Austin Eats: Community Takes Action to End 'Food Apartheid' There

An insulated shed turned food pantry at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Des Moines, Iowa, is open 24 hours a day seven days a week. Community members can drop off donations or pick up food for themselves at any time for no cost. And the pantry has a refrigerator for perishable goods.

Farm stands operating on sliding-scale and pay-what-you-can models are improving access to fresh, healthy food in communities battling poverty and food insecurity. In these models, residents who can afford to pay full price are subsidizing some of the costs for residents who cannot. The rest of the funding comes from a patchwork of support.

MARSH Grocery is a food cooperative with urban farm lots, an online catalog, a delivery program, a commercial kitchen, and a grocery store in which people can pay the amount on the sticker, 20% more, or 20% less. The cooperative is not quite profitable but is growing its customer base in a St. Louis neighborhood that previously lacked access to affordable, healthy food.

Good Grocer, a grocery store in Minneapolis, is a nonprofit run by volunteers who receive an additional discount on groceries for their work. The store’s food outlet offers discounts of up to 70% and provides affordable, healthy foods to combat food insecurity.

Atlanta's city government used public real estate, favorable financing, and a quasi-public development authority to open a privately-operated grocery store in a downtown food desert within nine months, serving more than 150,000 customers with prices matched to Kroger and generating nearly 20% revenue growth.

A group of volunteers in Luxembourg City collects edible food that shops and restaurants would dispose of at the end of the day to keep it from ending up in the garbage. Members of the organization, called Foodsharing Luxembourg, are informed through an app when food is available for pickup. Once they claim an order, they pick up everything the store offers and decide how it gets redistributed.

Dion’s Chicago Dream addresses food insecurity through a community fridge filled with fresh produce and weekly home deliveries of fresh, healthy foods.

More and more public libraries around the United States are creating seed libraries as a way to encourage gardening, combat hunger insecurity, and build community resilience. For example, the Jefferson Public Library in Georgia has seen the number of people using the seed library grow to more than 300 in 2021. It can be a lot of work to maintain the seed libraries, but some librarians see it as a way to engage the community.

The Rooftop Medicine Farm in Oakland, Calif., grows fresh produce to donate to food insecurity programs such as the UCSF Pediatric Clinic’s Food Farmacy, POOR Magazine’s Sliding Scale Cafe, and Moms 4 Housing. The urban farm also acts as an educational resource to help those served by these programs learn about healthy foods and urban agriculture.

The Ajo Center for Sustainable Agriculture has helped the town of Ajo in Arizona distribute affordable and nutrient-dense food to the community after the coronavirus pandemic created a significant financial strain on many families. Additional support has come from the town's participation in the Environmental Protection Agency's program Local Food, Local Places which "provides technical support and expertise to help towns leverage food systems to boost economic development."