Responses poverty and economic inequalities

1.Living in the Bronx for most of my life, I’ve definitely done my grocery shopping at corner stores in my neighborhood with the help of EBT. Some of these corner stores are not Food Deserts, but they’re quite similar in my opinion. I live in Pennsylvania now, which can be considered rural. In Pennsylvania there are many places where they don’t have a corner store in their neighborhoods, they need to drive to their nearest supermarket. Luckily for me, I live in a more urban area of Pennsylvania and I live nearby local stores, such as thrift shops, restaurants, corner stores, and laundry mats. Although I have access to these places much quicker than others, I still do my shopping in bigger stores like Walmart because these stores don’t always have what I need or want. With that being said, I believe although people are not in great need of these local shops, I still believe they can be very useful and beneficial for those neighborhoods, especially if you don’t have a car or need to rush to the store for something small. I don’t know why they haven’t opened more local stores in these rural places, I believe they can be very beneficial and appreciated by the locals. 

I believe having these corner stores, food deserts, are very useful and important for anyone because they can find a fruit or healthy snack (if provided by the store), without worrying about the location being too far. Some of these stores do provide unhealthy choices of foods but that won’t take away the light on the good stuff they provide. I say this because they provide vegetables or condiments, and meat, that is needed to cook a healthy home-cooked meal. 

2. Food Deserts was something I wasn’t aware existed until now. According to the CDC, Food Deserts originated in Scotland in the earlier 1990s and were used to describe poor access to an affordable healthy diet. (CDC, 2009.) We do not see similar grocery stores as such because we have access to numerous amounts of supermarkets and groceries stores, even public transportation in cities. Food Deserts are found where access is scarce and directly affect food insecurity in the rural communities. Several factors have been identified as being responsible for starvation and those include poverty, food and nutrition insecurity, inadequate infrastructure, limited access to healthcare facilities, low levels of education, and inadequate food intake. Obesity has been reported in areas with a lack of adequate resources to eat healthier. To improve an appropriate balance of healthy food everywhere I think there should be access available in all areas at affordable prices. Establish farmer’s markets at public transportation locations, support local farmers, and provide transportation in communities lacking transit options for future generations.  

3. 

In recent years as of a census report in the year of 2004 “following a series of city and state financing efforts, which began with the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative in 2004 (Karpyn et al., 2010). To date, such public efforts have provided more than USD 220 million, which has leveraged more than USD 1 billion in private investment through public-private partnerships, to fund nearly 1 000 retailers serving areas of limited food access in 35 states (PolicyLink, The Food Trust and The Reinvestment Fund, 2015)” This initiave would help provide money to rural communites that may or may not see a lot of nutrional beneficial storefronts in their area. Otherwise, disparity rages around the U.S. in different locations mainly economic to socio-economic situations on which people cannot access the right stores, or food locations. “because the number of low-income communities across the country had increased by more than 5 percent since 2010, the net number of low-income and low-access communities increased 0.36 percent (Rhone et al., 2017).” These numbers provide the blueprint for the economic downtrodden of America when it comes to food deserts. Scott Stinger who is the President of Manhattan Borough had this to say “Large supercentres also evoke considerable worry about the viability of local retail. For example, a report by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer showed that (a new) Walmart on 125th street in Harlem, New York would result in 25 percent of the nearby supermarkets and bodegas going out of business within a year (CBS New York, 2011).” This shows the amount of impact these supercenters to have on rural and inner city communites. Both of these situations come to an important moment in history where food deserts are becoming more prominent in inner city to more economically satiated communites which is not what we have seen before, I feel the only way to substatiante the economic issues in this country is to allocate more money to these communites and shut down any super centers that are in these communites from taking away the nutrional and benefical stores from these people.