View the April 2019 seminar recording
Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Food Deserts and the Logistics of Urban Food Transportation.
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Today we'll have two presentations, given by Michelle Miller, University of Wisconsin, Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and Alice Huang, City of Baltimore, Food Access Planner. Unfortunately, the third scheduled presenter, Caesar Layton is unable to present due to a last minute work obligation.
Our first presentation will be given by Michelle Miller, a practicing economic anthropologist engaged in participatory action research with farmers and others who create our food system. She is associate director of programs at the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, the Sustainable Agriculture Research Center on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Michelle Miller
Thanks, Jennifer. And thanks, Chip, for the invitation to join with everybody today. I'm a huge fan girl of the talking freight webinars and attend myself when I can. I want to tell you about the Center and then get into the work we've been doing on food transportation. We work primarily with farmers and listen to their needs and one of the issues that they had going even back to 2009 was that they wanted to access the Chicago market but were finding it very hard to do so and make any money. In the process of investigating this challenge we came to understand that wholesale market access has a lot to do with food access challenges and that's what I'll be talking about today.
One of the things an anthropologist does is look at the context. How did we get to this place in the first place? I've set up my slides so that I have some sources on the left-hand side with the titles in green, for anyone who wants to look a little more deeply into the issues. And then in the larger box on the right I've got just a quick summary of some of what I'm going to say. I'm going to try not to read that, so if you can listen while you read you'll probably get the most out of this that you can.
The context starts really in the '60s, which was a distribution heyday. The national supply chain was just getting started. There were small supply chains moving into neighborhood stores. And kind of the best of both worlds; both a national and a local supply chain situation. In the '70s, the need to save fuel and transportation costs was really exacerbated with the energy crisis. And I think people became very aware of how much money they were actually spending on gas. Especially businesses who made it their job to transport food. In the '80s we saw a shakeup in the labor market. The national supply chains were able to move food freight efficiently across the country and starting to invest in private warehousing. And public terminals, which had been in place for decades, started to diminish. In the '90s, global movements really highlighted the need for an investment in logistics and supply chain management. I'm not even sure if that term was in use before that. An example would be NAFTA and the food businesses' investment in Mexico. We used to produce a lot of vegetables in Wisconsin and, suddenly, the food processes were moving to Mexico, so that was when we really started to notice that. And in the 2000s, there was a further consolidation of the food supply chains. An example would be the organic food supply chain started out very small in the '60s and '70s, and by the 2000s was going national and global. And in the 2010s we started to see climate volatility that showed the brittleness of our national and global supply chains. A couple examples are: Lettuce; if you read the supermarket trade magazines, you can see that lettuce has been a recurring problem over the recent years. And also pasta wheat; there is a lot documented on that. Droughts and floods and associated insect infestations started to disrupt production, product movement and product distribution.
So, I want to talk a little bit about the boundaries of the system. I think a lot of times when you're working on a piece of the system you think about that piece but you don't see it in the context of the rest of it. And this graphic came from the Framework for Assessing the Effects of the Food System; the first source there on the left. And they named the food system as a Complex Adaptive System. In systems terminology, that has a specific definition and it's something that's shared by a lot of different disciplines. What makes a Complex Adaptive System? You'll notice that Wholesale and logistics is just one small piece of this large Complex Adaptive System. The Complex Adaptive System is also known as CAS, and you'll see that on some of the future slides. So understanding the system as a whole allows us to then identify leverage points for change, to correct what isn't working well. Fixing a system that's already in place can be difficult to do without causing unintended problems in the future. So, rather than working on very specific subsystems, or some piece of the food system, or symptoms specific to some piece of the system, we'd rather look at the symptoms across the system as a whole to see if we can see some patterns, and additional leverage points emerge.
In Complex Adaptive Systems, we are looking for a system design that allows for self-organizing to occur. And self-organizing would be democracy, free market – those are examples of self-organizing systems. And you'll see on this little diagram that as certainty decreases, as it does when you get more volatility in fuel and labor markets or because of climate change, then you must have agreement to be able to maintain the middle space where the system can self-organize to adapt to the change. There are different ways to increase agreement. You can do that through a public process or through better communication or by a collaboration with people you trust. Or it can be more top down; it could be vertical integration or concentration of the market or authoritarian systems that organize things for people and essentially force agreement rather than develop agreement. For systems to adapt and change as uncertainty increases, there are certain conditions that are necessary in the system. These are diversity, flow, non-linearity, and aggregation. I'm going to go through the four different conditions in the following slides. I wanted to point out that this is not something specific to a food system. This is something that is the foundation for understanding systems. In this slide, the source is Advanced Engineering Informatics, but you can find these necessary conditions in any kind of systems work.
Most of what I have been working on has been diversity at the farm level or maybe at the landscape level, but I think it applies for the system as a whole. What I've got here are examples of sources where we've looked specifically at agricultural diversity. One of the things that's happened over time is that seasonal volatility (a kind of uncertainty), just the natural seasons that those of us in the more northern climates experience, has led fruit and vegetable production to move to states in the Fruitful Rim. These are the states on the coastal areas, especially in the south, where it's relatively easy to grow food. It goes into Arizona, California, and New Mexico, but also up into Oregon and Washington.
There's solid evidence the diversity of ownership also matters. Scale of farm and other businesses in the supply chain, diversity of forms of ownership is also important to resilience and to maintain that ability for the system to flex as things change. In sustainable agriculture circles, the focus on diversity has been key. In transportation circles what I've been hearing a lot about is system efficiency, especially around fuel use, but also capital and labor. What people are starting to understand in the resilience circles is that it's necessary to optimize both diversity and efficiency for the system to work well.
The next condition that's necessary for a Complex Adaptive System to function is food flow. And this topic is pretty well researched in Europe. In the U.S. we have an incomplete picture of how food moves, largely because the data are privatized. We do know that Chicago is the epicenter of the system, that public food terminals are critical for small and emerging supply chains, and that logistics for small supply chains lack analytics right now. That's definitely an area for those of you who enjoy working with data to weigh in.
