Food Deserts
They're called food deserts, neighborhoods in our inner cities where it's almost impossible to find healthy, fresh, sustainably grown fruits and vegetables. Neighborhoods where all that's available is what's at the gas station mini-mart. Join us this week to examine why food deserts exist in the land of plenty and what they tell us about inequities in our food production and distribution system.
Click on a program topic to hear audio with voices and stories behind the issues.
Use the study guides to inform yourself about the topic and learn the skills of innovation, including:
- Creative problem-solving
- Strategic thinking
- Entrepreneurial initiative
- Collaborative design
In addition:
- Explore other audio, video and print resources on the topic
- Use the suggested activities to put innovation into action in your community
- Choose from a menu of options to adapt the materials to your specific learning and teaching objectives.
Ian Marvey
Co-Founder and Director: Added Value and its Red Hook Community Farm (5:46)
Food Deserts: Nutritional Starvation in the Land of Plenty
Study and Resource Guide
Learning Goals and Outcomes
- Examine the issue of access by low-income residents to healthy, affordable food in urban areas of the United States.
- Consider the benefits and costs of a local food system.
- Gain an understanding of where food in urban environments comes from and how it is produced.
- Explore ways to increase access to healthy and affordable food in urban “Food Deserts.”
- Gain a better understanding of organic and sustainable agriculture, including its reputed health benefits for consumers, economic advantages and challenges for organic farmers, and broader ecological benefits.
- Teach innovation skills to devise more effective approaches to longstanding challenges through creative problem solving, collaborative design, entrepreneurial initiative and strategic thinking.
Listening and Comprehension Questions
Before Listening
1. Where do you and/or your family do most of your grocery shopping? Do you feel you have adequate and convenient access to healthy, affordable food? Why or why not?
During/After Listening
1. What is a “Food Desert”? How and why did food deserts come about?
2. According to Mari Gallagher, what are the consequences of living in an area deemed a food desert?
3. Why isn’t it sufficient for retail grocery chains to move into food deserts? Since few large supermarket chains choose to locate their stories there, why don’t some see an advantage in locating their stores where they face less competition?
4. What does Oran Hesterman feel has created and sustained the phenomenon of food deserts?
Critical Thinking and Discussion Questions
1. What are the consequences of living in a food desert? Is it possible to eat well on what you can find in a gas station mini-mart? If so, what would you buy there and what would you avoid?
2. Mari Gallagher suggests that food deserts are actually being passed down from generation to generation. How so? What, if anything, can and should be done to break this cycle?
3. Mark Sommer asks why retailers would want to locate in low income neighborhoods. What incentives could be created for retailers to encourage them to locate in these “deserts?”
4. While Mari Gallagher advocates bringing retail grocers to areas lacking access to healthy, affordable food, Oran Hesterman believes the issue is more complex. Do you agree? Why or why not?
5. Mark Sommer suggests that solving the issue of food deserts is a multidimensional problem, fraught with economic, social, and cultural challenges. What are some of these challenges?
Experiential Learning
1. An Oasis in the Desert: Research local healthy food options either in your community or a documented food desert like Chicago, Detroit, Louisville, Kentucky or Oakland, California. Visit Mari Gallagher’s website (http://fooddesert.net/) and post commentary, photos, and resources for residents to locate and utilize healthy food choices.
2. Become a Forager: First, identify the ingredients of what you consider to be a “healthy” meal in terms of food groups represented, caloric intake, sodium content, nutritional balance, and other factors. Then visit a convenience store/gas station or other “non-mainstream” grocery store. Plan and purchase a full meal that you consider to be “healthy.” What did you buy? What couldn’t you find that you would have included if you could have found it on the store shelves? Report your findings.
3. Replant the Desert Landscape: What do you think it would take to “re-green” our food deserts? Write and present a plan recommending specific changes.
