CFFPI - Ohio Neighborhood Harvest: Demonstration of, and Best Practices for, Creating Fruit and Vegetable Oases in Food DesertsPI: Jill Clark NEW POLICY BRIEF Healthy Corner Stores: A Best Practices Brief There are a number of rural and urban communities throughout Ohio with limited physical, economic, and healthy access to specialty crops, as well as limited knowledge of them. Because of the retail industry’s consolidation and the movement of wealth to suburban communities, many supermarket chains have closed. Corner stores are often the only option for urban consumers to purchase food or food-like products. Likewise, rural consumers only have access to a supermarket if they have access to a vehicle and drive long enough; the lack of competition, however, makes food more expensive. These situations exemplify “food deserts,” or areas defined in the 2008 Farm Bill as “[areas] in the United States with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, particularly such [areas] composed of predominantly lower income neighborhoods and communities” (Title VI, Sec. 7527). Ohio has committed to understanding the extent of food deserts within the state as well as to increasing access to healthy foods (including specialty crops) in these areas. Governor Strickland announced this initiative, the Ohio Neighborhood Harvest, in his 2010 State of the State address to improve access to Ohio grown products and to ensure that people in every neighborhood in the state have access to affordable, healthy food. Project Purpose The Ohio Neighborhood Harvest project anticipates a number of immediate and long-term impacts:
Project Plan The Ohio Neighborhood Harvest project will identify three communities that have both the need and the capacity to begin implementing creative food desert solutions resulting in more specialty crop options for consumers. These solutions include the creation of healthy corner store networks to be located in urban communities and a community fresh stop program in rural ones. The healthy corner store networks will work with three existing corner stores per community that do not offer fresh, healthy food to include produce in their stores’ offerings and match demand to the new supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. The community fresh stop program will aggregate and deliver fresh fruit and vegetable packs to community centers (e.g. schools, senior living centers, libraries, places of worship, recreation centers) for easy retrieval. To encourage peer learning and a great sense of community, the stores will be networked together (as will the fresh stops). This offers the advantage of economies of scale in purchasing fresh produce, community education, and outreach. Timeline Throughout the fall of 2010 and the winter of 2011, the Center will be working with identified communities to review initial assessments, develop a plan of action, and establish arrangements with producers. Plans will be implemented from early spring through late fall of 2011 with monitoring and data collection ongoing. Evaluation and communication of results will emerge in the winter of 2012. Contact Jess Gambacurta Project Coordinator, Ohio Neighborhood Harvest Center for Farmland Policy Innovation Dept. of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics 103 Agricultural Administration Bldg. 2120 Fyffe Rd. Columbus, OH 43210 gambacurta.1@osu.edu (614) 247-6479 |
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