Seeding Food Deserts

Just a few blocks away from the Huron Hospital in East Cleveland, there is an increasingly familiar site in many urban neighborhoods across greater Cleveland. The shell of a former Tops grocery store resides at the end of a large expanse of empty parking lot. While gathering some footage at the site with Tom Kondilas at LESS Productions, one of the neighbors happened to stroll by.

“They going to be putting a grocery store back in here any time soon?” he asked.

“Probably not any time soon, ” I responded.

Meanwhile, just a few blocks from the old Tops grocery store, a mix of doctors, neighbors, and children worked with Maurice Small and City Fresh to convert a piece of turf lawn at Huron Hospital into a community garden. (This video is an urban response to the no mow lawn installed just last month at the front lawn of the Jones Farm house in Oberlin and shows the grassroots invention that is leading to the transformation of our food system).

Volunteers and hospital staff spent a couple of hours laying down cardboard, shredding newspaper, mixing in food waste, and bringing in a thin layer of topsoil. A variety of vegetables were planted in the strawbale-lined growing beds that evening. The Huron Hospital food services even baked a cake that mimicked the garden with layers of graham crackers, shredded coconut, cherry jelly, and crushed Oreo cookies representing the materials layered into the garden.

The garden project ties into a larger sustainability initiative for the hospital which will also be hosting a Fresh Stop food center through City Fresh to expand food access for staff, patients, and neighboring East Cleveland residents. Even Gus Kious, the President of Huron Hospital, recently constructed a 2,800 strawbale house in Cleveland Heights.

As an institution focused on health care, the garden project and Fresh Stop begins to explore the edge effect between the hospital walls and the larger neighborhood and community around it. This broadens the notion of health beyond our bodies and into the communities in which we live. If fresh and locally grown foods become more widely available on the vacant lands, rooftops, and blacktop lots that are so abundant in the city, then it will be easier for residents to take control of their own health. This food also helps to grow healthier communities as elders pass along gardening knowledge to youth and vacant lots motivate greater physical activity.

Freak weather events, rising fuel prices, and the increasing pressure to grow crops for bio-fuels have challenged the reliability and security of our current food system. For many urban residents, the increasing time and expense alone of finding a good healthy meal raises questions about the long-term health and even the productivity of our work force.

According to a recent assessment conducted by the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, the loss of multiple full-service grocers throughout Cuyahoga County has made it more difficult for residents to access the foods that they need to support a healthy family. Using a methodology to conduct a similar study in Chicago, the planning commission looked at a “food balance” ratio. This ratio shows the relative distance of fast food outlets compared to full-service grocery stores (greater than 25,000 square feet).

An ideal food balance would 1:1, meaning that residents would have equal access to fast food and a greater mix of healthier foods for a larger grocer. Within the city of Cleveland, this ratio is 1:4.5, meaning that residents have to travel 4.5 times further distance to reach a grocery store. Given that an average of 25% of the residents in Cleveland do not even own a vehicle, it is getting more and more difficult to find healthy food choices in our neighborhoods.

Food access is the problem. How can the problem become the solution? Neighborhoods across the metropolitan area are coming up with a variety of innovative solutions to this problem that address some of the broader issues of community vitality, greenspace, health, economic development, and even exercise.

Norm Krumholz, Urban Studies Professor at Cleveland State University noted that ““in professional journals, like the Journal of the American Planning Association, you’re beginning to see more articles talking about food, the need to provide people who are separated from fresh food with fresh food, and the resolution to the question what to do with all of the vacant land.”

Let’s just do a brief thought exercise. Given that about $3.2 billion is spent each year in Cleveland on food, what if 1% of the food consumed in the city was grown in the city? That would generate $32 million worth of opportunity for urban farmers. According to Ohio State University Extension, the 50 acres of land devoted to community gardens in Cleveland generate an estimated $1.2 to 1.8 million worth of food. Capturing 1% of the food spending in the city is not that out of reach.

What would Cleveland look like in 10 years if $32 million was grown within the city? How would it change the quality of life? Would it be a more desirable place to live? Would our children be healthier? Would crime go down? What would this mean for communities like East Cleveland which contain large amounts of vacant properties and a growing need for access to good food?

How would this local spending change the quality of life in our city as vacant lots, corner stores, grocers, Fresh Stops, institutions, and farmers markets all became an enlarged aspect of our health care system? Perhaps we can follow the leadership of institutions like Huron Hospital and look at local food access challenges and see the opportunities that wait just beneath our feet.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Brad Masi bradmasiATearthlink.net
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