In yesterday’s New York Times there was a piece by Kim Severson called “For a Healthier Bronx, A Farm of Their Own”, which covered so many food issues that it should be required reading for everybody in this country who reads and eats. (And that would be quite a lot of people.)  

Severson’s article is about how “Dennis Derryck, a 70-year-old mathematician and professor at the New School for Management and Urban Policy,” bought a ninety-two acre farm in upstate New York so that people in South Bronx could be part of “a commercial community-supported agriculture plan (C.S.A.) that lets residents determine what they’ll get, with an enticing prize at the end for people who stick with it: a chance to own shares in the farm.” To do this, Derryck took out a $300,000 loan and raised $562,000. He got nonprofit organizations to help sponsor Bronx participants who couldn’t afford the full price of belonging to a C.S.A. 

I found the whole article fascinating and hopeful, but two things really struck me. First was Derryck’s assertion that “If there is a food revolution, it’s not yet including the low income.” The South Bronx is a very poor community, and, as is often the case with such communities, good, fresh food at any price is hard to get. So while those of us with enough money try to buy as much local and organic food as we can, folks who live in poor communities must rely on convenience stores and fast food chains to get their food—most of it highly processed with too much fat, salt, and high fructose corn syrup. As the writer Mark Winne has put it, you can’t be free when your food choices are restricted to food that is not good for you. 

The second thing that caught my attention came from the farmer Richard Ball: “If we simply got New York to be New York’s customer, we’d be in great shape.” 

That really sums the situation up, doesn’t it? So simple but yet not simple at all.