This summer, check out these blockbuster hits:
Baltimore Food Deserts, now showing on Tumblr - http://baltimorefooddeserts.tumblr.com/
Not only do I get to focus more on Food Deserts in Baltimore over the summer, I also get to be involved in Towson University's National Science Foundation Grant research. Dr. Samuel Collins and Dr. Matthew Durington are doing a public anthropology project called Anthropology by the Wire.
Fun fun fun.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
An issue of distance part 2
I do some volunteer work with a housing project on North Avenue in Baltimore. Cindy (not her real name for the sake of anonymity) works there and was asking about my research. Cindy is a black middle aged born and bred Baltimorian. I started explain what a Food Desert was, and before I even got to defining my 'one mile radius from a grocery store' bit (see the last post for more info), she interrupted me and started agreeing.
"Oh yes, we have plenty of those everywhere. Umm hmm. Yes we do. In fact, I think I live in one."
I asked her where she lived and proceeded to Google it. She explained that Safeway was the closest chain grocery store around her. After inputting that information, I turned to correct her but stopped myself. Her house was within a mile of Safeway, so it did not fit my criteria of being in a Desert. But I knew that Cindy didn't have a car, and Google map showed that there were no MTA routes nearby that could transport her. I asked Cindy how she did her shopping there. "I usually walk or get a friend to drive me. Usually I'm walkin' though."
What normally would have been an easy drive to the grocery store became a .7 mile walk (3696 feet) one way, so a 1.4 mile walk in total (7392 feet). That's a long way to tote your groceries in a bad part of town. Cindy also worked a 9-5 job. She said that during the winter it was too dark and too cold to walk there. Cindy talked more about how it was easier to shop at the corner store, but how it was so pricey and didn't have any fresh food, that this was another problem of distance. Cindy lived within a mile of a store, but because of transportation she didn't have the same access to it.
This also becomes a problem of something known as 'friction of distance.' When something is close to you and does not take too many resources to access it (like time, money, energy), you are more likely to go to that place than somewhere farther way. The farther something is, or the more resources it takes to get there, the less likely you are to go there. For Cindy, getting fresh produce for her family meant a 1.4 mile walk. Not to mention the pulling of a hand cart, carrying bags of food or time of year. Suddenly, the amount of time and energy increase, helping me understand why Cindy would go to the corner store first before she went to Safeway. Cindy and her family's diet is dictated by this lack of access because of transportation, even when fresher food is so close. The friction of distance to getting to the store plays as big a part as proximity - they are both variables in the fight for access.
Something like this instance makes me glad that I practice anthropology. Normally my definition of Food Deserts would have overlooked someone like Cindy's problem. But by talking to locals, getting their input, and doing the long term participant observation that anthropology is known for - her voice and stories like it can be heard and make a difference. Even though my definition of Food Desert hasn't changed, I know that it is only a benchmark term and does not always apply to everything. In the future, when I am trying to define who does and does not live in a Desert, I know that there are more questions to ask than to stick to one definition.
I'd like to thank Cindy for letting me post this and collaborating with me on this post. :)
"Oh yes, we have plenty of those everywhere. Umm hmm. Yes we do. In fact, I think I live in one."
I asked her where she lived and proceeded to Google it. She explained that Safeway was the closest chain grocery store around her. After inputting that information, I turned to correct her but stopped myself. Her house was within a mile of Safeway, so it did not fit my criteria of being in a Desert. But I knew that Cindy didn't have a car, and Google map showed that there were no MTA routes nearby that could transport her. I asked Cindy how she did her shopping there. "I usually walk or get a friend to drive me. Usually I'm walkin' though."
What normally would have been an easy drive to the grocery store became a .7 mile walk (3696 feet) one way, so a 1.4 mile walk in total (7392 feet). That's a long way to tote your groceries in a bad part of town. Cindy also worked a 9-5 job. She said that during the winter it was too dark and too cold to walk there. Cindy talked more about how it was easier to shop at the corner store, but how it was so pricey and didn't have any fresh food, that this was another problem of distance. Cindy lived within a mile of a store, but because of transportation she didn't have the same access to it.
This also becomes a problem of something known as 'friction of distance.' When something is close to you and does not take too many resources to access it (like time, money, energy), you are more likely to go to that place than somewhere farther way. The farther something is, or the more resources it takes to get there, the less likely you are to go there. For Cindy, getting fresh produce for her family meant a 1.4 mile walk. Not to mention the pulling of a hand cart, carrying bags of food or time of year. Suddenly, the amount of time and energy increase, helping me understand why Cindy would go to the corner store first before she went to Safeway. Cindy and her family's diet is dictated by this lack of access because of transportation, even when fresher food is so close. The friction of distance to getting to the store plays as big a part as proximity - they are both variables in the fight for access.
