Urban Farming Combats Food Deserts In Southeast Fort Worth With Community Empowerment

By Brooke Colombo

August 5, 2021

On the western edge of Glencrest Civic League in Southeast Fort Worth sits a property that soon could become an epicenter of education and agriculture for the community. 

There sits a three-and-a-half-acre farm, Mind Your Garden, manned by husband and wife Steven and Ursula Nuñez, 38. 

Several days a week, Steven heads to local grocery stores to pick up their unsold and undesirable produce. Much of it is still in edible condition while the rest is buzzing with flies and dripping with juice as the pair unload the crates to weigh them.

“It’s a lot of work. It’s hard work,” Ursula said. “But it’s good work and we like to work and it’s therapeutic.”

Today’s haul was on the high end for the farm. The most they’ve received is over 1,000 pounds. of discarded produce. The couple composts the produce to use as fertilizer.

They’ll add it to their terraced gardens to prepare the soil for planting in fall. For now, they’re sowing the seeds for an urban farm, with which they hope to combat food scarcity and promote healthy living. 

Steven loads and unloads produce onto a scale. His truck bed was full with various fruits and vegetables, some still in edible condition. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

Cardboard from the discarded produce and recycled wood make up the terraced beds. The Nuñezes try to make the farm as sustainable as possible. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

Steven turns over the soil in the terraced garden beds to show how the compost enriches it. While they weren’t planting anything for the summer, some of the composted produce has sprouted new plants. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

In 2013, the Nuñezes bought the property, which once belonged to Steven’s parents. The house on the property eventually became their home. But Steven always planned to make the backyard into a garden. 

Steven’s passion and expertise began when he studied abroad in Guatemala, where he learned about urban agriculture. He then attended a workshop from the National Center for Appropriate Technology designed to teach veterans about agriculture. 

These experiences inspired him to pursue a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Texas at Arlington. Steven and Ursula also received certifications in permaculture and Ursula has a background in education.

The Nuñez family sits in their backyard where they have coffee each morning and brainstorm ideas to serve their community. Steven said the farm is his greatest passion and they want it to be their lifestyle and business. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

While looking for a thesis topic, Steven learned about food deserts in Southeast Fort Worth, where some residents didn’t have sufficient access to food. The Nuñezes said they feel the best way to address this is through an educational shift in the community.

“Food is what brings all of us together,” Steven said. “We can be a facilitator for the community to come in and have healthy food options and the education and social community building aspect.”

Mind Your Garden is now one of a handful of community gardens in the Grow Southeast network, an independent initiative that helps farms reach success.

About Glencrest and Southeast food deserts

Not all of Southeast Fort Worth is a food desert, but some of its census tracts meet the federal definition for one. In order for a census tract to be a food desert, according to the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas, it must meet two criteria: 

1. The poverty rate must be 20% or higher, or the median household income must be at or below 80% of the median household income for the region.

2. At least 500 people and/or at least 33% of the households must live more than a half-mile from a large grocery store or supermarket in urban areas.

Food deserts usually have an abundance of convenience stores, fast-food restaurants and liquor stores. 

A QT, Popeyes and Burger King sit on the Southbound side of HWY 287. The majority of food sources for the Glencrest Civic League are located in this area and are fast food, liquor or convenience stores. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report).

Save A Lot, located at 3101 E. Seminary Drive, is the only grocery store within the neighborhood’s boundaries. It’s considered a small grocery store and only part of its half-mile service radius extends into the neighborhood boundaries. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report).

Foodland is a large grocery store located at a Foodland at 3320 Mansfield Highway. It is the only large grocery store within a half-mile service radius of Glencrest Civic League. But just a small portion of the neighborhood is in this radius. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

Linda Fulmer, the executive director of Healthy Tarrant County Collaboration, who partners with Grow Southeast, has lived in Fort Worth since 1980 and remembers the shift of Southeast Fort Worth to a low-income area.

“(Southeast Meadowbrook) was an aging community with homes built in the 1930s and 1940s that were mainly occupied by aging original homeowners,” she said. “At that time there were eight grocery stores within three miles of my little house. Today only one of those stores remains in operation.”

Original homeowners in the area died or moved away, and the homes became available for rent by lower-income families. Many residents take their money to stores outside of the area, Fulmer said, which “erodes the shopper public for what stores remain.” Grocery stores are not a high-profit business, she said, so the stores look for a high density of residents with disposable income.

Glencrest Civic League is about five miles southeast of downtown Fort Worth and South of Highway 287. There is one small market (a Save A Lot food store at 3101 E. Seminary Drive) and one large grocery (a Foodland at 3320 Mansfield Highway) within a half-mile-service radius of the neighborhood limits. 