4. A Garden Grows in Brooklyn: Urban agricultural entrepreneur Ian Marvey and his colleagues have planted extensive community gardens in a low-income neighborhood in the Red Hook district of Brooklyn and a farmers market to sell its produce. Think about and propose how to adapt and launch a similar venture in a food desert in your own city or town? What hurdles would you face and how would you overcome them?
5. Desert Mirage? Critics argue that “food deserts” are a myth and that the residents of low income neighborhoods can find healthy food in nearby neighborhoods. Select an identified food desert either in your own community or online and look for the nearest supermarket where a wide range of food options can be found. What transportation options are there for low income residents? How practical and affordable is it for them to reach this market and how easy would it be for them to carry their groceries from the bus or subway stop to their home? Research this point of view and present your findings.
Crossing the Line Activity: Land of Plenty?
Lesson Objectives:
· Explore issues of access, health, and community as they are related to food deserts
· Develop critical thinking and problem solving skills through an inquiry based process
Materials Needed:
· Educast/Food, Sustainability and Society: Food Deserts (16 minutes/3 five-six minutes interviews)
· Student Worksheets
· One to two class periods
Procedure
- Ask students to listen to the Educast: Food Deserts, paying particular attention to the concepts of access to food (both geographic and economic), health and nutrition, and community as they listen. They may take as many notes as they would like during the Educast, as key points may aid them during this exercise.
- Divide the room/seating into two halves, facing one another. On one side of the room, place a sign that is labeled “TRUE” and on the other, a sign labeled “FALSE”. Instructors may even use a piece of thick tape/duct tape to create a visual “line” down the middle of the room.
- Provide students with accompanying worksheet of true/false statements and ask them to decide individually whether each statement is true or false, making notes as they like.
- Introduce the first statement and ask those who found it to be “true” to sit on the side of the room labeled “true” and vice versa.
- Students may then take turns defending their stance. During the process, should any one student become convinced that a point made by the other side is, in fact, the better point, they may move seats, or defect. Where students are positioned near or far from the line can indicate how strong their belief/conviction is concerning the statement. As students from “the other side” talk, those across the line may move closer or further away from the center line, denoting how their perspectives are shifting, if in fact they are.
- Facilitate this discussion, using your time allowance for each question as appropriate.
- After the debate, ask students to reflect (reflection worksheet provided) on the issue and their thoughts during the debate. Debrief with the group as a whole: What additional questions were raised? What issues were most important to you during this exercise? What issues need further consideration? What solutions, if any, can you see as a result of this discussion?
Food, Sustainability and Society: Food Deserts
Critical Thinking/ Problem Solving
TRUE/FALSE: For each of the statements below, decide whether you feel it is “true” or “false”. You may make notes to support your claim, but you must decide one or the other – there is no gray area during this debate.
1. Food Deserts are mainly a problem of urban, economically disadvantaged areas.
2. Those affected by food deserts should find a way, individually, to solve their problems concerning health and access to food.
3. Health and nutrition are the responsibility of the individual, and convenience stores/grocers are not responsible for the food choices of consumers.
4. Food Deserts are having an imprint on future generations in terms of education and health.
5. Food deserts are caused by poverty and high crime rates.
6. Education about food choices and nutrition is more important than increasing the supply of healthy food
7. Even if larger, mainstream grocers were to locate/relocate in an area deemed a food desert, residents will not make healthier food choices
8. Solutions for access to healthier foods in communities considered food deserts must come from within those communities themselves.
9. The only way to eliminate food deserts is to design policy at the Federal level creating incentives for farmers/producers to grow and distribute healthy food.
10. A global food system is inherently flawed and will only perpetuate the problem of food deserts.
11. A global food system provides an abundance of food at prices that are affordable for poor families.
About the Series: Educasting is a service of the Mainstream Media Project that extends the life and reach of MMP’s internationally syndicated radio program, A World of Possibilities (www.aworldofpossibilities.com) by re-purposing selected series following their initial broadcast for use as long-term audio educational and movement-building resources.
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