COVID-19 has highlighted somethingOpens in a new tab that should have already been obvious to everyone: too many Americans deal with food insecurityOpens in a new tab. A shameful number of our fellow citizens go to bed hungry every night. It’s a big problem that requires big solutions. But not necessarily complicated ones. A public area in AtlantaOpens in a new tab is helping alleviate food scarcity in a cost-effective, environmentally optimal way. The city has the country’s largest free food forest.
In 2016, the Conservation FundOpens in a new tab purchased an old pecan farm in the southeast part of Atlanta, in the Browns Mill neighborhood. The 7.1 acre piece of land was in foreclosure. It was last a working farm in 2000. For a few years it was marked for development. However, when a plan to build townhouses on the lot fell through, the nonprofit organization stepped in with a far more communal concept. It would not only protect the land, it would turn it into an asset for the entire community.
A US Forest Service grantOpens in a new tab allowed the Conservation Fund to turn the farm into the nation’s biggest free food forest. (Which we first learned about at CNNOpens in a new tab.) For the last few year it has serviced an area that previously lacked access to fresh food. From the USDAOpens in a new tab:
“This project was conceived as part of a larger strategy to address food deserts, or low-income areas that lack fresh whole foods due to the absence of grocery stores. According to data from USDA’s Economic Research Service, 22.3% of the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area’s population lives in census tracts that are low income and have low access to a supermarket, supercenter or large grocery store.”
The Weather Channel
While the farm is only ten minutes from Atlanta’s airport, it’s a half-hour bus drive away from the nearest grocery store. Now those citizens are a short walk away from roughly 2,500 pesticide-free, edible trees and medicinal plants. It’s an elegant, simple solution to a big problem. And Atlanta has plansOpens in a new tab to expand on it. The city hopes to make fresh, free food more accessible to most of its citizens in the near future.
Hopefully this provides a model to the rest of America too. No one should ever have to live with food insecurity in the richest nation in the world.
