Kel Smith - Pixels, Plows & Partnerships: Designing for Food Deserts
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Transcript of Kel Smith - Pixels, Plows & Partnerships: Designing for Food Deserts
PIXELS, PLOWS & PARTNERSHIPS Designing for Food Deserts
vehicle ownership ½-10 miles 1-10 miles
DEFINING FOOD SECURITY
FOOD AVAILABILITY PHYSICAL ACCESS PURCHASING POWER
DOMESTIC PRODUCTION IMPORT CAPACITY
TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE
SUPPLY CHAIN STABILITY WEATHER VARIABILITY
LOCAL STORAGE CODES
FOOD UTILIZATION SAFETY & HYGIENE FARMING PRACTICES
CULTURAL ATTITUDES
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Supplemental Nutri.on Assistance Program (SNAP) has 47 million par.cipants. They face numerous barriers to ea.ng a healthy diet, from insufficient benefit amounts to high cost of healthy foods to lack of choices.
CSA’s are allowed to accept payment through SNAP. But their ability to do so is limited because SNAP prohibits using the SNAP EBT (electronic benefit transfer card) online. SNAP par.cipants must be present at the .me of delivery to purchase through a CSA, elimina.ng the advantage of convenience. On the supply side, pre-‐orders help farms plan ahead and avoid waste.
Disability is an important risk factor for food insecurity. Reduced earnings and increased expenses put households at risk. Altogether, about 38% of households with low security included a working-‐age adult with a disability. Food insecurity is high even in moderate-‐income households affected by disability.
THE HIDDEN RISKS TO FOOD SECURITY
Lack of access to healthy foods is an infringement on the right of human beings. In this country, there should be no reason for the lack of access to fresh, healthy food, but it’s not necessarily a cons.tu.onal right. Policymakers are not always quick to understand what makes a healthy food system. They don’t understand reliance on public transporta.on and earning minimum wage and what effect that has on food choices.
It takes more than a produce aisle to refresh a food desert. You need more interven.on to change behavior. People tend to fall into rou.nes of habit, even if beau.ful and convenient op.ons are presented.
“The presump.on is, if you build a store, people are going to come. We see no effect of the store on fruit and vegetable
consump.on.” ~ Stephen Ma]hews, professor of sociology, anthropology and demography at Penn
State University
“The presump.on is, if you build a store, people are going to come. We see no effect of the store on fruit and vegetable
consump.on.” ~ Stephen Ma]hews, professor of sociology, anthropology and demography at Penn
State University
“THE PRESUMPTION IS, IF YOU BUILD A STORE PEOPLE WILL COME.”
Stephen Matthews, Penn State University
Shan. won’t use the water treatment facility because it isn’t designed for her behavior
AN EXAMPLE OF INHERENT OPTIMISM
Shan. won’t use the water treatment facility because it isn’t designed for her behavior
Design thinking – inherently op.mis.c, construc.ve and experien.al – addresses the needs of the people who will consume a product or service and the infrastructure that enables it
The “leased” land is not only the ancestral home of the people of Gambella but also the basis of their en.re livelihood and survival as a .ny minority in the Ethiopian family. For Gambellans who live as pastoralist and subsistence farmers, massive dispossession and auc.oning off their land for pennies risks inevitably destroying the very fabric of their society and way of life and threatening them with ex.nc.on. DESIGN THINKING, DESIGNED POORLY
Design thinking misses opportuni.es when we fail to consider the culture and needs of people in their communi.es
Design thinking misses opportuni.es when we fail to
consider the culture and needs of people in their
communi.es
“TIME AND AGAIN, INITIATIVES FALTER BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT BASED ON
[PEOPLE’S] NEEDS.” Tim Brown & Jocelyn Wyatt, IDEO
Illusions of access in a world of ci.es. The interface of the city – one part blocks you from something, while another part invites you into something else. A simple grocery aisle presents us with free-‐floa.ng consump.on items while simultaneously blocking awareness of how they were produced.
Food markets 100 years ago were smaller, mostly family owned, embedded in rural agriculture. You knew the people behind the counter. Groceries were seasonal and organic by default. The supermarket brought about improvements in storage and shipping, but also resulted in untraceable supply chains, self-‐service shopping and a sense of isola.on.
The supermarket model is one of abundance and certainly ripe for
disrup.on. The average store is 46,000 square feet and houses nearly 40,000
products all seasons. The result is a lot of waste.
“The Internet, when taken in aggregate, does not reflect ‘the world.’ It reflects the relentless content produc.on of large global ci.es, and the aspira.ons of transna.onal urbanites.”
“The simple supermarket aisle is a sani.zed interface. It presents us with free-‐floa.ng consump.on items while simultaneously blocking awareness of their prior produc.on process that happened somewhere else. Most interfaces are like this. One part blocks you from something, while another part invites you into something else.”
“SUPERMARKETS ARE A KEY INSTITUTION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCONNECTION.”