Something like this instance makes me glad that I practice anthropology. Normally my definition of Food Deserts would have overlooked someone like Cindy's problem. But by talking to locals, getting their input, and doing the long term participant observation that anthropology is known for - her voice and stories like it can be heard and make a difference. Even though my definition of Food Desert hasn't changed, I know that it is only a benchmark term and does not always apply to everything. In the future, when I am trying to define who does and does not live in a Desert, I know that there are more questions to ask than to stick to one definition.
I'd like to thank Cindy for letting me post this and collaborating with me on this post. :)
An issue of distance part 1
When I first started my work on Food Deserts, I realized that I had to figure out exactly what that term meant spacially. I worked off of Mari Gallagher's model of distance found in her study on Chicago. She took the location of a grocery store and used a one mile radius as a zone. That zone was supposed to be a good area and not considered a Food Desert because of the close location of the store. Area outside of that circle that did not receive any overlay from any other grocery store was considered to be a possible Food Desert. What also helps to define a desert is the number of fast food restaurants in the area. If a unhealthy fast food place is closer than a grocery store (and most likely cheaper) it causes more people to make unhealthy choices due to proximity.
Here is a quick map of the Edmondson Avenue Food Desert, which has been the community I have been working with and focusing on: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=218359790340298941836.0004a33db895d3c8c6f43&z=16
The blue point represents the MARC station where the community developed and held a Farmer's Market last year in 2010. They are aware of their lack of access to food and were trying to do something about it. You can visit the community organization's website here - http://westbaltimoremarc.blogspot.com/p/west-baltimore-farmers-market.html. The red circle has a radius of one mile from the source of fresh produce, the Giant. Black dots represent liquor stores, red dots represent fast food, purple stores represent corner markets that have a limited section of fresh produce at a steep price, and the green dot is the nearest grocery store (Giant). This is only a small part of the community of Edmondson, and this map shows that there are plenty of blocks without access. Just think, normally a community has access to 4-5 grocery stores. Where I live in Towson, I have access to 4 within a mile radius.
This is your brain. This is your brain on Food Deserts.
Here is a quick map of the Edmondson Avenue Food Desert, which has been the community I have been working with and focusing on: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=218359790340298941836.0004a33db895d3c8c6f43&z=16
The blue point represents the MARC station where the community developed and held a Farmer's Market last year in 2010. They are aware of their lack of access to food and were trying to do something about it. You can visit the community organization's website here - http://westbaltimoremarc.blogspot.com/p/west-baltimore-farmers-market.html. The red circle has a radius of one mile from the source of fresh produce, the Giant. Black dots represent liquor stores, red dots represent fast food, purple stores represent corner markets that have a limited section of fresh produce at a steep price, and the green dot is the nearest grocery store (Giant). This is only a small part of the community of Edmondson, and this map shows that there are plenty of blocks without access. Just think, normally a community has access to 4-5 grocery stores. Where I live in Towson, I have access to 4 within a mile radius.
This is your brain. This is your brain on Food Deserts.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Free, inventive ways to combat Food Deserts
I was lucky enough today to come across www.instructables.com where hundreds of users have posted their creative ways to do....just about anything. I was browsing through the garden section and discovered several cheap ways to create your own home garden from the materials around you. With a little modification, that tubaware container that you had no use for could be growing tomatoes in no time!
1) The TeraHydro Box (Earth Box hack) http://www.instructables.com/id/Ultimate-Vegtable-quotEarthBoxquot-For-CHEAP/
2) Start your seedlings in that 2 liter bottle that you were going to recycle http://www.instructables.com/id/Ghetto-Greenhouse%3aSeed-Starter/step4/The-end-result/
3) Or start your seedlings the eco-friendly way using newspaper pouches
http://www.instructables.com/id/Biodegradable-Seed-Starters-From-Newspaper-anothe/
4) Hang up some plants with this nifty shoe organizer planter
http://www.instructables.com/id/VERTICAL-VEGETABLES-quotGrow-upquot-in-a-smal/
Inventive and accessible ideas like these and others are helping people take the fight over Food Deserts into their own hands. The creation of farmer's markets by communities takes time and a great deal of facilitation to coordinate. By producing food in your backyard you have consistent access to free produce and have limited your ecological footprint by cutting out the use of petroleum to transport your food. Some things are just more convenient if they come from your own back yard.