Supply chains by their very nature are nonlinear, as everyone knows, and they require agreement for them to function well. If you remember, agreement is also necessary as uncertainty increases. So, you can see agreement in a supply chain where there's strong trust and communication, as is common in ethnically-based supply chains or other culturally-based supply chains. Top down management and vertical integration and concentration also create agreement, and we've seen a lot of concentration in the food system as well. I wanted to mention block chain really briefly, because it's a way for these very large supply chains to manage information in a way that can be transparent throughout the supply chains. It's something Walmart, Kroger, Albertson's are all doing, but small supply chains can't do that. They are too small to have the ability to invest in block chain at this point.
Aggregation is something people have researched and experimented with quite a bit in the last decade or so. Food hubs are an example of that. Many of you may have heard of food hubs, which tend to be first-mile food hubs, but also last-mile as well. Our team has identified some basic elements; critical thresholds that are necessary for aggregation to work well. At the farmer end, the first-mile end, if the distance to market is more than 50 miles, they need to work together to fill trucks and to be able to get that efficiency. And then when those truck efficiencies are met by this collaboration, they also have to be able to get access to transportation. One thing that we've noticed here is that the demise of small trucking companies is very similar to the demise of mid-scale farms. And it's a serious concern, especially as the owners of these smaller trucking companies age out of the system. Single product loads and diversity of produce and 12 month supply; all those things are necessary and help connect the regional with interregional and national flow of food. Last-mile considerations include access to the wholesale infrastructure, truck size in urban environments, traffic congestion and delivery, timing, and including hours of service regulations are all part of that last-mile concern. And it really gets down to who pays? Who owns the structures? Who owns the trucks? And who's actually paying for the fuel and the labor to move that food?
So, this graphic has been a really useful thing for our audiences, which are not transportation audiences, to understand this difference between the different parts of the different segments of the trip. Also, for them to think about where efficiencies might be found in the segments, particularly regional efficiencies. We've talked a lot with farmers about the first-mile and what they need to get the product into cities; what an over-the-road segment looks like, and what the different trucking configurations are, logistics rules of thumb; and then the last-mile. Is it even possible to get one of those very long tractor-trailers into an urban context? And why wouldn't you want to do that? Trying to explain some of that to novices in this field is part of what we've been doing.
I wanted to talk a little bit about C.R. England, because they are a really good example of how this system has changed and worked over time. They are North America's largest wholesale cold chain, founded as a regional food carrier. As soon as refrigerated trucks were available they were right on it. They made their first cross-country run to public food terminals on the east coast in 1960. It took them 18 years before they opened their first D.C. (distribution center) in New Jersey, and that distribution center was then followed by three additional distribution centers at key locations: Texas, California, Indiana. In 2016, they opened a drop yard to allow them to separate duty cycles and improve that last-mile food flow primarily to the L.A. port for international shipping. And I did want to tip my hat to C.R. England for their work with Smartway and how organizing the food flow made it possible for them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions considerably. It also improved labor relations, which is also key.
Another proof of concept I wanted to share was the Ontario Food Terminal. Businesses are collaborating, regardless of supply chain size, at Ontario Food Terminal. It supports many vibrant ethnic supply chains, regional farms, and farmland preservation around Toronto. My colleague, Lindsey Day-Farnsworth, is wrapping up some case studies of food terminals around North America and documenting what works and what doesn't in these contexts. We're using research to inform a project in the upper Midwest to improve food flow and address climate concerns.
So, the bottom line is that farmers have to make money, they have to hit the sweet spot between diversity and efficiency, both on the farm and at a landscape scale. If they are too diverse, they are operating under economic threshold. If they are too efficient, they are operating over environmental limits. Wholesale is where farmers can make a really good living. And they need to market products within a 200-mile radius, fill a 53-foot truck, have enough diversity for healthy soil, and enough efficiency to streamline farm labor. So, managing for that sweet spot between diversity and efficiency is really key. The rest of the supply chain also has to make money. As you know, they need regular hauling and buying contracts. And in a seasonal business, if you're moving products seasonally, that can be more difficult. Full trucks, again, really important. Backhaul has to be there. We really like this idea of regional one-day runs so that nobody has overnights. We can take some advantage of the hours of service situation and improve efficiency there. That one point of delivery is really key. Where is the terminal? Is it a private terminal? Is it a public terminal? They need to be able to anticipate road congestion and, hopefully, there's minimal road congestion. Trip segments allow for specific engineering, and this is an area where I think regional movements really shine. It's possible to ditch the overnight cab and move into something that weighs a little bit less. And there are a whole bunch of other engineering opportunities there. Alternative fuels is another one. I know a lot of places have been looking at electric and what is it going to take to electrify freight? Then there's also the need for affordable cold storage space. And it's probably more efficient to manage cold storage at a larger level or at a store level than it is for people to have enormous refrigerators that they pack with food that then goes bad and is wasted.
I'm not sure about my time. I've got a little bit of time left. So, looking at the entire system, we can see leverage points that otherwise might be overlooked. Food terminal infrastructure is one such leverage point. Food terminals increase food flow and support the emergence of small business that can serve their neighborhoods. That's really key if we want to avoid gentrification. We've got examples of that in the co-op movement where really it was co-op food distribution centers that opened up and made it possible for new, smaller co-ops to emerge in neighborhoods that were ready, and for buying clubs in neighborhoods that weren't quite big enough to support a full brick and mortar store. I mentioned Lindsey Day-Farnsworth's work that will show us ways that terminals can be organized to best meet these objectives. There are things like it's important in the terminal design that the trucks don't move from one dock to another to pick up food from different houses, but instead that the food moves to the trucks. Energy optimization is really important. The fact that the terminal would have a governing structure that protects the public interest in food, those are all really key pieces for terminal design to make them function in the public interest.
