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 ...
I was once hitch hikink through West (by God) Virginia, and a couple from Illinois picked me up. I was bragging about the beauty of the mountains. The fellow said, “Yeah. But, sometimes a man just wants to stand on level ground.”
While I never felt that need, I kind of understand it. When I am at the beach - all that openness makes me feel a bit disconcerted. I need some hills around me.
Once you hit the Tennessee side of things, barbecue starts slowly morphing away from pepper vinegar toward smoky and sweet, like Texas. Small wonder, Tennesseeans brung it with ‘em when they went, lol, just as Carolinians and Virginians brung it to Tennessee. So, not sure what you’d dislike.
It’s interesting to me to sample the variations as they go across Carolina, Tennessee and onward. The first dates to “catsup” popularized in Elizabethan times, vinegar, herbs and sometimes mushrooms. Settlers in the Tidewater region of Virginia and the Albemarle Sound region of NC were introduced to pit cooking by the local native tribes, combined their “catsup” with it and voila, barbecue.
As American as it gets, going back to the early 1600’s as it does. I love them all. Well, maybe not South Carolina mustard mush. Cooked to a pulp and mustardy isn’t my idea of barbecue heaven, but it must be for somebody. White barbecue sauce in Alabama is strange too, especially in appearance, but the flavor is nice.
The #1 place Tennesseans get their vegetables..... is...
Jar. They get their corn from a jar.
The problem is that these lefty bureaucrats think canning is something Dick Cheney did to innocent terrorists.
We need to go back to a day when we all had a garden, and some chickens and had livestock to keep our grass mowed.
So lets say that you live in a community with zero-lot line homes. In order to plant that garden, you will need to give up all of your good window space for hydroponic growing, or most of the homes in your community must be leveled and the lots conditioned to handle traditional gardens. That also pretends that productive gardens can be grown anywhere on the planet.
But Monsanto and the factory food producers would make sure that they bought off our Congresspeople so that a national law was passed outlawing such activity as unhealthy.
I'm guessing that you are not at all familiar with the production and distribution of food - particularly when studied over a few generations. Before Monsanto and the other "evil" GM food producers, far more land, water, fertilizer and insecticides were required to produce an equivalent quantity of crops. The quality generally sucked in comparison to today and food was very seasonable as opposed to today when one can get strawberries year-round. GM foods are superior in many ways because marginal land can have bountiful production because seeds can be tailored for less than optimum soil quality, droughts, disease and other hazards that have plagued man since the expulsion from The Garden.
I'm also very limited to what I can grow. Certain tomatoes and peppers grow somewhat during the summer. Spinach, beans, okra and strawberries in spring and late fall. I don't have the tillable acreage for wheat and corn, and the birds will devour the sunflowers. I don't have the water for melons and gourds and what I can grow gets destroyed pretty quick without almost continuous deployment of insecticides and extensive netting against birds and other critters.
When the average person wanders into a grocery store's produce department, they are looking at the best of a field's production. Tomatoes that look similar to what is typically grown in a hobby garden won't make it to the grocery floor but will find its way into your next jar of spaghetti sauce or fast-food ketchup packet. Heritage seeds just can't compete with GM seeds that are made specifically for a particular field with its particular soil, moisture, sun exposure, temperatures, disease and insects.
Furthermore, apparently you haven't noticed, but convenience foods outsell everything else. When a person can rip open a mylar bag and instantly grab a fistful of tasty snack, or when the hardest thing a person has to do to prepare a meal for the family is open the prepacked food carton as it makes its way from the freezer to the microwave, and where driving up to McDonald's and barking commands into the speaker, sliding the EBT card through the reader and being rewarded with hot burgers, fries and a shake easily is more attractive than preparing a garden, working the soil, ridding the field of weeds, disease and bugs, watering faithfully, monitoring soil alkalinity, nitrogen levels and moisture over a period of months only to find that the birds and nocturnal creatures ate everything that the sun didn't bake to death - then maybe we as a society will regress a generation or so and lose weight faster than an AIDS victim because there is nothing to eat.
The reason why there are "food deserts" is not because there is a conspiracy to deny certain people nutritious food, I don't know of any company that refuses to service a market that is there and profitable. The reason why is because there is no viable market for the sorts of foods the "federal nutrition experts" feel that those residents need. Its so much easier to rip open a bag. If the Feds were truly serious about stepping up nutrition, then they would deny the use of food stamps at anything but a warehouse that distributes rice, beans, milk and flour.
A bucket of chicken and grease from KFC will always win out to a sack of broccoli and carrots when the taxpayer is making the payment.
So many engineers and so few good Indian or Chinese restaurants?
Give it a few years.
And Krogers and Food City are mom and pop operations?
If you zoom in on New York’s Long Island, THE HAMPTONS is shown as as “food desert”. For those unfamiliar, that’s the beach community of the richest of NY’s richest. I assure you, George Soros is not going hungry this summer.
Basque food is healthy!!!!!
I wonder how celery is going to sell there.
Some of the counties in the upper peninsula of muchgan have less than 5000 people in them and are listed as food deserts.
At least one in my town, along with some (non-franchise) Italian. Some Mediterranean - a German - beaucoups of Mex and Tex-Mex. The fancy pants grocery (Earth Fare) has a food court. Fresh Market under construction. There's more.
or Chinese restaurants?