1) The TeraHydro Box (Earth Box hack) http://www.instructables.com/id/Ultimate-Vegtable-quotEarthBoxquot-For-CHEAP/
2) Start your seedlings in that 2 liter bottle that you were going to recycle http://www.instructables.com/id/Ghetto-Greenhouse%3aSeed-Starter/step4/The-end-result/
3) Or start your seedlings the eco-friendly way using newspaper pouches
http://www.instructables.com/id/Biodegradable-Seed-Starters-From-Newspaper-anothe/
4) Hang up some plants with this nifty shoe organizer planter
http://www.instructables.com/id/VERTICAL-VEGETABLES-quotGrow-upquot-in-a-smal/
Inventive and accessible ideas like these and others are helping people take the fight over Food Deserts into their own hands. The creation of farmer's markets by communities takes time and a great deal of facilitation to coordinate. By producing food in your backyard you have consistent access to free produce and have limited your ecological footprint by cutting out the use of petroleum to transport your food. Some things are just more convenient if they come from your own back yard.
Monday, April 18, 2011
When I was researching 'Food Deserts' two years ago...
Two years ago, when I was writing my paper on Food Deserts, information was scattered. You had to search keywords like 'food accessibility,' and 'urban food issues.' Now when I search for it, look what I find:
Top 6 results
1) http://www.fooddesert.net/
A site that brings together the top articles and sources regarding food deserts, along with highlighting Mari Gallagher breakthrough research done in Chicago. It hasn't been updated since November, but it is still a solid starting point.
2) http://www.cdc.gov/Features/FoodDeserts/
Yay for the Center of Disease Control for recognizing Food Deserts as being a problem. They are not necessarily a disease....more of a circumstance that has been caused my external socio-economic factors and the issues pertaining to the food system structure in the United States....but at least the site contributes to awareness and features the United States 2009 report on Food Deserts.
3) http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1900947,00.html
The 2009 Time Magazine article by Steven Gray that does a great job of contextualizing the Chicago deserts and then looking at the issue from a national standpoint.
4) http://www.marketmakeovers.org/node/147
A media intensive look at the Food Deserts in Southern Los Angeles. Plenty of videos to go around. Market Makeovers is a great website for the local South LA population and can shows how a group of people can go about fighting food accessibility problems at a grass root level. This site also is a hot link for connecting into the online Food Deserts blog and site network.
5) http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/AP/AP036/
The 2009 report on Food Deserts by the United States Department of Agriculture. A dense report for those rainy nights.
6) http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/resources/upload/docs/what/policy/ChicagoFoodDesertReport.pdf
My favorite, Mari Gallagher's groundbreaking report on Chicago Food Deserts. It is important to make a distinction between the United States and European research, as Europe has been aware and doing research on food accessibility problems many years before the US. A must read!
Top 6 results
1) http://www.fooddesert.net/
A site that brings together the top articles and sources regarding food deserts, along with highlighting Mari Gallagher breakthrough research done in Chicago. It hasn't been updated since November, but it is still a solid starting point.
2) http://www.cdc.gov/Features/FoodDeserts/
Yay for the Center of Disease Control for recognizing Food Deserts as being a problem. They are not necessarily a disease....more of a circumstance that has been caused my external socio-economic factors and the issues pertaining to the food system structure in the United States....but at least the site contributes to awareness and features the United States 2009 report on Food Deserts.
3) http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1900947,00.html
The 2009 Time Magazine article by Steven Gray that does a great job of contextualizing the Chicago deserts and then looking at the issue from a national standpoint.
4) http://www.marketmakeovers.org/node/147
A media intensive look at the Food Deserts in Southern Los Angeles. Plenty of videos to go around. Market Makeovers is a great website for the local South LA population and can shows how a group of people can go about fighting food accessibility problems at a grass root level. This site also is a hot link for connecting into the online Food Deserts blog and site network.
5) http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/AP/AP036/
The 2009 report on Food Deserts by the United States Department of Agriculture. A dense report for those rainy nights.
6) http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/resources/upload/docs/what/policy/ChicagoFoodDesertReport.pdf
My favorite, Mari Gallagher's groundbreaking report on Chicago Food Deserts. It is important to make a distinction between the United States and European research, as Europe has been aware and doing research on food accessibility problems many years before the US. A must read!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
How a seed of thought grows into a tree in a desert
I started my research on Food Deserts back in 2009 for my Life in the City undergrad class at Towson University. I'm not sure whether it was my love of food or the wonders of the Internet that allowed me to discover the concept, but I've been compiling corresponding articles and doing research ever since.
