General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I just spent $6.94 on a pound and a half of Organic Tomatoes. Honestly it bugged me, then I saw this [View all]BronxBoy
(2,286 posts)And in my experience, money is only one of the problems with getting fresh food to folks, affordable or not.
One thing that we have seen in the local food movement is that even if you get the cost of production down to where the food is affordable, other problems exist. In a lot of communities people don't have the means to cook or have very limited means. (Grills etc). I know that seems unfathomable in our country but it's a fact of life for many citizens.
Our farmers market coordinates closely with food ministries and pantries during our seasons. On several occasions, the farmers offered up unsold veggies at the end of the day and the pantry refused them. The reason had nothing to do with potential liability and everything to do with the fact that many of the clients lived in SROs or motel rooms and did not have the proper refrigeration or cooking facilities to use these items.
And in cases where they did, guess what? A large portion of the clientele had absolutely no idea how to prepare fresh veggies from scratch. These is why many of the EBT efforts at farmers markets were often coupled with cooking and preparation demos.
So the problems go way beyond how the food is produced. But solutions are increasingly being fashioned by organic and local food proponents