“it’s really healing to be able to tend to a space where food comes from,” said woods, shoveling fistfuls of leafy greens into bins. “you put love in and you get love out.”

woods is 24 years old and is part of a nonprofit urban farming program in omaha, nebraska called big muddy urban farm, which houses burgeoning young farmers rent-free, hands them $10,000 and a few urban plots, and guides them to build a business plan to pay back the loan. then, they get to growing.

“it’s like a simulation of a business,” woods said. the aspiring farmers get to hop in for a year with a financial safety net from years before if profits don’t cover costs.

the program minimizes some of the financial barriers that keep potential farmers from entering the industry, like low profit. many farmers have a working partner to make up a living income every year or a second job, like woods, who raps and produces freelance videos.

for producers, small-scale urban operations also avoid the financial challenges of buying swaths of expensive cropland. these farmers can’t grow enough food to fill huge orders, so they’re dependent on small and individual buyers.

about 50 to 60 customers buy from big muddy’s community supported agriculture. avenues to fresh produce are needed in the omaha-council bluffs metro area, where 9% of people live in a food desert, according to the landscape, a data collection project of the omaha community foundation.

nationally, 4% of people live in a food desert, an area where at least 1 in 3 live at least a mile from a grocery store and 1 in 5 people live below the poverty line.

wide lens a third of the globe lives in urban areas, according to a 2020 report from un habitat, which predicts that share will grow to 39% by 2035. at the same time, global demand for food will increase 70% by 2050, predicts the world bank.

money is a concern for producers, too. the farmers in big muddy’s program, like many young farmers, pick up odd jobs to keep their budget sheets in the black. the usda census reports that 65% of young farmers have a primary occupation other than farming.

with enough land, “i can grow as much food as i want, but if there’s nobody to buy it then i’m not going to make any money,” woods said.

a ‘big safety net’

when sophia cooper was a kid, she would catch fish in her hands in the trash-filled creek by her house in council bluffs, iowa. as a 20-year-old, she talked about that love of kicking around outside all day, and channeled that into her own farming and volunteer work, introducing kids in omaha to gardening and growing food.

“we always think kids aren’t paying attention, but they’re so good outside,” she said. “they’ll dig in the soil, they don’t care if they’re dirty. they have no cares.”

cooper is another resident at big muddy, and a senior at university of nebraska omaha, where she studies secondary education. she said she has options for what to do in the future, like teaching, wool farming, or cannabis farming, but she has to factor-in how to make a living.

the initial costs of starting a farm are daunting. “farmland typically stays within families for years and years, and then it’s expensive,” she said. “if you don’t have access to income already, then you’re just not going to get it. you’re just never going to be able to buy it.”

only 4% of farmland was expected to be sold from 2014 to19, according to a usda report, with 38% of those sales between relatives. 

wide lens lending to smallholder farmers is difficult, according to the world bank, which estimated in 2014 that their lending avenues were reaching less than 10 percent of smallholders.

cooper says free rent and land from big muddy are a big help, but she still works tutoring and waitressing gigs on the side.

woods said he knows people who are interested in starting their own farms, but it’s just too expensive for them to get started. for him, it’s a “big safety net” to not have to pay for rent and land, he said.

he could make the move to farming because “i didn’t put any risk into it,” he said.

representation matters

woods had been interested in sustainable agriculture before he ever considered farming in nebraska, but didn’t see people of color represented in his community until he took an online class run by ron finley, a black urban farmer and fashion designer.

“i was like, ‘oh, black people can grow food,’” woods said.

black farmers in america have historically faced significant social and economic barriers to owning and operating their own land. after emancipation, the u.s. government failed to implement a land settlement plan, leaving many former slaves with no economically viable option for buying land, according to a usda report.

the decades following saw mixed progress for black farmers. land ownership increased, but most black farmers faced “economic stagnation” fueled by racist jim crow laws, according to the report. and while the new deal of the 1930s shored up subsidies for white farmers, black farm ownership decreased from lack of access to those programs.

today, only 5% of american farmers are people of color, according to the usda census, though their numbers grew  7.5% from 2012 to 2017.

young, diverse farmers need to see their peers in the farming community, woods said. until finley’s class, he couldn’t see farming in his future. woods said, “i always thought agriculture was important, i just never could see myself being the person to do it.”

cooper wound her way under the beaming july sun through omaha’s gifford park neighborhood, where big muddy’s plots are scattered like neat, leafy vistas. she skirted behind a house to arrive at one of the farm’s chicken coops.

