We think of corner stores as places where you can conveniently buy a bag of chips or some soda pop. But in many low-income cities around the country, the food sold at these shops isn’t just consumed at snack time — it’s served at mealtime.
In neighborhoods like the Bronx in New York City, a scarcity of grocery stores drives many residents to food shop entirely at local bodegas. Unfortunately, the absence of healthy choices in these stores can lead to poor diets—which in turn leads to poor health. In fact, the Bronx has the highest obesity rate among NYC’s five boroughs at a startling 30.5 percent. (In comparison, just 13.9 percent of Manhattanites are obese.)
“More than 1 in 6 adults in the Bronx is now overweight or obese, and has developed or is at risk of developing related illnesses like diabetes,” said city Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley. “It is crucial that we address the issue of access to healthy foods in high needs areas.”
ALSO: A New Study Yields Surprising Results About Low-Income People and Food Deserts
So if residents can’t get to healthier fare, why not bring it to them?
As NY1 reports, 170 out of 200 corner shops in the Bronx neighborhoods of West Farms and Fordham are working with the City Health Department to stock up and advertise healthier fare to customers as part of the Shop Healthy NYC initiative.
“Instead of being bombarded with the usual advertisements, you can look right in the store and see baskets full of fruits. You can walk right up to some snacks, but they’re healthy snacks; they’re fruits and nuts. If you want to get a candy bar, you have to ask for them because they’re behind the counter,” City Health Commissioner Mary Bassett told the news station.
This simple plan to get more fresh produce into bellies is clearly working. Shop owners told NY1 that sales of healthier foods in these neighborhoods has increased 59 percent from 2012 to 2013, and profits are either staying the same or even increasing.
DON’T MISS: An Oasis in One of America’s Largest Food Deserts: the Local Quick Mart
“It’s a very, frequently repeated misconception that the junk in these stores is there because that’s what people want, but that’s not true,” Bassett said.
Based on the success of the Shop Healthy program, the city plans to expand it to other neighborhoods in the Bronx as well as to neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
The small changes that New York City bodegas are making aren’t difficult to implement nationwide. As you can see in the video below, shop owners make simple changes such as placing baskets of fruit by the cash register and removing sugary drinks from eye level, replacing them with water and other low-calorie beverage options.
When more than one-third of American adults and 17 percent of children are obese (costing the country $147 billion per year to treat), it makes a whole lot of sense to get the country on healthier diets.
It’s time to turn the corner on the corner store.
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MORE: Maryland’s Public Experiment to Combat Poverty and End Obesity
Tag: food deserts
Big Bets: How to Grow Healthy Eaters
Curt Ellis’ favorite childhood memory is sitting with his father in the family’s garden, watering tomato plants. “There’s something really special that comes from getting your hands in the dirt and doing something that you know how to do,” says Ellis, who co-founded FoodCorps in 2009 with five like-minded friends to give kids across the country that same experience. FoodCorps deploys service members to work with local community organizations in cities and towns in 15 states. They spend a year teaching nutrition, starting school gardens and working with local farms to bring fresh food into school cafeterias.
WATCH: Our Q&A with Curt Ellis and FoodCorps service member Meghan McDermott
We’re partnering with NBCUniversal to support the greatest innovators who are tackling some of the nation’s most critical issues. Tell us who you think the next biggest changemaker in America is by nominating them to be a 2015 NationSwell AllStar.
Ask the Experts: How to Bring Fresh, Healthy Food to the Neediest Families
We are a nation where rolling plains are covered in fields of wheat and corn, where rivers are filled with tumbling salmon, where orchards abound and valleys are filled with row upon row of vegetables. And yet millions of families live within our borders with empty cupboards and hungry children. In 2011, about 18 million households in the United States were described as “food insecure” — having limited or uncertain access to safe, nutritious foods — according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “More importantly, households with children are nearly twice as likely to be food insecure,” according to a recent analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Share Our Strength, which noted that about 4 million American families have children who lack access to adequate nutritious food. For children, food insecurity heralds a lifetime of future problems, including deficits in health and academic achievement.
