In many areas of Brooklyn, you can get a cheeseburger at 2 a.m. but you have to get on a bus to buy a head of lettuce. For Park Slope resident Nancy Romer, this is not acceptable.

"There are huge swaths of people who have no access to healthy food living right here in Brooklyn," said Romer, who is a long-time member of the Park Slope Food Coop and the general coordinator of the upcoming Brooklyn Food Conference.

Many local organizations are already working hard to provide Brooklyn communities access to healthy food. A new group, the Brooklyn Food Coalition, is bringing businesses and organizations together to create a network devoted to increasing food democracy - access for all people to sustainable, healthy and delicious food produced under non-exploitative conditions. To celebrate the birth of this new coalition, the first ever Brooklyn Food Conference will be held May 2.

"The conference is organized to provide entry points at many levels," Romer said. "People interested in cooking, the political economy of food, climate change, obesity, what to feed their kids, all of that, will be there. And then there will be a lot of fun."

"Food is an issue that is so familiar to people," Romer added. "It's not an abstract idea."

The idea to organize a Brooklyn Food Conference began with members of the Park Slope Food Coop. Founded in 1973 as an alternative to commercial supermarkets, the coop is about connecting people to local, fresh and healthier food, rather than making a profit. In exchange for low prices, coop members agree to volunteer three hours a month, often on committees that help educate fellow members and the neighborhood about food issues. Members within the coop's Safe Food Committee came up with the idea of the Brooklyn Food Conference.

"The Safe Food Committee had a narrow mission at first, to educate members about genetically modified foods," said Adam Rabiner, a Safe Food Committee member who will be a moderator at the May 2 conference.

At their committee meetings, it became clear that members had many areas of food expertise. Rabiner said that the committee's shared knowledge encouraged them to expand their efforts.

"We wanted to have a greater impact," Rabiner said. So the group began to brainstorm about how to expand their audience and educate people about what can be done to address the broken global food system. Out of this effort, the idea for a day of education, networking and celebration took hold.

Although the idea originated within the Park Slope Food Coop, a network has quickly grown. So far, more than 60 organizations plan to participate in the conference, which is being co-sponsored by Brooklyn's Bounty and the Caribbean Women's Health Association, Inc. (CWHA), a non-profit health, immigration and social services organization.

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