“it’s very hard to find a space,” she said, surveying the chickens. “being a woman, being a woman of color, like, where do i get accepted in this field?”

back at the house, woods finished packing up his kale for susan safia. she’s the founder of life elixir juice and a young, black woman. they packed the greens into safia’s car and haggled congenially for a moment over the price.

“the things that i can find locally, i really want to support because it helps my business,” she said. “i can say that this produce came locally.”

woods said he sees more and more people interested in where their food comes from. “i think people are just getting tired of living (a) life where they don’t actually get to connect with the earth,” he said.

across the street, the rows of cucumbers, melons, and squash that woods tends ate up the summer sun.

“you know, there’s something good even in just having your own backyard vegetable garden,” he said. sustainable, regenerative farming — “it’s the only right way to farm.” 

—

about this series: the planet forward-fao summer storytelling fellows work was sponsored by the north america office of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), and the fellows were mentored by lisa palmer, gw’s national geographic professor of science communication and author of “hot, hungry planet.”

edralin interviews leaders of the green bronx machine, an impact-driven organization based in the bronx that builds local food systems and empowers students to grow and consume their own healthy foods. crossing paths with the green bronx machine founder at a food sustainability summit in 2017, edralin reconnects with the green bronx machine team four years later to learn how the organization has addressed rising hunger rates and navigated a challenging learning environment, due to the pandemic.

want to learn more? watch her video above, and check out edralin’s story about the green bronx machine.

—

special thanks to the planet forward team and heidi estrada for assisting with the filming and production of this video.

specifically, edralin wanted to focus on food insecurity within the context of covid-19. her piece profiled the green bronx machine, a nonprofit organization that seeks to build healthy, equitable, and resilient communities through inspired education, local food systems, and workforce development.

edralin had pitched the topic for her short documentary because she had crossed paths with the founder of the green bronx machine at a conference in milan, italy, years ago and decided to reach out to see how they were handling the covid-19 pandemic in their classrooms.

the process of completing this film took about two months. we had to reshoot a lot because of minor details we would notice after we’d reviewed our footage, so this process required us to pay close attention to detail — and utilize a lot of patience! however, looking back now, we’re glad we took our time with it.

there’s a lot more to creating a documentary than just picking up a camera; creating a documentary is an art form that has a long process, but the final product is worth the effort. 

it was a windy, bright afternoon in march when i visited the smith elementary in south austin. the first thing that struck me was its size. upwards of twenty beds — some wooden, some cinder-block, some stone-cobbled, surrounded a large shade structure and a picnic table. invasive bermuda grass gained a firm grasp on many beds, and many shrubs were brown from february’s freeze. “i’ve got lots of weeding to do out here, obviously,” studebaker said, scrutinizing her domain. i, on the other hand, was enchanted. mustang grape vines with brown, gnarled stems surrounded the fenced-off garden. bumblebees buzzed lazily between dandelions. pear and apple blossoms yawned open in the warm air. studebaker told me that last fall, pumpkins plants from discarded halloween seeds overran the garden’s compost pile. when i visited, the grapevine was beginning to green, and so were many of the seemingly-dead plants. studebaker would pull back brown stems, and with a “wait wait wait is it green?” or a “okay, look at this!” point out barely-visible green popping from the plant base. i felt like i’d stepped into frances hodgson burnett’s secret garden: “it seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place.” 

