food deserts and Columbia, Mo.

--> As a Peace Corps Coverdell Fellow, I am expected to volunteer about 10 hours a week with a local nonprofit. I chose CCUA as my service partner because I wanted to learn more about growing veggies and growing awareness about food insecurity.

I first heard about food deserts last year when I was living in New York City. I was working at a youth development nonprofit in East Harlem and my coworker and roommate, Prospero Herrera, mentioned the term. He had studied urban planning and had spent a few years out in Oakland volunteering with an urban agriculture nonprofit.

Prospero told me that a food desert is a place that does not provide easy access to fresh, healthy and/or affordable food. It can be an inner-city neighborhood, a suburb or a very rural area. Food deserts exist because of uncoordinated city planning, poverty, structural inequalities, racism, lacking infrastructure, big box businesses, fast food chains, and sometimes, simply distance. They exist for complex and highly politicized reasons. And, the fallout of a food desert is complex as well. When people cannot easily access fresh food, they resort to fast food, which causes health problems like diabetes and high cholesterol. Essentially, living in a food desert long term can be harmful to your health. The USDA estimates that 23.5 million Americanslive in a food desert.

I’ve learned that eliminating food deserts takes a coordinated effort. A health conference I attended last March included a panel on improving communities. Paul Lopez, a city councilor from Denver’s third district, said his neighborhood really needed a grocery store, but faced quite a struggle in getting one. People in his community didn’t have a place nearbyto buy vegetables at a reasonable price, but they did have plenty of liquor stores and convenience stores filled with processed food. Lopez worked with a grocer for several months, and was finally able to convince the grocer to open a store in his district. It took intense pressure and a lot of effort to open that one store. Lopez’ anecdote illustrates the complexity of food deserts and the uphill battle people face in eradicating them.

When I moved to Columbia, I was surprised to find no markets or grocery stores downtown. In my neighborhood in Washington Heights, just north of Harlem in New York, I lived within half a block of several large grocery stores. But, in Columbia, I couldn’t find a single grocery store within walking or even biking distance.

Walk Score is a website that uses data to estimate how walkable and affordable various zip codes are. According to Walk Socre, Columbia is a car-dependent city. 

Walk Score's data ranks Columbia 26 out of 100 for walkability. In other words, most errands within this city require a car, and most areas are not bike friendly, either.

Those numbers are tough to see. But, if you look closely at the Walk Score map, you’ll see a small green dot in the middle of downtown Columbia. That’s indicative of a walk/bike-friendly location. In the nine months I’ve lived here, I’ve seen Lucky’s, a natural food market, establish itself just a few blocks from downtown Columbia. I’ve become involved with CCUA, an organization that not only grows fresh food for residents and delivers it to the doorstep of local food pantries and children’s organizations, but also teaches people how to grow food on their own. I imagine that green dot growing just a little wider every time a store like Lucky’s comes to town or an organization like CCUA takes root in a place that has been labeled ‘car dependent.’

I wanted to write about food deserts because I think that complex issues like this one can teach us a lot about our communities and what we might need to do to make them better.

CCUA is quietly addressing this issue, even though you won’t see this word listed anywhere in their literature. Yes, bringing healthy food to people is part of the answer and making that food accessible is certainly a big step in the right direction.

CCUA won’t put another grocery store in downtown Columbia. Only a grocer can do that. But they are addressing the issue by cutting down on the negative impact that food deserts have by teaching people how to grow gardens in those deserts. Urban agriculture empowers people to grow their own food, instead of relying on external systems that may disappoint them by being too far away, too expensive or too inaccessible. It’s a revolutionary idea, really. It’s an innovative solution to a complex problem and it’s making a difference.

Read some stories about how growing food is improving thelives of Columbia residents.