Brett Scott
MAXIMIZING PROFIT GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION
STANDARDIZED OFFERINGS SLOW DELIVERY OF GOODS
PASSIVE CONSUMERISM
LOCAL GOODS PURPOSEFUL BRANDS PERSONALIZED SERVICE EMPOWERED CONSUMERS EXPERIENTIAL SHOPPING
Some grocery chains like Safeway now offer home delivery, building new services on top of old infrastructure. FreshDirect and Peapod sell a few local items, but mostly deliver the same na.onal brands you’d find in any store. Instacart hires someone to do your Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s run. Good Eggs takes the “local” angle a step further, making the social element part of their business model.
Hello Fresh providers clear recipes and farm-‐fresh ingredients delivered to the home. The menus change weekly and all meals can be cooked in 30 minutes or less.
Online grocery shopping is not a food desert panacea. Instacart, Good Eggs and the like are in business to appeal to higher-‐income earners. They profit from doing the heavy liiing to match farms with forks. Those dependent on WIC or SNAP do not fit the target demographic.
Technology: stores using interac.ve and 3D signage; dynamic shelf labels; “smart” carts that help pick items for
them, instant near field communica.ons (NFC) that
enables quick purchasing. The grocery store is much more
experien.al.
Food aggregators like Good Eggs, Amazon Fresh and high-‐tech grocery stores like San Francisco’s Local Mission Market show what can happen when technology gets into the game. What remains to be seen is if these new models are affordable enough for the average American family. Or if, like so many innova.ons before them, will only be prac.cal for a certain affluent segment of the popula.on.
Posi.ve deviants – human centered approach relevant to a unique cultural context and will not necessarily work outside that specific situa.on
“I am not sure that a venture capital model based on the pursuit of innova.on is adequate to solve environmental problems, which have themselves been brought about by a model of growth that does not respect planetary limits. Innova.on is not an end in itself.” ~ Rufo Quintavalle
“INNOVATION IS NOT AN END IN ITSELF.” Rufo Quintavalle, Stanford Social Review
Victors & Spoils adver.sing campaign to promote broccoli – “you have to create an enemy” and in this case, the enemy was kale “the hipster vegetable.” Andy Nathan YOU HAVE TO CREATE AN ENEMY
As of summer 2013, approximately 25% of the American grocery market was controlled by Walmart. In many areas, including low-‐income neighborhoods, it runs closer to 40%.
The fear is that the only “fresh” produce available in food deserts will come from Walmart aier they eliminate the area’s small-‐scale grocery markets, leading to increased (and more expensive) health risks.
The problem is that Walmart’s profit margin is highly dependent on corporate welfare: the funding of SNAP and public assistance programs and their prac.ce of paying lower wages. SNAP restric.ons on processed food would nega.vely affect Walmart’s business “This is a company that everywhere it goes, it creates poverty.” ~ Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher with Ins.tute for Local Self-‐Reliance
The problem is that Walmart’s profit margin is highly dependent on corporate welfare: the funding of SNAP and public assistance programs and their prac.ce of paying lower wages. SNAP restric.ons on processed food would nega.vely affect Walmart’s business “This is a company that everywhere it goes, it creates poverty.” ~ Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher with Ins.tute for Local Self-‐Reliance
“THIS IS A COMPANY THAT CREATES POVERTY EVERYWHERE IT GOES.” Stacy Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
It is far easier to stock junk food and highly processed food products than fresh produce. They don’t spoil and require minimum labor to manage store stock.
“Don’t eat anything your great-‐grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” “Don’t eat anything that doesn’t rot.” Our current food system is set up to deliver the exact opposite of the above: ea.ng real food.
DON’T EAT ANYTHING THAT CAN’T ROT
More than 36% of drinks that Walmart labels as “water” has
ingredients that would disqualify them from the shelves of Whole Foods.
Sucralose calcium disodium EDTA acesulframe potassium potassium sorbate
CALCIUM DISODIUM ACESULFRAME POTASSIUM
POTASSIUM SORBATE SUCRALOSE
Renegade gardener: ar.st and engineer Ron Finley transformed his South Central Los Angeles neighborhood from unproduc.ve grass into an abundant edible landscape. His ac.ons provoked a na.onwide reconsidera.on of what it means to be food independent and to u.lize neglected public space.
“FOOD, IF YOU WANT TO CALL IT THAT, IS KILLING US VERY SLOWLY.”
Ron Finley, L.A. Green Grounds
Some startups are working to reroute food wasted. Food Cowboy is a northeast DC org that repurposes leiover food for hunger relief. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40% of food in US goes uneaten, oien discarded by commercial retailers for aesthe.c reasons. “The trucker is under .me pressure. Oien.mes, [a] charity is just a few miles away from where the shipment has been rejected.” Food Cowboy uses the Internet to helps companies and truckers find each other.
40% DISCARDED FOR AESTHETICS
Some startups are working to reroute food wasted. Food Cowboy is a northeast DC org that repurposes leiover food for hunger relief. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40% of food in US goes uneaten, oien discarded by commercial retailers for aesthe.c reasons. “The trucker is under .me pressure. Oien.mes, [a] charity is just a few miles away from where the shipment has been rejected.” Food Cowboy uses the Internet to helps companies and truckers find each other.