Both are located at the southernmost edge of the neighborhood, making them less accessible to the majority of the neighborhood. Steven’s thesis, published in December 2018, found 70% of the neighborhood’s food sources are located at its southernmost tip. His thesis also found 9% of residents did not have at least one vehicle for their household.

“Part of understanding food insecurity is also understanding the demographics of the communities,” said Jesse Herrera, CoAct’s founder and executive director, who works with Grow Southeast. “Historically, there have been effects one could attribute to redlining or other systemic oppressions that have led our communities to the path they’re on.”

With 29% of households below the poverty line, Glencrest Civic League is considered a low-income neighborhood, according to census tract data. This is about double the poverty rate in Fort Worth (14.5%) and more than double the rate in Tarrant County (12%). Sixty-one percent of residents have a household income under $50,000. 

The neighborhood is 56% Black, 36% Hispanic, 4% white, 2% Asian and 2% Pacific Islander. Of its 466 residents, 11.6% of the population has veteran status.

While lack of food options is an issue, so too is poor infrastructure. A lack of sidewalks, lack of exterior lighting and inefficient or insufficient bus routes can make it difficult to access food, Herrera said. 

“If your food takes you an hour, two hours, three hours to get to and from there — that’s assuming these routes would actually be open by the time an individual gets off work— that’s part of what leads to food scarcity,” Herrera said.

The area’s economy affects food insecurity. Herrera said it’s harder to come across well-paying jobs in the southeast. Money goes toward rent first, and putting food on the table can be difficult with a minimum wage job.

The effects of food insecurity and little access to nutritious food have greater implications for the residents’ health, as Steven and Ursula have experienced. 

“Steven’s family has a history of diabetes, and my family has a history of heart disease, which are both food-related diseases,” Ursula said. “I didn’t understand that with the food you consume, there are effects to unhealthy eating.”

A healthy diet can lead to a longer life, lower risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and some cancer, as well as help with chronic diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Steven and Ursula said despite exercising and training for marathons, it wasn’t until they changed their eating habits — cutting out alcohol and turning to a plant-based diet — that they saw a difference in their health.

How community urban farms address food scarcity

Though putting more grocery stores with healthy, affordable options in a more accessible place seems like the obvious solution, Nuñez suggests in his thesis this would have little effect on the buying choices of residents. The biggest factors are cultural background, tradition, education, custom and habit, his thesis argues.

“The whole nutritional education is extremely important,” Steven said. “It’s a long and tough journey to live a healthy lifestyle. For our community, some people just don’t know how to cook or eat healthily. They see fast foods and convenience as their only option. They need that strong support from their community to be successful.”

Community farms aren’t just about selling produce to residents, Herrera said. Rather, the farms also empower residents and boost the local economy to lift these communities out of poverty.

Once the farmers are equipped with successful business models, the farms could create opportunities for secondary and tertiary markets like neighborhood composting services and niche restaurants or cottage industries, he said. 

“We’re looking at this through the lens of entrepreneurship and trying to create resources that support,” Herrera said. “These farms have the ability to create a lot of jobs.”

The future of Mind Your Garden

Steven points to a map they’ve created for the future layout of the farm. This includes plans for an orchard, a chicken coop and additional terraced garden beds. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

Ursula and their daughter Alejandra walk across their backyard from their home. The house, built in 1948, was the first property on the block. This space behind it will serve as a workshop and classroom to educate residents when the farm opens to the public. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

A retention pond is on the Northside of the property. The pond existed before they purchased the property. They plan to deepen it with the money they won in the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s pitch competition. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

Though it’s not open to the public yet, Steven and Ursula have already planned how they want to get the community involved on the farm. 

They have a handful of volunteers helping build infrastructure to ready the farm for planting and a public opening. Preparing for the fall has been more than just physical labor, he said. Farming has allowed him and the volunteers to dig deep with each other.

“It’s a therapy session when we’re out here,” Steven said. “We’re out in nature. We’re working, sweating, talking about food insecurity and health. By the time they leave, we’ve had a pretty deep conversation. That’s definitely the community outreach aspect of it.”

To provide that experience to other residents, they intend to have gardening spaces where the community can get their hands dirty, as well as outdoor classroom space.

They will have a “healthy hour,” which will be like a happy hour focused on inviting the community over to eat and discuss their health.

“When we went plant-based and stopped drinking alcohol, we realized almost every social thing revolves around eating or drinking,” Steven said. “There’s a need for people looking to have a healthy lifestyle but still want to socialize.”

