GARY — The Steel City is one of 27 cities nationwide chosen for a federal initiative to eliminate food deserts, where people do not have access to healthy fresh food.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has selected Gary for the Local Foods, Local Places initiative, which aims to make healthy locally-grown food more accessible, especially for children.
Federal assistance is especially needed in Gary, where many people live five to eight miles away from a grocery store with fresh produce, said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in an interview with The Times.
"That's unacceptable," Vilsack said. "The reality is, the more miles away fresh, healthy food is, the harder it is to access. It's a serious issue."
The federal government will give Gary technical assistance on how to turn vacant land into gardens, and identify how food hubs could revitalize downtown. In other cities, the program has built permanent year-round downtown farmers markets, established co-ops and set up gardens at schools.
"What financial assistance the city receives will depend on the technical assessment and what meets the needs of the community," Vilsack said. "Greater access to fresh food will mean healthier choices."
Gary could end up getting federal funding for local or regional food storage facilities, or permanent infrastructure for the Miller Beach Farmers Market, Vilsack said. Cities like Detroit and Cleveland have had success turning vacant land into community gardens.
"I am excited about the city’s participation in this initiative," Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said. "The opportunity aligns with our vision for revitalizing the city’s downtown; the connectivity to our local development and existing neighborhood planning initiatives: livable centers of Downtown, Emerson, Horace Mann, the Broadway Corridor and more recently, Main Street Refresh."
"I am particularly excited about the job creation and entrepreneurship opportunities the initiative presents for local residents," the mayor added.
The USDA and other federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the White House Rural Council, will send experts to advise Gary how it could land more grant funding to further develop urban agriculture in the city.
"Gary is an amazing community in terms of needs in terms of food," Vilsack said. "It's an area with a high poverty rate where there's a lack of access to safe, affordable healthy food. The president wants to create a better link between producers and consumers of food."
The award to Gary should create a stronger link and lead to the development of a strategic plan for more urban agriculture and strengthen local gardening groups, Vilsack said.
The city of Gary applied for the program in order to create links between residents and those interested in providing healthy foods, said Gary Director of Environmental Affairs and Green Urbanism Brenda Scott-Henry.
"Gary’s project proposed to recommend policies that support urban agricultural activities that would result in access to local healthy foods within neighborhoods, technical support for local community garden/urban farming groups, with goals to advance a local food system," Scott-Henry said.