Posted on 06/25/2011 8:57:50 AM PDT by don-o
Portions of Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia find themselves in the middle of a vast desert. The climate has not turned these geographic regions into sand-filled valleys full of dunes. It does fit the description of consumers cut off from nutritious meals and the means to get to them.
According to a map and study supplied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Census Bureau, there are nine counties in those two states where the only food sources are either fast food restaurants or small scale convenience stores — a classification considered an unnutritious choice by the Obama Administration and federal nutrition experts. Those localities include: in Tennessee, Hawkins, Hancock, Greene, Washington and Sullivan; and, in Virginia, Wise, Lee, Washington and Scott. The Department of Health and Human Service announced earlier this month the allocation of over $10 million to help projects in more than 6,500 locations who received the designation get nutritious, more vegetable- based items to their residents.
“These grants will put resources into rural and urban economies to create and support direct marketing opportunities for farmers,” said Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan. “Consumer and farmer enthusiasm for direct marketing has never been greater. This year we will place emphasis on food deserts because America’s low income and underserved communities need greater access to healthy, fresh food.”
(Excerpt) Read more at timesnews.net ...
How silly! These counties are so rural and poor, that the people are probably eating primarily home-grown fruit, vegetables and hogs...an IDEAL diet, including white meat!
Why use a supermarket?
The fed moving in. I used to service the 911, police and fire communications in those counties. Hawkins in particular. The last thing they want is a federal interdiction program.
Here’s just one more object lesson (as if it were needed) on the absolute insanity that has located in Washington DC.
$10,000,000 thrown out there like loose change for the chumps to pounce upon.
Elko County NV. With the Star Cafe it is not a food desert.
The current oligarchs are pernicious liars.
Not sure if that is sarcasm or not. Percentage wise, we may have a few more folks who subsist by their own labors and lands than a typical metro, but not a great many more.
It’s creepy how damn much the federal government knows about us.
Oh dear, whatever will they do for food with only fast food restaurants and small scale convenience stores?
Bunch of blinkered urbanites, the notion of a garden is so utterly foreign that it never enters their pinched little minds. They'd be aghast at the thought of buying a side of beef from a neighbor and freezing it. Why, there ought to be a law, lol.
I live in SW Va. This is the land of vegetable gardens. Even I have tomatoes, lettuce and peppers growing.
He’ll yes!!! This is just the sort of thing I need the government to do with my money. Reelect Obama.
I do have the uncomfortable feeling, though, that somebody has just slipped their hand down into my pocket to grab my last dollar in taxes..
Poison Ivy, Kudzu. Squash Vine Borers and the Taxman. Can I be prosecuted for this? I don't like 'em, not nairy one.
Are you sure that it isn't? Distance to a grocery store seems to be the prime determinant of what constitutes a "food desert".
It's what I'd like to believe also, however, look at Federal farm subsidies, nutritional "guidelines," the dozens of multiple government agencies that have it's claws in EVERY industry.
Hundreds of thousands, or even millions of federal employees who's sole mission is to see that the diktats of the Feds on every facet of our lives are obeyed.
I spent most of my childhood in a county with only four grocery stores of any size at all, and they were all on the extreme southern border of the county. And only one fast food restaurant ... gasp! I’m surprised I survived that desert.
What, no grits?
The only thing I’m not really fond of in your neck of the woods is the BBQ sauce. LOL
Key Lime Pie used to be one of my favorites! Have shifted lately towards the coconut cream though.
Good come back!
If they do start after you, you’re welcome here although we have no mountains. As son’s girlfriend from that way said “It’s...so...flat....” :)
That region is rife with farmers. This is just the fed trying to justify their controlling edicts in other parts of the country. When the SHTF that area is better off than some poor sap that lives next to a Publix or Kroger.
I guess they'd be better off if they'd just get these darn farms out of the way!
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