The Nuñezes said it’s an honor to be able to provide for their community and share what their farm will have to offer.

“This is a lifestyle business, not a part-time business or hobby. This is our life,” Steven said. “It means so much to us to get to express ourselves, our creativity, and be of service.”

Lead Photo: Ursula and Steven Nuñez unload hundreds of pounds of discarded fruit from local grocers to weigh. This fruit will get composted in the pile behind them to create nutrient-rich soil for planting. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)

Small Urban Farms, An Oasis For Underserved U.S. Neighbourhoods

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October 30, 2020

Adrian Higgins

THE WASHINGTON POST – I ate the last of the season’s potatoes the other day, and it’s not a bad harvest achievement when you consider I dug the lot in July from a bed no more than 15 feet long. I’ve eaten many meals over the summer where the bulk of my plate has come straight from my small community garden plot in the city.

It is amazing how much you can grow in a small space if the soil is good and you stay on top of tasks such as watering and weeding. But even in a pandemic-driven planting year full of homegrown potatoes, beans and carrots, you have to face reality. If you relied on most urban veggie plots alone to feed yourself, never mind a large family, you’d be forever tightening your belt.

This is why I’ve had my doubts about whether urban agriculture can meet the challenge where it is most needed – in poorer, food-insecure neighbourhoods. Rosie Williams is in charge of such a garden, in an expansive side lot of the National Children’s Center, an early-learning and educational development provider in Southeast Washington, in the United States (US).

The garden packs a lot in. There are almost 70 raised planter beds, each four by eight feet and filled with deep, rich soil. That’s a lot of growing area; the beds generate bushels of edible plants for most of the year.

A shed houses tools, a single beehive is active, a few fruit trees ring the area, and one side is devoted to little benches for little people. The centre, which normally houses classes for 188 children up to age five, has been closed because of the pandemic, though a limited re-opening is in the works.

Teacher and garden coordinator Williams showed me cool-season veggies growing in the fall, young plants of kale, collards, cauliflower, broccoli and red cabbage. In other planters, mature plants are seeing out the season in robust vigour. The most obvious is a single pepper plant – now taller than Williams – whose leaves hide unripe green chillies that hang like ornaments. This is a mighty hot pepper from Trinidad named Scorpion, she said, and I have no doubt that it has a sting in its tail.

Nearby, a Japanese eggplant is full of purple streaked fruit. Along another path, Williams stopped to lift a wayward cherry tomato vine and places it back in its bed. “I don’t like to step on my babies,” she said.

Elsewhere, wizened sunflowers have had their day. “We bring the kids out, we show them how to plant seeds, what the plants need,” she said. “It’s getting folks exposed to the garden.” Food from the garden is used in the centre’s kitchen.

Thus the children and their families get a sense that food comes from the soil. This is not so obvious a connection in Ward 8. In this corner of the capital of the US, there is one full-service grocery store for 80,000 people, and access to something as basic as fresh vegetables is limited.

“We have a lack of grocery stores,” said Jahni Threatt, the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programme Market Manager for the non-profit Building Bridges Across the River. “In Wards 7 and 8, we have three grocery stores.” Residents eat from fast-food chains or out of convenience stores. “The food that’s available isn’t necessarily healthy,” she said. Under the CSAs, growers provide direct weekly harvests to subscribers.

The Baby Bloomers Urban Farm that Williams coordinates at the National Children’s Center is one of seven in a network of city farms east of the Anacostia River, including a one-acre farm run by Threatt’s organisation at THEARC, the arts, education and social services campus at 1901 Mississippi Ave.

This one farm produced as much as 1,600 pounds of food this year, but to provision its CSA programme, the Building Bridges group turns to an additional 10 farms within 50 miles of the city, most of them Black-owned, said Scott Kratz, vice president.

The CSA runs three seasons of subscriptions, and bags are picked up on Saturdays at THEARC. The spring season was cancelled because of the pandemic, but the summer and fall ones have been heavily subscribed and will provide food for over 400 families this year. The season has also been extended, from the end of this month to the end of next. Lower-income subscribers get a reduced rate, and families on assistance get the food free, Kratz said.

This is heartening, because the pandemic has hit the city’s poorest wards the hardest. Many residents have underlying health issues related in part to their diet, and many are front-line workers or rely on the gig economy, putting them at greater risk of contracting the novel coronavirus, Kratz said.

Ward 8, which is 92 per cent Black, so far has the highest number of virus deaths in the district, with 127, according to city data. Ward 3, 81 per cent White, had 34 for the same period.

