Tag: convenience store

Food Deserts in the City (Part 2)

  • For many inner-city neighborhoods, access to fresh produce is difficult if not impossible because there are no supermarkets. Farmers' markets attempt to fill the gap, but they're not as convenient as supermarkets. (Photo by Pat Blochowiak)

The loss of supermarkets in cities from L.A. to Detroit to New
York has left many people without access to fresh fruits and
vegetables. In some places, farmers’ markets are helping to fill the
void. But Julie Grant reports that there are still a lot of
barriers to finding healthy food in many inner cities:

Transcript

The loss of supermarkets in cities from L.A. to Detroit to New
York has left many people without access to fresh fruits and
vegetables. In some places, farmers’ markets are helping to fill the
void. But Julie Grant reports that there are still a lot of
barriers to finding healthy food in many inner cities:


When family physician Patricia Blochowiak moved to this
neighborhood six years ago, she didn’t anticipate a problem
finding fresh foods:


“I had thought that since I had a grocery store within walking
distance of my house that I’d be able to get my groceries there.
And it isn’t the case.”


Blochowiak is afraid she’d be sued if she said what she really
thinks about the quality of fruits and vegetables in her
neighborhood grocery store.


JG:”You don’t want to say what you thought? You’re shaking your head no.”


“No.”


So the neighborhood doctor started driving to a nearby farm
market to buy her vegetables. The market building has been on
this corner for 75 years in East Cleveland. This area was once
home to millionaires and to the world’s first industrial park.
These days much of it looks dilapidated, abandoned. But
Blochowiak says she can get free-range eggs, cauliflower from the
next county over, and apples from third generation family
farmers. It’s great for her. But she says a lot of other people
can’t get here:


“It’s very disappointing. You really see first-hand, that those of us
with cars, we can get where we want to go. But those without
cars have a difficult time. So you have to take several buses, or
you have to find a friend who can drive you, or you have to walk
long distances, and for people with a lot of small children, for the
elderly, it just doesn’t work.”


Dr. Blochowiak is president of the Cleveland Academy of Family
Physicians. She says people, especially children, need fresh
foods to perform at their best. But like in inner-cities across
the nation, it’s tough to find and buy fresh fruits and
vegetables.



Even here, at her farm market, farmers can only provide
vegetables in certain seasons. Walking by the market,
Blochowiak runs into an old friend. William Muhammad tries to provide produce year-round:


“Yeah, it is difficult. It’s very difficult to get produce.
Normally, I always have a stand in the wintertime. I have pies
now, but I always have another stand in the winter with produce.”



In the off-season, Muhammed buys produce from a wholesaler and
sells it here at the farm market. But as more retail groceries
close, the wholesalers are also closing:


“It’s difficult to get anything. All you can do is buy where you
can. It’s too difficult for me.”


Grant: “So what do you do?”


“Right now, I don’t know what to do yet. Next month, I’ll see
what I could work up.”


One thing they’re trying to do near the farm market is grow their
own food. Blochowiak has worked on a community garden nearby in
hopes of providing more fresh produce to the neighborhood.


But there’s concern here that such efforts are barely tipping the
scales. They’re not a dependable, accessible source of fruits
and vegetables for most people. Kevin Scheuring sells spices at
the market. He says a lot of people forego fresh fruits and
vegetables and opt for mac and cheese or canned food from the
convenience store because getting fresh food in the inner city is
such a tough row to hoe:



“Not that they wouldn’t make a better choice if it was easier.
Again, you’ve got to get on a bus with a bunch of groceries and
go really far away and haul stuff, especially in the winter. Or
you can just go – ehh – maybe tomorrow and just go down the
street and buy a can of beans or something. And call it a day.”


Scheuring says a lot people want to do better for themselves and
their families, but it’s just becoming too difficult to get to
the few remaining places that do sell fresh food in the inner-cities.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Returning Quality Food to Urban Areas

  • Chene Street, on Detroit's east side, was once a thriving retail corridor. Now, it's a decimated stretch of crumbling and burned-out buildings. (Photo by Marla Collum)

Finding a big supermarket is next to impossible in many inner-city
neighborhoods. That means a lot of people do their shopping at convenience
and liquor stores, where there’s rarely fresh produce. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on one group’s efforts to get around
the grocery store problem – and help revitalize a neighborhood:

Transcript

Finding a big supermarket is next to impossible in many inner-city neighborhoods. That means a lot of people do their shopping at convenience and liquor stores, where there’s rarely fresh produce. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on one group’s efforts to get around the grocery store problem and help revitalize a neighborhood:


(Sound of traffic)


Up and down this street as far as the eye can see are crumbling and burned-out buildings. This used to be a thriving business district. It’s where Vlasic Pickle, White Owl Cigar, and Lay’s Potato Chips grew into national brands. Today, the most evident sign of commerce is the prostitutes walking the street. Smack in the middle of this is Peacemaker’s International. It’s a storefront church where Ralph King is a member.


“Now if you look at it you see that there’s no commercial activity, no grocery stores within a mile of here. And our concern was that people had to eat.”


There are about seven liquor stores for every grocery store here on the east side of Detroit. Some people can drive to the well-stocked supermarkets in the suburbs, but many families don’t have cars, and King says the city busses are spotty.


“So they’re buying food at convenience stores or gas stations. And quite frankly, it just doesn’t seem a good fit that a community has to live off gas station food.”


That means processed, high-starch, high-fat diets that lead to illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Those are all problems that disproportionately hit African Americans, and public health researchers say those higher rates of illnesses are linked to the food availability problems in poor black communities.


Amy Schulz is with the University of Michigan, and she’s studied the lack of grocery stores in high-poverty neighborhoods.


“What we found, in addition to the economic dimension was that Detroit, neighborhoods like the east side that are disproportionately African American are doubly disadvantaged in a sense. Residents in those communities have to drive longer, farther distances to access a grocery store than residents of a comparable economic community with a more diverse racial composition.”


In other words, if you’re poor and white, you have a better chance of living near a grocery store than if you’re poor and black. Ralph King and the folks in this neighborhood want to get around that problem. So about three years ago, they decided to try and reopen a nearby farmer’s market. They turned to Michigan State University Extension for help. Mike Score is an extension agent.


“I thought it would just be the process of organizing some people, helping them buy some produce wholesale, setting up in the neighborhood, selling the food, and generating a net income that could be reinvested. And I was really wrong.”


The farmer’s market was a flop. Score says produce vendors set up in the neighborhood, but the fruits and vegetables sat all day, unsold. He says the problem was they were using the wrong currency. Most people in this neighborhood have very little cash on hand, and they need to use their food stamp cards to shop for groceries.


So, Score helped develop a plan for a neighborhood buyers’ club that can negotiate low prices by ordering in bulk. His business plan also calls for job training for people in the neighborhood.


“It’s going to give people who are chronically unemployed but who have some entrepreneurial skills access to food at a lower cost, and that enables them to think about starting restaurant businesses or smaller retail businesses. So that’s an important part of this project: in addition to getting people groceries, it also creates some job opportunities.”


It’s been a struggle to get the program off the ground. It took a long time to get approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a machine to read peoples’ food stamp cards. People have stolen some of the project’s meager resources, but Mike Score and Ralph King say they’ll stick with it until families in this neighborhood can put decent food on their tables. And they say they hope it can be a model that other low-income communities around the country can use.


For the GLRC, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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