Food Deserts

Many Americans don’t have convenient access to quality, healthy groceries. This problem exists both in impoverished urban areas as well as sparse rural areas. The federal government can fund a program to directly subsidize grocery stores in food deserts. Communities in food deserts would be able to apply directly with the Department of Agriculture. This way, food deserts can be connected with local farmer co-ops for sourcing to give them exclusive deals with these grocery stores to ensure those farmers always have customers to sell to without competition from factory farms. It’s important that healthy food is at least as cheap and convenient as unhealthy food, specifically fast food, so we can improve the public health of Americans. This will dramatically reduce the burden on our healthcare systems and allow more communities to thrive. Funding could come from reductions in subsidies to factory farms, though this would not be a terribly expensive program and mostly just requires prioritization in the budget.

It’s really that simple.