Some time ago I met with Schneider Trucking to discuss some challenges with seasonal logistics. They partner with Walmart to move product regionally, that's primarily one of their main partners. The Schneider guy explained that the logistics department has more than 100 people doing analytics to improve daily truck movement. No small business that can match this. We need some kind of food logistics in the public interest, especially as climate change adds uncertainty to the mix. USDA Ag Marketing Service has done this work in the past and is poised to do it again, I think. The key national need is to restore their budget and to support data analysis and infrastructure development. I think we became really clear about this when a number of us were writing a proposal on food access emergency planning. And we just couldn't get data that was necessary to assess what was going to happen in terms of food flow. So that's really critical. And I think our understanding of food flow at the national level is very, very rudimentary right now. And at the regional level almost unknown. Every region will have a different pattern of food flow depending on where they are in the national system, and also the kinds of agriculture and food production that are able to be commercialized in their region, so that understanding of food flow is really critical. Even if we had a five-year food flow study, that would be really, really helpful. And understanding how food access works within cities as well as within rural areas is really critical, especially as we look at various anticipated climate scenarios. For instance, in our region, we're expecting a lot more rain than usual and so we've got soil erosion issues on land that is not under perennial cover, erosion that is pretty severe and has a lot of impact on the health of the Mississippi River System. And how that might affect the kinds of food or the kinds of crops grown in Wisconsin will change the way transportation needs to work. For instance, if corn production is moving north, we have the right infrastructure in the wrong place to handle that change.
So, I guess I have one more slide. Do I have one more? No. I did want to mention that market access and food access are part of the same system. It's fundamental to everyone's well-being. And I think the Transportation Research Board's Freight Subcommittee understands that, and it will be targeting the issue for future calls for papers and that sort of thing. Thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity to share what we've been working on.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Michelle. Our next presentation will be given by Alice Huang. As a Food Access Planner for the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative (BFPI), Alice focuses on improving food access in Baltimore's Healthy Food Priority Areas (previously known as food deserts). She works with partners in transportation and in the local food system to address transportation gaps that impact food access and develop out strategies to help bring people to food and food to people.
Alice Huang
Hi, everyone. My name is Alice Huang. I am a Food Access Planner within the Department of Planning for Baltimore City. And within that office we have our little hub of the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative. One of the things I want to talk about is the fact that we are a part of a city agency, so the perspective I'm coming at is from a city policy perspective. We are a planning office specifically looking at food. And so, from our end, we are not transportation planners; we do not know a whole lot about transportation. But we are realizing that transportation is such a crucial part of food access, and understanding that that is very much necessary when we are trying to address food access strategies. So in this part, I'm going to talk a lot more about the last-mile of how food gets to people and how we need to start thinking about and understanding just how our residents get to food. So, with that, I also want to say some of these slides will be coming from my colleague, Celeste Chavis, from the Morgan State University. And I'll go into that in more detail, but we've been partnering a lot with the work that we've been doing. Her as a transportation researcher, me as a food planner, and trying to figure out how we can get our work to kind of bridge together more.
So, to give some background; The Baltimore Food Policy Initiative, we kind of are comprised of three components. The first is actually an interagency collaboration, so it's mainly between the Baltimore Office of Sustainability, the Department of Planning, the Health Department, and the Baltimore Development Corporation. But as we continue to expand we are hoping we can continue to make food a relevant issue to multiple agencies in the city and help them understand where food plays a role in their work, and really integrating food into multiple plans and multiple planning processes. We have the Food Policy Action Coalition; we meet quarterly and we have over 60 stakeholders, people who work on food issues in the city coming together to collaborate, to share ideas and resources, to network. It's just a way for different folks who are working on food in the city to come together and to break down silos. And finally, we have our Resident Food Equity Advisers. It's one of our newer launches, and this is the part of our pursuit of trying to figure out how to bring more racial equity into the work we do. In this initiative that we are working on, we have residents who have applied to be a part of our work, and we've been collaborating with them and working with them to create resident-informed policy recommendations. In these, every cohort is a different focus. At some point it might be transportation. We've currently been working on small food retail. So that is kind of the breakdown of how BFPI functions. And together, we use food as a catalyst to address health, economic, and environmental disparities in Healthy Food Priority Areas.
To give some background in terms of the Healthy Food Priority Area. It was previously known as food deserts. We talked to a lot of folks in the community, and folks were talking about how that didn't quite define how they felt they were living. They wanted to kind of express things on their own, whether saying they were experiencing food apartheid, or they were experiencing lack of resources. We wanted residents to have their own narrative, and deserts were considered a naturally occurring phenomenon and food deserts are not. From that we decided to change our terminology and how we talk about this. From this time forward I'm going to be calling the areas that were previously known as food deserts as Healthy Food Priority Areas.
We have looked at how mapping can drive policy. So, going into our Food Environment Map; as you can see this is a map of Baltimore City. The areas in red are considered Healthy Food Priority Areas, and those areas are defined by four factors. If those areas have all four factors, they are considered a Healthy Food Priority Area. One (1) is the Healthy Food Availability Score. And that was conducted in partnership with John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Their staff went throughout the city and visited 800 stores in one point in time. And in doing so, they designated a score for each store that they visited looking at the variety and the quality of the food that each store had, and the amount of food each store had. With that we used those scores to create these Average Food Availability Scores within census blocks. So, we used that to determine whether or not certain areas are considered low scoring, average scoring, or high scoring. We looked at poverty levels (2), we looked at low vehicle availability (3), and we also looked at whether or not that area was within a quarter mile of a supermarket (4). If you can see out of the four criteria we use to determine whether or not something is a priority area, half of the criteria are really related to transportation – vehicle availability and distance to a supermarket. So, as we kept thinking about food access, we realized that transportation really needs to be something that we intentionally think about when we think about food access. And when you look at the impact, you can see that almost a quarter of residents live in these areas, but children and seniors are particularly impacted by these areas. But if you look at the last point, 31% of black residents live in priority areas, whereas only 9% of white residents do. And so, on our end, we really see this as a racial equity issue and something we needed to address from that lens as well.
And with that I'm going to move forward. And what we saw was we really wanted to help our elected – our councilmembers, our legislative representatives – to better understand the food environment. So not only did we create a citywide map, but we created maps that were specific to people's districts. And this was to help these elected understand their specific food environment. Just how much Healthy Food Priorities are present in their districts, and also to be able to understand and identify different resources available in their districts. Through this they were able to kind of see what was available, but also see how their districts compared to other districts in the city. With that we created these reports and briefs that not only highlight the map, but really help them understand what the demographic breakdown is of their district and who is lives in the healthy priority areas. We were also able to break down how to think about food. We talked about food retail and the scores of the stores available in the districts, but we also talked about urban agriculture, nutrition assistance support, and really wanting to help our elected and other folks at large to understand all the components that impact food in their particular district and as a city.
