A new study conducted by the federal department of agriculture, or the USDA, has identified Arkansas as the most food insecure state in the country. With almost 20% of the state lacking resources to feed their household, Arkansas has a significantly higher rate of hunger than the national average of 12%.
There is a food desert in every county in Arkansas. What’s a food desert? According to the USDA, it’s a term used to describe a region with a large number of households facing low incomes, inadequate access to transportation and a limited number of food retailers providing fresh, affordable produce. In a rural state like Arkansas, these types of areas are common to find. And while residents may be growing food in these farming-driven communities, CEO of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance’s Sylvia Blain said the food isn’t for the farmers.
"So, we're an agricultural state," Blain said. "We export a lot of our food, but we're not necessarily growing fresh fruits and vegetables for our communities. So that's one of the reasons you have this level of food insecurity and food deserts in an agricultural state. So that's two different things, the agricultural products and then having fresh fruits and vegetables for your community. But across the board, you know, Arkansas has a high poverty rate, and so along with that comes a lack of transportation, a lack of access to a lot of the resources that we might need, and the inability to gain those resources for yourself. So you know, the root causes are varied."
Blain said this isn’t a new issue, but it’s steadily becoming worse despite existing community efforts to provide fresh food to locals.
"Our agricultural community is doing an amazing job of growing food for economic development in rural Arkansas, but if we can support our small and medium sized farmers of what are considered non conventional crops... Believe it or not, a non conventional crop would be fresh fruits and vegetables," Blain said. "Those are not considered conventional. And maybe even restructure the way that farmers are able to access funds and land in order to grow those crops. Because while I don't believe it's intentional, they are disincentivized from growing fresh fruits and vegetables because they're not considered a commodity crop, so they're not funded at the level. So say it would be harder to get a farm if you're growing, you know, an apple orchard, it'd be harder to get a farm load than if you were growing a commodity crop."
With those concepts in mind, the Arkansas Minority Health Commission recently awarded $10,000 to four different organizations as part of an inaugural Food Desert Elimination Grant. These groups, mainly located around central Arkansas, are locally-driven initiatives directly providing food to those who need it. The commission’s director, Kenya Eddings, said the state’s overarching goal is to provide equal access to health for all residents, regardless of background.
"Also to promote health and prevent diseases that are prevalent in the minority population," Eddings said. "And so with that, our primary focus is on reducing cardiovascular disease, and we do that through a number of ways. Probably our most popular program is our Mobile Health Unit program, which consists of a mobile health unit that has two full size exam rooms, and we travel the entire state providing screenings, education, outreach and referrals where needed."
Eddings said community health and access to fresh food go hand in hand, which is why they created the food desert elimination grant.
"We announced its availability to the public last fall, and so the application period was open for roughly six weeks, and then at the conclusion of the six weeks, we received a total of 10 applications," Eddings said. "And then those applications were reviewed and independently scored by an external group of three reviewers. And so the top four scores were the ones selected to receive the grant."
Timothy Wallace, a cooperative extension agent of Jefferson County and the division of agriculture, works with the University of Arkansas in Pine Bluff and their Master Gardener program. One of several master gardener programs throughout the state, Wallace’s group is one of the four recipients of the first ‘food desert elimination grant.’ Wallace said the Master Gardeners have been at this kind of work for a while.
"You know, depending on the size of the community or the size of the county, you range from maybe five or six master gardeners to, I know the Pulaski County area has over 700 master gardeners," Wallace said. "So we're able to bring kids from our local school out and kind of have a 'Where does your food come from?' kind of programming with them. We have fertilizer workshops, so they hold a variety of fertilizing and planning and producing workshops. One of the things we're really proud of here in Jefferson County, in addition to the food elimination grant, every year around this time, which is the fall, going into the fall season, we plant an abundance of greens. Turnip greens, mustard greens, all types of greens, kale, lettuces, broccoli. And then right before Thanksgiving, we have a green field day. And so we have the community come out and we teach them all about greens, we give them recipes, so forth and so on, and they're able to actually harvest those greens and take them home and actually be able to prepare them for their Thanksgiving meals."
Wallace said that with the funds from the grant, they’ll be able to expand even further.
"The $10,000 will be used and funneled directly through our Master Gardeners here in Jefferson County," Wallace said. "And so we're really lucky here, and we have about a two acre garden spot. And so what we're doing is we're actually planting, harvesting and producing vegetables and fruit that we're able to collect and clean and set up a produce stand where our local community members will be able to come and actually access that fresh produce and vegetables one hundred percent for free. And how the division works with it is our master gardeners take care of 100% of that. When I mean 100% of that is they come cultivate the land. They prepare it for the actual growth process. They use the tractors and the tillers and the hoe and the shovel. And they actually take that 100% from seed, caring for the seeds, you know, pulling weeds, fertilizing, and then they actually harvest it as well. So they plant it, they harvest it, and then they go through the washing process of cleaning it and actually packaging it and preparing it for the general public to come and actually be able to take that home. So it's a 100% farm to table operation. So it goes from in the ground and then in less than 24 to 48 hours, it is on somebody's table ready to eat."
There is still a lot of work to be done to fix Arkansas’ food security problem. But in the meantime, Blain said the food desert elimination grant is a good start.
"Governor Sanders picked up the mantle and is, you know, putting funding in place and putting these grants out around the state for some of these pilot projects," Blain said. "And so I'm excited to see what some of these projects do with that funding. And I think it's important for for people to remember that programs like this are pilots. It is to put money behind programs to see what works, and some some things work better than others. But I'm always interested to love to see money being put behind these programs that are looking for answers, and we can find out what works, what doesn't work, and if it didn't work, could it work if we changed, you know the way we're doing it, so I'm very excited to watch these programs move forward."
The other three grant recipients are the Innovative Community Concepts organization in Pulaski County, the McElroy House in Yell County and the city of Pine Bluff. Their projects also involve locally-led initiatives, like pop-up grocery stores and a seed-swap program. The city of Pine Bluff received additional funding to conduct a study to further identify factors influencing food deserts in the area.
