Nashville's Sylvia Ganier is not only a farmer, but she is also a policy advocate, an educator, an event organizer, and an innovating leader in the city's fight against food waste. Ganier is the founder and operator of the 350-acre farm and educational space, Green Door Gourmet, the only farm within Nashville's city limits.
Green Door Gourmet has made efforts to reduce waste throughout its seven years of existencebut, in January, the farm took these efforts to the next level by signing on to Mayor Megan Barry's chef challenge as part of the Nashville Food Waste Initiative, organized by the National Resources Defense Council.
'We have 110,000 food insecure people in Davidson County, and, to think that we could capture our food waste and wasted foodbecause [those are] two separate thingsthat we could possibly eradicate hunger in our city, that's pretty monumental,” Ganier says. 'It's a profound statement for our community. If we really care about community health, we really have to look at it every way, and food is a key part of that.”
Ganier works with her customers to make sure they're getting the products they are most interested in.
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'We make sure it's given to the market or to our chefs in the most usable form, for example, taking off the outer leaves of cabbage. Most consumers don't have compost, but we can compost [those leaves for] them. Getting a product into the most usable form for the consumer stops food waste at the home,” Ganier explains.
Ganier also works with Second Harvest Food Bank and The Nashville Food Project to get blemished produce 'in to the hands of folks who can use them,” or turns that produce into grab-and-go prepared foods for sale at the market.
Ganier is simultaneously vocal about the importance of agritourism, which can provide an important revenue stream to farmers like her. Ganier says Metro Nashville taxes buildings and acreage used for agritourism as commercial property, resulting in a 60- to 300-percent tax increase.
'The state law is there [to protect agritourism], but I think agencies across the state and cities need to understand there is a law,” Ganier says. She says she focuses on educating local agencies to ameliorate this issue.
Green Door Gourmet is the only local farm providing fresh produce to Metro schools, because a host of food safety and insurance requirements make it difficult for small farms to fill that role. 'Most of the schools need things already processed,” Ganier says. 'They don't have a viability to buy sweet potatoes, bring them in, wash them, chop them, and cook them. Unfortunately, the farms can't be processors. So, currently, the schools are able to take a minimal amount of locally available product.”
Green Door Gourmet provided Metro schools with strawberries the past two years, and tomatoes and green peppers this year. Ganier says if Nashville had a centralized facility for local produce to be aggregated and processed, Nashville institutions, like schools, hospitals, and nursing homes, would have access to a lot more nutrient-dense, locally grown foods.
Overall, Ganier is hopeful about the future of Nashville's local food system.
'I think the most important thing is that we are truly poised at this point in time in our city and state to make a difference in our food waste,” she says. 'We need to seize this opportunity to work together, to learn together, to grow together, to make a better community and a healthier city for Nashville and all across Middle Tennessee.”