So, with these resources, we started to delve into more opportunities for partnership and collaboration and how to really build on these strategies that we wanted to address. And this is where transportation kind of plays out and takes a role here. You'll see here we have our Healthy Food Environment Strategy. And it's an eight-point plan that we developed based on what we saw as the relevant points in our mapping, in our interactions with people working on food, the issues they thought were important and the opportunities where we saw we could make some nudging, some impact in terms of food access. So, one of the main ones in point eight says to address transportation gaps that impact food access. For us, even though we were just delving into transportation, we knew it was something we had to call out and start to think about. And so, we put that in our strategy to really kind of push that out to hold us accountable, but to also challenge other people to start thinking about transportation when they think about food. And going back to what Michelle had shared, one of the other points was point number 5 where it says, "implement supply chain solutions that support healthy food distribution and small businesses". And so, for us, what we saw was we have these small food retailers who are trying to sell fresh produce. But for them, one, the cost of buying something not in bulk was a challenge. And the price being of what they could offer for their produce was not the same as what a larger store could offer. So, for them, supply chain solutions was something we really do need to address especially if the small retailers are in a healthy food priority area and access to food is limited. And we thought that we need to better understand how food is distributed and really understand how these store owners, these corner store owners, small food retailers could really access produce at an affordable price and according to their own schedules of businesses. For small retailers, running a business is really hard and sometimes getting to a food terminal is not always easy or convenient. So, those are some of the things that we realize we have to think more about and really start to figure out how to tackle.
So, as we kept trying to think about food and thinking about how we can continue to bring transportation into our work, we actually met with Celeste Chavis from Morgan state University. And in our conversation, she was saying, "I think a lot about transportation and I really want to think more about how people get to food." And that's so great, because we, as a city, want to do that, too. And for us, we really wanted to understand consumer behavior. A lot of times as we think about how we determine whether or not to bring a grocery store into the city – not that that's in our control – but when we think about incentives or how to incentivize stores to come in, oftentimes people think we just need to make sure there's a store in the neighborhood. But we really wanted to understand. Are people shopping there? Do people go to their closest grocery store? How do people travel to the store? What are their preferences? And those are things that we needed a research partner to help us to ask and to find out. And so what was really great about this study with Celeste was that we were part of the development of the survey. It wasn't just that she created it and gave us the findings. But in the process, she vetted it with us, we talked about the questions that we wanted to find out, we shared it with our partners; really trying to figure out what kind of transportation questions were we trying to figure out. And we also collaborated on outreach strategies, we connected Morgan State with some grocery stores so they could do in-person surveying, and we also did online platforms and really tried to spread this widely. We ended up getting 400 responses, I guess close to 450. And so with this study we were able to kind of really see where people were shopping and kind of their behavior. And with this we saw that folks didn't necessarily shop at their closest store. Some were willing to shop outside of the city to get the food or the resources they wanted. And we saw that a lot of folks ended up going to a super store like a Walmart or a big box store. Some people shopped specifically at the farmers markets or even these small grocers. So, we saw that there was really a wide range of what people were willing to do for food, where they were going, and even considering that stores like Walmart have other resources, and that those stores are also considered food destinations. And so, this was a really interesting piece we're seeing, where people traveled. And when folks were food shopping, they did not necessarily go to their closest store. And here you can see that while a majority do go to the closest store, regardless of whether or not someone has a vehicle or not, there's still a good chunk of people who choose not to go to the closest store to get their food. And so we realized that there are a lot of factors that impact how people determine whether or not they shop at a certain store. And a lot of it has to do with people want good quality food and maybe the store nearest to them they don't feel has the quality of food that they're looking for. Or maybe it's more convenience where they would shop at a big box store and so that would give them all the resources they need that are not just food related. But I think this is interesting for us because oftentimes people talk about needing a store in the neighborhood, but there are other factors when we think of food access and what food access means to residents.
So, if we keep looking at the findings, we were looking at vehicle access and we realized this was actually a really important indicator of grocery accessibility. And we saw that people who owned vehicles ended up shopping more frequently at stores. People with a car would visit a store about five times a month, versus someone without a car would visit a little over 3-4 times per month. And then they would also visit a greater number of stores and would also go to stores that would have a higher quality of food. And so this was really interesting for us. I think there's some things we assume, but it was helpful to see just how many people ended up following this type of behavior.
And so, as we continue to kind of look at this, we were also looking at people who don't have vehicles and what they did. And so, we saw that the majority of people, or 46%, would either borrow or hire a car. But we saw that car sharing was not something that people would do. We saw that very limited number of folks would use public transit to get to a store, but a little over a third ended up going to using a bike or walking to the store. For those who walked to the store, most of them lived less than half a mile from the store, so it was realistically accessible. And we saw folks of a lower income ended up using Hacks more often than not.
So, just to flesh out some things, Hacks are kind of what Celeste called uber before there was uber. It's a very nonformal taxi-type service in Baltimore City. A lot of folks will be driving their own car and using that to offer rides to folks. Often you'll go to the grocery store and you'll see Hacks drivers waiting outside to provide rides for folks who are going to the grocery store and want a ride back. We see that they are the busiest closer to the weekends, on Friday and Saturday. And they actually provide a really great service. Celeste had a student do some interviews with some of the Hack drivers at grocery stores. And they were asking do you feel threatened? Are you worried about uber or Lyft taking over your business? And for the most part these hack drivers were not worried at all. For them, they have loyal customers and they really were taking pride in the fact that they offer customer service; walking the customer to the door, helping to carry the groceries to doors. It wasn't just a ride service. And this has been a staple in the Baltimore City culture of how people access places and transport themselves. And so, we really wanted to kind of think about the role of Hacks and especially as we continue to think about racial equity. What is their role and how do they play out in terms of providing a service for food access? And wanting to figure out whether or not whatever interventions or programs or policies we are thinking about, also needing to consider how that would impact these folks. And for them this is a job for them and needing to understand multiple dimensions of how transportation strategies would impact these Hack drivers.