***

the smith elementary school garden is one of hundreds of gardens that a nonprofit group called the green corn project has implemented in austin over the 23 years of the nonprofit’s existence. “i always like to say that green corn was urban gardening before it was cool,” said brooke leterelle, green corn’s program coordinator. thinking back on the hundred of beds raised by the organization, she added, “that’s a lot of good-feelin’ stuff –– a lot of food. it’s a lot of happiness.” green corn’s garden clients come from all stages of life — from senior citizens to parents to preschoolers. but what their clients all have in common is that they have difficulty accessing fresh, healthy food. “we’re growing food in a food desert, basically,” added leterelle. 

a food desert is a place where people don’t have access to fresh produce –– whether it be in a low-income city neighborhood surrounded by fast-food stands, or a rural town without stocked grocery stores. this may lead many to suffer from life-threatening diseases such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. studies have shown that food deserts disproportionately affect low-income and minority populations. according to a study at the university of texas at austin, access to reliable transportation plays a big role — in auto-centric austin, families without access cars are especially vulnerable. green corn sought to shift that paradigm. “it’s harder to change larger systems,” said leterelle, but “green corn dives right in there… the repercussions are multiplied with a successful garden, because it makes you feel good, the healthiest food that you eat is the stuff that you grow and you’re not paying money for it.” 

the green corn volunteers directly target their clients, setting up booths at other nonprofits like the central texas food bank and coats for kids. there, green corn volunteers are able to explain their mission and potential clients have the opportunity to fill out a garden request form. then, each spring and fall, volunteers set out to about 50-60 sites per season for “dig-ins,” where they amend existing gardens and create new ones –– turning “grass to garden,” as letterele puts it.

“i think the hardest part about gardening is the starting part,” she said. “i like that we come in and take that off their plate.”

the benefits to their clients have been astounding. some have been with green corn for years, and are now gardening experts, feeding their family and neighbors. letterele has become a close friend of many clients, and through building a community, she is able to lift up those around her. letterele told me of one mother she worked with a few days ago who didn’t know what a seed looked like. a few hours later, she was pressing lettuce seeds into the earth, and telling letterle all about it. “it’s that simple education –– those simple things that just click once you have a little bit of information… it makes people happy to have their hands in the dirt and to watch something grow. you get to care for something.”

perhaps the most compounded benefit of green corn comes with school gardens. “those gardens that reach multiple people –– the wonderful impact of them is just magnified,” said letterele. green corn has helped install over a dozen school gardens in the austin area. studebaker serves a dual role as both a green corn volunteer and an after-school teacher at smith, a role she acquired after green corn became involved with the school. in the after-school program, she teaches students about everything from seasonal plantings to monarch migrations to the ethics of reduce, reuse, and recycle. they collect bugs, cook healthy food, and examine wildlife scat (hopefully not while cooking). “it gives them a chance to learn more about the outdoors and wildlife and the various little beings that we all share the planet with,” said studebaker.

“we’re in a place where we’re wanting to do some growing and expanding,” said studebaker, “getting more involved with helping create local food systems in low income communities.” green corn is looking to pair with the training kitchen, a community-hub in south austin, and work with them to create an even bigger demo-garden in which to train their volunteers. they hope to expand their client-base even further, reaching even more low-income homes and schools. letterele also aims to check in more regularly on their clients. “starting out… is one thing, but confidently gardening is another. we want to be there to make sure that our gardeners are confident… solving problems before they even have them.” 

**

when the green corn project was first starting out in the late ’90s, one of the founders happened upon an article about a creek indian celebration called the green corn festival, held once a year when the first green shoots of corn appear in spring. it is a way of thanking mother nature for last season’s harvest, and of celebrating the sight of new growth in spring. “as gardeners,” said letterele, “we’re supporting life and little ecosystems. so i think it’s a very well-rounded name for us.” but studebaker wasn’t so sure. “we need to at least be growing some corn somewhere!” she exclaimed. “how can we be called this and we never plant corn?” 

that march afternoon, studebaker and i decided to do just that. we got two packets of corn seeds and went to work. the wind had died down, and i could feel the cloudless heat pressing on my neck. i filled my left hand with shriveled yellow corn seeds, and with my right, i created a line-like crevasse in the earth. i pressed each seed six inches apart, then sprinkled them with a nutrient-rich compost mixture. a mocking bird warbled away, watching us as we worked. studebaker mentioned that after years spent in the same garden, animals began to recognize her. they’d keep her company as she reaped and sowed. i felt compelled, suddenly, to give thanks for this afternoon in nature’s fine blush of spring. i looked down at the corn kernel, golden-yellow and ripe with the promise of life, and pressed it into the earth.

