Most residents don’t realize that deserts exist throughout Northeast Ohio. In fact, there are a number of “food deserts” scattered throughout the region.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, food deserts are areas that lack access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk and other foods that make up the full range of a healthy diet. Last year, The American Journal of Epidemiology reported that people with no supermarket near their homes were up to 46 percent less likely to have a healthy diet than those with more shopping options.
Fortunately, for many, taking a drive to a large grocery store or farm market is a simple task, even if it’s a commute to a surrounding neighborhood. However, there are areas, both rural and urban, where access to fresh, healthier food options is limited by distance or lack of transportation.
For urban residents, especially, access to a major grocery store is difficult at best. These people tend to rely upon the corner market, or convenience store, for the majority of their food purchases.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 11 percent of all U.S. households have trouble accessing groceries from established grocers who traditionally have higher quality-control systems, more fresh fruits, vegetables and meats, and lower prices because of their buying power.
The long-term adverse effects of not having access to grocery stores include poor nutrition, obesity and impaired psychological development, according to The Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia-based economic revitalization group.
"When people are located a significant distance from a supermarket, the local options are often higher priced and lower quality," said Alan Berube, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.
One typical response by most people is to question why someone simply cannot “put a new grocery store there?”
Opening stores in urban areas can be more expensive than opening in suburban markets for grocers. Also, larger grocers tend to build stores in heavily populated areas with higher income levels that can better sustain the stores.
A Reinvestment Fund study that examined the costs of opening a grocery store in an urban area compared with opening one in suburban areas found that it was significantly more expensive to open an urban store because it costs more to train staff, maintenance costs are higher, and in most cases, real estate taxes are higher.
The study showed that it costs seven times more to train employees in urban stores than in suburban stores, and security costs were five times higher per year.
In response this these challenges, the Obama administration’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative announced in February 2010, will invest $400 million a year — and leveraging hundreds of millions more from the private sector — to bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places like convenience stores carry healthier options.
Other options are available
Announced in the 2010 State of the State address, Ohio’s then-Governor Ted Strickland’s Ohio Neighborhood Harvest initiative is a statewide effort to ensure that Ohioans in every neighborhood have access to locally grown, affordable and healthy food.
The Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council and the Ohio Department of Agriculture, with assistance from other state agencies, will move forward with its Ohio Neighborhood Harvest work to identify areas in the state that lack access to fresh, healthy food, analyze information and propose solutions to gaps in our food system.
From this analysis, a list of potential solutions will be developed, and may include options such as:
• Improving fresh, local food access in corner stores
• Developing new grocery models
• Supporting farmers market development
• Expanding the ability to process food assistance at fresh food outlets
• Making innovative connections with rural farmers
Until grocery stores begin showing up in inner city neighborhoods, there are other programs springing up to help alleviate the healthy food vacuum.
In Cuyahoga County, the Cleveland Cornerstore Project is working to offer fresh fruits and vegetables to convenience stores at below market prices that they in turn provide for sale to their customers. With additional incentives such as coolers and display tables for the new produce, they are hoping to entice more corner retailers to offer a healthier option to customers than the typical hot dogs and potato chips. Similar programs are being initiated in the Akron area, hoping to bear fruit in 2011.
Another program, City Fresh, works with local farms and volunteers to bring fresh produce to underserved neighborhoods in Summit and Cuyahoga County. For a fixed price each week during the growing season, City Fresh brings a share of the local harvest to specific sites within the city where customers can pick up the produce without having to travel to rural areas typically served by farm markets. Organizers anticipate adding three new stops within Summit County, bringing to seven the number of Fresh Stops for 2011.
Other programs are offering help in establishing urban gardens where communities can grow their own food. Through the Akron Grows program, the city offers six plots throughout town open to anyone willing to plant. Cleveland has several ongoing urban gardening initiatives, many quite successful and some producing enough bounty to be sold within the surrounding neighborhoods.
In Youngstown, the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC) is installing urban gardens across Youngstown on vacant or foreclosed properties.
