Earth's Table, Community Food Share help families in need find fresh produce

In Jakarta’s slums, families can’t buy their children nutritious food. So Mercy Corps started a for-profit chain of food carts selling healthy kids’ meals. A second column highlights the challenges NGOs face when they try to start for-profit businesses.

The lack of access to healthy food has always been a problem for the financially unstable. Food stamps can now be used to buy fresh produce at farmers markets, but greater success could be achieved by getting grocery stores involved.

With child obesity on the rise, public school students have lacked the motivation and access to eat healthy food. Different programs around the country aim to improve student diet in public schools, including Real Eats for Academics and Life in Los Angeles and Cornell’s Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, by emailing nutrition report cards to parents, presenting the healthy food with aesthetic pleasure, and the arrangement of the food for access.

In just the next couple of decades, the World Bank says, farmers across Africa could lose more than half their cropland to drought and heat - the issue is considered so pressing that, a few years ago, Malawi's Department of Meteorological Services added "Climate Change" to its name. A new aid group group now works with farmers in more than 60 villages — with plans to expand — helping them become more resilient to a changing climate.

In an agricultural system designed for big-industrial growers, many farmers struggle to bridge the relationship between their produce and consumers, as well as strengthening local economies. The food hub is a collection of buildings that process and distribute the sale of local food. Eastern Market in Detroit is an example of a food hub that makes local produce accessible to low-income neighborhoods.

America is the world’s main supplier of food aid to impoverished countries; however, food aid has the problems of long-distance transportation, the cost of the transportation and storage, and the navigation through dangerous zones. Different programs around the world are experimenting with alternative forms of aid, including vouchers and cash for work.

Asian cities are over-crowded and many residences are kitchenless, causing families with children to consume unhealthy food from the street vendors. Mercy Corps, a non-profit organization that advocates nutrition, has initiated some for-profit businesses in Jakarta that provide healthy food to underserved neighborhoods. The food carts are marketed at serving poor children a healthy meal.

World Concern, a Seattle-based Christian humanitarian group, provides people around the world with vouchers they can use in select markets, rather than the traditional emergency food aid of rice and other grains. In Dhobley, Somalia, the solution of vouchers quickens the process of receiving the food and contributes to the local economy.

Even with all available help, New Yorkers miss about 100 million meals each year - food stamps are not enough. But some New York food banks allow for the homeless to choose their own food products, making healthy choices easier.

The San Francisco Unified School District is piloting a collaboration with the design firm IDEO to re-imagine the school food system and help combat childhood obesity by better designing the space and the experience of how children eat, as much as the type of food they consume.