"Why Grocery Stores Are Avoiding Black Neighborhoods"

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blackforest said:
Do you believe the residents are just being lazy and apathetic? If so, let’s not jump to conclusions.
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No, I don’t think they are lazy and apathetic. I think a lot of people who have lived in cities all their lives truly have no idea how to maintain a garden and harvest anything edible. I am one of these–like I said everything Peeps tries to grow suffers early demise!

And frankly, I think a lot of the people, especially women, in the “poor” neighborhoods are afraid to be outdoors in areas that are known gang territory. A good tomato harvest is not worth being shot over.

I just don’t think that victory gardens are a viable solution for many people. SOME people do manage to have large and flourishing gardens, but they have the very valuable gift of a Green Thumb (or perhaps they grew up in a family of gardeners?). I think the rich ladies didn’t realize all this.

I personally think that Gardening should be taught in the schools, begining with the grade schools. It would be a valuable skill for both rich and poor children, and something that even STEMC people should be able to do.
blackforest said:
Food banks are actually struggling right now with increased demands from COVID-19. Just a friendly reminder to donate if you can. 🙂
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Thanks for the reminder! So many of us devour excess food, and doing a grocery run for the pantry is a great way to “diet!”
 
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blackforest said:
I speak from direct experience. Raised beds require daily hand watering if irrigation isn’t established, as well as regular weeding.
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After putting in quite a bit of time initially to get the garden planted, tilling several times, planting plants, getting support structure for plants ect, , (probably a days work total) it only takes about 10-15 minutes per day to harvest and check for pests in our garden.

We don’t use raised beds, and have set up a timed watering system. I do have to re till a couple of times each season to keep the weeds down. I have plants spaced so I can get the regular tiller between most, and use a hand tiller for the tight spots. Beats the heck out of tilling by had.

Raised beds IMO are a huge waste of water. They look cool and you can get your soil right quicker, but tend to require much more hands on to keep them right.
 
Peeps said:
No, I don’t think they are lazy and apathetic. I think a lot of people who have lived in cities all their lives truly have no idea how to maintain a garden and harvest anything edible. I am one of these–like I said everything Peeps tries to grow suffers early demise!
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I think this is where getting the kids from the neighborhoods involved is the key. What kid, (other than mine) doesn’t like playing in the dirt.

If the folks who set up the community gardens regularly scheduled times to meet the kids in the neighborhood during the growing season to explain the process and give pointers, once one kid learned some, they could pass that knowledge on to others.

All this stuff looks great on paper, but making things like this actually work takes a lot of time and effort on everyone’s part. Sadly many programs like this fail before they catch on good.
 
Peeps said:
… and I think the rich ladies have given up, and I don’t blame them. If people won’t help themselves when they get a helping hand, then…they don’t deserve the handout.
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This reminded me of my hometown, where some wealthy residents once donated money to the local hardware store for paint for those poorer neighborhoods to “spruce up” a little. However, few took advantage of it.

While their motives may have been good,
some folks didn’t have the wherewithal to paint or have enough money to hire painters.

Since there was no direct contact between the donors and residents beforehand and the donation was unsolicited, many of the residents felt the wealthy donors were insinuating that the poorer neighborhood homes weren’t good enough to live in.

Personally, I think the initiative might’ve worked if it had been more collaborative, including money for painters for those who were unable to paint their own houses.
 
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Peeps said:
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farronwolf:
Could some of the people in the urban areas plan better so they could have better eating options? I am certain they could. Heck we all could. Could they start community gardens so they help themselves and others, absolutely.
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In our city, there are several community gardens in the “poor” areas of the city, and rich ladies acquired the land, set up the boxes (raised wooden boxes), filled them with soil, prepared the seeds, and distributed the seeds and seedlings to all the interested people in these neighborhoods. They also helped with the planting (not everyone is good at gardening–e.g., anything Peeps plants dies a quick death!), and checked regularly to make sure the gardens had enough water, were weeded, and didn’t get infested with leaf-devouring pests.

But sadly, the gardens never caught on, and I think the rich ladies have given up, and I don’t blame them. If people won’t help themselves when they get a helping hand, then…they don’t deserve the handout.

I’m so sorry that the country is like this. I know there are people who DO accept help and DO have a garden.

There are also plenty of food pantries in our city, including truck food pantries that travel around the poor areas. Lots of the churches have food drives–one of the Assembles of God churches in our city has handed out tens of thousands of bags of groceries during the pandemic (they have a very large church with thousands of members, mostly people living in the “rich” neighborhoods).

