WBEZ | food deserts

Illinois Food Fund to help grocers expand in health-challenged communities

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 12:47:00 -0600

Loan applications are coming in for a pot of state money that would put grocery stores in underserved communities throughout Illinois.

Currently, the state of Illinois has $10 million for a Fresh Food Fund.

The money is supposed to help full-service grocery stores expand or build in places like food deserts where healthy food is scarce.

The loans are not meant for the Jewel-Osco and Dominick's of the grocer world but smaller or independent operations.

"The intent behind the Fresh Food Fund has always been to make our neighborhoods healthier in a self-sustaining way that also promotes economic development," said State Sen. Jacqueline Y. Collins. "While larger grocery stores are part of the solution, they aren't the answer for every neighborhood."

Collins said the Fresh Food Fund needs to include a variety of access points.

"Including smaller stores that are owned by local residents and employ people in the community, re-invest locally and stay in the community over the long term," she said.

Trinita Logue is president of IFF, the community development financial institution administering the program.

"We feel that the projects we’ll be financing will be in higher need, harder to reach areas, where the markets may not be as robust but there very clearly are needs," Logue said.

She said the first loan should be out early next year.

Logue said the pot of funds should swell to $30 million to invest throughout the state.

Money is being raised from banks and foundations. The Illinois Fresh Food Fund is modeled after similar efforts in Pennsylvania and New York.

Grocers will also have to offer education to address healthy eating in the communities they serve.

Mari Gallagher: Food desert super sleuth

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 06:00:56 -0500

Mari Gallagher gets a Google alert every time someone uses the term “food desert” online. That’s because she popularized the term -- used to describe locations where it’s harder to find fresh produce and other healthy options than fast food or processed goods -- in a landmark 2006 study that revealed as many as 650,000 Chicagoans were then living without easy access to healthy food.

Thanks to new retail options and other changes, that number has shrunk to around 383,000, according to a 2011 report issued by Gallagher and her team. Still, she says, you’d be shocked at how hard it can be to find “a banana that doesn’t look like it got in a fight with another banana” or “produce that doesn’t come out of a can” in many Chicago neighborhoods. (A young woman who tweeted that she now lived in a food desert because “Whole Foods didn’t stock her favorite kind of sushi anymore” had missed the point, Gallagher adds.)

Gallagher’s food desert analysis produced grim findings that are now an accepted part of the dialogue around food access-- stats like African-Americans in Chicago have to go twice as far as white residents to find a grocery. But all of Gallagher’s research starts with the most simple question: What retail exists where and what does it sell? It’s harder to answer than you might think.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) more commonly called “food stamps,” has its own way of classifying the various kinds of stores that sell food. The government agency used to make those classifications public, Gallagher says. Now it doesn’t (although it still catalogs participating outlets in its searchable online database).

Even when the USDA’s taxonomy was publicly available, Gallagher found that their classifications weren’t always accurate. While doing research in Detroit in 2007, Gallagher says she came across places with names like “Jimmy Jack’s Liquor Shack” that were labeled as “medium-sized grocery stores.”

Then, she says, the USDA would release “stats like ‘84% of all food stamp dollars were spent in grocery stores in 2010,’ when first of all, it depends on how you’re coding a supermarket.” Gallagher argues that inaccurate labeling of retailers makes it much harder to combat food insecurity. “We think it’s a bigger deal in low-access areas,” she says. “We’re very concerned about these specific areas where there are so many bad apples and so few mainstream [food retailers].”

All of this categorical confusion means that Gallagher has to be a super sleuth: Step one in her process is figuring out where the stores are, and what they sell.

Some places are easier to assess, like national or regional chains that have predictable stock. “A Jewel is a Jewel,” for example, and Gallagher says she’s never seen a 7-11 that sells enough produce to qualify as a “mainstream” retail outlet based on her team’s definition.

It’s much tougher when it comes to assessing corner stores, the kind of mom-and-pop operations that are often the closest retail option for people in food deserts. With these kinds of places, Gallagher sometimes goes undercover.

