Feature Story

June 5, 2008

UNC to study link between sustainable farming and health

From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:

A team of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers has received a grant to study the public health impact of moving toward a local, sustainable food system.

The team will establish a Gillings Innovation Laboratory (GIL) through the UNC School of Public Health.

The project will be the eighth laboratory established through a generous gift to the School by Dennis and Joan Gillings.

"The result is not only damaging to our health and the environment but also devastating to the economic base of rural communities," Ammerman said.

The rural communities in which these farmers live are also facing manufacturing layoffs and plant closures -- another blow to the local economy.

Collaborators include the School of Public Health's departments of health policy and administration and environmental sciences and engineering; the College of Arts and Science's departments of anthropology and city and regional planning; the schools of Medicine and Government; the Renaissance Computing Institute; the Center for Sustainable Community Design; and the Office of Economic and Business Development.

Those groups include the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Program, the U.S. arm of the Rural Advancement Foundation International, the Orange County Economic Development Commission and the NC Office of Environmental Defense.

Also involved is the NC Department of Health and Human Services Department of Public Health, the Wayne County Community Food Systems Initiative and the UNC Center for Integrating Research and Action, with regional partners in the southeastern, northeastern and Appalachian regions.

As a supplement to this Gillings Innovation Laboratory, UNC's Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity has funded Ammerman's team to conduct an economic and policy analysis specific to the loss of black-owned farmland.

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