And so, as we continue to think about transportation, we also look at this idea of delivery. So, we talk about how to get people to food, but then we also want to think about getting food to people. And looking at the study and the findings that Morgan had, we saw that everyone uses takeout, everyone uses takeout services. But when you think more about fresh groceries and staple food, I think that's a little different. Not as many people use grocery pickup services. And even with meal prep services, it was clearly something that people with higher income and higher means were able to access. And so, really kind of seeing how people are using food deliveries and the challenges of food deliver, whether people feel it's trusted, it's really accessible to them. And I think from a city perspective we've been trying to think of food delivery as well. Trying to think through, what does it look like to allow residents who are on snap to access grocery deliver services for them? Right now that is not something that is allowed. Right now, purchasing groceries with your snap benefits via online platform is not legal, but there is a pilot program being played out right now throughout the country that's launched by the USDA. And I think we're waiting to kind of see how that plays out in other cities and even in Baltimore city. But we've seen that there are a lot of reservations about that for folks who live in some areas. I think the fear of getting your groceries stolen, delivery times (whether or not someone will be home when a delivery is made), whether or not they can deliver fresh produce versus canned and dry goods. Those are some of the things we're thinking about. At this point, I think food delivery is something we're exploring, but there are some challenges in terms of how to make that into something realistic and practical for residents here.
So, all in all with all of the things that we were able to find we saw that vehicle ownership was really the most significant predictor of store access. We saw that really having a store close to you does not necessarily mean that people will access it. Public transit is not necessarily a resource that people are using to go grocery store shopping. Maybe someone can get to a store through transit but not a ride home once they get their groceries. And just thinking about how takeout services and grocery delivery services are being utilized and trying to understand the challenges of those pieces. And so with that, we've been trying to think of what our next steps are in terms of how we continue to think of transportation as a food access strategy. So, one of the things that we are trying to work with is the MTA. They are looking in terms of their routes. So, as our local transit services are looking at how different bus routes are created, trying to understand what is accessible along those routes. And so, one of the things we've been talking to them about the understanding whether or not a grocery store is accessible on certain routes and what do we define accessibility as. Just because a store is on a route does not mean someone who lives near the route can get there quickly. Because a store on the route might mean that it's 45 minutes away even though it's on the route. So, we're understanding how do we understand distance and time of travel when thinking about food access? We're looking at how ride-hailing apps play out in all of this? There are some ride-hailing services are starting to think about food access in terms of how they are serving the communities they are located in. And that's something that we are exploring. And in terms of just public transportation, we are even just looking at where people are meeting in terms of looking at hubs. Whether or not there are considerations for different stations to have food retail or farmers markets, pop-ups. Really understanding how we bring retail options to different stations if that is where people are. Understanding just even as transportation planners are thinking about where bus stops need to be and where a route should be. Are supermarkets part of that scoring criteria and that consideration? And figuring out how to better integrate food access into transit policies and how do we bring transit into our food planning approaches as well.
Some other pieces as we think about how food and transportation are connected. Recently, there's been a report released by Safe Routes to Healthy Foods, which was kind of an offshoot of Safe Routes to Schools, looking at what does it mean for people to be able to safely get to grocery stores and food sources. And finally, one of the things we have also looked at is food resilience, which is relevant to what Michelle was presenting. Really looking at areas of weaknesses in terms of how food gets transported to our region and to Baltimore city. We've worked with Erin Beale at The Center for a Livable Future out of Johns Hopkins, and they've been looking more at the resilience piece of foods, and how kind of the food flow that Michelle was referring to and understanding in terms of flooding or other natural disasters, what areas are more at risk and how would that impact how food gets to our cities? And those are the different things that we have been looking at and we are continuing to figure out how do we increase our partnership with transportation planners, transportation researchers to be able to really make a more thorough strategy around food access and transportation. And I know Celeste is on the line too. And she would be able to also talk more if there are questions. But, yes, that is my presentation. Thank you.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you, Alice. We do have a number of questions and we'll start going through them. Please feel free to continue to type in your questions. Alice, we'll start with questions for you since you just finished. Can you delve deeper into why people chose not to shop at the nearest grocery and was that studied in the experiment at all?
Alice Huang
We don't, in terms of people's responses. They didn't give an explanation. It was a multiple choice survey. But from what we've learned from talking to residents and people in the community, I think there are preferences, and oftentimes there are these smaller, affordable stores located near communities. But I think communities don't necessarily feel like that store is providing them the best quality food. And I think there are concerns about whether or not there's enough variety there, whether or not the store is offering stuff that the community wants. And oftentimes, I think communities have preferences in terms of the types of stores they want to shop at. And unfortunately, those stores don't always want to be located in those communities. And I think a lot of times it is preference and choice and people really wanting to have a shopping choice with the quality of food that they have.
Michelle Miller
I would add a little bit, that sometimes people are making choices based on economics too. So for instance, they might make a single monthly shopping trip to the big box grocery store to buy things much more cheaply. And then do weekly or every other day to the nearby store for the something fresh or meat.
Jennifer Symoun
All right, thank you. And I should have mentioned, Michelle feel free to jump in as well if you have an answer for the questions. The next question for Alice is have you found correlation between frequency of visits to groceries and the quality of the selected stores? Do people with preference for higher quality food shop more frequently for fresh products?
Alice Huang
I would say I don't know from a research perspective, but I think from our conversations with residents and community members, I do think kind of what Michelle was saying, typically when people shop they have one large shopping trip. They go to a big box store or a larger grocery store to buy the items that they can stock for a month. And then usually for the rest of the month they'll have smaller trips, once a week at the local store or at a corner store. I don't know if people who want high quality food necessarily correlates to people shopping more frequently for fresh products, but I do think one of the things folks have been talking about the different cultures of how people eat. And oftentimes kind of where we are, folks do think about big box stores, big shopping trips, and buying things in bulk to stock up versus the idea of folks having a store so close by that they can go every day to shop for something fresh. And I think there are different cultural differences in where we are, urban versus. We were talking about the transportation planner, and he was telling us he was living in Europe for a while. And when he was out there, that was something people did. The reason why the markets there are open every day versus our markets open once a week is that people go every day to get fresh produce. And part of the challenge is just that I think people live differently where we are, and that's something that we need to think about in terms of what people consider as a realistic frequency. And also just figuring out that people here, I think especially with depending on your income level, the time that you have to go shopping can be really limited if you're jumping from one job to the other. And the ability to go more frequently, regardless of your preference for fresh produce, can be challenging if you have multiple jobs t0 go to and children to take care of. And so I think there's a lot of cultural things that need to be considered in how residents live.
