Civil Eats

Having saturated the rural landscape, shuttering local stores in small town America along the way, now, in the wake of stagnant sales and increased competition, Walmart desperately needs to expand into urban markets.

And what better urban market than one full of eight million people? While the big box retailer is eager to enter the Big Apple, challenges loom large. Given the negative reputation Walmart has earned for being hostile to workers among other problems, many New Yorkers are skeptical, to put it mildly.

To counter the opposition, Walmart is positioning itself as the solution to urban food deserts – areas where finding real food is next to impossible. But as Anna Lappé has eloquently argued, the big box chain isn’t the answer: “Let’s be clear, expanding into so-called food deserts is an expansion strategy for Walmart. It’s not a charitable move.” Read More

We get it. Organic food typically costs more than conventional, that that’s a significant barrier for people under financial strain. Food activists are working toward big-picture, systems-wide changes that could make organic food more affordable, but in the meantime one company in New York State is trying to make organic food more affordable and accessible–one dozen eggs at a time. Read More

The Alameda Point Collaborative Urban Farm is a one-acre farm growing a variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, eggs, honey, and–with the introduction of new aquaculture ponds–will soon offer fish as well. Neat rows of plants are surrounded by olive and stone fruit orchards, but beyond this farm, towering cranes are positioned on the horizon. This farm is in a unique location. Read More

I’ve got a problem with the food system conversation in the U.S.  It neglects to include what I call the “first food”—breast milk—and emphasize the critical importance of breastfeeding. No conversation about equitable food systems can truly exist without including the first food and understanding how the racial and social inequities around breastfeeding adversely affect vulnerable populations.

If access to healthy food is a basic human right then doesn’t that right start at birth? Shouldn’t our smallest and most vulnerable citizens have fair and just access to the healthiest food for them?

Consider the facts: For the past 30 years, breastfeeding rates among black women, particularly those in underserved, food desert communities, have been significantly lower than all other ethnicities. In the U.S., African American infants are more than twice as likely to die before their first birthday than other infants. In some cities, the stats are even more sobering: Memphis, Tennessee ranks at the top of the list for infant deaths in American cities—where a baby dies every 43 hours. Read More

First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity moved forward last Wednesday with her announcement that grocery chains have agreed to open or expand 1,500 stores in urban and rural “food deserts” nationwide.  She did not say who would be growing all the anticipated fruits and vegetables.

Many believe local farmers and businesses could help supply these retail outlets, and grow new jobs in the process, if provided more business development support.  America’s largest farm finance network, the Farm Credit System (FCS), is considering a proposed regulatory rule that could help deploy such expertise. Read More

The surprise darling of the Community Food Security Coalition conference last May was a little-known city councilman from Cleveland. He spoke fervently about his city, a city of flourishing community gardens, backyard bee hives, and chicken coops, a city where all farmers’ markets accept food stamps, where schools get discounts for sourcing local food, and where both trans-fats and smoking on playgrounds are banned. His name? Joe Cimperman.

A 4th term Democratic city councilman whose parents hail from Slovenia, Cimperman is a vocal advocate of community gardens, which create community and self-sufficiency. He told of coming together with community leaders, public health officials, doctors, and foundations to pass the Healthy Cleveland Initiative — a series of audacious policy goals that will improve the health of Clevelanders for years to come. (That is, if Ohio’s Republican-majority legislature doesn’t pre-emptively squash them.) He ended with this rallying cry: “Why are we in food policy? Because we want our friends to live longer!”

What are Cleveland’s secrets for becoming a food justice utopia? I recently interviewed Cimperman to find out. Read More

Washington, D.C. sports its proud identity as the nation’s capital, but it also suffers the typical problems of urban blight, including food deserts, impoverished areas with limited access to healthy food. Almost 16,000 people reside in such food deserts within the city.

Fortunately, a number of forward-thinking organizations have resolved to end food insecurity in the nation’s capital through food access, affordability, and community education. As a result, D.C. capitalizes on its dual local/national character and acts as a role model for initiatives that support access to good food throughout the nation.