“You pretend like you’re a customer,” she says. “You call and say, ‘We’re new in town and we don’t know that much about your store. I’m wondering for my kid’s lunch -- do you have these things: apples, oranges, fresh spinach?’” She gets mixed reactions from such sleuthing. “Sometimes people will yell at you, ‘We don’t have any of that stuff!’ And hang up on you,” she says. “It happens a lot.”

Sometimes when Gallagher hits the pavement in places like Washington, D.C. or Alabama, she’ll come across stores where it’s not clear if they’re out of business or merely closed. So she asks around.

“I’ve done things like find the closest social service agency, a church or daycare, something across the street,” she says. She gives them the same “new in town” routine, and often gets good information. “People will say, ‘Oh, that’s mostly a liquor store,’ or ‘It doesn’t open ‘til 1,’ or ‘You know what? It’s closed.” Ask, Gallagher says, and “you’ll know more.”

Gallagher says that she feels “a little bad operating under a pretext,” but argues it’s for a good cause.

“If you told them you were a researcher, it would be too complicated,” she says. She loves having to reclassify corner stores when, in response to efforts like a Chicago-area public health initiative that provides seed money and refrigeration equipment, they start stocking more produce.

But, she says, the most important thing is to stay neutral -- to figure out the honest truth of what’s available at a given store and what’s not.

“If you get angry, you’ll lose your ability to sort fact from fiction,” she says. “You’re in the eye of the storm. Some people will love what you find, some people will hate it. But you’re trying to uncover the best information you can, to keep your neutrality, without spin one way or the other.”

Gallagher spoke at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in March, and shared some of the back story of her ongoing research. In the audio above, she discusses the challenges of getting such accurate info and explains why sleuthing in the field is such a crucial part of her process.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Mari Gallagher spoke at an event presented by the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in March. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.

Gallagher will appear at an event called Chicago's Food Deserts: How you can have an impact, at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum on Tuesday April 17 from 7 to 9 p.m.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly attributed the term "food desert" to Gallagher. She popularized the term in her 2006 report, but did not coin it.

Corner stores to become oases in food deserts?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:58:00 -0600

In food deserts, large grocery stores are scarce. But these same communities have plenty of corner stores. That’s usually seen as a problem because corner stores often stock more junk food than fresh produce. There are new public health programs underway in several Chicago neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs. The idea is to turn corner stores into healthy assets.

Danny Block is a professor at Chicago State University. He researches food deserts, and he has a map that shows areas that have few grocery stores but lots of independent corner stores.

MOORE: How well have these corner stores been filling the gap?

BLOCK: Probably not very well.

Block says customers have a catalogue of complaints with corner stores: overpricing, too much snack food, and uncleanliness. There’s a local food justice movement that’s working on food access issues and it’s trying different strategies.

One tactic is to get chain grocers to open in food deserts. Another is to clear hurdles for urban agriculture. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s working on those two. But there’s another strategy: transforming corner stores from holes in the wall to healthy havens.

The Chicago and Cook County public health departments and private agencies are involved. Corner store owners are getting hundreds of dollars in seed money and refrigeration equipment.

Again, Danny Block:

BLOCK: I am all in favor of diversifying. I am not against bringing in the chain stores. The food desert issue is about community disinvestment in general. It’s about which communities have received retail investment and which communities haven’t. If you really want to revitalize a community, you just can’t do it with one store. You have to have a developed economy that gives people a variety of different choices.

Payless is a corner store near 69th and Ashland in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. It’s crammed with artificially flavored drinks, potato chips and junk food, but Payless is changing. It’s enrolled in the Healthy Places campaign, so now it’s got a display case that literally stands out like an oasis in a food desert. Fresh oranges, shiny apples, ripe bananas, plums and pears — all at discount prices.

A local community group called Inner City Muslim Action Network, or IMAN, is helping Payless with its fresh transition. Shamar Hemphill is with the group and shows me a refrigerator in the back that holds tomatoes, carrots and cabbage. Hemphill says each week community leaders check to ensure the produce is crisp.

