Meet the Black Farmers Fighting Food Deserts in New York

[Jilly_in_VA]

On a warm August morning in this hamlet in upstate New York, Ashanti Williams and Arian Rivera are breaking ground on a new vegetable plot on their 95-acre farm. Winter is coming, and they need to plant cover crops to prepare the land for new growth next spring.

Williams, 32, and Rivera, 39, owners and operators of the Black Yard Farm Cooperative, grow produce that’s culturally relevant to the neighborhoods they came from in Harlem and the Bronx. That means crops like lima beans, collard greens, callaloo, hot peppers, and different rice varieties. “Food is medicine,” says Williams. And in their communities, two historically underserved areas of New York City with large populations of color, people need the food “that actually helps you heal and grow, as opposed to things that are going to make you sick.”

Their mission—to supply fresh food to people of color and encourage Black farming, food sovereignty, and land ownership—grew out of their personal experiences of food injustice. When they were living in both Harlem and the Bronx, good produce was scarce, and fast food was everywhere. Such bleak foodscapes have allowed for obesity and its related illnesses, like blood pressure, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes, to thrive. In the Bronx, obesity affects nearly 32 percent of the population; in gentrifying Harlem, it affects between 21 percent and 31 percent of adults. The disease pattern holds across the country. Among Black, non-Hispanic Americans over age 20, obesity affects nearly 39 percent of men and 56 percent of women.

Against that backdrop, the Black Yard Farm works closely with the Corbin Hill Food Project, an organization that buys fresh produce from farms in the Northeast and distributes it through low-cost shares in low-income areas of New York City, offering flexible payment and signup schedules to accommodate residents’ needs. New School University professor Dennis Derryck and a group of largely Black and brown co-founders started the organization in 2009 after realizing that the major cause of death in Harlem and the Bronx “really came down to food,” explains Derryck. “Just poor quality of food. It was a health problem.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4ave8q/meet-the-black-farmers-fighting-food-deserts-in-new-york

[Carlitos Brigante]

1. K&R! nt

[CrispyQ]

2. Great article.

I want a bouquet of those zinnias.

snip...

In low-income areas, groceries that sell fresh, affordable produce tend to be scarce. The term “food desert” is often used to describe these neighborhoods, but food policy researchers prefer “grocery gap.” There’s plenty of food in these areas; the problem is that most of it is unhealthy. Across the country, fast-food chains have proliferated in minority neighborhoods. Along with a disproportionate number of convenience stores, bodegas, and dollar stores, they offer overworked, low-income people tantalizingly affordable and convenient food options at a steep health cost, contributing to rising obesity.

Many years ago I read a story about a woman who bought a food truck & converted it into a produce truck & then drove to neighborhoods without grocery stores. What she thought would last a few days, she sold out in a few hours. The (mostly) women who shopped at her truck asked if & when she would be back. At the time the article was written she'd only been at it a few months. I always wondered if she succeeded over time.