Jennifer Symoun
Another question for you, Alice. How do you think the healthy food priority areas would translate to suburban and/or rural areas?
Alice Huang
You know, so the Healthy Food Priority Areas in Baltimore City were created because we have looked at USDA designations for what was considered a food desert. And if you use their designation, it just was not an accurate representation, because a lot of industrial areas were then labeled as food deserts and it was not accurate to where people were. I think one of the things to think about is how do you create a definition that is relevant for the places you're serving? And so, I think there is an importance about distance to a grocery store, but I think there's also questions of how people access a store and what is a reasonable amount of time it would take for someone to get there. I think it really is case by case. For us, we've been realizing that when we created the definition, there's very little that we can change about our food deserts. You were talking to a transportation planner and even if we improved our bus routes and we made sure that grocery stores were located on the high frequency routes, that doesn't change anything about this map. And so, for us, we realize that had at some point we'll probably have to evolve as people are looking at online purchases and if online delivery becomes something that's really accessible, how does that challenge us to change the factors that we determine in terms of how we define a Healthy Food Priority Area? And so, in terms of how it translates, I'm honestly unsure. I think it does depend on kind of that area and being a little specific to those areas and how they serve them.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. I'm going back up to some of the questions that came in for Michelle. And then we'll go back.
Can the supply chain model developed by Kwik Trip in La Crosse be adapted to the producers themselves? I know KT has a milk supply chain in place.
Michelle Miller
I don't know a lot in depth about Kwik Trip's supply chain, but I do know a little bit about how they've organized to allow the trucks to use natural gas. And I think there are definitely some things that we can learn from them about how they chose where to put natural gas outlets. Again, if we're intending to electrify everything as an approach to climate change, then I think understanding how to set up those kinds of supply chains that actually supply truck fuel is a really important piece.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. And another question for you. Do you think the Land Grant University Extension Offices could help or partner to address the need for public food flow studies or data?
Michelle Miller
Extension has played a really important role in thinking about food systems and also equity within food systems. And they certainly have a role in that sphere. As for specifically looking at food flow, I'm not sure. I know the extension people I work with here in Wisconsin don't necessarily have that kind of a transportation background that they could easily apply that, but that might not be the case in other parts of the country. For instance, Texas or California, I don't know much about how their extension service serves their particular constituency and if they have that kind of analytical transportation analysis capacity or not.
Jennifer Symoun
And another one for you. Are the food terminals funded by the private sector, the public sector, or both?
Michelle Miller
My favorite example for food terminals is the Ontario food terminal. The way they structured I thought was brilliant. They received either with a no-interest or low-interest loan from Ontario. And then they paid that back in less than 10 years. So, they operate as a nonprofit, and they charge a rent to the businesses that are there. So in that sense it's privately funded. But it's also maintained this governing structure that includes the public good. And to me that seems to be the best of both words. I know a lot of food terminals have, for instance I'm thinking of Hunts Point where the city owns the facility and then rents the space out to businesses. The food terminal in Chicago is run like a co-op, or a condo association is probably more accurate. So different food terminals that are in existence have different governing structures and ownership structures, and that's part of Lindsey's work is to better understand what's working and what's not working to meet the public interest.
Jennifer Symoun
All right, thank you. Let's see here. Here's a question for both of you. Speaking of preferences and cultures, can speakers comment on work that has been done to look at specialty ethnic grocery stores serving specific communities?
Alice Huang
I can share a little bit. So, what we've seen often with when we look at our smaller retailers like our corner stores and those types of stores, we have found that the ethnic grocery stores, the Latinx stores, the Asian stores, they tend to have higher scores in terms of their healthy food availability. And part of it is because they are serving a specific group of people who have specific requests and needs. And so because of that, they are selling particular items that maybe the average store wouldn't have. There is one store that we have who is within a very heavy Spanish-speaking community. And we've seen that residents will kind of travel a little further out just to go to that store even though it's small. Because of that they do fairly well, because they are serving a specific need and a specific group. There have been conversations about trying to figure out how to translate these ethnic grocery stores to a wider reach if they are doing so well. But the problem is, they are doing well because they are serving a specific community. And once you take that store, it's challenging to say, "well that can be a model, let's take it into this other community." I think often we forget there are cultural differences between some of the store owners and the communities they serve, and really trying to understand that. Just because one store in one community, they are selling like masa and other items that are very culturally specific. And that's what allows them to have these considered staple food items. They might not be able to sell that somewhere else. So oftentimes, I think we need to look at that, but also realizing that with a lot of these stores, we've been trying to figure when we think about it from an equity perspective how are we really helping them thrive and are we providing the language services that they need in order to be better stores or to be better able to serve the communities and have even a wider reach. And so, I think those are some of the things that we've been thinking a lot in terms of the specialty stores or the ethnic grocery stores. Because they are thriving and they are doing well, and we do want to figure out how do we activate that into something greater and see how that can be a model, but needing to understand that nuance between that community and other communities in the city.
Michelle Miller
I would add that ethnic grocery stores are the classic example of a small supply chain. They have to access their products from a specific vendor or maybe a couple of vendors. And so, supporting ethnic grocery stores so that they have access food that's appropriate is really key. One of the conversations I had with the manager of the Ontario Food Terminal was that at his terminal, the Italian Canadian farmers would sell to the Italian Canadian stores, and the Asian-Canadian farmers would sell to the Asian-Canadian stores. He stressed that ethnic supply chains are there because there's a trust level and the ability to communicate and have high-level communication in this bull-whip supply chain. The other thing I'd mention is that in African-American neighborhoods there's also an interest to purchase products from African-American farmers. And so, one of the bright spots we see in our on the ground work to put in a cross dock in the upper Midwest is that we would be able to improve the north-south movement of food in our region. Right now, we're kind of in the shadow of Chicago as the primary, the huge warehousing district for food moving east-west. And so, the north-south connections just aren't there. However, we know we've got connections to products that we could move north-south fairly efficiently if we had a single drop place for those trucks.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, both to have you. Alice, do you have any insight into your role in city planning for grocery delivery services and equity? And also, what the MPO's role is.
