Fresh food initiatives feed, serve communities of color

PHOENIX » Bruce Babcock only has to walk across the street from his house in a residential neighborhood to get to the 10-acre patch of farmland where he labors to help feed his community.

As a community garden coordinator, Babcock works with volunteer growers and food enthusiasts to provide enough freshly grown produce every week for hundreds of low-income Phoenix residents without access to much nutritional food.

The Spaces of Opportunity neighborhood food system is among several initiatives launched in Phoenix in recent years, following other U.S. communities like Oakland, California; Detroit and Chicago where urban gardens aim to improve food options in racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods.

The efforts have grown increasingly important with hunger across America on the rise amid the coronavirus pandemic. For example, more than 5 million people in Arizona filed unemployment claims this year and many worry where their next meal will come from.

The Arizona Department of Economic Security said as of October more than 900,000 people had applied for the Supplemental

Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.

Spaces of Opportunity works with the Roosevelt School District, the Orchard Community Learning Center, Unlimited Potential, the Tiger Foundation and the Desert Botanical Garden to produce and improve access to healthy food through farmers markets and distribution programs.

It is located in south Phoenix, a predominantly Latino and Black community that public health officials call “food deserts” because of limited access to fresh produce and other healthy options.

A map by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows such food deserts are wide

spread throughout Arizona and other parts of the Southwest. A lack of fresh food can cause people to depend on fast food and other items that can make them vulnerable to diet-linked health problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

Babcock began volunteering with the garden in 2015, after he experimented with an aquaponics project in his backyard. He began paying for a quarter-acre plot of his own shortly after that.

Babcock said growers start out paying $5 a month for a quarter-acre and can later expand to a full acre plot. More than 60 gardeners now work there and as many as 200 have worked under Babcock since 2015.

CHEYANNE MUMPHREY — AP PHOTO Spaces of Opportunity garden manager and farmer Bruce Babcock collects watermelons from one of a handful of family farms to be sold at the weekly farmers market. Babcock spends most of his time managing and assisting other farmers at the 10-acre community farm.