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First class meal: could the declining US postal service deliver food to the needy?
The Guardian ^ | 1 Feb 2017 | Ann Babe

Posted on 02/01/2017 9:32:02 AM PST by Cronos

..America’s food-insecure population is also low-income and trapped in food deserts, where they lack fresh, healthy, affordable eating options. Residents of food deserts make up almost 18% of the population, or about 54.4 million people, who live more than half a mile away from the nearest supermarket in urban areas or more than 10 miles away in rural areas.

“It’s just ridiculous in a country that is as resource-rich as we are,” says 30-year-old Anu Samarajiva, a graduate student at Washington University in St Louis. “The issue isn’t a lack of food or a lack of resources, but of distribution, pickup and logistics.”

Keen to make a change, Samarajiva and her classmates Irum Javed and Lanxi Zhang came up with a proposal to tackle the issue – by harnessing another service in a predicament of its own.

If the problem is distribution, they thought, then who better able to handle it than the king of delivery: the United States Postal Service (USPS)? The post office department has long been entrenched in America’s neighbourhoods, with more than 30,000 physical branches across the country – but with the rise of digital communications, it’s in decline.

The team’s proposal, which won the Urban SOS: Fair Share competition in January, envisages using the vast postal system network to improve food security in the US. Grocery stores and markets with surplus perishable foods would use the USPS app to schedule pickups, and USPS trucks that are either refrigerated or equipped with refrigerated bags would then deliver those pickups to hunger-relief organisations around the region. USPS offices, 17% of which have shuttered since 1971, could also be reconfigured as food-recovery storage and shopping centres.

...The nation’s declining post offices, then, could well be the food-security centres of the future.

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: Missouri; US: New York
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To: Responsibility2nd

I wrote a supply chain paper on food distribution to schools in India. It was working with poor districts throughout the country and setting up kitchens to create meals and then using a logistics system to get meals to the schools every day.

So this would be my suggestion. All those left wing chefs who knock evil republicans because they make too much money can split the cost between them, since they don’t really need to live in penthouses and villas with $25,000 cooking appliances. They can set up cooking facilities and working with wealthy donors provide the food.

Then based on areas throughout the country that need this type of service, the USPS can outsource to third party vendors who in addition to delivering food will also pick up day to day mail delivery. The other facilities they can sell off to FedEx and UPS.

Cost to taxpayers, zero.


41 posted on 02/01/2017 10:11:41 AM PST by EQAndyBuzz ("Alinsky, you magnificent bastard, Trump read your book!")
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To: Cronos

Food insecure and food deserts. Leftist BS talk for more welfare. Food deserts is code for stores won’t stay in business in neighborhoods where they are robbed and shot at constantly. Free money for groceries isn’t enough, now they want it delivered to them too.


42 posted on 02/01/2017 10:13:43 AM PST by Trillian
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To: Cronos

What a bunch of ma1arkey! 1 out of 7 people I know IS NOT FOOD DEPRIVED and we are a very rural. Your just plain stupid if you are starving in city and I don’t care how poor you are.


43 posted on 02/01/2017 10:14:41 AM PST by Pilated (.)
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To: usurper

The grocery chain HEB in uber lib Austin, TX so very concerned with food deserts that they’re going to build a store in the middle of one. Of course, it’ll take a year or so before the store will open so they’re working with farmers markets, donations and such so HEB can set up tents with food. Cue the choir with “Kumbayah” and keep Austin weird.

Excuse me, but HEB is the only game in town where we live so they’re screwing us every which way they can. In Austin, they have nice stores, clean, bright lights, a large variety of items and brands, decent meats and produce. Here? Ha! We get “fresh” bread that’s frozen, old nasty produce that other stores refuse and very few brand choices. The meat dept. is c r a p. Aside from ground beef, there may be 5 ft. of space for beef so the cuts are limited. On top of that, they will only put out 4 packages of each cut which means the person ahead of you just bought it out. Most of the time, there’s no milk or you’ll have someone begging you to give them one of your two gallons. You take your VERY basic grocery list and come home with a fourth of what you went for. Half the items in the weekly circular are never ordered and they don’t accept coupons.

But, hey, instead of giving their regular customers decent produce, they’re getting fresh from the farm produce for “food deserts” in tents. There are food deserts because of theft. Tents. Theft. Hmm, what could possibly go wrong? And they’ll be sure to pass the losses to me.


44 posted on 02/01/2017 10:15:46 AM PST by bgill (From the CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola")
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To: marron

Clean up in the 400 block of Elm and nearby Peach St.


