rather than treating this illness caused by diet with a pill, the innovative fruit and vegetable prescription program chooses to treat it at its root cause – the diet.

doctors prescribe their patients $1 per day per family member to spend on fruits and vegetables at farmers markets, or rather, farmacies. that’s over $100 per month for a family of four to spend on produce instead of pills.

patients participate in nutrition and exercise classes where they learn how to lead a healthy lifestyle, and are given the means to do so. a prescription for an apple a day keeps the sickness away.

story and video by annabel epstein and aishvarya kavi.

while urban agriculture of the community kind is on the rise, commercial urban farms are under threat. policy makers can make it easier to maintain peri-urban agriculture and encourage community initiative such as the sustainability street community garden outlined in this video.

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“it really looks like a wasteland. its blight and we have zombie sub-divisions just like this all over our valley,” said anna trentadue of valley advocates for responsible development. “and some of them appear to be in some of our most sensitive habitat areas.”

trentadue works for a non profit that deals with growth. with a diminished market making it tough for developers to finish what they started, here the group is ceasing an opportunity to try to reshape rural development. the hope is to avoid building on all the vacant lots which would create sprawl, a development pattern that’s expensive for tax payers who maintain the roads bridges and school bus routes that serve these far flung sub divisions. the group also aims to avoid carving up all the farmland and this valley’s rich wildlife habitat, bordering the southern end of the great yellowstone ecosystem,
teton valley is home to grizzlies, wolves, moose elk and many other species. to reshape growth, this non-profit is teaming up with developers, national experts and local government to see if some unfinished subdivisions can be redesigned to reduce the number of vacant lots, leaving more open space.