Simply providing government assistance isn’t enough. A 2012 study at the Harvard School of Public Health found that people participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often referred to as food stamps, eat less healthy diets — with fewer whole-grain products and more potatoes, red meat and sugary soft drinks — than people who didn’t receive SNAP benefits. The study didn’t make clear exactly why this is so, but part of the problem has to do with access. Many residents of low-income neighborhoods, urban or rural, don’t have easy access to grocery stores or other fresh-food options — the so-called food desert problem.
It’s an issue that’s received a lot of attention, but so far, few scalable solutions. So NationSwell asked the experts to weigh in on this question: How can we bring healthy food to our neediest neighborhoods? Read below for their hopeful responses, and then leave your thoughts in the comments box below.
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10 Chefs Who Are Bringing a Food Revolution to America
1. Mario Batali
Home base: New York, N.Y.
Noted for: Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca, Del Posto, Otto Enoteca Pizzeria
Cause: Hunger relief
How he’s changing America: With a slew of Manhattan restaurants, regular television appearances and famous friends like Gwyneth Paltrow, Mario Batali is hands down one of America’s most visible chefs. But behind the scenes, the man in the orange Crocs is equally hard at work at the Mario Batali Foundation, which has taught low-income families about nutrition and healthy food preparation since 2008. Batali has also raised nearly $8 million in the last decade for the Food Bank for New York City, a nonprofit hunger-relief organization where he serves on the board of directors. In 2013, the Mario Batali Foundation partnered with the Food Bank for New York City to create the Community CookShop, a program that has taught more than 1,400 people at 24 food pantries and soup kitchens how to maximize their food budgets and cook nutritious meals.
2. José Andrés
Home base: Washington, D.C.
Noted for: Jaleo, Zaytinya, Minibar by José Andrés
Causes: Hunger relief, culinary training
How he’s changing America: When José Andrés moved to Washington, D.C., one of the first people he met was Robert Egger, founder of DC Central Kitchen, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing poverty and hunger in the nation’s capital. Humbled by the group’s efforts, Andrés began helping on a number of their initiatives, including a culinary training program that teaches homeless vets and former prisoners food preparation and cooking skills so they can find jobs in the restaurant industry. In 2010, Andrés formed World Central Kitchen, which aims to replicate the success of DC Central Kitchen on an international scale by teaching vulnerable citizens how they can grow, cook and preserve their own food and become self-sustaining communities. “As chefs, we are in a position to influence how people eat and how they think about food,” Andrés says. “Yes, we cook for the few in our restaurants, but we have the power and knowledge to cook for and feed the many.”
3. Cat Cora
Home base: Santa Barbara, Calif.
Noted for: Kouzzina by Cat Cora, Cat Cora’s Kitchen
Cause: Hunger relief
How she’s changing America: In 2005, Cat Cora made history by becoming the Food Network’s first and only female Iron Chef. And yet the Mississippi-bred chef may be best known for her work as president and founder of Chefs for Humanity, an organization that aims to provide nutrition education and hunger relief around the world by rallying culinary experts to raise money for disaster-affected populations and to teach low-income communities about healthy eating habits. In 2005, Cora and fellow chefs worked with the American Red Cross to help feed victims and volunteers of Hurricane Katrina, which left a trail of destruction in her home state of Mississippi. More recently, Cora has partnered with Michelle Obama on the first lady’s Chefs Move to Schools program, which invites chefs to help eradicate the childhood obesity epidemic by creating healthy meals and menus.
4. Bill Yosses
Home base: Washington, D.C.
Noted for: White House executive pastry chef
Cause: Food literacy
How he’s changing America: Many chefs would consider a tenure in the White House to be the gig of a lifetime. Bill Yosses can claim that honor twice, as he has whipped up delicious desserts for both George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the White House executive pastry chef. This summer, Yosses will depart 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for New York City, where he plans to form a foundation to promote healthy eating habits for adults and kids alike. “There’s much talk about STEM in schools — science, technology, engineering and math,” Yosses told The New York Times. “Food knowledge should be part of a complete curriculum.” And while the White House kitchen will no longer be his domain, its hallowed halls won’t be far from his mind. Yosses’ plans are reportedly inspired in part by Michelle Obama and her White House garden, which provided ingredients for healthier desserts during his stint.