“We need to make sure that the programming we have is coming through the lens of equity and making sure the access people need is available to everybody in the community,” said Building Bridges Farm Director Dominic Hosack. I am rethinking my sense that mini-farms in the city are of limited value. They are, rather, a key portal into a larger infrastructure of food-security efforts. Beyond their utility, they are places of deep reconnection, to the soil, to food and to communities. In the food deserts of big-city America, they are the oases.

GARDENING TIP

Whiteflies are tenacious pests of certain houseplants and should be tackled, preferably before bringing plants indoors for the season. A vacuum cleaner is an effective way of dealing with them without using pesticides. Repeat as needed.

Lead photo: Garden coordinator Rosie Williams checks a pepper plant at the National Children’s Center urban farm in Washington. PHOTO: THE WASHINGTON POST

US: Washington, DC - A Sommelier's Foray Into Urban Agriculture Starts With Mushrooms In Shipping Containers

Barry Farm resident Calvin Hines Jr. launched EightFold Farms to address food deserts and underemployment.

LAURA HAYES

JAN 29, 2020

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COURTESY OF CALVIN HINES JR.

“This started out with me being pissed off that I had to go to the grocery store far away,” says Calvin Hines Jr. The D.C. sommelier and bartender, who has been mixing drinks most recently at Hank’s Oyster Bar in Dupont Circle, grew up in Hillcrest in Ward 7. Later in life, he lived off the U Street Corridor as the neighborhood rapidly developed. Recently, he moved back east of the river and settled in Barry Farm in Ward 8.

“I forgot that you used to have to travel to go get food,” Hines says. “There’s no place we can walk.” He drives to the Harris Teeter on M Street SE for groceries. “The Safeways that are closer to me don’t have great food.” There are only three full-service grocery stores for the more than 150,000 people living in Wards 7 and 8, though others broke ground in 2019. 

This got Hines thinking about food deserts and socioeconomics. “What can I do that would be most effective in solving the problem or multiple problems?” he asked himself before diving into urban agriculture research. 

Havana, Cuba emerged as a source of inspiration. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba entered a phase known as the “Special Period” in the early 1990s, residents had to work quickly to find new and sustainable ways to feed themselves. “They were able to build urban agriculture in Cuba to help them with their food shortage and also increase employment,” Hines says. 

The Cubans did so with great success. As of 2014, Havana, a city of two million people, had dedicated more than 87,000 acres to urban agriculture. “If they’ve been doing it for this long, why can’t we do it in D.C.?” Hines asks. “I live here.”

Hines is launching a for-profit urban agriculture company of his own—EightFold Farms. The name is a nod to Hines' Buddhism practice. The Eightfold Path consists of eight directions, including mindfulness and effort, that are supposed to lead to liberation.

“We can build these small sustainable intensive farms through the city and throughout Wards 7 and 8,” Hines says. “Through these farms, we can sell to restaurants, which I’m linked into. We can start farmers’ markets in Ward 7 or 8 or any other area that lacks food in D.C.”

He’s starting small with one or two shipping containers that he will convert into mobile mushroom farms in partnership with the Phillips Collection, Non-Stop Art, and developer MidCity. The containers will be temporarily housed at 1325 Rhode Island Ave. NE "just until we find space on the other side of town,” Hines says. He went to high school with Non-Stop Art founder Nehemiah Dixon. 

“We’re starting with oyster mushrooms and maybe some lion’s mane and shiitake,” Hines says. “Oyster [mushrooms] will be the bulk of it. They’re easy to grow and there’s more of a demand.” 

EightFold Farms aims to have an educational component Hines calls “From Farm to Table” that will teach young Washingtonians both practical urban agriculture skills and the business side of restaurants. He hopes to accept them into the program as early as elementary or middle school and keep them through high school when they would potentially be ready to attend the University of the District of Columbia’s College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences. 

“There are not enough people that are into urban ag,” Hines says, noting this is particularly true for people of color. “We’re creating a workforce that can bridge that gap. They’ll already have a good foundation, a practical education.” 

Hines has even bigger goals down the line, including launching an all-encompassing space that would have indoor and outdoor farming areas, a market, and food vendors. For now, he’s just hoping to have a quarter to a half-acre of space planted the first year EightFold Farms gets off the ground.

He estimates he’ll need about $125,000 to buy and refurbish the shipping containers and purchase equipment. Omar Hakeem from buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, a Texas-based nonprofit community design center, is helping with the design of the containers. Hines launched a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe today.

“We’re trying to attack the problem through food,” Hines says. He hopes EightFold Farms grows healthy food that can lead to better health outcomes while also creating pathways to employment for his neighbors. 

