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Fresh greens in the desert

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Fresh Greens on the market
The greens are really at their Fall peak right now, and between the various local farmers I found a lot this morning:

From Woodson Ridge Farms, I got carrot, radish, beet, and turnip tops, along with arugula.  I missed their lettuce.

From the Bost Farms at MidTown shopping center (sadly, the last market of the Fall), I got mustard greens and spinach.

From Flora Farms at Midtown, I got Swiss chard.

From Hollowell, who has taken to parking a pick-up truck just north of the three-way intersection, I got collards and kale.

I’ve got bunching onions in the yard and will buy some cabbage, lettuce, Italian parsley, along with some brisket from the Brown Family Farm, garlic from Flora (how many dishes have thirteen local ingredients?), and sausage Joyce brought back from West Louisiana to make this, something I ordinarily make in the Spring.

 I left a comment. Apparently, he’s not aware of the fact that he lives in a food desert.

From the Food Desert Locator brought to you by the United States Department of Agriculture
Your Federal Government hard at work making sure you know that Oxford, Mississippi and University, Mississippi have “low-income neighborhoods with high concentrations of people who are far from a grocery store.”

The HFFI working group defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store:

To qualify as a “low-income community,” a census tract must have either: 1) a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher, OR 2) a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area’s median family income; 

To qualify as a “low-access community,” at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract’s population must reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles).

From the middle of the map, you can see that there are two distinct pink areas. One is the town of Oxford, the other the “town” of University. University = The University of Mississippi. Both are classified as “urban.” So let’s get this straight, poor college kids have to travel more than a mile to find a grocery store. And yet…

Dining options at Ole Miss
Take a peek at the menus at the Marketplace. If it’s been a while since you’ve had “cafeteria” food at a state university you will be bowled over by the quality and selection. And I don’t say this in the abstract. I’ve eaten many times at Ole Miss– good stuff. (Not as good as, say Proud Larry’s in Oxford, but still good.)

There are 14 grocery stores with “Oxford” in their address. I know most on this list are stop & robs, but still, there’s a WalMart Supercenter and a Kroger. And let’s not forget that population of Oxford is 18,916 (2010 census). 

I have some problems with the notion of food desert. By definition, in an urban area, if 500 people or 33% of the census tract’s population live more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store, that area is a desert. Whoever came up with this stuff has no conception of small-town life.
  1. What is the definition of “large” in this context? Is it proportional to population size? Even if you combine Oxford’s permanent resident population with the on-campus population, how many grocery stores can Oxford support?
  2. Why one mile? Or 10? At best this seems arbitrary. At worst it reflects an assumption that one mile is a really really big distance, which it might be if you don’t have a vehicle (i.e., if you are accustomed to using public transportation to scoot around D.C.).
  3. Why supermarkets? Why not canvas all available food access locations? “… who has taken to parking a pick-up truck just north of the three-way intersection… .” Again, there are some underlying assumptions at work.
I’ll grant that there are people in the United States who have to travel long distances to get to a grocery store. And I’ll grant that some percentage of them are “poor.” But guess what? They mange to figure things out! I have never driven past a body of someone who’d keeled over from starvation while walking to the grocery store. Not once.

On a related note, did you know that the quality of my life is low because I live more than 10 miles from the Getty Museum?

One Response

  1. i think that the concept of food desert is broader than simply having food available, but rather having access to quality food. although the paradigm may not work in a rural agricultural area where you can get ahold of high quality produce in the parking lot, but i think grocery stores are generally considered a good measure of this because they have variety of produce/unprepared foods that provide families with something healthy to eat for a reasonable price (of course this is assuming that they know how to cook something healthy). the problem with food courts and stop&robs is that not only do they generally NOT have healthy food options availabe, but often they are the sole source of food for an individual living in a certain place. while 10 miles may seem arbitrary, it is a long way to walk (in each direction) with an armful of groceries and if youre living below the poverty level you may not have other means of getting there. also, maybe not that much starvation happening in the us, but 2/3 of the population is overweight (and a higher proportion in MS). ive never seen anyone keel over from starvation in a grocery store either, but i have seen someone keel over from diabetes… in los angeles.. which despite having the highest concentration of whole foods in the country also has large swathes of food desert.

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