5. Michel Nischan
Home base: Fairfield, Conn.
Noted for: Wholesome Wave
Cause: Sustainable farming
How he’s changing America: Though he grew up in the Chicago suburbs, Michel Nischan spent the summers of his formative years on his grandfather’s farm in Missouri. There, he learned how to raise animals, can veggies and drive tractors. “It’s where my passion for food comes from,” Nischan says. “It’s also where I learned about the role and importance of people who produce that food.”
In 2007, Nischan co-founded Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit that partners with farmers across the country to provide underserved communities with better access to locally grown foods. Wholesome Wave is perhaps most famous for its double- value coupon program: Food stamp recipients get double the value of their government-issued food dollars if they shop at participating farmers’ markets rather than traditional grocery stores. In 2011, in an effort to lower obesity and boost health, Wholesome Wave launched its fruit and vegetable prescription program, in which doctors write patients “prescriptions” for fruits and vegetables that can be cashed in at farmers’ markets. The program was introduced in Massachusetts, Maine, California and Rhode Island (New York City adopted it in 2013).
6. Ann Cooper
Home base: Boston, Mass.
Noted for: The Lunch Box
Cause: Healthy school lunches
How she’s changing America: Ann Cooper realized there was a problem with our food culture when her own niece informed her that strawberries were grown on trees, not bushes. Since then, Cooper has become an advocate for childhood nutrition, a fight she’s led for more than 20 years. “So many of our kids don’t know where real food comes from — that it doesn’t come in plastic wrap in a box,” Cooper says. The Boston-based chef has been dubbed the “Renegade Lunch Lady” for her efforts to bring healthier foods to the public school system, having launched several nonprofits and websites in support of these initiatives, including The Lunch Box, an open-source community that provides free recipes, video cooking tutorials and other tools to families who want to eat better. In 2010, Cooper also teamed up with Michelle Obama to start Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools, an effort to bring 6,000 salad bars to school cafeterias across the country.
7. Christina Tosi
Home base: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Noted for: Momofuku Milk Bar
Cause: Immigrants
How she’s changing America: One of Christina Tosi’s earliest dreams was to own a bakery. In 2011, she checked that item off the bucket list when she became chef, owner and founder of Momofuku Milk Bar, the dessert branch of David Chang’s Momofuku restaurant group. It’s only fitting, then, that her philanthropic efforts are with an organization that also loves baking: Tosi serves on the board of Hot Bread Kitchen, a Spanish Harlem-based nonprofit that trains low-income, immigrant women in artisanal baking skills, which can help them secure management jobs within bakeries, where minority women are particularly underrepresented. (In New York City alone, just 500 of the area’s 6,000 bakers are minority women.) Founded in 2007, Hot Bread Kitchen has already helped 12 of its 39 trainees find full-time work as bakery shift managers, with plans to train 30 new participants this year.
8. David James Robinson
Home base: Columbia County, N.Y.
Noted for: “Learn How to Cook (and Eat Your Mistakes)!” DVD program
Cause: Job training for veterans
How he’s changing America: Having cooked for more than 35,000 guests in his career, including presidents, Academy Award winners and professional athletes, chef David James Robinson has a wealth of culinary knowledge to share. His DVD program “Learn How to Cook (and Eat Your Mistakes)!” offers beginner chefs lessons from food prep to chopping. A spin-off, called Culinary Command Training, is a 45-day program for vets and select active-duty soldiers eager to learn skills that would prepare them for a culinary career. The program, which takes place twice a year in Chatham, N.Y., is free for military participants and funded by donations.
9. Hugh Acheson
Home base: Athens, Ga.
Noted for: Five & Ten, The National
Cause: Food security
How he’s changing America: Hugh Acheson lives in Athens, Ga., about an hour’s drive from Atlanta, where more than half a million people live in food “deserts” —communities where citizens, the great majority of whom receive benefits from the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), live more than a mile from the nearest grocery store.