How do we lead the shift from processed, unhealthy products to fresh, nutritious food? While accessibility and affordability are certainly crucial, community education is a key component, notes Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s Michael Babin, and founder of the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture. Read More

Civil Eats contributor Sarah Henry reports at KQED’s Bay Area Bites on yesterday’s announcement by First Lady Michelle Obama on the new food financing initiative, The California FreshWorks Fund, designed to increase access to healthy, affordable food in underserved communities in California.

The local take away from the White House announcement: A full-service grocery store may finally come to the people of West Oakland. It looks like the People’s Community Market, a long-anticipated mid-size retailer in West Oakland, may be a step closer to raising the capital it needs to break ground.

Read More

As if there weren’t enough conflicting nutrition information out there already, a professor of human nutrition decided to go on a Twinkie Diet. He then proceeded to lose weight, improve his cholesterol numbers, and make matters even more confusing for the general public. But while the media has taken the easy headline and run with it, I think this story deserves a closer look. Read More

Just around the corner and down the street from where I live on a stretch that includes liquor stores and the dodgy characters who frequent such places, you’ll find Spiral Gardens, a slightly disheveled verdant oasis on a fenced in corner of a formerly empty city lot.

It’s a welcome addition to the neighborhood. For the past six years in this location, the community food security project has developed a four-pronged approach to reaching low-income residents, particularly people of color, on the southwest side of Berkeley. The nonprofit is home to a nursery chock full of edible starts and trees, culinary and medicinal herbs, and California native plants for folks who want to grow their own food. Nursery sales help fund other programs the group offers. Read More

This week is National Farmers Market Week. Time for fresh corn, tomatoes and berries at your local farmers market, which now are as American as baseball and apple pie. In the past fifteen years, the number of markets has almost quadrupled to nearly 6,000. Americans annually spend $1.3 billion at farmers markets, according to Farmers Market Coalition estimates.

Business associations adore farmers markets because they revitalize depressed downtowns, bringing shoppers into otherwise ignored areas. Communities love them because they turn a parking lot or empty city street into a colorful and festive weekly commons where friends and neighbors can meet and linger. Farmers frequent them because they can capture 100 percent of the retail value of their products, helping revive a flagging small farm economy.

Yet, there is one group that has been excluded from the benefits of farmers markets: food stamp recipients. Read More

We’ve heard from the politicians, academics, activists, and social commentators about how to help a city like Detroit that is economically-depressed, struggling to retain residents (let alone attract new ones), and home to 500,000 food insecure residents. What has happened? Not much. People offer statistical calculations for how to reduce poverty levels but the city continues to lose residents and increase the number of vacant homes and lots. Mix in the obesity epidemic, lack of access to healthy, nutritious food and you’ve got the worst-case scenario for the city. I have a new equation to offer for how to build up Detroit. Till soil + plant seeds = self empowerment and community development. Multiply this over and over and the change is exponential. The enthralling short documentary, Urban Roots, proves this theory true. Read More

One of the most logical ways to eliminate food deserts – those places that don’t have adequate access to fresh fruits and vegetables – is through urban agriculture. In Brooklyn, New York, residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant are fighting to keep their urban farm – which produces 7,000 lbs of fresh produce per year – alive in the face of development. Read More

On May 16th, New York City unveiled a new initiative, Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH), which combines zoning changes and some financial incentives to make it less costly for developers to include supermarkets in their projects, and to allow the construction of supermarkets in light manufacturing districts without a special permit. Read More

People from all over the world travel to Namibia because it is rich in charismatic megafauna like elephants, lions, zebras, cheetah, kudu, oryx and springbok. Having grown up in New York City, I developed an insatiable desire to surround myself with wild, beautiful animals and landscapes. I was delighted to go to Damaraland in the Kunene Region of northwestern Namibia to join a team studying the nearly-extinct desert-dwelling black rhinoceros.

Our research looked at the effects of livestock herding practices on rhinoceros habitat. Since rhinoceroses and livestock occupy the same region and utilize similar food and water resources, we wanted to know if the presence of livestock negatively affects the rhinoceros population. I hadn’t guessed that it would be farmers, not rhinos, who would change my way of looking at the world. Read More

To many of us in the food and wellness communities, having a food supply based on local, sustainably-raised and organic foods should be nothing less than mandatory – it should be our right. But for many Americans, these terms remain elusive and even far-flung. Read More