The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Savannah organizations offer bridge to healthy eating man in an orange construction vest rode down Waters Avenue and 40th Street on his bike, passing a table with nearly-empty baskets of produce. “Free food,” yelled Rachel Bowman, effectively grabbing hi
Thousands of residents lack easy and affordable access to fresh food.
ABut in just a short amount of time, residents had cleared out most of the fresh produce, and volunteers at the YMCA of Coastal Georgia were packing up after a successful morning of giving out fresh produce — apples, peaches, salad kits and potatoes — that residents easily could carry back to their homes.
The YMCA of Coastal Georgia’s Fresh Express pop-ups have become an anticipated event for many people in the Savannah area. On the third Friday of each month at 9:30 a.m., residents line up at the Curtis v. Cooper Primary Health and the Moses Jackson Advancement Center to pick up more than 750 pounds of fresh and free produce.
Thanks to a partnership with America’s Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia, they’re able to shop directly with the nonprofit organization to get community members a variety of items they might need.
“I know of a young lady who consistently wanted lemons, specifically as remedy during the pandemic to make hot lemon water. We always make sure to look for lemons so that she gets some for her and her elderly mother,” said Laura Schmarkey, outreach program director for the YMCA of Coastal Georgia.
“Also, there’s a man who only wants tomatoes and the softest bread, so when we get tomatoes, we also pick out some soft white bread. He likes tomato sandwiches.”
These pop-ups are just one of many ways that community organizers and leaders have worked to alleviate a glaring problem that plagues thousands of Savannah residents: food insecurity.
Lack of options leads to healthy food needs being met by other organizations
Millions of people frequent grocery stores across the country every day.
For many Chatham County residents, it’s as easy as hopping into a car, checking out and loading their items into the trunk that hopefully will feed them for the entire week.
Yet, 35,000 Savannahians live more than a mile from a grocery store and lack easy and affordable access to fresh, nutritious foods, leaving them in a food desert.
Food deserts are geographic areas where residents have few to no convenient options for securing affordable and healthy foods, and are disproportionately found in low-income, high-poverty areas.
A lack of grocery stores nearby and inadequate transportation also hinder access.
According to Healthy Savannah, a nonprofit that is focused on supporting a culture of health, 17.6% of all residents and 21.8% of children in Chatham County are food insecure. When the lens of where these inequities exist is focused, Savannah’s Black neighborhoods, such as West Savannah, disproportionately are affected.
This has led to the adoption of the term “food apartheid” by some community organizations over the common term “food desert,” which implies that the areas naturally are occurring.
Food apartheid relates to a system of segregation that divides those with access to an abundance of nutritious food and those who have been denied that access due to systemic injustice.
Research by Feeding America has shown that an estimated 24% of the Black community experienced food insecurity in 2020. Black children are almost three times more likely to live in a food-insecure household than white children.
The inability to gain easy access to healthy foods means a reduced quality of life and an increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity, as well as developmental and mental health issues among children, highlighting the intersection between food insecurity and health.
In lieu of action from corporate grocery chains, many community organizations have worked to bridge the nutrition gap.
Acting as an extension of the Forsyth Farmer’s Market, Farm Truck 912 has been bringing affordable local seasonal fruits and vegetables to Savannah’s neighborhoods daily since 2015. The truck started as a project to make sure that food that was available in the market also was available in the neighborhoods where demographics rapidly were changing due to gentrification.
“If you look at west of (Forsyth Park), for example, the socioeconomic status there is significantly different from east of the park, or the folks who are coming in as tourists,” said Tasha Wei, the outreach and education coordinator at Forsyth Farmer’s Market.
“That was pretty notable, and we’ve heard from folks in the community that people who had always lived in this area didn’t feel as welcome because the market didn’t look like them; it didn’t reflect the people who were actually living just blocks from where the park was.”
Farm Truck 912 has transformed from an old bread truck into a sort of “bat signal” for those communities that fresh produce is available to purchase.
Since then, Farm Truck 912 steadily has grown, introducing education programs and expanding its initiatives to make healthy, affordable food more accessible even during the pandemic. The truck also accepts and doubles SNAP/EBT benefits.
“What’s making the truck and the organization, as a whole, become a lot more successful and being able to reach especially food insecure communities, is our relationships that we’ve created in the community,” said Mark Bowen, program director and executive director of Farm Truck 912.
The mobile food truck is all about meeting people where they’re at, addressing the issue of transportation that acts as an obstacle for so many, especially seniors, and making those communities a priority.
At Sustainable Fellwood Apartments in West Savannah, the senior members of the community make the weekly arrival of the farm truck an event as they sit around, chat with one another, sing along to classic music and shop for items like okra and tomatoes.
That sense of community was built through years of cultivating relationships with property managers and residents at the apartments.
What once was Farm Truck’s lowest grossing stop — anywhere between $5 to $11 a week — now is its highest grossing stop, with up to $500 a week. This year alone, they’ve reached $60,000 in total sales at all of their stops.
“Things like that tell a story. It tells a story that is very different from the dominant narrative or what people say about when people think about people and their health choices,” Bowen said. “So, what the story tells me is that when poor people, especially, have the supplemental income, they choose to eat healthy.
“When you ask the community, what is it that you want? What is it that you need? And you work with leaders in the community, and you start from a bottom-up approach as opposed to a top-down approach, that’s when you can have the kind of results that we’ve seen.”
Bowen’s team is developing new stops based on the need they see in the community, with plans for a new, updated truck so they’re able to expand to the south side of Savannah as well as Garden City.
From seniors to kids, local group has been filling food needs for decades
America’s Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia has been helping to alleviate food insecurity in Savannah for decades. From its brown bag programs serving seniors to its Kids Cafe and mobile food pantry, the nonprofit addresses food insecurity across generations.
In June alone, the organization provided 86,000 meals through its annual summer feeding program that provides meals to eligible children in Chatham and other surrounding counties free of charge at 43 feeding sites. The main goal of the program is to help kids at risk for hunger eat a well-balanced dinner in the Savannah area.
The program has 15 menu options, with foods like grilled chicken over lettuce with dressing, popcorn chicken and meatballs with marinara sauce for parents to pick up for their kids.
This year’s summer feeding program was made even more significant by the surge in consumer prices due to inflation.
Groceries are 12.2% higher now than they were last summer, according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Inflation hits harder on low-income families, leading to heightened trade-offs, which makes rent and gas purchases — necessary for travel to and from work — a priority before food, leading to budget cuts.
Through its agency distribution marketplace, Second Harvest is able to provide food for all the nonprofits in town that have low-income feeding programs, including the YMCA of Coastal Georgia. As many as 240 different organizations come to Second Harvest to get access to food.