Acheson has been one of the loudest advocates for those living on SNAP, donating money to organizations that help underserved communities access nutritious foods and running cooking demos for low-income citizens who want to learn how to make the most of their food stamps. “People forget that SNAP is supposed to supplement — not serve as 100 percent of anyone’s food budget,” says Acheson, whose demos focus on how to make sustainable meals from vegetables and grains, which are considerably cheaper than meat. “I don’t want to raise a bunch of chefs in America,” he says. “I just want to raise a bunch of people with basic cooking skills so they can feed themselves.”
10. Rick Bayless
Home base: Chicago, Ill.
Noted for: Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, Xoco
Cause: Local farmers
How he’s changing America: With multiple restaurants, cookbooks and even his own PBS show dedicated to Mexican cuisine, it’s no wonder that Rick Bayless was invited by the Obamas to be the guest chef at an official state dinner in 2010 for Felipe Calderon, then president of Mexico. But he’s not letting that national attention get to his head. For decades, Bayless has helped out small farmers who supplied food to his restaurants, and in 2003 he founded the Frontera Farmer Foundation to support local Chicago farmers through grants for capital improvements; to date, the foundation has given $1.2 million to 71 farms. “They’d tell us they needed a little help with this project, with that project, and we wanted to see them thrive — not the least bit because we wanted to continue getting product from them — so we’d help them out whenever we could,” Bayless says. “And eventually we thought, ‘Hey, this is part of our mission, it’s part of what we
do, we should just make it official.’” But for Bayless, the decision to support farmers goes beyond his three Chicago restaurants. “I just didn’t want to see our food systems go completely corporate and globalized,” he says. “I wanted to eat food that was grown in the Midwest, the same way people in Mexico eat food that was grown just a few miles away…the same way we all used to do that. It’s about health, it’s about the planet’s health, it’s about flavor, it’s about stories and it’s very much about people, the farmers who make their living growing food for us to eat.”
Editors’ note: Since the original publication of this story, Michel Nischan, CEO of Wholsome Wave, has become a NationSwell Council member.
Read About the Nonprofit That Grows Not Just Food, But a Community, Too
What activity can decrease a low-income family’s dependence on food assistance, promote health, reduce crime, and bring people of different income and education levels together? Gardening can accomplish all this and more.
Since botanist and garden enthusiast Larry Stebbins responded to the lack of community gardens in Colorado Springs, Colorado by starting the nonprofit Pikes Peak Urban Gardens (PPUG) in 2007, hundreds of volunteers have become involved in creating plots in low-income neighborhoods and educating their new owners on how to tend them. “By teaching others how to [garden], you empower them to be more in control of their food supply,” Stebbins told J. Adrian Stanley of the Colorado Springs Independent.
Case in point: Stebbins said that one low-income family participating in the PPUG expanded the garden volunteers had helped them plant and were able to reduce using food stamps by 70 percent during the summer months when tomatoes, zucchinis, and other produce was abundant.
Another benefit to gardening? The nonprofit has learned over the years that when the plots are physically close together in proximity, not only is a feeling of community created, but also an atmosphere in which gardeners learn from and share with each other. Now it plants “pods” of gardens, such as the nine clustered gardens they established in a low-income neighborhood this year with the help of a $3,000 grant from the Colorado Home and Garden Show.
In addition to helping people plant their own gardens, Pikes Peak Urban Gardens has established two urban farms that grow produce for charities; some of the homeless people that benefit from the produce pitch in to tend those crops, alongside volunteers from all walks of life. Stebbins told Stanley that one year, a doctor and a man who lived in subsidized housing struck up a garden-based friendship. “People come in their dungarees,” he said. “You don’t know if they’re rich, poor or whatever. And it’s a great equalizer, and it’s a great way for people to come together.” After all, we’re all united in our quest for that perfect tomato.
