Food Desert

Words: 905
Pages: 4

If you're wondering what a food desert is, it's an area, often in inner cities, that have limited or no access to fresh foods or produce. Approximately 20% of our population live in an area considered a food desert, and around 82% of them are from low-income urban areas.
To fix this, we need to change how we think about getting food to those areas. As I mentioned before, transporting food is one the biggest costs associated with getting food to our tables. So, this is my proposal, we bring the farms to the people, in the form of hydroponic and container gardens.
I hereby charge, as your caring Dictator, the Agriculture Department to begin development of sustainable hydroponics and container food production throughout our nation in the form
…show more content…
Other non-local basic needs and food items can also be included, but the primary focus of each store is to distribute what is grown …show more content…
Each garden will be run by a local community board once it is operational. The community board will not only be in charge of what to grow, but how much is grown and each garden is to keep waste as close to zero as possible, but cannot exceed 5% of total production. Local tastes and preferences are to be used when deciding what is grown, because no matter how healthy something is, if people don't like, they're not going to buy it. Kale comes to mind as I talk about this. Super healthy food, terrible taste that nobody actually likes. But a good mix of fruits, vegetables, and herbs should be maintained.
And while food waste can't be reasonably kept at zero, keeping it from a landfill is. With that in mind, each community garden will be responsible for its own composting. Not only for what is created in the garden, but will also take in local residents' food waste as well. Compost will be given away for free to any local resident and used to help sustain the community garden.
The community gardens should be self-sustaining, once the initial set up is complete. No pesticides will be used, instead, the gardens will rely on companion planting and other organic means to keep the plants healthy. Some plants will intentionally let go to seed to secure the seeds for the next planting. Community gardens may also exchange seeds between the facilities