Alice Huang
When we think of grocery deliveries, often we're trying to continue to emphasize the importance of food access. I think we've been trying to make sure that we are in those spaces and in those conversations, because when we look at grocery delivery, there are a lot of challenges. And certain people who are trying to explore delivery are saying, "we can't do fresh produce, but we could do canned goods and dry goods." That's not our request. We think it's very important that these folks are able to access healthy and fresh and affordable food. For us, when we're in those, I guess the great thing about our department is we have an office that focuses on food policy. And because we have that space, then we get to walk into those spaces. And so, in that way that we have had conversations with food retailers and people who are doing delivery and really trying to help them better understand the needs of residents who are on snap so that when they think of grocery delivery services they are not just thinking about these higher income, typically, upper middle class residents, but they are thinking citywide how can we really serve the city. I don't think there are a lot of easy answers. But for us, we just constantly try to make sure that those considerations never disappear. And also figuring out delivery costs. How do we deal with delivery costs, especially for someone who is on snap? Because Snap will not cover delivery costs, they'll only cover the cost of the food. And so really trying to work with these companies to try to figure our what are some ways that we can develop strategies or find funding to be able to cover delivery costs if and when this becomes viable for these communities. And in terms of how do we engage, I think for us it's very unique because we have a food policy office. And so that allows us to be in these conversations in the way that we are.
Michelle Miller
I would add that again like Alice was saying, who is going to pay for this? Big companies are creating these pick-up arrangements, but not delivery. It's too expensive to deliver that last mile. So companies like Amazon and Walmart are maybe toying with it a little bit. But no one has really bought into it big time. So, to me that's an indicator that this is not the way to go. And I also share the story that here in Madison, we've got 33 community supported agriculture arrangements where people pay in advance of the season for a weekly delivery of a box of food. And so those 33 farms moving a fair amount of product into the city weekly at 179 drops. It's just insufficiently organized to be efficient. And they're operational cost of that is not apparent to them. They've been looking at doing house to house drops as opposed to neighborhood drops, which would make it less efficient. So, we've been talking with them about how to finesse that. And then I would look to the United States Postal Service for what it really costs to do door-to-door delivery, because they probably know better than anybody what it really costs.
Jennifer Symoun
Another question to both of you. In California, Local Health Departments (mostly county level) are funded to do food system work to create greater access to food. They are interested the model just discussed - building capacity within communities to keep wealth in the communities (think local production, distribution, processing, sales, etc.). Are there any good examples of models of that type of localized/regional food systems work? And can you also speak to your collaboration with health departments and what their role is as a partner in this work?
Alice Huang
In terms of looking at building capacity within communities, I would say that there's a lot of conversation I would say happening in Baltimore City. I would say in terms of that local community preservation, there's a group, his name is Eric Jackson, he started something called the Black Yield Institute. And they are really talking about the idea of food apartheid and what does it look like to really empower the black community to really sustain for themselves. And so, they are exploring co-op models, and that's in the exploratory phase right now and in the very initial steps. That's part of the conversation of how do we think differently in terms of how we are sourcing our food and how we are better supporting local urban agriculture. I think right now urban agriculture, at least what's happening in Baltimore City, there's conversation about how do you better allow urban agriculture to serve the communities they're in versus just selling your products to higher end restaurants or higher end folks? But the farms that are located in communities, how do you make sure that the communities are able to afford what you're growing? Those are a lot of conversations that are being had right now. We have an organization called The Farm Alliance where all of these urban farmers are coming together and having a conversation of how to have better cohesion and to create a better system to be able to serve residents in Baltimore City better. There's also a pastor named Pastor Heber Brown in Baltimore City who is starting The Black Church Food Security Network. And he's been trying to figure out how do churches serve as hubs in their communities, as hubs for food? And within the black community, the entity has the largest amount of property and assets is the black church. And so, how do we mobilize the black church to be better able to serve the communities they are in? And they have huge land, so how do you challenge the churches to start growing food on the property or holding space where people can access food from a very economic standpoint, not just as a food pantry? And I think there are some of these conversations happening in terms of building community capacity, and really trying to get communities to have more ownership around some of these issues.
In terms of the health department, we do work closely be them on our end. The health department runs something called Baltimarket, which is a suite of services. They do Healthy Cornerstores programming, but they also run something called the Virtual Supermarket where seniors are able to actually order food online through a partnership with a local grocer. And the grocer brings the groceries to senior and disabled housing units once a week at a set time. And in that the folks living in that facility can get their groceries and they are able to use their snap because the grocery store will bring their EBT unit to the housing facility so that folks can use their snap and purchase those things in person. And I think we've been working with them to be more collaboration and understand how do we bring more services to the ground in terms of food access and understanding that food access is really interconnected with a lot of things. We look at our corner stores, and people don't go to corner stores just because there's not good food, they don't go there because there are issues with crime, safety, all these issues. So, in order to address food access, we also need to address all these other issues. And how to transform a corner store to become a community hub. So, we've been working with them to try to think about those pieces as well. So, there's a lot of collaboration with the health department and other agencies in this work.
Michelle Miller
I would point, again, to the Ontario food terminal and essentially what they were doing was a food sovereignty program; that terminal is a food sovereignty program. They didn't want to be reliant on the United States, or globally like Mexico, for those products. They wanted to be able to support the farmers in their city regions. And a big part of providing that market access. I work closely with the 12 tribes in Wisconsin, and there's a lot of interest in trying to fenagle use of the commodity food warehousing that's on each of the reservations to figure out a food distribution structure between reservations. Especially for culturally significant foods like hominy, wild rice, white fish, maple syrup, a whole bunch of other culturally relevant food. And so, I think that's a nascent effort. We've been working with the tribes for maybe 5 or maybe 10 years. But there are a lot of exciting things happening in that space, including an interest in beginning farmer training so that people are growing their own foods. I'd also point to some of the work happening in Minneapolis. There's a very strong co-op community in Minneapolis, and I'm thinking of one store assisting the emergence of a new store in an underserved neighborhood. And one of the really exciting things they did was they developed that north-south supply chain working with the Southern Federation of Co-ops to bring truckloads of pecans, kale, and watermelon so they could sell African-American produced products in the African-American neighborhoods that they were located in. So that was really exciting. And on the health department question, I would say that we've had less collaboration with them on this kind of thing although we've done some work with them on farm-to-school, and farm-to-school is certainly a food flow and distribution issue. So, I know they've been very interested in farm-to-school. And another program that's coming out of the health agencies is work on climate change issues, especially for emergency response professionals. And we see an opportunity to work with them on some similar pieces, not just for emergency response, but for mitigation and adaptation for flood, extreme heat, drought, those kinds of things. So we're just starting discussions on that.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you. Another question for both of you. From your perspective, what is one thing you would suggest to start research related to improving accessibility and affordability of food at a metro wide scale?