MORE: Thriving Gardens Now Grow in a Denver Food Desert
A New Study Yields Surprising Results About Low-Income People and Food Deserts
Whether it’s a traveling bus full of vegetables or convenience stores stocked with farmer’s market produce, people across this country are coming up with innovative ways to solve the problems caused by food deserts. And these creative programs are having a big impact in some neighborhoods.
More low-income people tend to live in food deserts and have a hard time accessing transportation to grocery stores and farmers markets — exacerbating the problems of obesity-related illness among the poor. Or so the theory goes.
Jerry Shannon wondered if this was true, so during his doctoral program in geography at the University of Minnesota, he studied where 275,366 recipients of SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, once known as food stamps) in the Twin Cities purchased their groceries from 2009 to 2010.
Shannon discovered that SNAP recipients often travel to supermarkets outside their communities. “You can’t just assume people shop where they live,” Shannon told Cynthia Boyd of the MinnPost. These people shop outside their neighborhoods in part “because of perceived better quality and lower prices of suburban stores,” Shannon said.
Shannon’s findings are detailed in “Rethinking Food Deserts: An Initial Report of Findings,” published in Social Science & Medicine. On his website, he offers an interactive map showing where those who receive SNAP benefits live, where they redeem their benefits, and the types of stores they shop at. Shannon isn’t suggesting that communities stop working on the problem of food deserts, but he told Boyd, “We need more sophisticated ways about seeing how people access the food system.” He just might be the researcher to advance these studies.
MORE: This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Communities
Thriving Gardens Now Grow in a Denver Food Desert
After graduating from the University of Denver in 2007, pals Joseph Teipel and Eric Kornacki headed south, to Guatemala where they participated in a service project.
Inspired by the work they did there, the two returned home to help poor communities here in the United States. Their goal is a lofty one: They want to foster self-sufficient communities nationwide that grow their own healthy food. But for now, they’re starting small by making a difference in one city.
In 2009, Teipel and Kornacki formed the non-profit, Re:Vision, and launched their first program, Re:Farm, to help low-income people living in a food desert in southwest Denver. Their first project included planting a school garden at Kepner Middle School, designing irrigated backyard gardens for seven families, teaching families how to grow their own food, and mentoring at-risk middle schoolers through gardening. In 2010, their work was rewarded with an $80,000 grant from the National Convergence Partnership to study how gardening can be used to prevent violence and implement programs. From there, they began hiring community promotoras to spread the word about healthy food and teach other people in their neighborhood how to garden.
Much like the gardens themselves, Re:Vision is growing. Last season, 200 families participated in the backyard garden program, producing 28,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables. A hundred families are on a waiting list for a garden, and the organization hopes to meet that demand this year, with the help of a $50,000 Slow Money Entrepreneur of the Year award and a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
They’re also launching a program called “Dig it Forward,” through which people who want to help can hire Re:Vision workers to design and plant gardens. The proceeds from these garden sales will pay for free gardens in low-income people’s yards. Taipel told Helen Hu of North Denver Tribune, “It’s a way of thinking outside the box. We have a lot of expertise, and if people want to start gardens and help others, it’s a win-win.”
Patricia Grado, an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico, serves as one of the promatoras, told Hu, “I’ve reaffirmed my understanding about how to grow our own food, about food sustainability, nutrition, and among other things, how to help the community with my knowledge.”
MORE: This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Communities
This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Communities
Food desert: Urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food.
This definition, provided by the USDA, accurately describes the situation in some of Arizona’s burgeoning cities, where there are neighborhoods of low-income people that have to travel long distances — mostly via public transportation — to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. Because of this hardship, many of the residents don’t bother to make such a trek.
Recognizing the negative impact that the lack of access to healthy food can have on a person’s health, a group of Arizona businesses and educators, including Arizona State University’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation and Chase Bank, organized the Fresh Express bus. Traveling between Phoenix and Tempe, the aisles of this renovated city bus are chockablock full of bins containing fresh fruits and vegetables — bringing nutritious produce to people at discount prices.
