Food For Thought: The Lives of Others

How food deserts threaten community

Over the last thirty-ish years I’ve knocked on thousands of doors. I’m a long-time political volunteer and have spent hundreds of hours pounding pavement in well-heeled neighbourhoods, in seniors’ apartments, and in lower income communities.  I’ve developed strong opinions on types of doorbells, dogs, and the changing fashions of landscaping.

It’s funny how we can live somewhere and know so little about it. I’ve done this door-to-door work in nearly every community I’ve lived in plus a few more and I’m always struck at what I find just around the corner from the landmarks and intersections that are such familiar parts of daily life.

But a glimpse into a home from the front step reveals a simple fact: we know very little about our neighbours and their lives. There’s a temptation to believe that people who live near me have the same kind of life that I do, but it’s wrong to make such an assumption: within the same city, and even on opposite ends of a long street, the lives of residents can be dramatically different.

My Facebook feed gave me a little jolt earlier this week. World Central Kitchen, a charity and relief organization that I have mentioned before in this space, set up operation on Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo, New York, the site of the recent mass shooting that left 10 innocent people dead simply for being at their local grocery store.

A relief organization best-known for feeding the refugees and first-responders of war and natural disaster deploys because one grocery store is closed? How does that happen?

But then I read a bit more about the Jefferson Avenue neighbourhood. It’s a lower income area, predominately Black, and a food desert. The TOPS Market was the only supermarket in the area and its opening nearly 20 year ago was the result of a hard-fought community effort of advocacy and petitions.

The term “food desert” belies some ugly reality. A desert is a naturally-occurring ecosystem, and there’s nothing natural about a food desert. Food deserts are consequence of bad governance underpinned by economic disparity and all the root causes of both.

Imagine a scenario something like this: government decides to run an expressway through a part of town, effectively cutting a neighbourhood off from the rest of the city. In fact, commuters using the expressway go through a tunnel, so they don’t even see the neighbourhood as they pass through. No one from outside the neighbourhood has a reason to visit anymore, so no one opens “destination” businesses like restaurants and shops. The “destination” businesses that do exist only serve the neighbourhood now, so many of them close. As storefronts get boarded up no one wants to live there, so housing prices decline, vacancies increase, and renters replace homeowners. Poverty is concentrated. Public transit declines because no one goes to that neighbourhood except to go home at night. The vicious cycle continues until the area is economically depressed and politically isolated. And let’s be honest here: No government plans to run an expressway through a neighbourhood that has a lot of political clout to start with.

This is pretty much what happened in Buffalo. It’s how the closing of one grocery store means that nearest supermarket is now three bus rides away. That doesn’t work out too well if you don’t have a car, work multiple jobs or shift work, are a single parent, a senior, or have a disability or other limitation on your time and/or mobility.

You would think that an area without a grocery store would be an opportunity for business, but not necessarily. Businesses, quite naturally, factor in risks when creating their business model, and economically depressed neighbourhoods present risk - availability of an educated workforce, crime, and lower than average household incomes to name only a few. And what do you need to improve those things? Oh yeah… that vicious cycle again.

And what happens when there’s no supermarket? Well, it’s not that there’s no food available, but it’s the kind that usually comes from convenience stores and quick-service restaurants: over-priced, unremarkable, and not particularly healthy. The health effects of poor nutrition leave both an economic and human toll: obesity, chronic illness, disability, and early death.

But let’s also remember that neighbourhoods with greater political influence also create a different type of food desert through zoning that encourages single-family homes at the expense of multi-unit housing and commercial development, essentially NIMBY-ing themselves into suburban sprawl that demands car ownership. Car-oriented shopping patterns encourage large corporate malls and commercial developments with acres of parking over small street-side businesses, further spacing out markets and food stores. That’s not a healthy scenario for a community either: inaccessible, exclusionary, wasteful, and dull.

Food is absolutely central to so many of our cultural, social, economic and political issues. What we eat, where we buy it, how and where it is raised, grown, and processed are fundamental. All of us, no matter who we are, depend on the food system and it’s a barometer of the health of our society as a whole.

As with any problem with so many threads, improving access to food and food security isn’t something that can be addressed with only one solution. A food co-op may be a great idea. A farmer’s market too. Tax credits and incentives to business and better schools and job training are all part of the mix. Exactly how and in what combination depends on the community and the needs and perspectives of its residents, but they all start with one thing: knowing your community and the people in it. Good governance gives us livable communities, and that’s everyone’s responsibility.

Better lace up my shoes… I have more doors to knock.