I honestly don’t think there is any reason for people in our city to go hungry–there are lots of charitable outreaches.

And I don’t think there will be regular chain grocery stores in these “poor” areas until the street gangs/mobs make it clear that these stores will NEVER be touched and anyone working or shopping at these stores will NEVER be shot on the store property and no one will ever be taken hostage in the parking lot and forced to drive a gang member around town and grant him other…favors.

The ball is in THEIR hands right now–it’s their move, not ours. It makes no sense for anyone to build a playground for street gangs, drug dealers, and mob members to easily take out their victims.
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I think the main problem in these two examples is that the outreach was planned without listening to the community on the receiving hand. It probably felt like something forced on the community and not owned by them. It would have made more sense to sit down with people in the community saying we would like to help but what do you think is the top priority for your community? And then… listen to the answers before starting anything.
 
aroosi said:
I think the main problem in these two examples is that the outreach was planned without listening to the community on the receiving hand. It probably felt like something forced on the community and not owned by them. It would have made more sense to sit down with people in the community saying we would like to help but what do you think is the top priority for your community? And then… listen to the answers before starting anything.
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I agree.

I think that all sides need to do a lot more face-to-face meetings and lots and LOTS of civil (although emotions should be allowed!) conversation!

Nowadays, though, people are so afraid to talk to anyone, and I can’t say I blame them. Every time we turn around, we see some public figure or beloved business owner or pastor booted from their position because of something that they said in the past, often the FAR past–that seems “racist” or “sexist” or “homophobic”. People are afraid that they’ll inadvertently say something that offends (even though they didn’t intend to offend; e.g., saying “colored people” instead of “African American”, which is what my parents’ generation always said with no insult intended), and the media will take it to town and build it into a giant scandal, and the speaker will lose everything–job, respect, position in the community, possibly even be asked to move away. And what’s worse, it might even affect their CHILDREN–they might lose their job or standing because of a PARENT"S mis-speak.

So honest talking, arguing, exchange of information and ideas, brainstorming, disagreeing and agreeing–is not likely to happen. It’s tragic, IMO. We’re all supposed to be friends and love each other without actually KNOWING each other.
 
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Regardless of the sincerity of the so-called “ruling class,” are you in favor of home voucher programs in your neighborhood the way Republicans are in favor of school vouchers? As Kamala Harris would say, yes or no? And, if the answer is no, why not?
 
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farronwolf said:
And we wonder why there are areas that can’t support an actual grocery store where someone can buy food to go home and actually prepare.
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In conversation with a couple of ladies from the poorer part of a place I used to live in, I discovered they did not know how to cook rice, nor much else.

Girls used to take home ec and learn this sort of thing, so the process of passing it down from mother to daughter was lost. Then they stopped teaching home ec, and people stopped learning how to do basic cooking and sewing.
farronwolf said:
think this is where getting the kids from the neighborhoods involved is the key.
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Another thing these ladies told me was that people in their area did not put much into gardening because members of the bad element would steal from the gardens. These ladies had a couple of tomato plants, but felt expanding would be worthless because of the stealing.
 
Annie said:
Another thing these ladies told me was that people in their area did not put much into gardening because members of the bad element would steal from the gardens. These ladies had a couple of tomato plants, but felt expanding would be worthless because of the stealing.
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Or you plant enough and freely offer it to the bad element. Not saying that is guaranteed to work, but it certainly is worth a shot.

Often times what draws people into the bad element is that the don’t feel they fit anywhere else. The aren’t shown any attention at home so they act up at school to get attention. They have no good mentors so they gravitate to the drug dealers and gangs because they “seem” to give them at least some recognition.

Again, the ills that plague our society are very complicated. All we can do is put our best foot forward and home that somehow we can positively affect someone else. Many times it is fruitless, but on the odd chance it takes with one person, it is well worth it.
 
Peeps said:
No, I don’t think they are lazy and apathetic. I think a lot of people who have lived in cities all their lives truly have no idea how to maintain a garden and harvest anything edible. I am one of these–like I said everything Peeps tries to grow suffers early demise!
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I’m a city person, and have been all my life.

