Tell Congress Everybody Needs Fresh Food

by Katherine Gustafson · 2009-12-17 06:00:00 UTC
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We have two kinds of deserts in this country — real deserts, like the Mojave, and food deserts, like inner-city Philadelphia. Their common name springs from their common feature: scarce resources. In the Mojave you can walk for miles without seeing water, while in certain parts of Philly you can walk for blocks and blocks without seeing fresh food.

A bi-partisan group in the US House of Representatives is out to change that. Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) and 20 others have introduced a resolution (PDF) in support of a National Fresh Food Financing Initiative (NFFFI) to give people in low-income neighborhoods better access to healthy food, as well as more jobs.

The NFFFI would be based on the successful Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a public-private partnership that has applied $30 million in state financing to creating 4,800 jobs, opening or expanding 78 fresh-food markets, leveraging over $150 million in additional private funds and putting fresh food within reach of 400,000 Philadelphia residents.

At Change.org, we are all for the NFFFI effort and hope you'll join us in telling the House we want them to support the resolution and to be ready to sign onto a 2010 bill to put the initiative in place.

Click here to sign the petition.

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background in international nonprofit organizations.
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