Our Food Is Killing Too Many of Us

Improving American Nutrition Would

Make The Biggest Impact On Our Health Care

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By Dariush Mozaffarian and Dan Glickman

Mr. Mozaffarian is dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Mr. Glickman was the secretary of agriculture from 1995 to 2001.

August 26, 2019

The Democratic debate on health care has to date centered around who should be covered and who should pay the bill. That debate, which has been going on for decades, has no clear answers and cannot be easily resolved because of two fundamental realities: Health care is expensive, and Americans are sick.

Americans benefit from highly trained personnel, remarkable facilities and access to the newest drugs and technologies. Unless we eliminate some of these benefits, our health care will remain costly. We can trim around the edges — for example, with changes in drug pricing, lower administrative costs, reductions in payments to hospitals and providers, and fewer defensive and unnecessary procedures. These actions may slow the rise in health care spending, but costs will keep rising as the population ages and technology advances.

And Americans are sick — much sicker than many realize. More than 100 million adults — almost half the entire adult population — have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Cardiovascular disease afflicts about 122 million people and causes roughly 840,000 deaths each year, or about 2,300 deaths each day. Three in four adults are overweight or obese. More Americans are sick, in other words, than are healthy.

Instead of debating who should pay for all this, no one is asking the far more simple and imperative question: What is making us so sick, and how can we reverse this so we need less health care? The answer is staring us in the face, on average three times a day: our food.

Poor diet is the leading cause of mortality in the United States, causing more than half a million deaths per year. Just 10 dietary factors are estimated to cause nearly 1,000 deaths every day from heart disease, stroke and diabetes alone. These conditions are dizzyingly expensive. Cardiovascular disease costs $351 billion annually in health care spending and lost productivity, while diabetes costs $327 billion annually. The total economic cost of obesity is estimated at $1.72 trillion per year, or 9.3 percent of gross domestic product.

These human and economic costs are leading drivers of ever-rising health care spending, strangled government budgets, diminished competitiveness of American business and reduced military readiness.

Fortunately, advances in nutrition science and policy now provide a road map for addressing this national nutrition crisis. The “Food Is Medicine” solutions are win-win, promoting better well-being, lower health care costs, greater sustainability, reduced disparities among population groups, improved economic competitiveness and greater national security.

Some simple, measurable improvements can be made in several health and related areas. For example, Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers and hospitals should include nutrition in any electronic health record; update medical training, licensing and continuing education guidelines to put an emphasis on nutrition; offer patient prescription programs for healthy produce; and, for the sickest patients, cover home-delivered, medically tailored meals. Just the last action, for example, can save a net $9,000 in health care costs per patient per year.

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Taxes on sugary beverages and junk food would help lower health care costs. Credit: Jenny Kane/Associated Press

Taxes on sugary beverages and junk food can be paired with subsidies on protective foods like fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, plant oils, whole grains, yogurt and fish. Emphasizing protective foods represents an important positive message for the public and food industry that celebrates and rewards good nutrition. Levels of harmful additives like sodium, added sugar and trans fat can be lowered through voluntary industry targets or regulatory safety standards.

Nutrition standards in schools, which have improved the quality of school meals by 41 percent, should be strengthened; the national Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program should be extended beyond elementary schools to middle and high schools; and school garden programs should be expanded. And the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which supports grocery purchases for nearly one in eight Americans, should be leveraged to help improve diet quality and health.

The private sector can also play a key role. Changes in shareholder criteria (e.g., B-Corps, in which a corporation can balance profit versus purpose with high social and environmental standards) and new investor coalitions should financially reward companies for tackling obesity, diabetes and other diet-related illness. Public-private partnerships should emphasize research and development on best agricultural and food-processing practices. All work sites should demand healthy food when negotiating with cafeteria vendors and include incentives for healthy eating in their wellness benefits.

Coordinated federal leadership and funding for research is also essential. This could include, for example, a new National Institute of Nutrition at the National Institutes of Health. Without such an effort, it could take many decades to understand and utilize exciting new areas, including related to food processing, the gut microbiome, allergies and autoimmune disorders, cancer, brain health, treatment of battlefield injuries and effects of nonnutritive sweeteners and personalized nutrition.

Government plays a crucial role. The significant impacts of the food system on well-being, health care spending, the economy and the environment — together with mounting public and industry awareness of these issues — have created an opportunity for government leaders to champion real solutions.

Yet with rare exceptions, the current presidential candidates are not being asked about these critical national issues. Every candidate should have a food platform, and every debate should explore these positions. A new emphasis on the problems and promise of nutrition to improve health and lower health care costs is long overdue for the presidential primary debates and should be prominent in the 2020 general election and the next administration.

