Food Cooperatives

Jeff Brown’s grocery store was indeed successful in mitigating food deserts in Southwestern Philadelphia, altering the community’s nutritional habits; however, he needed a lot of money to do so. Opening a grocery store is not cheap, especially one with all of the services provided by Jeff Brown’s stores, which were feasible for him, being a partial owner of the ShopRite franchise.

Food Cooperatives are much more feasible options for urban communities seeking relief from the strain of food deserts and general food insecurity. A cooperative is “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs.” Food co-ops are run democratically by all their participants and successfully create access to healthful food while also providing employment to low income neighborhoods. Jeff Brown’s grocery chain, though it caters successfully to the community’s needs, is still a profit-driven company, and the majority of that profit is not invested in the community. Food co-operatives are non-profit, meaning that any profit is re-invested into the cooperative to keep it running or returned to its employees depending on their contributions.

Co-ops, being self-sustaining and democratic, run by the community for the community, are perhaps one of the most successful grass roots approach to dismantling food deserts. The Food Co-Op Initiative Development Model outlines the four cornerstones of a food co-op—vision, talent, capital, and systems—and the three developmental stages of a food co-op—organizing, planning/feasibility, and implementation. The Food Co-Op Initiative also provides financial resources for starting food co-ops, webinars, and a multitude of additional resources for those interesting in learning more about food co-ops. It is important to note that resources such as soup kitchens are generally not classified as co-ops. Closer to a food co-op is a Food Bank, which collects and redistributes food to low income communities on their own terms.

What do we need from the grocery store?

Food deserts are defined by their inhabitants lack of access to healthful food. More often than not, this access is defined by geographical proximity to a grocery store with healthy foods and fresh produce; however, the primary concern for many who live in food deserts is financial access to food.

Take, for example the Apples and Oranges Fresh Market, a grocery store opened in 2013 in Baltimore, owned by Michelle Speaks-March and her husband. The store was stocked with everything a food desert lacked– fresh produce and community resources like cooking classes–and none of the unhealthy foods typically consumed in food deserts, such as snack cakes and frozen ready-made meals. Apples and Oranges Fresh Market struggled to stay afloat for six months before finally closing. What Speaks-March found that her store did not match the demands of its consumers. What people wanted were the ready-made meals, the packaged snacks. The produce, though fresh, was priced too high and many could not afford it. For the same reason, no one wanted her cooking classes. Many living in high poverty tracts do not have the means to make a home cooked meal and must rely on pre-made meals and snacks for nourishment, not out of choice, but economic necessity.

Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, for his work on poverty and equality, specifically studying the way governments deal with famines, argues that the most famines are “an avoidable economic and political catastrophe.” Therefore, to eradicate food deserts, dismantling the economic barriers that perpetuate food deserts must be prioritized over geographical barriers.

Jeff Brown, a grocer from Southwest Philadelphia, was able to successfully open a chain of seven grocery stores in Philadelphia that tackled the main challenges faced by markets in low-income neighborhoods: funding, feasibility, community attachment, and sustainability. Not only was Brown able to offer realistic prices, he invested in in-store chefs to make healthful meals for customers at a feasible price, replacing the ready-made meals. Additionally, Brown invested in nutritionists, health clinics, credit unions, and social workers, all either free, or at extremely low costs. He was successful in offering the community resources in ways that the Speaks-Marches fell short. Rather than introducing new resources, Brown put community centers in his stores for neighborhood events, and lobbied SEPTA to place bus stops near his stores.

Ultimately, Jeff Brown was successful because he maintained a conversation with community to ensure that his grocery store provided what the neighborhood wanted at prices it could afford. He ensures the neighborhoods that his stores are for them, however they want it.

Urban Nutrition

Oftentimes, health problems linked to lifestyle choice, such as Type 2 Diabetes, Heart Disease, and Obesity, are blamed solely on an individual’s unhealthy diet and sedentary lifestyle; but how much say do we get in these lifestyle choices?

If you’ve live in the suburbs or rural areas your whole life, your answer might be “quite a bit of choice.”  Stop choosing McDonald’s for dinner, and start buying healthier food at the grocery store. Try fruits and vegetables instead hamburgers and fries. However, for many, these healthy solutions are not as simple as they sound.

In the twentieth century, urban centers in the United States underwent a demographic change that drastically affected the food culture in American cities. Since the early 1970s, the number of people in urban areas living below the poverty line has grown larger and more geographically condensed. Between 1970 and 1990, the percentage of urban citizens living in poverty rose from 33% to 53%.  According to the most recent census, 59% of urban populations live under the poverty line, and 17% of the population live in areas identified as high poverty tracts. Yet, only 1.3% of urban whites live beneath the poverty line, which means these neighborhoods are inhabited almost entirely by people of color. Property values dropped drastically in neighborhoods populated predominantly by ethnic and racial minorities, a process known as redlining, which systematically bars economic growth in low income neighborhoods and contributes to the high density of the urban poor.

Urban retail, specifically grocery stores, are subject to redlining as well. Grocery stores underwent a drastic change during the twentieth century. By the 1970s, large grocery store chains were able to offer increasingly lower prices to out-compete individually owned ones. Then, as grocery stores in America became more profit-driven and less consumer-driven, corporations began to close stores in urban areas, where rent was expensive and lower income families were bringing them less profit. Supermarkets grew dramatically in size, and cities were no longer able to accommodate their roughly 50,000 sq. ft. These are a few of the primary factors that contribute to modern food deserts.

Now, how much control do we have over our diet? For people below the poverty line, especially in dense urban neighborhoods and food deserts, the answer is “very little.” 1 in 8 Americans suffer from food insecurity; 23.5 million people in the United States live in a food desert and have access to few, if any, healthy, whole foods. Therefore conditions like Type 2 Diabetes, Obesity, and Heart Disease, which are usually attributed to the individual’s choices, are not as preventable as they seem. Stigmas associated with these conditions- that people who suffer from them are fat, lazy, and could change if they really tried- are inaccurate and harmful to individuals who in reality have very little choice.

Food Deserts and Food Insecurity

The USDA defines Food Desert as “a place vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas” occurring when 500 or more people live at least one mile from a supermarket, or ten miles in rural areas. Food deserts are currently affecting 23.5 million people in the United States.

For a more detailed, interactive map of food deserts and low access areas, click here.

Rural food deserts can have the unique benefit of arable land, allowing for farmers markets to offer fresh fruits and vegetables, even meat and dairy products. Urban food deserts do not have this option, and many suffer from food insecurity as a result. People living in urban food deserts rely on convenience stores and local markets for food, where nutritional value and affordability are mutually exclusive. Junk food, fast food, and pre-made frozen meals comprise most people’s diets. Fresh fruits and vegetables are often unavailable, and corner stores that have produce have limited, low quality options at inflated prices.

The dearth of nutrition and abundance of saturated and trans fat, sodium, and processed sugars lead to health problems including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and chronic illness. In addition to higher food costs, people living in food deserts face higher healthcare costs as well.

So what do people do about it? Currently, 12 million children rely on school lunches as a primary source of nutrition. Individual municipalities have policies and programs to aid people living in food deserts, such as food co-ops and New York City’s Green Carts Program. In 2014, Michelle Obama founded the Let’s Move! Campaign, which will  increase access to healthier school lunches for children, open grocery stores in urban areas, and add initiatives to increase availability and affordability of food resources.