'Power to communities': Chicago considers city-owned grocery store to address 'food deserts' after giants like Walmart and Whole Foods shutter stores
stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to 
finance.yahoo.com
The mayor’s office says it would be the first major U.S. city to enact such a plan.
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Do you think 6500 is a low number? It's not like each food desert affects only one person each. More likely than not, each is affecting more than a thousand people. Especially in a population dense area like Chicago. We are talking millions of people living in food deserts.
Also, after reading a bunch of your comments, I'm not sure you are fully aware of what a food desert is. But hey, that's Capitalism.
Just going off the name, that's someone who didn't leave reddit voluntarily.
The more time that goes by on Lemmy, it seems like the higher percentage of people who aren't here by choice, they're here because reddit IP banned them.
Anyone who left Reddit did it voluntarily, my dude.
That person is an ass in 90% of the comments I see them post... And I see them quite a bit unfortunately.
(To clarify: "that person" mentioned above is shittyredditwasbetter)
Wait you're here by choice?
Yeah, lots of us came here voluntarily....
But it seems like not a lot stayed, kind of feels like we just built the infrastructure and abandoned it to a bunch of trolls. Not sure how much longer I'll stick around to be honest.
I am, I'll grant you I started looking for alternatives because Reddit went to shit, but I haven't looked back since I created a KBin account and have been quite happy with the change.
I've seen three different definitions in the past 5 minutes. Two definitions were based on physical proximity to grocery stores. Another focused primarily on the poverty rates in census tracts, regardless of the presence of absence of supermarkets. I think the "6500" number comes from that third definition. Of the 84,414 census tracts in the US, fewer than 6500 (about 7.7%) are classified as "food deserts".
I would have to say that yes, 6500 of 84414 tracts is a fairly low number.
I would also have to say that if they are using the third definition in these Chicago neighborhoods, they qualified as "food deserts" before Walmart (et al) decided to leave.
7.7%? That's HUGE for 21st century! What is it? Africa? Russia?
7.7% of census tracts, not of people. The overwhelming majority of those tracts have insufficient population to support a nearby supermarket. That doesn't mean they don't have access to food.
Most of these tracts are farming communities. They provide all the food stocked in these urban and suburban supermarkets. They are literally surrounded by food, in their fields, pastures, gardens, pantries, etc. But because the definition of "food deserts" focuses on supermarkets and doesn't include the 10 tons of grain in their bin, they are considered to be living in a "food desert".
I think you misunderstand how rural food deserts work. They're certainly less-bad than an urban food desert but they're still a problem to solve. That 10 tons of food in your grain bin isn't necessarily food you can eat. Nobody chooses to eat feed corn unless they don't have other options. And while a farmer certainly has the tools and knowledge to grow their own food crops its a significant time investment to do so, something that a farmer doesn't have after 12+ hour days taking care of the crops and animals that make them a meager living.
The issue is partially mitigated through roadside stands and farmer's markets but its still a significant challenge to the people who live in these communities, and some of the side effects of living in a food desert are present both in a rural food desert and an urban one, despite extremely different circumstances leading to them.
About 5% of the population. Whereas the rest enjoy the best supermarkets on the planet. This should be about fixing the edge cases, not trying to pretend we don't have amazing choice and wealth in food for the vast majority.
So you're talking about "edge cases" and also claiming it effects over 17 million Americans. That's a lot of human suffering.
We should strive to improve. But the modern food system which is overwhelmingly capitalist has produced the most food secure system to the most people ever. Calling it a failure over 5%, especially without context and scope is foolish.
The modern food system is not capitalist. We extensively subsidize farming, so that farmers will produce excesses despite a lack of corresponding market demand. This socially-funded excessive production is the foundation of our food security.
Capitalism does not produce such a system. Capitalism sees production in excess of actual demand as wasteful, and seeks to eliminate it.
We subsidize farmers, so we don't have a famine. Has nothing to do with it being socially funded.
Why can't capitalism prevent a famine?
The only way capitalism can prevent a famine is if the individual can be expected to adequately plan and prepare for a food shortage. History says we won't do that.
Please clarify your point. You seem to be saying "the subsidies we provide have nothing to do with subsidization".
Because it doesn't...we subsidize farmers, so we don't have a famine...we don't subsidize farmers because of socialism or capitalism. It's literally done as a fail safe. It's the same reason we have metric tons of cheese on hand as well.
The idea that the government should provide such a failsafe against famine is an act of socialism. A purely capitalist approach to a famine is that the individual should be responsible for preparing their own means of surviving it, or perish in an act of economic Darwinism.
And praising the capitalist part "especially without context" is also foolishly.
The context being that a historically isolated and hard to invade country with extremely beneficial geological features happened to be capitalist, then went on a 50 year military and social propaganda campaign to stamp out any possible competition in other countries either by directly sending its military in, or funding local forces willing to cooperate.
In no way am I saying communism or socialism is some kind of perfect system, and I not going to debate their historic representations.
But you're ignoring a looooot of history in your comments.
My guy, shut the fuck up. Who is paying you to spout this nonsense? Because if no one is, you are getting played.
No.
"fuck those potentially 15 million people, I eat perfectly fine so stop pretending there's a problem"
This is what you sound like to those 15 million people.
Again, I'm not sure what kind of Boogeyman you've imagined, but I'm not sure where I've said we shouldn't strive to improve food scarcity. Y'all are wild looking for some people to fight with.
Wait you're not here looking for someone to fight? Well F-U
I just said US food supply chain is a poor example 🤷♂️
Oh, so like 20,000,000 people don't fucking matter and don't deserve the ability to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables?
GTFOH.
Can you point out where I said that's okay? Or that we shouldn't strive to improve?
Then quit down playing the number of people in food deserts.
I'm not 🤷♂️
Yeah but the rest of the world sees supermarkets as a negative.