The Discovery Triangle, a corporation that assists developers in the triangle-shaped area between Scottsdale, Phoenix and Tempe, came up with the ingenious idea when it realized how few grocery stores existed there. Discovery Triangle president Don Keuth told Jill Galus of Good Morning Arizona that a recent study by St. Luke’s Health Initiative designated the area between downtown Tempe and downtown Phoenix as an official food desert. “Although we’re trying to help with economic development issues,” he said, “if we don’t have a healthy community, we’re not helping it reach its full potential.”
The Fresh Express bus starts making its rounds on March 25. Two days a week, the bus will make five stops — two at different public schools and three at places such as senior centers and community centers where a high concentration of low-income people gather. Accompanying services also include free health screenings provided by ASU’s College of Nursing and cooking ideas for health-conscious eating, courtesy of Fresh Express employees.
Instead of hauling bags of groceries across town on the bus, the bus now brings the groceries directly to shoppers. Talk about convenience.
MORE:An Oasis in One of America’s Largest Food Deserts: The Local Quick Mart
An Oasis in One of America’s Largest Food Deserts: the Local Quick Mart
The Quick Mart on Williamsburg Road in Richmond, Va., is your typical corner store. It does a brisk business in cigarettes and newspapers, along with convenience foods, like Cheez-Its and potato chips. It’s located in the city’s Greater Fulton neighborhood, which means its customers are mostly low income. There is one thing that sets the Quick Mart apart from other shops, though: It’s the only place within a nearly two-mile radius where customers can buy fresh fruits and vegetables.
Since May 2013, the Quick Mart has been stocking a portable refrigerator with tomatoes, sweet potatoes, lettuces and other seasonal fruits and vegetables. Every week it receives a delivery from Tricycle Gardens, a local nonprofit whose mission is to grow healthy foods and get them on people’s plates in low-income Richmond neighborhoods. On a busy Monday afternoon last October, the Quick Mart fridge was empty, save for a couple of handfuls of okra and some collard greens.
“Everything’s selling,” says store owner Ayad Nasher, 26. “Whatever I got there in the cooler, they want it. I’ve been explaining to people that we have fresh vegetables now because we didn’t have it before, and they love it.”
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There are some 18.3 million Americans currently living in food deserts — low-income areas with limited access to a supermarket or other source of fresh food — which are more than a mile from a grocery store in urban areas, or more than 10 miles in rural communities, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. People who live in these areas are more likely to eat poor diets and to be at higher risk of becoming obese and developing chronic obesity-related diseases. Richmond is one of the most densely populated food deserts in the nation; many of its residents can’t afford a car or the bus fare necessary to reach a grocery store.
The problem with the food-desert epidemic is that there’s no clear solution — or at least not one that’s been adequately shown to work. Public health experts have been very good about accurately mapping the precise location of the country’s thousands of food deserts, but they haven’t been as successful in getting to the next step: identifying ways to shrink them. One obvious answer may be simply to build more grocery stores. In fact, in January, the House finally passed the farm bill, which included a provision for the Healthy Food Financing Initiative that will provide $125 million to fund the construction of healthy food retailers in underserved neighborhoods.
Improving food access helps. But recent research suggests that while building new grocery stores can increase people’s perceptions of healthy food availability in their community, it might not be enough to actually change their shopping behaviors. There are lots of reasons people shop and eat the way the way they do. It goes beyond mere access: They like buying their food from the same neighborhood store owner they’ve known for decades; and they like cooking and eating with their families and preserving their culinary traditions. They don’t particularly like it when outsiders drop in to wag their fingers and tell them to eat their fruits and vegetables.
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That may help to explain Tricycle Gardens’ success. Rather than building an invasive, new superstore, the nonprofit is wisely using the resources Richmond already has. Tricycle Gardens’ Get Fresh East End! initiative gets affordable, organic and delicious foods to low-income communities through existing channels — the Quick Mart and, about 2 miles northwest, the Clay Street Market. All the produce comes from Tricycle Gardens’ half-acre, high-yield urban farm in the nearby Manchester neighborhood. Opened in 2010, it produces 20,000 pounds of food a year. “There’s incredible flavor in locally grown food that hasn’t been trucked across countries or states,” says Tricycle Gardens’ executive director, Sally Schwitters. “One thing you can’t outsource is locally grown food.”
