User:Yaydnew/Food desert

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Farmers' markets and community gardens[edit]

Local and community efforts have made strides in combating a lack of access to nutritious food in food deserts. Farmers' markets provide residents with fresh fruits and vegetables. Usually, in public and central areas of a community, such as a park, farmers' markets are most effective when they are easily accessible. Farmers' markets tend to be more successful in urban than rural areas due to large geographic distances in rural areas that make the markets difficult to access. The expansion of SNAP to farmers' markets also helps make nutritious foods increasingly affordable. Each year, SNAP program participants spend around $70 billion in benefits; as of 2015, more than $19.4 billion were redeemed at farmers' markets. The Double Up Food Bucks program doubles what every Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) dollar spent at a farm stand is worth. This incentivizes locals to shop for fresh foods rather than processed foods. Community gardens can play a similar role in food deserts, generating fresh produce by having residents share in the maintenance of food production.

The Food Trust, a nonprofit organization based in Pennsylvania, has 22 farmers' markets in operation throughout Philadelphia. To increase accessibility for healthier food and fresh produce, Food Trust farmers' markets accept SNAP benefits. Customers have reported improved diets with an increase in vegetable intake as well as healthier snacking habits. Community gardens also address fresh food scarcity. The nonprofit group DC Urban Greens operates a community garden in Southeast Washington, D.C., an area labeled by the US Department of Agriculture as a food desert. The garden provides fresh produce to those in the city who do not have easily accessible grocery stores nearby. The organization also sets up farmers' markets in the city. In the food desert of North Las Vegas, a neighborhood with one of the highest levels of food insecurity, another community garden is addressing food scarcity. These community gardens can aid in education and access to new foods. Organizations such as the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network use community-building gardens to promote community around healthy food.

Urban Agriculture

Urban agriculture (UA) is another way that helps when it comes to having access to fresh food in urban cities. Urban agriculture is one of the responses combating the lack of fresh foods in communities that need fresh foods. There are communities that are turning vacant lots into a community gardens and urban where they can use agriculture to grow fresh foods for the community. Urban agriculture has many benefits such as being a "local source of fresh healthy food", bringing communities together and reducing environmental problems. An issue of urban agriculture is that in many food desert communities, many times the soil has been contaminated from local pollutants making it harder to use plots of land as a garden to grow fresh food. For example, in Oakland, California, there has been a rise in using urban agriculture as a means to get areas that are in the middle of food deserts to grow and produce their own food.

Youth education[edit]

Food deserts are a result of lack of access to food and not enough money to afford the available food, which causes many people and especially children to not get enough nutrients their bodies require. Because there is a dominant concern of where the next meal will come from, people do not always care what they are putting in their bodies as long as it will keep them alive. When there are organizations that target the lack of access to food, there are multiple organizations that implement education within their work. The Grow Hartford Program was implemented in a school in Connecticut to have students address an issue in their community and they chose to focus on food justice. The youth involved worked on farms in the area to learn about the processes of food production and the importance and variety of vegetables. The program even led kids to start a community garden at their school. This program allowed the students to engage in hands-on learning to educate them about agriculture, food scarcity, and nutrition while helping bridge the gap of food access for some of their peers who could now bring home food from the surrounding farms or the school garden. Another example of an organization that educates community members is Oakland Food Connection, located in East Oakland where they teach children about production and consumption through lessons on urban gardening with cooking classes. This program helps educate children about their own food culture and others while also learning about nutrition.

References

Food desert

McClintock, Nathan (2008-11-10). "From Industrial Garden to Food Desert: Unearthing the Root Structure of Urban Agriculture in Oakland, California".