HEMPHILL: It made sense around lifting and elevating the issue of food deserts. The corner store is really the probably most essential place in the most hard hit communities across the city of Chicago.

There’s a lot at stake in making store options healthier. Englewood residents have higher rates of diabetes and heart disease, and these convenience stores can’t help much. Hemphill says his community group wants more corner stores to participate – but it’s a paradigm shift.

HEMPHILL: It’s not as easy with store owners wanting to shift their store around with their bread and butter products. You know what I’m saying? To begin to put in products that they may make little profit at first.

I visited Payless two years ago — for some other reporting on food issues. Back then store owner Falah Farhoudeh said he couldn’t sell fresh food because he wasn’t sure people would buy it. He’s changed his tune.

FARHOUDEH: I do make money. Saturday and Sunday I sell 50 bags.

Mary Newsome is a long tim customer. She’s 84 years old, has trouble breathing and she’s prone to seizures. She’s long asked the owner to stock fruit.

NEWSOME: I asked since I’ve been coming here. I didn’t see any. My nurse wants me to have bananas. She want me to have apples, oranges.

Newsome lives just a block away from Payless, and that’s a notable detail. Experts say convenience is key when it comes to improving people’s access to healthy food.

These changes aren’t happening just in Chicago. Cook County and some non-profits are helping at some suburban stores, like Cicero’s La Alegria. But there’s one issue: money. La Alegria is out of kiwi on this weekday, but it’s still got tomatillos, lemons, and avocados.

Owner Gloria Valle shows me around. She says she's not worried about the grant running out. Valle says people are now hungry for these items and she’ll keep stocking her shelves with fresh fruit.

Grant aims to reduce racial health disparities among Chicagoans

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0600

The University of Illinois at Chicago has received a grant to improve access to healthy food for African American and Latino Chicagoans.

Those groups have higher rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. And an $850,000 grant seeks to reduce health disparities. The money will be used for health literacy. Community health workers will use a curriculum to educate residents in food deserts – areas lacking fresh food options.

UIC's Sheila Castillo is working on the grant.

"What we also need to talk about is how do we get people to know what to do with the food once they get it? How can we help make a systems change so that we really are impacting and benefiting people across a wide range of the metropolitan area?" Castillo said.

Part of the discourse around food desert elimination is making sure there’s an educational component. If people have never had access to healthy food, they’re less likely to know how to prepare it.

Report: Fewer Chicagoans living in food deserts

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:00:00 -0500

A new report says the number of people living in food deserts has decreased in Chicago. But hundreds of thousands of families still don’t have access to healthy food.

In the past five years, there’s been more awareness around food deserts. Those are areas where grocery stores are scarce and that can lead to long-term health problems for residents.

Mari Gallagher has put out a new report. She helped popularized the term in 2006.

"The Chicago food desert has declined in population almost 40 percent and this is huge but the key point, too, is we still have a long way to go," Gallagher said.

Gallagher said some big-name grocery stores have come into communities. Yet the food desert problem tends to lie in African-American neighborhoods on the South and West Sides.

Gallagher said one area that can be improved is in the food stamp program. She said many fringe grocery stores accept food stamps but lack healthy options. And the federal government has lax oversight.

Below are stores that take food stamps. They are within a half-mile radius of Growing Home, an urban agriculture business in Englewood. Many of these are considered fringe stores.