Michelle Miller
Alice? Do you want to give that?
Alice Huang
You can go first if you have one that comes to mind.
Michelle Miller
I can give you one off the top of my head. The issue of food flow is really important. There might be easy flow for the something in a region that's common so like in California, you're right there next to the Central Valley and producing large amounts of vegetables and fruit. That might be an easy thing to first of all figure out what the flow is, and then figure out how to increase the flow in the areas where it's lacking. Somebody was commenting, "I bet in Chicago, the food warehousing is located where all the poor people live, and they don't have access to huge stores of food." And that might be true in many cases. So, figuring out that the flow of food first from the growing regions into where it goes to the city and then from that last mile is really key. One of the reports that I had in my slide set was the Five Borough Food Flow Project that the city of New York released about two or three years ago now maybe. That's a great model for understanding food flow in an urban area. So, if you don't have that kind of detailed knowledge, it's worth looking into.
Alice Huang
I think I do agree in terms of the food flow and supply chain solutions. I think often, I feel like as a city when we look at food we're looking so hyper local and looking at individual stores and individual communities. And often when you do that, I think the system piece, it's hard because you have to look hyper local, but also system wide. So, a better understanding of the system of how food flows through our cities is probably something that would be helpful to understand kind of where are areas that we can intervene and where are areas that we can step in, especially when we're looking at how to make things affordable for stores. Often when people think of food and food insecurity, a lot of times they think "How do we open up a food pantry or how do we give away free food?" But often the retail perspective gets lost, and the retail perspective is really what we need to figure out, because we really want these communities to be not just depending on donations all the time, but for them to figure out how do they thrive and how do they become a thriving community? And in order to do that we need to understand how retail plays a role and I feel that's often a piece that doesn't get clearly spelled out. And understanding just the flow of food as it affects retailers and the cost of food and the price points of how things are sold I think is really helpful. For example, we've seen other interventions where locally, there's Loyola University, and they do, in terms of the food they provide for students and for the campus, they order a little bit extra at a wholesale price which can then be provided to local stores in that community to be able to better serve that community and to really launch a healthy corner store program that can help the store owners find produce at an affordable price. And so often, I think that situation is very unique because you have a partner university who is willing to provide wholesale items to these stores at smaller amounts. And so, for us, it's like what are other strategies to really help these stores get affordable produce from the wholesale perspective? Whether it's a group buying system, but really understanding how to make food flow work for smaller retailers is something that we are still trying to delve into.
Michelle Miller
Alice you reminded me of another example that might be of interest to people. And that is, we're working right now with a large I.T. company that doesn't really have a direct budget when it comes to food. And one of the things we learned is that they're using the same provider, the same distributor that the school system is using. And they've been in talks with the school system to figure out what items would the school system like to buy organically or local from that distributor? But they can't buy in enough volume to keep it on the distributor's sell list. So, they are then buying enough of the product to not only keep it on the sell list, but also to bring down the price overall of that product so the school district can use that product. So, that's kind of a collaboration that I had no idea was going on and it was good to hear about it.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. And I think we have time for one more question. So what is the role of recusing food waste? reducing food waste?
Michelle Miller
I was going to say that in my understanding of the system, one of the key reasons for food waste is this kind of a food planning issue. So, if you go to the store and you're thinking, "I've got to have lunch for the kids and school and then we're going to do five meals this week, what am I going to make?" And then I go in and buy all that stuff and then take it to my refrigerator and with the intention of using it all week long. And then two days, the kids are sick and another day somebody's got a birthday party and I end up eating dinner out. You know, all these unforeseen things and then I end up with a bunch of dead food that I have to throw out. And to me, that aspect of food waste is a key one. And it gets back to where you get the most efficiencies in terms of storing food, especially cold food. Refrigerated and frozen food requires a lot of energy. And if we're trying to address our energy consumption to address climate change, where should we be storing all this food? Is it better to keep it in a centrally located store or in our individual homes? So, food waste is a critical piece of looking at the overall system and where the leverage points are.
Alice Huang
I think from a transportation perspective I don't know if I can connect all the dots. But I do know in Baltimore City we just started a Food Matters program with the Natural Resource Defense Council. And we are really trying to create a strategy to cut down on food waste. And often I think when people think of food waste, they are thinking of compost, but really we want to talk about food recovery as well. And, one, how do we encourage people to buy less? If you're hardly going to drink a gallon of milk, maybe you shouldn't buy a large bottle of milk that large. Really helping people be conscious about how much they are buying. And then looking at gleaning programs and how gleaning programs can reallocate food to areas in need so that food doesn't go to waste. And our hope is that less food goes into the dump and even into compost, and actually gets into mouths. I think there's a lot of conversation around that and challenging people to think about food differently. And so I think that's been something that we're starting to think about and starting to engage with, and even working with the schools to make sure that the amount of food they order and the amount of food they are putting out there at the counter is not exceeding estimates. It's not about having like a plethora of food, but really trying to be more accurate with the measure and the estimates of how many meals every group has to serve, whether it's school meals, summer meals. But we really want to figure out accuracy so that we really minimize the amount of waste and even the amount of money that goes down the drain when you overestimate the amount of food that you are planning to serve or provide.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, thank you. I think we have gotten through all of the questions. I want to thank both Michelle and Alice for presentations, and thank you all for attending today's seminar. The recorded version of this event will be available within the next few weeks on the Talking Freight website. Registration is not yet available for the May webinar but once it is information will be sent through the Freight Planning LISTSERV. The Freight Planning LISTSERV is the primary means of sharing information about upcoming seminars. I encourage you to join the LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