Food Deserts, for those new to the concept, is when a community or space lacks access to a supply of fresh, affordable produce (i.e. - a grocery store) and instead is surround by an abundance of cheap, unhealthy food sources (i.e. - fast food places.) Studies have correlated that issues like community disfranchisement, gentrification, and community physical health conditions can be related to a poor diet that comes from living in a Food Desert. Sometimes the reason a certain section of a city falls into squalor is not because of the people living there, but because of the unforeseen consequences of the flight or removal or grocery stores that were the core of a healthy community.
A problem that I have come across in the past is the definition of space in a Food Desert. For a middle class rural Desert, having a grocery store located more than a mile away is not an issue. Many of the individuals in the community would own a car and be able to drive there. For individuals living in a city, whether middle or lower class, having access to a grocery food store that is less than a mile away is a huge factor in your shopping habits. The problem in both areas is spacial, but the configuration and use of space in each dictates certain actions from the occupants of that space. The idea of you are what you eat can be expanded to 'you are what you eat where you are.' Where you live may have more influence on what you eat and what you feel you choose to eat than your class.
I am using this blog as a space for my thoughts, field notes and field work, and a sort of 'live' media ethnography. Whereas anthropology effectively uses print media to distribute knowledge, much of this can seem old even though the topic was new at the time the author was writing it. In this globalized world that we live in, and especially in America, time and space have become exceeding compressed due to the extremely frequent use and dependence on technology. With our reliance on it, technology has gone and created a secondary universe of culture that is ever-changing and unstable. Writing an ethnography on something that happens in the digital world could find itself becoming as out of date as your Twitter update from yesterday. In an attempt to move at the same speed as the digital world, I've created this blog.
Food Deserts are a cultural problem that must be addressed on a national and communal level. If National policy depends on the trickling down on programs and aid, I seek to work from the ground up. (If you are wondering, the United State's first documented study on Food Deserts was in 2009, so there's not really too much policy rolling around upstairs yet.) Communities that live in Food Deserts adapt their way of life to what they have available and become resistant to change. Especially change that would come from an outsider that would tell you how to change your lifestyle without caring about your life. In working with several community groups in Baltimore, I am trying to become a resource and a witness to their movement. Community understanding of the issues at hand and a continuous force of internal sustainability will help programs that are working to have farmer's markets in the area and teach neighbors recipes eliminate Food Deserts.
That would be a great goal, because, let's face it.....we all like food. :)
Food Deserts, for those new to the concept, is when a community or space lacks access to a supply of fresh, affordable produce (i.e. - a grocery store) and instead is surround by an abundance of cheap, unhealthy food sources (i.e. - fast food places.) Studies have correlated that issues like community disfranchisement, gentrification, and community physical health conditions can be related to a poor diet that comes from living in a Food Desert. Sometimes the reason a certain section of a city falls into squalor is not because of the people living there, but because of the unforeseen consequences of the flight or removal or grocery stores that were the core of a healthy community.
A problem that I have come across in the past is the definition of space in a Food Desert. For a middle class rural Desert, having a grocery store located more than a mile away is not an issue. Many of the individuals in the community would own a car and be able to drive there. For individuals living in a city, whether middle or lower class, having access to a grocery food store that is less than a mile away is a huge factor in your shopping habits. The problem in both areas is spacial, but the configuration and use of space in each dictates certain actions from the occupants of that space. The idea of you are what you eat can be expanded to 'you are what you eat where you are.' Where you live may have more influence on what you eat and what you feel you choose to eat than your class.
I am using this blog as a space for my thoughts, field notes and field work, and a sort of 'live' media ethnography. Whereas anthropology effectively uses print media to distribute knowledge, much of this can seem old even though the topic was new at the time the author was writing it. In this globalized world that we live in, and especially in America, time and space have become exceeding compressed due to the extremely frequent use and dependence on technology. With our reliance on it, technology has gone and created a secondary universe of culture that is ever-changing and unstable. Writing an ethnography on something that happens in the digital world could find itself becoming as out of date as your Twitter update from yesterday. In an attempt to move at the same speed as the digital world, I've created this blog.
Food Deserts are a cultural problem that must be addressed on a national and communal level. If National policy depends on the trickling down on programs and aid, I seek to work from the ground up. (If you are wondering, the United State's first documented study on Food Deserts was in 2009, so there's not really too much policy rolling around upstairs yet.) Communities that live in Food Deserts adapt their way of life to what they have available and become resistant to change. Especially change that would come from an outsider that would tell you how to change your lifestyle without caring about your life. In working with several community groups in Baltimore, I am trying to become a resource and a witness to their movement. Community understanding of the issues at hand and a continuous force of internal sustainability will help programs that are working to have farmer's markets in the area and teach neighbors recipes eliminate Food Deserts.
That would be a great goal, because, let's face it.....we all like food. :)
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