Not quite yet as ubiquitous as Baptist churches - but getting there.
Maybe I have told too much. Just ignore all that. We are starving up in here.
According to the map, I live in a food desert???
Within 5 miles, there’s at least 15 restaurants. Our population is famous for being overweight. A significant percentage of the population here has livestock (chickens, hogs, goats, etc.) Fishing is our primary industry. Most folks have fish in their freezers. There are vegetable gardens everywhere. On the road that I live on, there’s pick your own grapes and blueberry farms. The place is over run in deer. There was herd of 7 deer in the yard when I went out at daylight.
We don’t have big box grocery stores nearby. There’s a reason. They go broke.
Barry "Richard Daley III" Chicagoland thug knows how to work patronage system.
I showed my daughter our local food desert counties, and said “That’s where we are moving!!!”
Our kitchen is a food desert. Nothing good for us as far as the eye can see.
BTW, don-o — If you fancy chocolate, just shave or grate a chocolate bar (sweetened) over the cocoa meringue. Nice, easy way to enhance that pie.
It would also be necessary, in the less densely populated counties, for every other resident to be a grocer to avoid the classification.
Found this from 2010
here
http://wbjtoday.com/blog/usda-grant-money-promote-income-opportunities-ag-producers/7983/
USDA gives grant money to promote income opportunities for ag producers
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Filed on 15. Oct, 2010 in Agriculture
The Wenatchee Business Journal
Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced Thursday the recipients of the 2010 Farmers Market Promotion Program.
“This year’s farmers market awards will help strengthen local food systems and rural economies in communities nationwide,” Merrigan said. “Many of these projects support increasing access to healthy foods in underserved communities or food deserts by creating direct-to-consumer marketing channels and making electronic benefits transfer available in farmers markets.”
The program exceeded its mandate to award at least 10 percent of total FMPP funds for new electronic benefits transfer projects at farmers markets. More than $1 million will go to 27 new EBT projects, with another eight projects receiving an additional $235,103 in support of existing EBT projects. These grants amount to approximately 30 percent of the $4,099,897 total announced. These projects will help increase access to locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables by low-income consumers using funds provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Women, Infants and Children Program and the Farmers Market Nutrition Program.
Among the substantial number of projects supporting low-income consumer access to fresh, local foods are five urban “food deserts.” A key priority for USDA and the Administration is increased access to fresh, healthful foods in “food deserts” in the U.S. – areas with few, if any, grocery stores or nearby sources of affordable, fresh fruits and vegetables. FMPP is helping to improve this access with over $273,000 in grants targeted at increasing the availability of fresh, local products in these self-identified food deserts, and ensuring that they are affordable. These grants will support a portion of the EBT projects funded that allow low-income consumers to use their federal nutrition program benefits for purchases at farmers markets, and create stronger and broader supply and distribution channels among the growers providing these fresh local foods.
In an effort to improve rural economies, approximately 62 percent of this year’s awardees will recruit and train the next generation of small farmers (beginning, immigrant, and under-served) and support the continued viability of current producers. Training in subjects ranging from conservation management and growing practices, to accepting electronic benefits transfer payments, to on-line marketing will help keep rural America prosperous. Several other projects will provide training in processing and storage techniques to extend the market season. All of these projects offer opportunities to generate income for local and rural producers and keep them viable.
Approximately 28 percent of the awards offer further professional development opportunities for farmers to strengthen their business management skills, including training in risk management, certification, and good agricultural practices. Just as FMPP invests in farmers, these grants also invest in building the capacity of markets, ensuring that a cadre of farmers market managers and boards of directors have the skills to keep their markets thriving and offering new and continued market outlets to local farmers and producers.
Virtually all of the 2010 grants are strengthening local and rural economies and 16 new, direct markets will be created by this year’s awardees. Investments in infrastructure to support value-added product development and distribution account for approximately 28 percent of total awards. Several projects will further develop statewide and regional producer associations to increase the market power of groups of small farmers.
FMPP was created through an amendment of the farmer-to-consumer Direct Marketing Act of 1976 to help improve and expand domestic farmers markets, roadside stands, community-supported agriculture programs, agri-tourism activities, and other direct producer-to-consumer marketing opportunities. Since its inception, FMPP has awarded nearly $14.5 million to increase direct marketing income and consumer access to local farm products.
Under the funding announced Thursday, 77 grants were awarded in 34 states for a total of $4,099,897. Washington was awarded $166,917.
These are the organizations getting money in Washington state:
– North Olympic Peninsula Resource, Conservation and Development – Port Angeles – $79,408 (new EBT)
– Washington State Farmers Market Association – Suquamish – $87,509
Doing the math, that's $1,439 per each of the 6500 locations if the $$ is distributed equally. The total of $10,000,000 is x 2.5 over what it was for 2010.
I wonder if there is reporting required on what's done with the money. Silly question, I know.
All the better to see that the "right people" get the booty.
Are you kidding me??? What a steaming pile...Food City carries loads of produce grown by local farmers...the selection at Ingles and Krogers is excellent. People are flooding into East TN/SW VA because good food is so hard to find? If I rolled my eyes any harder; I'd snap a tendon.
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