The Luxury of the Grocery Store...

It’s hard to recognize how much we take grocery stores for granted. Even growing up on my ‘isolated’ farm five miles from the nearest store, I was always within easy driving distance of whatever food I needed or craved.

Serving in Forsyth and working to bring the Hysham community a grocery store introduced me to the challenges of living in a food desert. Food can’t be spontaneous when it must be purchased thirty miles away which is a major obstacle to consistently eating fresh, healthy food. 

Even though I spent a great deal of time learning about the challenges that food desert communities face, it’s an issue which is hard to grasp unless you’re living with it. Although Lame Deer has a grocery store stocked with essentials, it doesn't have much in the way of quality fresh produce. If I were to do all of my shopping in Lame Deer, I would face real challenges preparing meals from fresh food that I wanted to eat. Like much of eastern Montana, it is very hard for grocery stores to procure fresh produce because of their small scale and the high transportation costs. As such, my weekends now tend to include a round trip of 40-200 miles to buy food for the coming week (40 miles for the basics, 200 if I’m craving kale or to treat myself to a white chocolate mocha and pastry).

The nearest grocery store outside of Lame Deer is in Colstrip, 22 miles away. Forsyth’s grocery store is 60 miles. Wal-Mart is 100 miles east in Miles City, and the Good Earth Market in Billings is 100 miles west. With gas costing about 20 cents more here on the Reservation than the rest of the region, there are high costs to accessing fresh produce. These can only be averted by bringing good quality food into town or producing our own. There are serious challenges to each, but it is going to take a combination of both to produce real change in how food is treated here. 

Businesses won’t stock a product unless they are confident that consumers will buy it. There are few people here willing or able to pay the high price it takes to ship fresh food here. I’ve had suggestions to bring in programs like Bountiful Baskets, which offers weekly or bi-monthly produce and is touted as a pseudo-CSA, although the food is not necessarily local, organic, in season, or purchased directly from the farmer. However, the main challenge to any of these suggestions is that this community is not ready to change their purchasing habits. How do they know that there are any advantages to buying fresh food, that it can fit into their budget or that their families will eat it? This is why education comes first. 

This week the Boys & Girls Club built a garden out of shipping pallets, and we already have over 30 strawberry plants coming to life. Along the fence line, the garden is easily visible to pedestrians and passing drivers. A brightly-painted sign will make it even more visible, along with sunflowers and other flowers. The opportunity for club members to eat fresh-off-the-vine cherry tomatoes or peas or strawberries will hopefully spread the word that fresh food is well worth the effort it takes.