the black panther party was founded in oakland, calif., in 1966. they preached a message of radical black power throughout disinvested in, low-income urban areas until the early 1980s. part of their message was policing the police — often remembered as violence — but their commitment to community safety went further.

the panthers’ goal was to address and mitigate the injustices caused by national, endemically racist policies and programs that have systemically undermined black communities since their inception. policies such as the requirement for public housing to be segregated, often segregating previously desegregated neighborhoods when initially built, and processes like redlining.

while the black panther party’s overall goal was to bring about systemic change for black communities, with an end to police brutality and economic subjugation, they provided important resources as a stopgap measure to sustain urban communities until radical change or revolution came. the panthers’ “ten point program,” detailed their mission — both what they wanted, and what they believed. it makes explicit calls for institutional change, and reaffirms the rights of all people to the basic necessities to live a healthy life.

10. we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.” 

— the black panthers ten point program 

the panthers designed a series of survival programs, which targeted a wide range of needs, including food, clothing, jobs, education, health, and more — items highlighted in their mission. four are particularly relevant to the ways we conceptualize food movements today. 

the first two, free breakfast for school children and the free food programs most explicitly provided communities with food security. 

the free breakfast for school children program provided hot, nutritious food, free of charge, to any child who attended the program. by the panthers’ own admission, the purpose of the program was threefold — to feed children, to bring attention to the pervasive issue of childhood hunger, and to provide a positive introduction to the panthers and their message for children, their parents, and the broader public. it is sometimes credited with inspiring the expansion of federally sponsored free breakfast programs, the government’s response to its wild popularity and the way it palatably introduced the panthers’ beliefs and message. 

the free food program addressed hunger beyond just the school day. the panthers accomplished this through ongoing food deliveries to program participants, and periodic widespread food distribution to a wider swath of the community. a third program, the seniors against a fearful environment (safe) program, aimed to meet the variety of needs of elders in the communities, and included food distributions to seniors.

the exploited and oppressed people’s needs are land, bread, housing, education, freedom, clothing, justice, and peace, and the black panther party shall not for a day alienate ourselves from the masses and forget their needs for survival. … when people call in to say they need food we do not spout a lot of superficial rhetoric, but see that they are fed.” 

— a bpp member named marsha in an april 1969 issue of the black panther 

all of these programs relied heavily on community assistance to run. donations of food, funds, space, and time were necessary. while many of these donations were made by community members on their own volition, the panthers also took a more active role in securing donations. this included calling grocery stores to ask for food donations, requesting that program participants occasionally volunteer, or asking churches and community centers to lend them space for organizing and distribution. this was often an effective strategy for the panthers, but if an entity refused to provide the requested assistance, a more aggressive tone was often adopted, including boycotts or protests of offending businesses, according to the book “black against empire: the history and politics of the black panther party,” by joshua bloom and waldo e. martin.

these three survival programs are clearly understood within the framework of food security movements, ensuring that all in the community had access to affordable, healthy food. but when coupled with the panther’s demands for just and equal living conditions, it elevated the food movements the panthers were a part of to a class of food justice activism. 

there is another survival program of the panthers — and the fourth on our list — that is worth mentioning in its relation to food movements. although it was never realized due to a lack of funds, the panthers designed a land banking program, which would have given the community the power to make land use determinations. these decisions could have created a space for a food sovereignty movement to flourish, as community members would have been able to create jobs and access to healthy, affordable produce growth within their community. the panthers imagined a system that would see the “merger of land conservation and ‘human conservation’ — the interconnection between the preservation of our natural and human resources, recognizing that each have little without the other,” according to the book “the black panther party: service to the people programs” by the dr. huey p. newton foundation and edited by david hilliard. this could have been used for urban farms and gardens, where the means of production would have been put back into the hands of the community, but without the means of purchasing land, the land banking program was unfortunately never actualized. 