Lead Image: Cheeseburgers at a White House picnic in 2018. Credit Alex Edelman/Getty Images

Dollar Stores Are Taking Over the Grocery Business, and It’s Bad News for Public Health and Local Economies

BY CLAIRE KELLOWAY

Posted on: December 17, 2018  

Today, there are more dollar stores in the United States than all Walmarts and Starbucks combined. These low-priced “small-box” retailers, like Dollar General, offer little to no fresh food—yet they feed more Americans than either Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, and are gaining on the country’s largest food retailers.

Detailing the explosion of dollar stores in rural and low-income areas, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) recently released a report that shows how these retailers exacerbate economic and public health disparities. The report makes the case that dollar stores undercut small rural grocers and hurt struggling urban neighborhoods by staving off full-service markets.

ILSR also argues that the proliferation of dollar stores is the latest outgrowth of an increasingly concentrated grocery sector, where the top four chains—Walmart, Kroger, Ahold-Delhaize, and Albertsons—sell 44 percent of all groceries, and Walmart alone commands a quarter of the market. These dominant chain stores have decimated independent retailers and divested from rural and low-income areas, as well as communities of color.

A Dollar General in Morgantown, West Virginia. (Photo credit: Taber Andrew Bain)

“Earlier trends in big box store [growth] are making this opening for dollar stores to enter,” says Marie Donahue, one of the report’s authors. “We’re seeing a widening gap of inequality that’s a result of wealth being extracted from communities and into corporate headquarters… Dollar stores are really concentrating in communities hit hardest by the consequences of economic concentration.”

“Before this report, I had no idea that dollar stores were proliferating in this way,” says Dr. Kristine Madsen, Faculty Director of the Berkeley Food Institute. But, she adds, “it doesn’t surprise me that these incredibly cheap stores may be the only choice for people [who] may be choosing between medicine and rent and food.”

Dollar General did not respond to a request to comment for this article.

Profiting Off Customers in “Food Deserts”

Two companies, Dollar Tree (which acquired Family Dollar in 2015) and Dollar General, have expanded their footprint from just under 20,000 stores in 2010 to nearly 30,000 stores in 2018, with plans to open yet another 20,000 stores in the near future. Dollar General alone opens roughly three stores a day.

Most of these new stores are in urban and rural neighborhoods where residents don’t often have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. In 2015, in fact, Dollar Tree and Dollar General represented two-thirds of all new stores in “food deserts,” defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as low-income areas where a third or more of residents live far from a full-service grocery store. Dollar General predominantly targets rural areas, though it s beginning to compete with Family Dollar, which is ubiquitous in urban food deserts.

Profiting off these left-behind places is baked into dollar stores’ business plan. In 2016, low-income shoppers represented 21 percent of Dollar General’s customers but 43 percent of their sales. Dollar General executives publicly described households making under $35,000 and reliant on government assistance as their “Best Friends Forever.” When discussing growing rural-urban inequality, Dollar General’s CEO said “the economy is continuing to create more of our core customer,” i.e., more struggling rural families.

Undercutting Independent Grocery Stores

Some, including dollar-store executives themselves, argue that a low-cost retailer seeking to go where no one else will benefits underserved communities. But ILSR argues that dollar stores are not a true solution to hunger or food insecurity. Furthermore, the group says, they do nothing to promote food sovereignty, or people’s right to control the production and distribution of their own food.

Inside a Dollar General store in Eldred, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Random Retail)

“To the extent that dollar stores are filling, in some ways, a need in communities, I think that is true in the short term,” says Donahue. “But really our research is demonstrating … those foods aren’t as good quality as full-service grocers or independent local stores, which may be able to connect to local farmers and the larger food system.”

Dollar stores sell predominantly shelf-stable and packaged foods. Four-hundred-and-fifty Dollar General locations are experimenting with an expanded refrigerator section to respond to a demand for more fresh fruits and vegetables. But, to date, the fresh and frozen offerings that do exist in these stores consist of processed meats, dairy products, and frozen meals. In other words, customers don’t have the same wide selection as they do in a traditional full-service grocery store.

“Grocery stores have more variety and a higher quantity of healthy foods than do dollar stores,” says Dr. David Procter, director of the Rural Grocery Initiative, a program of Kansas State University’s Center for Engagement and Community Development.

Despite their reputation, dollar stores don’t provide the best deals either. They often sell products in smaller quantities to keep a low price tag and draw in cash-strapped buyers. But when comparing per-ounce prices to a traditional grocery store, dollar store customers tend to pay more. Reporting by The Guardian found that the prorated cost of dollar store milk cartons comes to $8 per gallon, for example.

