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http://www.grist.org/article/nyc-sends-veggie-carts-to-underserved-areas-and-the\

yre-a-hit

 

NYC sends veggie carts to underserved areas—and they’re a hit

Posted 5:43 PM on 16 Jun 2009

by Tom Laskawy

New York City took a baby step recently towards a state role in distributing

healthy food. It significantly expanded a program to bring fruit and vegetable

“carts†to low-income neighborhoods that lack good food options—so-called

“food deserts.†And if the early response as reported by the NYT is any

indication, the program looks to be a rip-roaring success:

 

....[O]n Wednesday afternoon, an urgent line formed at a cheery new produce cart

that had materialized at the corner of East Fordham Road and Decatur Avenue near

Fordham University in the Bronx. “These strawberries look great, and they’re

a bargain,†said Michelle Cruz, a 38-year-old graphic designer who lives

nearby and found herself jostling other produce hounds under the cart’s jaunty

green umbrellas.

The crowds who appear to be turning out for the carts should give some pause to

elitist opponents of such programs who often doubt that low-income residents

will put down their sodas and fast food and pick up apples and carrots. Indeed,

a member of the USDA’s dietary guidlines panel (i.e. the people who brought

you the food pyramid) recently speculated—as paraphrased by US Food

Policy—“whether people would really eat much differently if healthy food

were free.†The NYT provides a hint of an answer:

 

If the avid buyers at Decatur Avenue were any indication, residents of

produce-poor neighborhoods may welcome the green-umbrella invasion. “Research

has demonstrated that the greater the access, the more the consumption,†said

Elliott S. Marcus, an associate commissioner of the city’s health department.

And New York didn’t just address access. While the program doesn’t

officiallly subsidize fruit and vegetable prices (for which I’ve advocated

before), it does subsidize the overhead of the vendors. As a result, they can

offer aggressively low prices. According the article, produce was half the price

(or even less) of the same stuff at local markets.

 

In some ways, this is such an obvious program that it’s painful to think that

even this modest fleet of up to 1,000 produce carts could have failed based on

opposition from brick and mortar vendors. While it did pass, it was a tough

fight. As the NYT described the original city council proposal back in early

2008:

 

The measure had the backing of antihunger and child-advocacy groups, and when it

was introduced it appeared to have strong support on the Council. But support

began to waver amid heavy lobbying from the retail food industry, leading to a

flurry of late changes and compromises.

And even now, not everyone is happy about the new competition.

 

“It may be good for health, but it’s bad for business,†said George

Katehis, manager of the Splendid Deli Restaurant at 387 East Fordham Road. “A

guy might buy a piece of fruit there instead of coming in here for a soda.â€

Yes, George. I believe that’s the point. I’ve written before about our

mind-boggling tendency to privilege the needs of business-owners over the

general public in public policy debates. But the fact is that current businesses

simply aren’t meeting the demand for fresh food in marginal

neighborhoods—and this is true across the country. So who cares what they

think?

 

This one small program isn’t going to solve the core problems of food deserts,

or obesity for that matter. But it certainly suggests that government policies

aimed at providing an adequate supply of healthy food at a reasonable price to

low-income people have a good chance at succeeding. I can’t think of any

reason why this shouldn’t be replicated in communities across the country.

It’s cheap, quick and effective. And while cities like Philadelphia have had

success with public/private partnerships to bring supermarkets in to underserved

areas (a model which NYC is planning to emulate), building or renovating stores

takes time and still relies to some extent on the good intentions of supermarket

chains. Why should low-income folks have to wait for all that? Let’s roll some

produce trucks, people!

 

Tom is a media and technology professional who thinks that wrecking the planet

is a bad idea. He blogs here and at Beyond Green about food policy, alternative

energy, climate science and politics as well as the multiple and various effects

of living on a warming planet.

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