CropMobster does something similar, using an online message board (similar to Craigslist) to connect food producers, grocers and food chari.es. Combined, CropMobster and Food
Cowboy have saved an es.mated 400,000 pounts of food across seven states.
Farmigo allows local farmers to sell their harvests to the online community, seung their own prices and earning supplemental income. Farmigo gives their farming champions an online dashboard and local media support, taking a 20% commission on sales. More than 3,500 CSA’s use the service today.
In Minneapolis, an ordinance passed that allows mobile farmers markets to sell farm fresh food where it isn’t available, provided that the store offers at least 50 items of fruits or vegetables in at least seven varie.es. Urban Ventures parks the mobile store at elementary schools on weekdays and churches on Sundays.
In Chicago, community ac.vists formed Fresh Moves as a grocery on wheels. In Oakland, the People’s Grocery created a farm-‐to-‐table distribu.on business for low-‐income families.
But more than that, people in low-‐income food deserts just aren’t used to buying or preparing healthy meals. “The next part of the interven.on is to create demand, so the community wants to come to the store and buy healthy food and go home and prepare those foods in a healthy way.” ~ Alex Ortega, public health research University of California Los Angeles.
What has worked at UCLA are projects to convert corner stores into hubs of healthy fare, including cooking classes and nutri.on educa.on outreach at bus stops.
But more than that, people in low-‐income food deserts just aren’t used to buying or preparing healthy meals. “The next part of the interven.on is to create demand, so the community wants to come to the store and buy healthy food and go home and prepare those foods in a healthy way.” ~ Alex Ortega, public health research University of California Los Angeles.
“THE NEXT PART OF THE INTERVENTION IS TO CREATE DEMAND.”
Alex Ortega, UCLA
People don’t respond to the food police nagging them to eat their vegetables. Outsiders dropping off bags of free eggplants mean well, but it doesn’t scale. People respond posi.vely to cooking classes that celebrate kitchen tradi.ons using high-‐quality ingredients either produced themselves or distributed through trusted sources.
FREE EGGPLANT DOESN’T SCALE
CULTURAL ATTITUDES
?
CULTURAL ATTITUDES
CULTURAL ATTITUDES
Food represents heritage, culture, love, faith, healing and pride. It binds families, builds communi.es and reduces social isola.on.
ShopRite at Bakers Centre in Germantown. Jeff Brown of Uplii Solu.ons owns 10 ShopRites in Philadelphia’s underserved neighborhoods and stocks the shelves according to local customers’ requests. “We start many years before we open a store, working with community groups. We focus on empowerment of customers.”
That means Nicetown’s SHARE food program brings in a selec.on of urban-‐grown produce. Products from Africa and the Caribbean, and hard-‐to-‐find conveniences like a Credit Union branch and an onsite health clinic (with a nutri.onist among its staff).
“WE FOCUS ON THE EMPOWERMENT OF OUR CUSTOMERS.”
Jeff Brown, Uplift Solutions
In Atlanta, Rashid Nuri turned a neglected property into a six-‐acre farm called Wheat Street Garden. Customers keep returning for chemical free kale and squash. Families using SNAP benefits get $2 worth of food for every $1 spent.
In Atlanta, Rashid Nuri turned a neglected property into a six-‐acre farm called Wheat Street Garden. Customers keep returning for chemical free kale and squash. Families using SNAP benefits get $2 worth of food for every $1 spent.
“WE’VE GOTTEN TOO FAR AWAY FROM THE LAND.”
Rashid Nuri, Truly Living Well Urban Farms
Mfarm empowers Kenya’s farmers with price transparency and market access. Jamila Abass, a 29-‐year old computer scien.st from Nairobi and founder of Akirachix. “They want social responsibility. By sourcing produce through MFarm they are playing a vital role in development and securing a consistent supply that is not dependent on middlemen.”
IF IT WAS A SNAKE, IT WOULD BITE YOU
“If it was a snake, it would bite you.” You’re overlooking something obvious – hidden in plain sight
“The world is full of nice, smart people who can’t rake a damn leaf.” There is no shortage of good ideas – don’t forget to rake the leaves. The difference between success and failure is a]en.on to logis.cs.
YOU CAN’T GET UP FROM THE TOP
“You can’t get up from the top.” You’re going to stumble at .mes. Every failure is an opportunity – success is a process
REMEMBER WHERE YOU CAME FROM
“Remember where you came from.” Get the hell out of the studio and learn how to be a designer. Real world, prac.cal experience trumps knowledge when dealing with fundamental human needs.
Some have argued that food deserts aren’t really a problem in ci.es. This opinion is based on anecdotal evidence from the USDA map without appropriate context. The ques.on to ask is: for a person working or looking for work, which is more convenient for the lifestyle: fast food or raw produce? Which is easier to access and consume during a normal day?
The term “food desert” (or “food swamp”) becomes a diagnosis that labels a neighborhood undesirable, rather than a target of opportunity. We become cri.cs who assert that it’s not the environment that’s broken – it’s the people who live within it.
AFFORDANCE
EMPOWERMENT
ABUNDANCE
THANKS FOR LISTENING [email protected]