Dollar store customers do, however, find genuine value in things like greeting cards, pasta, coat hangers, and other everyday home goods. But this very cost-cutting is what makes dollar stores uniquely brutal competitors for smaller independent grocers.

“There’s very little money made on all kinds of segments of the [independent] grocery store, but where [grocers] do make their most money … is in paper goods and dry goods,” explains Procter. “That is really the heart of Dollar General … and it’s cutting into the largest profit area of the grocery store, that’s the real challenge.”

By sucking away this source of revenue, dollar stores tend to drive out the few independent grocers that remain, especially in rural areas. ILSR’s report found that “it’s typical for sales [at local grocery stores] to drop by about 30 percent after a Dollar General opens.”

Additionally, a survey by the Rural Grocery Initiative found that competition from large chain stores is the single largest challenge facing independent rural grocers. In the ’90s, Walmart was their main challenger; now Dollar General is moving in where even Walmart wouldn’t go, pushing out more local businesses.

The Benefit of—and Fight for—Small, Local Stores

Residents lose more than fresh foods when their local grocery store disappears. They lose jobs, local investment, and a voice in their food choices.

According to federal data, small independent grocers employ nearly twice as many people per store when compared to dollar stores. “When you have a hometown grocer owned by people who are committed to that community, not only are all the decisions made locally, but all of the profits stay in that town,” says Procter. “Some of the money that’s being generated in Dollar General stores is going to their headquarters in Tennessee, and the decisions about whether or not that [store] stays open or what they offer is being made by out-of-state corporate decision makers.”

A Dollar Tree store in Cheshire, Conn. (Photo credit: Mike Mozart)

In addition to undercutting existing stores, the proliferation of dollar stores can shut out new entrants. This is a particular concern in low-income urban areas and communities of color. ILSR’s report features the case of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there’s a 14-year life expectancy gap between residents in the predominantly Black north Tulsa neighborhood and residents in the predominantly white south Tulsa neighborhood. ILSR found that dollar stores have “concentrated in [Tulsa] census tracts with more African American residents,” and community members are not happy about it.

“I don’t think it’s an accident they proliferate in low socio-economic and African American communities,” Tulsa City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper told ILSR. “That proliferation makes it more difficult for the full-service, healthy stores to set up shop and operate successfully.”

However, Tulsa’s story also provides a glimpse of hope into what some communities can do to halt the invasion of dollar stores. Hall-Harper worked to pass zoning ordinances that would limit dollar store development and encourage full-service grocers to set up shop. She rallied residents to protest the opening of a new Dollar General and join city council meetings to show support for a temporary dollar store moratorium. City council passed the moratorium and the zoning changes seven months later. North Tulsa will soon have a new grocery store, operated by Honor Capital, a veteran-owned company that has a food-access mission. Rural communities in Kansas have similarly organized and leveraged city council to halt a proposed Dollar General.

“It’s great to see a community really fight for this ordinance and show up to public meetings and hearings and challenge those traditional systems that would have just approved development for more dollar stores in the area,” says Donahue.

Top photo: Outside a Dollar General in Fort Hancock, Texas. (Photo credit: Thomas Hawk)

How Vertical Farming Aims To Eliminate Food Deserts From Urban Landscapes

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By Adam Putz

September 17, 2018

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A leafy green salad or a juicy cheeseburger? For millions of Americans, the question's a no-brainer … and much of it has to do with a lack of fresh produce at affordable prices close to home.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, food deserts are defined as areas with limited access to supermarkets, supercenters, grocery stores, or other sources of cheap, healthy food. These deserts affect more than 20 million people in the US, per a USDA estimate, and they typically form in urban population centers—particularly low-income neighborhoods—as major food retailers followed waves of suburbanization to set up shop further from city centers during the latter half of the last century. However, food deserts can crop up anywhere with a pronounced lack of accessibility to inexpensive sources of nutrition, as measured by the distance to a store or by the number of stores in an area.

For those who must travel lengthy distances to eat a healthy dinner, there's often no real choice between buying ingredients for a salad or grabbing a burger from the fast-food joint around the corner. And it's not just Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit that have struggled to cope. San Francisco, despite its tech wealth and relative proximity to California's Central Valley, is also home to its own food deserts such as Bayview-Hunters Point.

But rapidly maturing agricultural technologies like vertical farming have already started to produce food oases where deserts once dominated by taking aim at the twin problems that perpetuate them: the amount of unhealthy foods readily available nearby and the relative inconvenience of attaining cheap, nutritional options.

