Food and Fresh Water Insecurity (USA)

A few days ago I shared a few articles on food deserts here in the US. I learned a better word may be food apartheid. Deserts are natural and often still full of life. Where and how food gets distributed are choices made by people based on economics, ideology and all too human biases. There are entire communities that have little access to safe, affordable and healthy food. They do have plenty of access to cheap, sugary, salty, fatty glop that leads to poor health outcomes such as obesity, heart disease and strokes. Oh, and there is cheap alcohol aplenty! When it's only about the money, the poor lose out. What's the history here? How can we change course to a more food-secure future? 

Food deserts have been with us for awhile. They started to take shape as far back as the 1930's as cities and towns organized along racial lines. Poor African Americans living in one area and more wealthy whites living in another. Viewed through a capitalist lens; simple business math- more poor the area, the less revenue (robberies as well?). This could cause grocery chains to consider opening elsewhere where there is more prosperity / money. Another element is plain old racism. Why are these areas poor in the first place? Redlining and yellowlining made investing and growth in these areas all but impossible. Fast forward a few decades and good manufacturing jobs started to flee the inner cities leaving large areas of black and brown blight, decay and drug epidemics. Dollar stores, liquor stores and junk food outlets moved in deepening poor health outcomes. Few, if any of these, were owned by people who actually lived there. They vacuumed out what little money was left and returned nothing to these communities but bad health. There are also water problems. 

We know of Flint, Michigan feeding residents poisonous water for years. But Flint is far from alone. Let's not forget New Hampshire, New Jersey and Alabama.  Crumbling infrastructure, contamination and inadequate water treatment plague cities and towns all across the USA. It's a form of slow violence against poor people and regions that kills slowly and is especially hard on children. Water poverty is a huge problem here in the US because it kills over time and mostly impacts the voiceless poor. How can this be in the "richest country" in the world? We stopped investing in our communities long ago while creating new poisons (lawn fertilizers, household and industrial chemicals, fracking cocktails to name a few). Almost no one gave a thought to where all these will go in time, hint-hint our drinking water! Slowly, the danger is starting to be addressed.      

President Biden's Build Back Better Act at least makes a start. Time will tell how much help actually reaches those that need it and how much others simply grow their wallets. The real change that's needed is addressing the underlying injustices and not taking no for an answer. There is no justifiable reason for food deserts and fresh water insecurity here in the USA. If you agree, lean more about local politics. Find those in your area trying to make good, healthy food and safe, fresh water available to all. Like so many of the problems we talk about here, you can find the answer in the mirror. Federal, state and local governments are not going to solve the problem out of the goodness of their hearts. If we make enough noise, they will respond. Let's spend less money for war and more for safe water and infrastructure. Government cannot do it alone. We need to change attitudes towards the less fortunate among us.