the panthers imagined a radical equality, never before seen in america, and were willing to take active measures to secure this reality. at the same time, they realized the immediate needs of their communities. 

the creation of the survival programs was a hallmark of their approach, integrating the practical needs of the community with broader radical ideological struggle. the survival programs ingrained mutual aid and community care and were creative in adopting strategies from other movements to best fit their needs. 

racial and environmental injustice has many effects, and the survival programs were designed to address them all. food was just one facet of their programming to right injustices. part of the panthers’ downfall lay in the ways managing this multitude of programs strained resources. predicated on substantial systematic change, the programs were never designed to provide for communities indefinitely. 

across the country, urban farming organizations continue to provide mutual aid, access to healthy and affordable food, and educational opportunities to advance food security in the same spirit as the panthers. 

in oakland, the black panther party’s birthplace, organizations like spiral gardens, city slicker farms, and phat beets produce, all work with the local community to provide fresh produce for free or at affordable rates, or supplies for community members to grow their own. 

similar organizations exist in major cities across the country, such as the urban growers collective in chicago, and revision urban farm in boston. they also exist in smaller cities, suburban, and rural areas, like soul fire farm in petersburg, new york; the natwani coalition in northern arizona; and liberation farms in androscoggin county in maine.

in today’s movements, taking a narrow focus has led to longer-term success for organizations.  this is unlike the panthers multifaceted approach, which when combined with pressure, white supremacist systems, and the forces that uphold them caused strain on their resources. with this narrower approach, in order to effectively challenge the systems that produce and maintain inequality, an intersectional, multi movement coalition will be necessary. to do this, many food sovereignty and justice groups partner with groups addressing other symptoms of oppression to challenge the larger system. 

in this struggle, by remembering the panthers’ approach — by utilizing mutual aid networks and uplifting urban communities from within — organizations can address the current realities or low-income communities while striving as a collective for systemic change.

time since the beginning of this global pandemic can be measured by the size of the zucchini plant outside audrey’s bedroom window. on nearly day one of quarantine, she knelt beside a garden bed and planted a seed, not much bigger than the size of a pencil eraser, into the ground. now, four months later, that seed has blossomed into a plant that is 3 feet wide, blooming with yellow flowers and covered with vividly green, dinner plate sized leaves. the plant has stretched over the patch of dirt and its fruit is starting to make itself known.

like us, covid-19 may have forced you into a new relationship with food. newfound time in quarantine may have brought you closer to your food as you also planted seeds and watched them sprout, kneaded your hands into bread dough, or experimented with new recipes.

however, the same pandemic may have caused you to feel increasingly distanced from food sources, as changing incomes led to a scramble to figure out how to feed your family or health conditions caused anxieties to rise about how to secure food supplies in safe ways. this pandemic may have brought you closer to your food, further from your food, or a mix of both. but regardless, food has been part of your covid-19 experience.

pandemic or not, the food that ends up on your plate has always traveled a complicated, exploitative, and convoluted path to get there. in fact, when one begins to peel back the layers on our food system, one might even realize that it was built to keep some of us very full while the rest starve.

you might begin to think about the inhumane conditions, minimal pay, and backbreaking labor migrant workers endure to harvest our food. you may think of the unequal distribution of grocery stores allowing communities with abundant resources easy access to healthy foods, while lower-income communities have very few options. you may think of the thousands of miles some of our produce travels, year-round, to make it to your store, and the high amount of carbon fuel it takes to make it there.

you may think about the struggle for native communities to have sovereignty over and access to the plants that serve as binding ropes to culture, as colonial forces have built a “single species” diet and wiped out many native species. you may think about how, after generations of black bodies working the land and inventing and passing down traditions of sustainable farming, now only 0.5% of american farmland is owned by black people, and relationships to the land has been severed.

you may think of a multitude of other reasons.

when you sprinkle in a virus as widespread and dangerous as covid-19 to a food system that is already exploitative, a perfect recipe of chaos is created that disproportionately affects the food security of people of color.