A novel form of mass agriculture

With supply chains that depend on trucking produce into city centers, sometimes from thousands of miles away, conventional agriculture is inefficient and expensive—to say nothing of the carbon footprint involved in shipping and storing foods. Alternative methods of production within cities are needed to eliminate food deserts, and those developments can't come soon enough; global production will need to increase by 50% to feed another 2 billion people in 2050, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

But alternative methods of production won't solve everything. A higher cost of living in urban areas can also eat into disposable income, resulting in even those with greater means choosing unhealthy options to trim expenses. That highlights the need for alternative methods of distribution within cities as another way to drive down prices.

That's where vertical farming comes in—though the term, much less the practice, hasn't been around long. Credit for the concept has gone to retired Columbia University medical school professor Dickson Despommier for his 2010 book, "The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century."

Just as the first farmers domesticated cereals in nearby fields before inventing techniques like irrigation to improve yields, vertical farmers have adapted existing indoor ag methods to grow leafy greens in tall warehouses and freighters using advanced technologies like LEDs to replace sunlight.

Vertical farming tackles inefficiencies in production and distribution head-on by growing healthy food near to where it's sold. The evolution from simpler forms of indoor ag, such as growing tomatoes in greenhouses or producing several tons of kale in vertical farms, seemingly has a parallel in humanity's rise from single-story dwellings to the boom in skyscrapers 100 years ago—and the engineering and technological advancements are no less impressive.

By reducing inputs, eliminating crop protection products like pesticides from and incorporating machine learning tools into the growing process to optimize water and light levels, vertical farming has also started to combat many of the capital-intensive issues around growing nutrient-rich produce. Slowly but surely, companies operating in the space will draw down the price on fresh fruits and vegetables grown vertically. In the meantime, these companies have also boosted their bottom lines by targeting the cultivation of greens that carry higher premiums.

Those financial benefits and opportunities have lured deep-pocketed backers to the industry to cut some sizable checks. Venture capital investment, including from corporates, into greater agtech last year represented roughly $1.9 billion across 238 completed deals. Meanwhile, the indoor ag space rode that investment wave to hit a peak in 2017 of some $346 million across 37 financings. But the bulk of that funding went to just one startup.

Plenty: SoftBank's big bet on agtech 

Last summer, SoftBank deployed its massive Vision Fund to lead a $200 million Series B for Bay Area-based Plenty. The deal represented the Vision Fund's first major foray into agtech.

"By combining technology with optimal agriculture methods, Plenty is working to make ultra-fresh, nutrient-rich food accessible to everyone in an always-local way that minimizes wastage from transport," said Masayoshi Son, chairman & CEO of SoftBank, in a news release. "We believe that Plenty's team will remake the current food system to improve people's quality of life."

Founded in 2013, Plenty raised a $26 million Series A in 2016 from funds run by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and former Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt alongside the likes of Data Collective, DCM Ventures and Finistere Ventures. Like others operating in the space, Plenty uses a tiny fraction—a measly 1%—of the water deployed on conventional farms and also leverages machine learning, the IoT and Big Data to optimize the growing environment for crops and minimize the energy used in production. Plenty's vertical farms occupy a few-hundred-thousand square feet—the indoor equivalent to a few acres of open field. Meanwhile, rows of arugula and kale sprout not from soil but columns covered in a growth medium comprising recycled bottles designed to hold roots in place and deliver nutrients.

Plenty's buildout with SoftBank's support should also encourage investments into the companies behind complementary agtech solutions like sensors and precision ag, the proprietary software programs created to provide data management and analytics for monitoring water and nutrient levels, along with the presence of plant pathogens.

A greener future

From early on in their rise, skyscrapers have been synonymous with the growth of urban populations. And from just as early on, some architects and engineers reveled at the prospect of farming in the sky.
 

Some 55% of the global population currently inhabits urban areas, and the UN estimates this figure will jump to 68% by 2050.

In 1909, Life magazine ran an illustration by the popular cartoonist Alanson Burton Walker depicting a skyscraper containing single family homes complete with their own gardens.

Although quaint to contemporary eyes, Walker's depiction of cultivation in the skies should no longer feel so farfetched with companies like Plenty starting to bring comparable methods closer to reality—developments that could eventually result in the elimination of food deserts from the contemporary urban scene.

Some 55% of the global population currently inhabits urban areas, and the UN estimates this figure will jump to 68% by 2050. Mega-cities of more than 10 million inhabitants are expected to number 43 worldwide by 2030. These cities will represent a long-term investment play for firms focused on the confluence of farming, food and infrastructure, with companies in vertical farming well-positioned to capitalize on these bets by cultivating a central role for indoor ag in sustainable urban development.

Tags: venture capital, agtech,