thanks for posting! very informative! and shocking! i would never have thought that cities in America wouldn't have supermarkets and grocery shops wanting to open up on every street corner, like i am used to from the city i live in. sounds like this plan is a good one to start changing that, i hope it's successful and can expand into other areas.
Food deserts are a huge problem* in America and almost exclusively affect low-income and/or otherwise underprivileged people.
I really hope this plan takes off too! I want to own a farm at some point in the future, and while I'm really only looking to provide enough food for myself and future family, part of me thinks it would be great to go bigger and provide produce to nearby food deserts.
*They may not be recognized as one by the general public, but I think that they have a huge detrimental effect on the health of communities. They also highlight specific failures in our food/agricultural systems, which is problematic throughout.
The problem may not be recognized by the populace at large, but it's certainly regarded as a giant problem by public health professionals and authorities, so I'd say "a huge problem" isn't just a matter of opinion.
Good to know that at least public health people and authorities are on it! I learned about food deserts from reading about how fucked up American agriculture is, so most of my knowledge about it comes from the angle of "How screwed up is it that a head of lettuce costs more than heavily-processed Twinkies?", not a social and/or medical bent.
i am in love with juan's flying burrito. i hope i run into this guy one day. he could get it so long as he whispers sweet deep velvet nothings in my ear.
My God, this is so needed. I live in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and we don't have a grocery store closer than three miles. There's a few corner stores and dollar stores that sell some food but nothing fresh, and mostly fried foods and canned or prepackaged meals. The closest decent grocer is a six-block walk past the end of the bus line.
The store will offer a free shuttle to anyone who spends $50 or more, so they need not walk or take the bus with heavy bags.
The particular area of town where this first store is opening has utterly horrendous public transportation. It is on this bus line: W3 Lapalco. Imagine working full time and then depending on this bus in the evening to get you to the grocery store and back home.
This is a late comment, but I did not know it was so bad out in the Ninth ward. I live in New Orleans but I don't go out there often. I know that N.O. East is without a big grocery store and is finally getting one. I never realized how spoiled I am because I live in Mid-city.
Thanks for the article. So interesting (and so accurate).
I work for a firm that's had to work with FEMA to restore an area of my state that was ravaged by tornadoes. It was a quite rural area where virtually everything was destroyed and the Piggly Wiggly that had been in the town forever, but which was blown away by the storm, said they weren't going to rebuild.
It took FEMA and local efforts to help finance the rebuilding for the Pig to even agree to come back to the area. If there's no place to buy food, how can an area survive?
(And if they're having to live out of filling stations and thus off of soda, chips, hotdogs, etc. How can we as a nation complain about obesity? We've created the problem by supplying high calorie but low nutrient food to people with limited budgets. It's malnourished obesity (which sounds like an oxymoron but isn't). It's a lose/lose for everyone.)
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I really hope this plan takes off too! I want to own a farm at some point in the future, and while I'm really only looking to provide enough food for myself and future family, part of me thinks it would be great to go bigger and provide produce to nearby food deserts.
*They may not be recognized as one by the general public, but I think that they have a huge detrimental effect on the health of communities. They also highlight specific failures in our food/agricultural systems, which is problematic throughout.
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The store will offer a free shuttle to anyone who spends $50 or more, so they need not walk or take the bus with heavy bags.
The particular area of town where this first store is opening has utterly horrendous public transportation. It is on this bus line: W3 Lapalco. Imagine working full time and then depending on this bus in the evening to get you to the grocery store and back home.
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That's a powerful image. I hope things improve soon.
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I work for a firm that's had to work with FEMA to restore an area of my state that was ravaged by tornadoes. It was a quite rural area where virtually everything was destroyed and the Piggly Wiggly that had been in the town forever, but which was blown away by the storm, said they weren't going to rebuild.
It took FEMA and local efforts to help finance the rebuilding for the Pig to even agree to come back to the area. If there's no place to buy food, how can an area survive?
(And if they're having to live out of filling stations and thus off of soda, chips, hotdogs, etc. How can we as a nation complain about obesity? We've created the problem by supplying high calorie but low nutrient food to people with limited budgets. It's malnourished obesity (which sounds like an oxymoron but isn't). It's a lose/lose for everyone.)
Anyway thanks for the story. Bravo to this guy!
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