in the united states, the initial stages of the pandemic were marked by the closures of offices, restaurants, and schools. grocery store workers and farm workers were recognized as essential workers to continue the movement of food supply chains. as we were able to keep eating, these workers lacked resources and options to protect themselves, leading to higher infection rates and deadly ramifications as seen in the farmworker community of immokalee, florida. these same food service and agricultural industries largely employ people of color, adding a racial component to this unequal virus exposure.

it was quickly realized that the correlation may further show that food service industry workers may have a harder time maintaining food security in the pandemic. if you can’t do your job due to illness or unexpected lay-off, you won’t be able to afford food to feed your own family. in addition, job loss has not been equal across industries. for example, employment in technology or the oil and gas sectors can much more easily transition to virtual employment, while food industry and hospitality workers are left without work and without salaries. this leaves an entire class of people without income. these industries also provide less ability to save for emergencies such as this, creating even greater food insecurity during this crisis.

in washington, d.c., we have seen local government, nonprofits, restaurants, and community members get creative about responses to food insecurity that has been exacerbated by the virus. for example, the local government has worked as a bridge to connect restaurants’ food supply with nonprofits, so food can be redistributed. restaurants have changed their modes of production, to keep people employed but making products more needed in this time, like hand sanitizer, or selling raw materials in a csa model to provide families with locally sourced groceries.

local nonprofits in the district, like d.c. central kitchen, have taken the lead in providing breakfast and lunch daily to school children and their families. snap benefits have expanded to some delivery models so that high risk individuals do not have to leave their homes to purchase food. and mutual aid groups have allowed neighbors to share food with each other. while these are needed immediate reactions to big problems within our food system, these solutions act much like spraying a squirt gun on a burning building, as they do nothing to address the deep-seated inequalities within our food system.

food banks, nonprofits, and mutual aid systems are not intended to be permanent solutions. they are meant to support people as they work to gain independent access to food. the fact that communities heavily relied on them even before the pandemic points to a fundamentally broken food system wherein people are not able to afford the most basic things necessary for survival. 

as urban gardeners managing a community garden in d.c., it is clear that long-term solutions only come when communities and individuals begin to pull closer and gain autonomy over their sources of food. when communities or individuals invest in growing their own food, they are able to access and eat healthy, cost-efficient, ethical, and sustainable produce. further, a sense of community is fostered, where neighbors begin to take care of neighbors, new skills are learned, cultural crops can reemerge, and a sense of economic independence can even appear.

likewise, policy change is a crucial part of supporting a sustainable and equitable food system. reimagining policies — that could include subsidies for small farmers, similar to those large farming corporations enjoy, or reclaiming unused space for community agriculture — are good places to start. these policies, combined with community members willing to invest time into creating small local spaces for agriculture, can begin to create new relationships with our food.

perhaps, now, with a global pandemic exposing many of the gaps in our food system, people might have the time to learn, imagine, and create community-based food systems that truly serve all people.

soon, that zucchini growing outside the bedroom window will be harvested. while the vegetable fills us up, we will recognize that in the same time it took to grow that produce from seed, covid-19 has caused compounding problems and exposed some of the glaring inequalities of our food system. we will acknowledge that it is the result of a system that is built to exploit and disproportionally causes harm on communities of color. we will eat and we will be reminded to draw closer to our food and to dig into the messy, intersectional work of pursuing a healthier food system so that we can grow a more beautiful, sustainable world for all people.

—

about the authors: audrey friedline and liz szafranski are managers of the grow community garden and students at george washington university. audrey is a rising senior studying international affairs and sustainability and liz is a rising sophomore studying biology and geography. they both love plants and care about food justice issues. 

however, the adirondack north country association came up with a creative way to combat food insecurity within the north country. how, you ask? cycling! bike the barns is an event organized by the anca. this event involves the selection of a scenic bike route within the adirondack state park of new york. cyclists pay a fee to register for this ride, and the income made from registrations is used to provide locally grown food shares to impoverished families.  these rides vary in length from 10 to 70 miles. along the ride there are stops to multiple diverse small scale local farms, in which you are given a farm tour and the opportunity to converse with the farm owner and other riders. having the opportunity to see a window into these people’s lives and to observe the power of the local food movement was incredible. 

the bike the barns event is an extremely creative way to provide relief to individuals who experience food deserts and food insecurity, but how do we make progress on this issue on a larger scale? below are some more ideas on how to combat food insecurity on both a local and broader level. 
 

