Thoughts on Food Deserts

When I worked on the Activity and Food Landscape Project at Penn (August 2010-October 2010), I learned a lot about the "Food Desert." It is a very very complex issue with interesting causes, terrible and surprising results and innovative solutions.  One cause of the food desert is that grocery store chains deem inner city neighborhoods of a certain demographic as "too risky", so they don't open shop, even though there are people this is the demographic, which tends to travel the most on foot or with public transportation, and traveling to a far away grocery store is an all afternoon affair.

But it isn't just inner-city neighborhoods.  The high-end, yuppy neighborhood I lived in in Orlando (which I like, by the way) has been the antithesis of a blighted inner-city for at least a decade, yet hadn't had a grocery store in a square mile radius for, like, 30-40 years!!  It was impossible to live downtown without a car, but a compact downtown isn't possible if everybody has a car, so the whole venture was doomed, until Publix opened a grocery store on Central and Eola Dr..

Also,  I know this because I lived in a food desert in Philly.  I lived a couple of streets away from a poorer part of town, but my neighborhood was all college students (no cars) and professors.  Corporations can be really blind sometimes when it comes to knowing where to invest.  I took me a half an hour usually to take the bus to the nearest grocery store, that or I had to walk two miles or so, also taking a half an hour.  My solution: I bought a backpack with wheels!  Two miles doesn't seem like a lot to some car-driving executive, but without a car it's a long way.  At least the walking was nice and I could walk down a recreational trail on the river on my way to the grocery store.  I guess I was privileged.

A surprising solution to the food desert problem is that the residents in these areas supply their own services for their own demand, and the result is a very non-corporate America in it's most authentic form, in my opinion.  There are parts of America that McDonalds, Wallmart's, and big chains don't care about a bit, so they don't open shop.  Access to fresh food suppliers for small scale and corner stores must be difficult though and could explain why lots of food-stores in inner-cities don't have good quality food, or if they do, it can be expensive compared to the chains.  At least a local resident had the pride of being his/her own boss.  

I mean, it is not as if all grocery stores need a pharmacy, bakery, meat counter and wine store within it; That is potentially six different stores, potentially run by six different small business owners.  The grocery stores might have to be smaller, but if there are lots of small stores, it comes out to the same amount, just spread out between a lot of hands, a lot of entrepreneurs.

But what do I know; I'm no entrepreneur or small business owner.  Or is this common sense?

Another solution are food markets on the weekend (from local farmers or imported, whatever), food trucks, and smaller grocery stores spread out more often (like every corner, darn it!).  Suddenly there are a whole lot of people in Generation X and Y, who want to have a farm, raise cows and churn out organic cheese.  That, or small family farms might have an alternative to selling en masse to some retailer.