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Urban,
rural communities lack supply of affordable produce
USA Today - July 5, 2008
By Mike Groll, AP
By Valerie
Bauman, Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y.
— For years, Mel Williams rarely ate fruit and vegetables — unless
it came out of a can.
Fresh produce
was too expensive or too far away until the state-funded "Veggie
Mobile" started bringing the fruits and vegetables to him at a lower
price.
 
By Mike Groll,
AP  Veggie
Mobile worker Paul Barrett helps customer Christina Coughlin in
Albany, N.Y., on May 9. With the rapidly climbing cost of food and
fuel, states and nonprofit groups are finding ways to get healthy
food to underserved areas.
"I'm a
diabetic and I have problems with my heart," the 66-year-old said.
"The canned stuff has so much sodium in it. So now with the fresh
fruit, it's less sugar and carbohydrates and stuff."
Williams is
one of millions of Americans living in a "food desert," urban or
rural areas unserved by a big grocery chain that can serve up fresh
foods at lower costs. He's in Troy, a former industrial city about
10 miles from New York's capital.
With the
rapidly climbing cost of food and fuel, states and nonprofit groups
are finding ways to get healthy food to these underserved areas.
In New York,
the health department gave $500,000 to the Veggie Mobile, operated
by the Capital District Community Gardens and delivering fresh,
locally grown produce to people in Albany, Troy and nearby
Schenectady who otherwise might never buy a fresh apple or tomato.
"It makes it
possible for families to include these foods in their diet because
it's about half the price of what it is in the market," said Amy
Klein, executive director of the nonprofit.
When compared
to New York Supermarket — a small grocery in the poor Arbor Hill
neighborhood of Albany — the Veggie Mobile offered dramatic savings,
more selection and fresher options. Bananas sold for $0.99 a pound
at the supermarket, but went for $0.59 a pound from the Veggie
Mobile. Iceberg lettuce was $1 each at the mobile grocery, and $1.99
at the New York Supermarket. Cucumbers sold for $0.89 each at the
neighborhood market, but were 3 for $1 from the Veggie Mobile.
The
difference means that poor families cannot only afford and access
fresh produce, but can buy more than if they relied on the
neighborhood options.
Instead of
going to a big chain grocery store each week, where volume sales and
competition mean lower prices, families in urban food deserts and
rural communities tend to rely on gas station convenience stores, or
corner stores where milk, bread and other staples cost more.
"As more and
more national chains have a greater share of the food market, it can
impact areas that don't have either the space or the demand for a
full line grocery store," said Ephraim Leibtag, an economist with
the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "The majority of the country is
predicated on driving somewhere (for groceries), so 'close to home'
may be defined differently if you don't have a car."
Many rural
areas are using consumer supported agriculture, like Iowa's Farm to
Folk program, to tackle the problem. Customers within 30 miles of
the Ames, Iowa-based organization can order 20 weeks' worth of food
off the Internet — either a weekly share of whatever local farmers
produce, or an a la carte selection, coordinator Marilyn Andersen
said.
Farm to Folk
sells products from 10 farmers to about 130 consumers at prices from
$95 for a small fruit share, to $430 for a share of whatever the
farmers produce that would serve a family of four. Each week the
customers pick up their food from a church.
Neighborhood
stores in urban areas across the country have been closing as chains
invest in building bigger, new stores in suburbs, a 'disinvestment'
forced by urban crime, high employee turnover and the lack of space
for large stores. But some grocery stores are responding to the need
and earning potential of food deserts.
St.
Louis-based Schnuck Markets, Inc., announced plans earlier this year
to open a two-story, urban market in a parking garage in the city's
downtown. It will be the downtown neighborhood's only full-scale
grocery store and pharmacy when it opens in 2009.
British
grocery giant Tesco PLC has opened 61 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood
Market stores in California, Nevada and Arizona. The small grocery
stores are found in upscale markets, but have also filled gaps in
underserved areas — including a recently opened store in Compton,
Calif., south of Los Angeles.
Pennsylvania's Fresh Food Financing Initiative was created in 2004
to commit millions in public funds to leverage additional public and
private funds. The money is used to create loans for supermarket
development across the state. It provides incentives for stores to
open and gets more coolers into small corner stores so they can
offer healthier options.
That effort
was driven by The Food Trust, a nonprofit which has also helped New
Orleans come up with a proposal for dealing with food deserts.
In Chicago,
the city created a program to make it easier for grocery stores to
do business, attracting new stores to long-underserved
neighborhoods.
And in
Connecticut, the nonprofit Hartford Food System has signed up 40
smaller retailers for its Healthy Food Retailer Initiative, which
since 2006 has provided healthier options to customers in
underserved areas. Smaller stores that agree to shift a portion of
their shelf space from junk food to healthier options get
promotional assistance as an incentive.
In rural
communities, the problems can be different. The family store on Main
Street has likely closed, and rural communities often don't offer a
financial incentive to support grocery stores. Big chains are
reluctant to build here, where the customer base is too small to
support a mega-store.
While people
living in these communities are used to driving long distances for
groceries, rising gas costs and inflation make it difficult for some
to pay for both transportation and food.
Whether
families live on a farm in rural Iowa, or in a population dense
inner-city, the need for healthy affordable food is the same. In
many cases the solutions are being built around the communities they
serve. There's plenty of untapped demand in the communities that
need the most help.
"People were
skeptical and thought they (low-income families) weren't going to
come, and they're not going to spend their money on fresh produce,"
Klein said of the Veggie Mobile. "But they are, and they're buying
it in large quantities ... They're not looking for a freebie,
they're appreciative that it's there, that it's available and it's
affordable."
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