1. volunteer.

2. start a food drive.

3. support local or grassroots food movements.

4. grow a garden to contribute toward a food shelf. (check out the “plant a row for the hungry” movement.)

5. provide food education programs.

6. contact state and local governments and ask about their food policies. 

7. if possible, cut down on meat consumption.

8. support no waste policies for restaurants and grocery stores.

for the navajo nation, 13 stores is a devastatingly inadequate number. if the reservation was located in new england, it would almost entirely cover the states of massachusetts, new hampshire, and vermont. this land, where the navajo people were forcibly resettled by the u.s. government in 1868, covers over 27,000 square miles stretching from northeastern arizona into utah and new mexico and is home to more than 300,000 people.

with so few full-service grocery stores, the reservation is a food desert on a massive scale. the average resident has to drive three hours just to buy food at the grocery store, and extreme poverty on the reservation limits access to many foods like fresh produce. most caloric needs are met by shopping for chips and soda at trading posts and picking up treats like piccadilly at roadside stands and trading posts.

on the national level, a quarter of native americans are experiencing food insecurity. native americans are over two times more likely than white americans to have diabetes. health struggles among the navajo people are no different, as half of navajo children are unhealthily overweight. one in five navajo adults have diabetes — the third highest rate in the world.

many of the najavo people’s economic and health struggles can be directly traced to the neglectful and violent way the u.s. government has treated the tribe for centuries. for example, the navajo taco dish has a dark history, as it was created out of necessity when the bureau of indian affairs was rationing the tribe’s access to food staples like flour and salt.

but far from passively accepting this assault on their health and their lives, the navajo people are taking actions to increase their access to nutritious food. the navajo nation council eliminated produce taxes and passed the united states’ first tax applying to both sugary beverages and low-nutrition snacks in 2015.

even more revolutionary is that reservation residents can get prescriptions for fresh produce from their doctors. with the fruits and vegetables prescription program (fvrx), doctors give patients vouchers that they can use at the store and receive a month’s worth of free produce for their families. the program is paid for by grants from the centers for disease control and prevention and other organizations.

as of 2018, nearly 1,700 navajo people had benefited from the fvrx program, and a third of overweight children in the program reached a healthy weight after six months. it was adopted by 15 health clinics, and produce prescriptions can be filled at 26 grocery stores and trading posts.

programs like fvrx can help fill the gaps in populations like the navajo that suffer from widespread and extreme poverty. but it’s reaching less than 1% of residents after three years in operation, and it’s not a sustainable solution for food insecurity across the whole reservation.

resource scarcity on the navajo nation is a systemic problem that requires systemic solutions. residents who live too far from a full-service grocery store to regularly shop there won’t benefit much from reduced taxes and free produce. and with at least 10% of people on the reservation living without electricity and/or access to safe water, struggles with storing and cleaning produce may prevent fvrx from reaching its full potential.

in a different climate, growing one’s own produce might be a solution for many households, but the reservation’s location in the desert makes that more difficult. difficult, but not impossible, as programs like the adopt-a-sonoran-desert crop program allow arizonans to grow and eat their own sustainable, desert-resistant crops and could potentially be adapted to the navajo​​​​​​​ nation.

on the systemic level, the answer seems glaringly obvious: the reservation needs more than 13 grocery stores. but it’s unlikely that new grocery stores or healthy restaurants will start popping up in the rural corners of the reservation, especially since many businesses offering more pricey wares like fresh produce are unlikely to invest in a population with a median household income of around $27,400.

for now, programs like fvrx will attempt to fill the gaps left by american colonialism and systemic violence against the navajo people. but more structural changes are required to ensure that no one must drive three hours just to buy vegetables for dinner.