Tricycle’s program coordinator Claire Sadeghzadeh interacts directly with the corner store owners and personally delivers their produce twice weekly. On average, she drops off anywhere from $4 to $12 worth of fruits and vegetables per delivery at each store and constantly monitors which items are selling and which aren’t. She says Get Fresh East End! — which is supported in part by Virginia Community Capital, another nonprofit working to increase food access — plans to expand to eight additional stores by the end of 2014. “I think it helps dispel that myth that low-income families don’t eat healthy or that they don’t want healthy food,” Sadeghzadeh says. “And we know that they do. I think it’s superpowerful to see that all of our produce is pretty much sold out every week.”
Quick Mart’s Nasher, who has started cooking for himself using the produce at his store, says “it would be great” to see more shops in the area carrying fresh, locally grown food from the nonprofit. “I’m here to help the community,” says Nasher, who moved to the United States from Yemen in 2003. “To get fresh fruits and vegetables has been amazing.”
At the same time that it’s increasing healthy food access, Tricycle Gardens is also working hard to reconnect local growers with their buyers. People become more mindful of what they eat when they know where their food is coming from — even more so when they’re taught how to cook it properly. Tricycle Gardens offers various classes for community members, so they can learn how to prepare their produce — everything from bell peppers, onions and cucumbers to squash and eggplant — once it’s obtained. “The distribution is critical, but complementing that with education and outreach events — to show that preparing this great food can be easy and affordable, great fun and incredibly delicious — is where we know the changes that we hope to see can happen,” Schwitters says.
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One especially rewarding moment sticks out in her mind. Tricycle Gardens set up a stand at the Greater Fulton Community Health Fair last May, and offered local residents a fresh salad from the farm. A mother and son approached the stand; Schwitters handed the child a bowl. The salad was full of food that kids love to hate: raw kale and collard greens, topped with broccoli and carrots.
“Oh, he’s not going to eat that,” the mother said.
“Well, let me just hand it to him and if he doesn’t eat it, that’s fine. We’ll compost it and it’ll go back into our garden,” Schwitters said.
Schwitters says she turned away for a brief conversation with the boy’s mom, and when she turned back, the salad was gone. He wanted seconds. “We see this time and time again,” says Schwitters, whose grandfather was a farmer. “It’s very different eating freshly grown broccoli that has a crunch and a sweetness and a beauty to it, as opposed to that mush that comes out of a frozen bag.”
Tricycle Gardens, which has a full-time staff of just four and draws on a network of nearly 500 volunteers and interns, runs a year-round weekly farm stand and helps maintain five community gardens and three learning gardens, which provide ample opportunities for children at schools and community centers to connect with the food they eat. With its partners, the Bon Secours Richmond Health System and the Children’s Museum of Richmond, the nonprofit also runs two healing gardens, spaces for reflection and solitude. The food from the healing gardens further helps feed employees of the health system and museum.
“We want to share the magic of looking at a tiny seed and wondering how, with a little love and sunshine and a home in some beautifully composted soil, this could become something that ends up feeding you,” Schwitters says. “That connection lasts a lifetime.”
DON’T MISS: Why It’s Time to Forget About “Food Deserts”
Farmers’ Markets Around the Country Have Found Bitcoin’s Secret Good Side
At farmers’ markets, credit cards make transactions more convenient for customers who may not have cash on hand. But they’re not ideal for vendors, who have to forfeit a 3% transaction fee. Some farmers are therefore turning to the new digital currency, Bitcoin, which most people associate with online drug and weapon sales. Clinton Felsted from Provo, Utah, started using Bitcoin at his market and has enjoyed pocketing the 3% of each transaction he was previously losing. It might seem like a small fee, but for a “high-volume, low-profit” business like a farmers’ market, it accrues harshly. Bitcoin could make a significant difference in business, and aid the country’s growing local agriculture movement. Small businesses may especially benefit from Bitcoin: they’re young and nimble enough to take the risk of using a new currency.