1	2001 EXPRESS MINI MART INC	5501 S Ashland Ave
2	Busy Bee Supermarket	5659 S Ashland Ave
3	CHEBLI FOOD STORE	5536 S Ashland Ave
4	City Food --CLOSED CORNER STORE	6059 S Wolcott Ave
5	M & M DISCOUNT, INC.	1607 W 59th St
6	S & M Food Market Inc	5600 S Wood St
7	Wood Street Farm Stand	5814 S Wood St
8	ASM GAS	1952 W 55th St
9	Citgo	5901 S Ashland Ave
10	CVS 5989	1620 W 59th St
11	Family Dollar 7057	1615 W 59th St
12	R H A FOOD & LIQUOR INC	5515 S Damen Ave

Commissioner Choucair prescribes a new strategy for Chicago health

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:11:00 -0500

The lack of access to fresh food is especially critical in certain Chicago neighborhoods – mostly poor and black. Many U.S. cities reflect said racial and economic disparities in public health issues. But many of those gaps, including those seen in asthma or breast cancer mortality, appeared greater in Chicago than the rest of the country. In the present era of government belt-tightening, improving public health is hardly a cinch. Still, Dr. Bechara Choucair said he was glad Mayor Emanuel kept him on as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. A week out from releasing an ambitious new agenda, Dr. Choucair joined Eight Forty-Eight to talk about Chicago's public health challanges.

Music Button: If These Trees Could Talk, "The Flames of Herostratus", from the CD Above The Earth Below The Sky, (self released)

Emanuel takes on Chicago's food deserts

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:00:00 -0500

Today marks Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 100th day in office, and we’re taking stock of his progress. One problem he’s taken on is "food deserts," areas that don’t have much fresh food for sale.

Experts say the number of Chicagoans living in food deserts stands at approximately 400,000. Emanuel says he wants to cut that number in half by the end of his first term. The food desert is a complex, un-sexy policy problem, but Emanuel says he’ll spend political capital on it.

When he was barnstorming for mayor, Rahm Emanuel met a young African-American couple who live near 89th Street. The wife a doctor. The husband in information technology. Two kids. The couple told Emanuel they traveled eight miles to grocery shop. Emanuel assumed they endured the trek for cheaper prices.

EMANUEL: Maybe this is a vulnerability for a politician but I don’t mind because you always have to learn.

He learned the couple traveled because they didn’t have good grocery stores in their neighborhood.

EMANUEL: Here was something that kind of materialized it in an existential way. It was a way that just drove home, and I remember saying to the staff that was with me at the time – I want to speak to this.

MOORE: Would you say before you met that couple food deserts were even on your radar?

EMANUEL: Let’s go through my professional life. I’m a congressman on the North Side of the city of Chicago. What I do for office hours? Congress on your corner at grocery stores. I’m going to be honest – it’s not a material thing for people I represented. As chief of staff to the president of the United States, obviously I don’t want to say I had other issues, but I did have other issues.

Emanuel read up on food deserts and made their elimination part of his transition plan. And, during his first 100 days in office – he followed up. Back in June the mayor convened CEOs from major food chains and he received commitments from them to open stores in Chicago. Then, in July, he introduced an ordinance to city council that would make urban agriculture a new zoning designation in Chicago. The idea’s to kick-start large-scale production of vegetables close to where people need them.

EMANUEL: I see this as an opportunity to address a number of issues with one hit.

Jobs, economic development and…

EMANUEL: We’ll begin to make a dent on the public health piece of this, which is people having the opportunity to have access to fresh fruits, vegetables and meats in their area.

It’s one thing to want to make a dent in a problem like food deserts, but it’s another thing to actually make it happen.

GALLAGHER: It’s a complicated situation in neighborhoods like the ones we see in food deserts … it’s not just a problem that happened overnight; it’s been going on for a while.

This is national food desert expert, Mari Gallagher. She says Mayor Emanuel could have his work cut out for him. She's not aware of any city that’s eradicated food deserts.

GALLAGHER: These neighborhoods have suffered from disinvestment and other kinds of challenges, but they also have a number of assets, too. And given that everyone does eats as part of the human condition, we think there’s a real opportunity around healthy food in terms of, certainly, public health and better diet.

I meet Gallagher at the kind of spot she says could be one of these assets: the farmers market.

MARKET VENDOR: Thank you, have a nice day!

(WBEZ/Natalie Moore)

Food desert expert Mari Gallagher tours a farmers market in Chicago's Pullman neighborhood.