My wife and recently moved to a small village. Only 600 inhabitants. We are sitting on just short of 3000 square meters of land. Some of it is fruit trees, and one grassy paddock we have leased to a local farmer who grazes his goats there. But for the most part it is tillable soil. We didn’t know much about tilling or planting when we moved in but we bought books, googled stuff, watched youtube, and now we are producing stuff like crazy - and this is only our first year. My wife picked 10kg of tomatoes yesterday, but if you go out you wouldn’t think she picked any as there are so many still growing. She could pick another 10kg today if she wanted. We are also eating our own courgettes, cucumbers, peppers, squashs, sweet peas and other things besides. And what we can’t eat we are making into sauces or preserves to see us through the winter. Or giving them to friends, or swapping stuff with neighbours, for example they have chickens and we don’t so we give them vegatables in exchange for eggs. We are hadly doing any shopping any more. We make our own bread even. When we do shop its for things like meat, cheese, flour, or basics like toilet paper. Typically everything we buy at the shop these days fits in a single bag.

It has been a tough year but we still manage to balance life, leisure, our day jobs and the garden. We have learnt a lot and we have discovered many things are not as difficult as we imagined. In fact I never thought it would be so easy, that God could be so generous.
 
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Do you have a translated version of your post for us that don’t use the metric system? How much is 10kg actually? Is that a grocery sack worth. How many square meters in an acre BTW. LOL.

Have you found that once you are home, away from the city, what you normally would have just run to the store for quickly, now can wait for later or not at all?

There are some disadvantages, to country life, like when you are working on stuff and have to make a trip to the hardware store because you gotta have something, but overall it certainly beats living in the city.
 
farronwolf said:
Do you have a translated version of your post for us that don’t use the metric system? How much is 10kg actually? Is that a grocery sack worth. How many square meters in an acre BTW. LOL.
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Google is your friend. If you type:

3000 sq m in acres

into the search bar, Google will give you the answer.

Same if you type:

10 kg to lb OR ten kilos to pounds

37 c in f

Or even American/American conversions like:

8 gallons in cups

1/2 miles in feet.

Also does currency:

150 dollars in pounds

Etc. Google has a lot of neat features.
 
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farronwolf said:
Have you found that once you are home, away from the city, what you normally would have just run to the store for quickly, now can wait for later or not at all?
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I think you also change your expectations. You eat what the land produces and that means eating what is in season rather than expecting fancy stuff all year round. It makes you appreciate it more and be more conscious of what you’re eating.

In other words, you say goodbye to lots of fancy stuff. Well, actually we still buy pineapples or bananas or mangos in the shop here and there, but the strange thing is we don’t crave them as much as we used to because we find they don’t really have that appeal any more and actually taste bland and tired in comparison to our more mundane home-grown vegetables. For example,we are now eating fresh tomatoes that are a hundred times more intense and tasty and spicy than anything from a supermarket. It’s maybe about less choice but more quality.
farronwolf said:
There are some disadvantages, to country life, like when you are working on stuff and have to make a trip to the hardware store because you gotta have something, but overall it certainly beats living in the city.
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Definitely the nearest hardware store is quite a trek to get to, and even when you’re there the choice is fairly limited. So you need to plan ahead more rather than only buying things as and when you need them. And if you need something that you didn’t anticipate, the only thing you can do is to improvise. It’s ceratinly like being on a crash course in improvisation techniques and survival skills. Or otherwise we can ask neighbours for help. The people here are all very friendly and keen to help out when we need them, and in the first couple of months I was always borrowing their tools until I built up an adequate collection of my own. But I think people here also have lower expectations. They are happy when stuff works somehow. They don’t want perfection.
 
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Annie said:
Girls used to take home ec and learn this sort of thing, so the process of passing it down from mother to daughter was lost. Then they stopped teaching home ec, and people stopped learning how to do basic cooking and sewing.
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Anyone can use home ec, not just girls. Boys eat too and it would be nice not to rely on girls or restaurants to get a bite to eat.
Annie said:
Another thing these ladies told me was that people in their area did not put much into gardening because members of the bad element would steal from the gardens. These ladies had a couple of tomato plants, but felt expanding would be worthless because of the stealing.
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This is one good reason. The bad element must be the root cause for the food desert. No businesses can survive there and no community gardens either.

Question is, how can these criminals be handled?
 
I’ve lived in apartments for the last decade or so but have had a balcony garden.

I was still able to harvest a lot of vegetables from my little balcony garden.

To me, this little garden was a physical manifestation of God’s Grace and providence.
 
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Annie said:
Another thing these ladies told me was that people in their area did not put much into gardening because members of the bad element would steal from the gardens. These ladies had a couple of tomato plants, but felt expanding would be worthless because of the stealing.
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I don’t think community gardens work unless everybody is 100% honest. You need your own plot and it needs to be fenced in. Of course a fence alone doesn’t keep all bad elements out but it does discourage them as the bad elements often tend to be lazy and stealing a tomato doesn’t have the same pull as stealing something they can sell for cash.
 
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