This report is a picture of Oklahoma’s food system, seen through the lens of community food security. It is an attempt to answer the question posed at the beginning of this piece: Is Oklahoma food secure? Two years in the making, this groundbreaking report features extensive research and original analysis. It is the first attempt to look at Oklahoma’s food system from field to table, the first time that information about agriculture and agricultural markets have been combined with information on nutrition, health and food access into one report.

Closer to Home has a reader-friendly format. The report features about two dozen magazine-style articles about innovative people, businesses and
programs contributing positively to community food security in Oklahoma. The profiles run the gamut from a successful community garden at a small country school in Delaware County, to Oklahoma’s own regional dairy, Braum’s. Alongside the profiles, we examine the community food security issues raised by the articles. For example, alongside a profile of the Oklahoma Farm-to- School program, we explore the diet-related health problems of Oklahoma’s kids. Along with a profile of Ricky and Claudia Crow’s farm near Shawnee, we investigate the economic potential of farmers selling direct to consumers.

In the first five chapters of Closer to Home, we take an in-depth look at food insecurity in the state, as well as the diet-related health problems of Oklahomans and efforts to find solutions to these problems.