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Mo McGonagle’s values include providing good food to all areas of the community.
Dan Smith
Maureen McGonagle
Maureen McGonagle’s work life at this moment is centered on community and that definition expands almost exponentially as she explains her position with the Local Environmental Agriculture Project (LEAP).
McGonagle, who is often called “Mo,” is a 32-year-old native of Arlington who developed an interest in local food growth and delivery early on. Her goal: “to support local food systems and to elevate local food and distribution access.”
She recently signed on to lead the Farm to School planning process in Roanoke, moving from food leadership programs in Blacksburg. But it is difficult to put her efforts in a box with a single title. She is not one who is easily categorized, though her interest in food access and quality will give you an idea where she wants to take things.
Her preparation has been extensive: Virginia Tech degrees in Humanities and Science and the Environment as well as a master’s in Agricultural Leadership and Community Education. She has worked on a vegetable farm, with local food access initiatives, with community gardens, and her interest in systems leads to environmental and social sustainability.
It is also easy to guess that she is a runner, a sometimes yoga instructor and a part-time massage therapist whose own diet would be sensible, local, and more than likely organic when possible.
A drive through any city the size of Roanoke would give you a view of the problem: low-income areas with few grocery stores and almost no stores in those sections with healthy alternatives. LEAP is working to help find solutions for this problem with several farmers markets, including the West End Farmers Market smack in the middle of a low-income area, and a mobile farmers market, which serves other low food access areas, as well.
The mobile unit is used in the city now, McGonagle says, but LEAP is hoping to expand the reach of the market to support low food access areas beyond the city boundaries.
Through a regional food system partnership that brings together “various food-centered organizations to network and develop priorities,” this community-based partnership is “basically creating new avenues of change, looking at people’s priorities. We want to know what farmers need and what is preventing access to healthy foods.”
The Farm to School program, which involves several Roanoke schools, is tied to the Virginia Cooperative Extension Program. “We received a grant when COVID hit,” McGonagle says, but the program had to be put on hold. “We are just starting again.”
With numerous school gardens, including food systems and nutrition education, and local food procurement, stakeholders connected to Roanoke City Public Schools are planning processes to elevate farm to school efforts.
When she worked with the food co-op in Blacksburg, she says, “it was an epicenter of the local food system and I saw how community-centered food systems are.” She learned about healthy food incentives where SNAP customers could double the value of their funds when used at farmer’s markets. She worked in the New River Health District Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, and with a collective community garden.
“In food systems efforts, we plan, but we also create as we go. … It used to be that all food systems were local” but agri-business and big business in general consolidated control. Your tomato, for example, might come from a valley in Northern California, not from a farm in Floyd. “It is no longer a resilient food system,” McGonagle insists. “We want to create that again. Right now, it is trial and error to see if it works. It is hard work with not a lot of funding. Local is tiny and [the competition] is a beast.”
Still, she says, “There is plenty of encouragement” out there. “The LEAP community programs have shown us how uplifting a community-centered food system can be. For instance, you can see how a garden impacts the lives of people and improves and uplifts those lives.”
She is hoping to “scale up what we do and stay involved with the community” in the short term and ultimately to be “led by my values.” That would hang close to the value of community.
The story above is from our November/December 2021. For more stories, subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!