Grocery Stories: Food Access And Sustainable Communities

Transcript

In a land of plenty, it may be hard to believe that many people don't have access to fresh foods in their communities. The US Department of Agriculture has just identified thousands of "food deserts" across the country. Here in Pennsylvania, Allegheny County leads the state in the number of people who don't have nearby full service grocery stores and markets. The Allegheny Front's Ann Murray looks at how access to healthy food shapes the sustainability of some Pennsylvania neighborhoods.

MURRAY: It's Saturday morning and Father Dan Walsh and his neighbor Jim McCue have joined the throngs of Pittsburghers who shop in the Strip District, a veritable Mecca of fresh foods. The men split up long grocery lists.

FATHER DAN to McCUE: You get the red pepper, two pounds and I get two bags of potatoes. I'll get the fish and see you over there.

MURRAY: After about an hour of hard-core shopping, the two load fresh meats and cases of vine ripe vegetables and fruits into an old pickup truck. But they don't head home with all that food. Instead they drop off the food at the basement of the Hazelwood Presbyterian church where Pastor Leslie Boone and neighbors weigh the produce, and carefully match grocery items to numbered grocery bags.

LADY: OK two oranges for number...ten. SOMEONE REPEATS "ten".

BOONE: It's a unique little animal we have going on here. We're glorified grocery shoppers for folks.

MURRAY: Leslie Boone would admit that "grocery shoppers" is a bit of a simplification. For the past year, the Presbyterian Church and others have worked with consultants to form a food buying club in Hazelwood, a low-income Pittsburgh neighborhood. The Club's 40 members place grocery orders every other week through the church and buy fresh food in bulk. Hazelwood lost its last full service grocery store in 2009.

As people line up to pick up their grocery orders, Margie Chippich and Gloria Ferguson explain the nearest supermarkets are now more than a mile away. Ferguson, a senior citizen, says that distance makes it hard for the neighborhood's many older people who don't drive and folks without cars to buy fresh food.

FERGUSON: I don't very often get the opportunity to cook fresh vegetables because I have to put gas in the car to go to get vegetables.

MURRAY: Margie Chippich points to her husband, Ralph.

CHIPPICH: I don't drive so to go to a store if he's laid up or in the hospital, I'd have to take buses or call somebody. You can't buy anything in Hazelwood.

MURRAY: There's been talk among supermarket chains about locating in Hazelwood but no action so far. Boone says that's why the churches are stepping in.

BOONE: We don't want us to be waiting 20 years for a grocery store to be here because in the meantime, we're watching our community being depleted and being discouraged and the more you're depleted and discouraged, you move out for something better.

MURRAY: Boone believes the buying club is one way to plug that drain on the neighborhood. A drain thatís not uncommon in many low income communities. As these areas lose full service grocers and other basic businesses, the loss contributes to a cycle of "urban flight," says Court Gould, Executive Director of a public policy group called Sustainable Pittsburgh. Turning struggling city neighborhoods

GOULD: into islands of concentrated poverty that are segregated racially and socio-economically.

MURRAY: When communities become more isolated, it becomes less likely that supermarkets will come back. Studies by The Food Trust, a nationally known nonprofit in Philadelphia, have found that financing is a big obstacle to grocers opening new stores, especially in poor neighborhoods. Some grocers who are willing to locate in underserved areas have found help through the Pennsylvania Fresh Foods Financing Initiative. The initiative is managed by The Reinvestment Fund, a community development group in Philadelphia that works with public and private investors.

Since 2004 The Fund has financed close to 90 grocery stores in low income communities like Vandergrift, northeast of Pittsburgh. Randy Sprankle, the owner of this market, says the Reinvestment Fund allowed him to keep open the only grocery store in town and put local people to work.

SPRANKLE: We have 18 employees. Five full time and 13 part time. All of that money goes back into Vandergrift.

SMITH: We call it the triple bottom line.

MURRAY: Patricia Smith is a senior policy advisor with The Reinvestment Fund.

SMITH: Community revitalization is the outcome. Jobs with career paths is another outcome as well as the potential of improving health through making healthier foods available at affordable prices.

MURRAY: The Pennsylvania fresh food financing Initiative has worked so well that the state of California just adopted it as a model.

MURRAY: Back in Hazelwood, Pastor Boone acknowledges that researchers haven't made an absolute connection between bringing in full service food stores and the health of a community. That kind of rigorous study is happening in two nearby Pittsburgh neighborhood s. But she is hopeful that year round access to affordable fresh food will change the way her community eats and help to keep her neighborhood intact. As they finish bagging the last orders, Boone smiles.

MURRAY: For The Allegheny Front, I'm Ann Murray.