45 posted on 02/01/2017 10:18:13 AM PST by bgill (From the CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola")
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To: TADSLOS

USPS always complain they’re going broke but they have plenty of money to donate to the Olympics.


46 posted on 02/01/2017 10:19:08 AM PST by bgill (From the CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola")
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To: Larry Lucido
I thought the USPS disposes of the stumps the homeless don't want.


47 posted on 02/01/2017 10:19:35 AM PST by Gamecock
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To: KittenClaws

That’s what I noticed. A half a mile. I’m just shaking my head.


48 posted on 02/01/2017 10:20:26 AM PST by FamiliarFace
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To: Cronos

Email has killed USPS, but Amazon (and other) deliveries are saving it I believe.

And Amazon will probably be moving into grocery delivery. There is no doubt a market for having your basic predictable grocery staples delivered weekly to your door, you then only go to the market for the odds and ends.

That’s assuming it can be done at a reasonable price. If delivery was done by USPS, that would probably put them back on the road to being profitable. I do believe USPS should be privatized, though. Hence, my remark that maybe Amazon should just buy them.


49 posted on 02/01/2017 10:25:39 AM PST by marron
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To: Mr Ramsbotham
As long as they can find language in the Constitution for this, I’m all for it.

Call it a tax and it'll sail right through.

You're depressing me!

Regards,

50 posted on 02/01/2017 10:35:38 AM PST by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: Cronos

MREs, but not fresh food. We don’t want the post office to deliver wilted produce.


51 posted on 02/01/2017 10:36:00 AM PST by GingisK
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To: bgill

Postal Workers Union Endorses Obama

52 posted on 02/01/2017 10:38:32 AM PST by TADSLOS (Reset Underway!)
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To: Larry Lucido; Cronos; SaveFerris; FredZarguna; PROCON
First shipment is on the way!


53 posted on 02/01/2017 10:42:52 AM PST by Gamecock
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To: Cronos
First, please define "needy". Are we talking about people like very genuinely disabled folks who find it physically impossible to support themselves, 90 year old feeble widows, etc. or lazy-a@@ 4th generation welfare slobs?

Second, USPS service stinks. My lazy incompetent mailman always puts my mail in the mailbox of my neighbor, leaving it for her, who is not paid to sort the mail, to remove my mail from the pile in her mailbox and put it into mine. Last week, it was raining like a monsoon and my magazine got completely ruined from being in my neighbor's leaky plastic junk mailbox instead of my steel lockable waterproof mailbox. I called (once again) to complain. If you used USPS to deliver food, it would moulder and rot before it reached its recipients, and attract vermin to mailboxes.

54 posted on 02/01/2017 10:44:03 AM PST by EinNYC
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To: Wallace T.

Good observation, and well stated FRiend.


55 posted on 02/01/2017 10:48:20 AM PST by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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To: Cronos
The team’s proposal, which won the Urban SOS: Fair Share competition in January,...

Good lord.

56 posted on 02/01/2017 10:59:32 AM PST by Washi (Google "the long march through the institutions" to see how the left is waging their revolution)
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To: Responsibility2nd

“NEWMAN!”


57 posted on 02/01/2017 11:02:54 AM PST by moovova
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To: Cronos

Private groups already have a well developed system of food distribution in urban areas. In my area it is called Harvesters. They have tractor trailers to pick up donated food and move it around. They also solicit trucking companies to donate spare space on their loads.

From their hub in town, churches, food pantries, etc can pick up the food. Its already a well developed system, without getting the post office involved. They also deliver once a week to schools, to give the kids a backpack of food for the weekend...because they get free school food during the week but can’t depend on their craptastic parents to provide food over the weekend. Its thousands of backpacks a week.

Admittedly the local county government does make a block grant to this group every year, but its a lot more privatized than the post office would be.


58 posted on 02/01/2017 11:13:06 AM PST by lacrew
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To: EQAndyBuzz
I always wondered how the old lady, who was probably 80+, who lived in the shack across the alley from us in Spokane, WA back in the early 50’s survived.

The nearest store was across from Madison Park on Division Street, a goodly hike. Looking back on this I wish I could have heard her story.

59 posted on 02/01/2017 11:31:37 AM PST by Little Bill (o)
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To: Cronos
food deserts, where they lack fresh, healthy, affordable eating options.

I've only spent a little time in NYC, but I am assuming these "food deserts" exist there, right? How could they, with a freaking 'bodega' on every corner? I'll never understand the nutty left.

60 posted on 02/01/2017 11:32:41 AM PST by backwoods-engineer (Trump won; I celebrated; I'm good. Let's get on with the civil war now.)
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