs who create and transforms locally grown food into meals that are distributed to organizations that provide weekly meals to families across the City of Phoenix.
Kimber Lanning, founder and CEO of Local First Arizona, discusses how and why the Feed Phoenix program came to be.
Rodney Machakoto and his family at Spaces of Opportunity where he grows some of Feed Phoenix’s produce.
Paris Masek from Green on Purpose delivers farm-fresh goodies to Chef Jennifer from Witnessing Nature in Food to make Feed Phoenix meals.
