AUSTIN, Texas — On Tuesday, Austin and Travis County leaders laid out a draft of their first-ever comprehensive food plan. It aims to ease hunger, cut waste and create a more local, sustainable food supply.
During Tuesday’s Austin City Council work session, Rachel Coff, the planning manager for Travis County Health and Human Services, testified that plan development started in 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic and winter storms.
“Severe weather has shone a spotlight on the fragility of supply chain systems,” Coff said.
Edwin Marty, the food policy manager for the city of Austin’s Office of Sustainability, told council members that 0.06% of food eaten in Travis County is grown locally, 14.4% of residents are food insecure and 1.24 million pounds of food are wasted every day in Austin.
Documents also show 18 of 47 ZIP codes lack access to high-quality grocery stores. These “food deserts” have been an issue in eastern Travis County for years but have also moved to the northern and southern edges of the county.
“We’re at a pivotal moment,” Marty said. “We get to decide right now what our community’s going to look like in the next 10, 20 years.”
The plan includes input from more than 3,600 community members and collaboration between 22 total city and county departments. It lays out 62 strategies to achieve nine goals, which include preserving farmland and building communities around it with better job opportunities for food workers.
“There is still plenty of farmland in northeast Austin and Travis County, but not for long,” said Marty.
The plan also calls for a disaster-resistant supply chain, help from the private sector to build grocery stores and quality food in schools.
“It’s really difficult to feed kids for $2 a day,” Marty said.
Additionally, the plan aims to divert food waste and avoid the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
“We don’t want to see any food thrown away,” Marty said. “We think that’s an achievable goal.”
However, with a tight budget, the Austin City Council must decide where to move money if it approves the plan.
“The land is going to go away if we don’t buy it, and we have no dollars,” Alison Alter, councilmember for District 10, said.
Both the Austin City Council and Travis County Commissioners Court could vote to approve the food plan in August.