This market’s on 111th street, in the Pullman neighborhood’s Arcade Park. It’s got stalks of corn piled up like hay, and it’s got less common vegetables around, too, like kohlrabi.

MARKET VENDOR: It's in the cabbage family. You boil them like potatoes and serve with a cream sauce.

Gallagher says neighborhoods in the center of food deserts benefit from farmers markets. But they have another asset, too: small, corner stores. Food deserts have plenty of them.

GALLAGHER: These smaller stores that specialize in products that can sit on the shelves like potato chips and boxes of cereal and so on. Those are lower-risk items. If they’re going to start getting into produce, there’s a whole skill set around buying produce, displaying produce. But I think that these are challenges we can help stores address.

Gallagher says food deserts could stand to get help attracting bigger, mainstream grocery stores, too. Mayor Emanuel has already hit this. Again, he gathered grocery chain CEOS for a food desert summit in June. Emanuel walked in with data about neighborhood population density, and he handed over a list of 11 sites that need a big-box store and are commercially zoned (see below).

The talk was frank.

EMANUEL: Although it’s morally motivating for me, they’re not in the moral business. As one CEO said to me and I won’t say who, says ‘look, if you want to grandstand I’ll write you a check and I’ll be done with it.’ I said that’s not what I want. I want you to open stores that serve people, create jobs and make money. I want you to make money.

Supervalu CEO Craig Herkert attended Emanuel’s summit. The chain is the parent company of Jewel-Osco and Save-A-Lot.

Herkert says Supervalu will open 30 more discount Save-A-Lot stores in Chicago over the next five years.

HERKERT: Let me state clearly, this first and foremost, is a very good business decision for us.

Naturally, I asked if any Chicago-style sweetheart deals got cut. Herkert said no, just break the red tape.

HERKERT: What the mayor has offered us is his support from the mayor’s office to do what he can to help us get these things opened. He did not give us, nor did we request, financial aid or support. We can open these stores as a viable business option on our own.

ODOMS-YOUNG: I want to see what happens with the meat around that.

Angela Odoms-Young is a nutritional scientist at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

ODOMS-YOUNG: It’s easy to say we’re going to bring in grocery stores. But we really need to make sure the community has input in what that plan will be.

Odoms-Young says the food desert issue is a broad one and it’s not solved just by having successful businesses in a neighborhood. Even big stores can minimize fruits and vegetables, so someone will have to keep watch. After all, the federal government recommends eating five fruits and vegetables a day to prevent chronic disease. That only works if people have the food available - and children see it.

ODOMS-YOUNG: When you have young children, exposure actually can contribute to the development of dietary habits. So when you have flaming-hots in a community, you have these sweetened beverages and people are only exposed to those things, a lot of your habits are really sort of coming together and you’re greatly influenced by your environment.

As grocery chains, urban agriculture and retooled corner stores peck away at the food desert problem in Chicago, the philosophy is guided by a simple principle: everyone has to eat.

From Melissa Stratton, a spokeswoman from the mayor's office:

Below are the 11 sites we gave the grocery chain CEOs at the Mayor’s food desert summit. Each site contains a parcel of land that can sustain a grocery store based on our calculations. Specifically, each is commercially zoned and is in an ideal spot to absorb revenue because the area lacks grocery store options. The sites were identified by the City and given to each grocery chain.

Cicero and Kinzie
63rd St and Justine Avenue
63rd and Halsted
63rd and State
47th and State
4400 W. Roosevelt Rd.
63rd St and Drexel Blvd.
63rd and St. Louis
7900 S. Perry
87th and Constance
114th and Western

Music Button: Sounds from the Ground, "Delphine", from the CD The Maze, (Waveform)

Food activist: Do more than 'vote with your fork'

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:00:00 -0500

In the public discourse around food, “sustainability” and “organic” are buzz words deployed by the so-called “conscious consumer.” But author and activist Oran Hesterman said during a stop in Chicago that he would rather have people move from being conscious consumers to engaged citizens: in other words, do more than just “vote with your fork.”

