The Gotham Gazette, a New York news and policy site, teamed up with The Huffington Post for a piece on fresh food availability in New York City.

The article, complete with interactive map, shows a huge disparity between food availability in Manhattan and the outer boroughs.

According to the map, some Manhattan neighborhoods have over 20,000 square feet of supermarket space per 10,000 residents. In a neighborhood like that, all residents could fit into their local supermarkets with two feet of wiggle room. Some neighborhoods have as much as 30,000 square feet per 10,000 residents.

Compare this to neighborhoods in the outer boroughs; the map tells us that Brooklyn’s tenth district has around a third as many square feet per residents as Manhattan’s 10th. That’s around 7000 square feet of supermarket space for 10,000 residents.

But not all of Manhattan has satisfactory fresh food availability;

“I live in the West Harlem area, and it is incredibly difficult to find quality fruits and vegetables,” writes Erin Barker. “It’s a big problem. Even when stores have this stuff, it’s usually not in good shape — bruised or not usable. I think it is more difficult in my neighborhood than it is in wealthier areas of Manhattan that have more upscale grocery stores.”

Check out the article for more, it really puts food access in the NY metro area in perspective.

The city is working on the problem, Gov. Paterson’s office sent out this press release in May.

On the other side of the country, in Oakland, an effort is being made to bring fresh foods to low income neighborhoods, as covered by The San Fransisco Chronicle.

Opened this past June, Mandela Foods Cooperative is located near an affordable housing complex called the Mandela Gateway.

Drawing about 300 customers a day, the new co-op only stocks healthful things, barring products including common ingredients like high fructose corn syrup from their shelves.
They have an interesting business model:

It’s a worker-owned cooperative. Eight local residents are worker-owners who make all the store’s business decisions and perform all its functions - including cashiering, stocking shelves, cleaning, taking inventory and ordering.

One third of the profits will be returned to the community in the form of a credit union next door.

PolicyLink President Judith Bell had a letter published this weekend in the New York Times. Check it out:

To the Editor:

Re “Fresher Food, With Some Help” (Business Day, June 17):

Gov. David A. Paterson’s effort to bring fresh-food stores to low-income communities is a boon for the health and economies of neighborhoods that need boosts in both.

By trying to replicate the astounding success of the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative — which has already provided nearly 400,000 Pennsylvanians with better access to healthy food — New York is at the leading edge of a national wave to bring healthy food and jobs to communities that were abandoned decades ago by the well-stocked supermarkets most Americans take for granted.

That is why my organization is working in partnership with the leaders of these state efforts — the Food Trust and the Reinvestment Fund — to bring this smart, innovative idea to a national scale. Using the leadership and leverage of the federal government, we can make a real impact on the health and welfare of millions of residents of low-income communities and communities of color.

Judith Bell
Oakland, Calif., June 17, 2009

The writer is president of PolicyLink, a national research and advocacy organization.