LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 51 What do you think of when you think of a desert? The Sahara, with giant sand storms, thirsty camels, cacti, and not much else. A desert, as commonly defined, is an area marked by a lack of something—precipitation, civilization, plants, or animals. Originating from the Latin word dēsertum, a desert meant "an abandoned place." The Adirondacks have their own kind of desert, one that has nothing to do with rain. In the early 1990s, the phrase "food desert" was introduced in Scotland, a term used to describe inade- quate access to healthy and/or affordable food. Quite literally, a food desert is the absence of healthy retail food in a specified area, but the term often encom- passes more, often studying socio-economic advan- tages and disadvantages as they relate to healthy food. In the Adirondacks, grocery stores are becoming few and far between. For years in towns across the Park and the North Country, grocery stores have closed, leaving people to either shop at convenience stores or drive long distances to get fresh food. Thus creating food deserts. But not all hope is lost. The east coast of the Adirondacks and the Cham- plain Valley are having a farming renaissance. Farms producing produce, cheese, meat, eggs, and so much more are more common than grocery stores in some communities. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily solve the food desert dilemma. Access to healthy food can mean both a physical and financial barrier. Initiatives like the Supplemental Nu- trition Assistance Program (SNAP) help those in need supplement their food budgets, and institutions like The Hub on the Hill are working to bring it all into the 21st century with their new "Double-Bucks" program, an initiative which is helping residents in food deserts such as the Adirondacks to have more equitable access to fresh produce. Introducing SNAP Online SNAP has traditionally worked similar to credit cards: individuals were issued a card that can be used to pay, in part or in full, for groceries at a store. How- ever, families without access to transportation faced barriers in getting access to the benefits provided by SNAP. The answer to that became SNAP Online, a program allowing SNAP users to purchase groceries online and delivered to their homes. The national SNAP Online pilot program was first introduced to select regions in New York State in 2019, expanding throughout the rest of the state and into additional states throughout the country. Then-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said, "People who receive SNAP benefits should have the opportunity to shop for food the same way more and more Americans shop for food – by ordering and paying for groceries online. As technology advances, it is important for SNAP to advance too, so we can en- sure the same shopping options are available for both non-SNAP and SNAP recipients." But while the SNAP Online program cleared a number of hurdles, access to fresh produce was still problematic in the Adirondack region. With the scarcity of grocery stores came the scarcity of fresh produce—produce that was grown, harvested, and transported by means that upheld the nutritional value of each food item. Such nutritional value can be lost by mass-produced fruits and vegetables using high amounts of chemicals and stored for long peri- ods of time before being delivered to the shelves of traditional grocery stores. While it is more nutrition- ally beneficial to purchase farm fresh food, such items can carry a higher price tag as well as be difficult to access. Enter the Double Up Food Bucks program.

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