Hesterman is founder of the Ann Arbor-based nonprofit Fair Food Network and has written the new book “Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All.” In recent years several authors have exposed horrid conditions and pitfalls in Americans’ diets and the mass production of food. But Hesterman – a former farmer, professor of agronomy and policy wonk at the Kellogg Foundation – takes a more inclusive approach to fixing what he sees as a broken food system.

“My concern isn’t only about bringing heirloom tomatoes to farmers’ markets … My concern is making sure that those living in inner-city neighborhoods have access to tomatoes in a form other than a ketchup packet at a fast food joint,” Hesterman writes.

Hesterman explores the intersection of race and class when it comes to healthy food access, arguing that changing the U.S. Department of Agriculture food stamp program could lead to one of the country’s biggest food revolutions. He adds that recipients should be provided incentives to purchase healthy food instead of the junk food endemic to stores located in underserved communities.

Hesterman stopped in Chicago this week for a book reading and we chatted about current food reform movements. He takes umbrage at some of their exclusivity.

“The biggest gap is making the shift from conscious consumer to engaged citizen. Thinking [the food system] is going to change by choosing different food is like choosing a different doctor to reform health care. There has to be a change in public policy,” Hesterman said.

“Fair Food” is policy-centered and lists solutions: changing food procurement in institutions such as schools, hospitals and colleges; helping local food businesses get started; forming food policy councils in communities; pressuring the government to give subsidies to crops besides corn and soybeans. At the end of the book, Hesterman suggests resources for food activists, including lists of organizations that address everything from the treatment of workers to the financing of business incubators.

While in Chicago, Hesterman visited Plant Chicago, an old meat-packing plant that is now integrating food production systems that range from aquaponics (raising fish and other aquatic food in close quarters) to breweries. Earlier this week Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the creation of an official zoning designation for urban agriculture. Hesterman says he finds the latter development inspiring, though he quibbles with the language used to describe it.

“I use the term 'urban food systems,'” Hesterman said.

Urban agriculture conjures images of livestock grazing in empty lots, which is far from where the movement is actually going; current trends are more about creating jobs and rebuilding successful economic models. Plus ... the deceptively simple goal of providing access to fruits and vegetables.

South Austin residents still hungry for options despite new food desert data

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:53:00 -0500

In many regions of Chicago, healthy eaters get to be picky about their produce; some choose to only eat organic, to shop at farmer’s markets or to support local growers. But according to one report, more than 380,000 Chicago residents have problems finding fresh fruits and vegetables in their neighborhoods.

Researchers recently reevaluated the problem of food inaccessibility, and reported significant improvements citywide. But residents of Austin, a community where the problem has reportedly been solved, disagree with that finding. WBEZ's Lizzie Schiffman visited a grocery bus on the West Side to find out why.

Music Button: Tuatara, "Land of Apples" from the release The Loading Program (Fast Horse)

Walgreens to add 600 new jobs, expanded food options in Chicago

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:25:00 -0500

Walgreens Co. announced its “Chicago Hometown Investment Initiative” Wednesday. The plan will add 600 new jobs, five new stores and 40 expanded food oasis locations in Chicago.

Half of the new jobs will be from an expansion in Walgreen’s downtown office for e-commerce and information technology, the company said in a statement. The other half will be from staffing the five new stores as well as remodeling some of the 142 Walgreens Chicago locations.

Part of the initiative will be expanding the food selections at 11 of the Chicago Walgreens locations. Last year, Walgreens expanded food options at 10 Chicago stores to include fresh fruits and vegetables and frozen meats and fish. The stores, called food oases, will be in the areas designated food deserts. Food deserts are communities in Chicago without a local grocery store or option to buy healthy foods.

The announcement comes a day after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an additional 300 jobs from Allscripts, a health internet technology company.

“The healthcare, IT space, electronic medical records, is one of the key growth sectors for the country,” said Emanuel in a press conference Wednesday. “Chicago, through both Wallgreens and Allscripts is a leader in this space. I don’t want to just leader. As mayor, I want to dominate that space.”