A new South Dallas urban farm is a good thing, but when will we see more jobs to pull people out of poverty?

Dec 30, 2019 at 08:20 AM CST
There’s a lot to applaud in the efforts to transform a vacant lot owned by DART into an urban farm in South Dallas. We’ve written many times in these pages about the area’s lack of access to nutritious food. Thousands of Dallas’ residents still live miles away from grocery stores and too close to fast-food options that lead to higher cases of obesity, diabetes and all sorts of ailments. And any project that promises to improve on land in that a neglected part of our city is a cause we can get behind. We’ve seen the negative impact vacant lots can have on neighborhoods. But our enthusiasm for this endeavor is tempered when we hear of another urban farm in an area that so desperately needs grocery stores with volume and product availability — and serious economic development. No urban farm can make up for decades of historic underinvestment in an area and the underlying societal causes that create food deserts in the first place. An estimated 700,000 Dallas residents have limited access to grocery stores. That’s an unacceptable that won’t be rectified by a micro farm.

Dec 30, 2019 at 08:20 AM CST

There’s a lot to applaud in the efforts to transform a vacant lot owned by DART into an urban farm in South Dallas. We’ve written many times in these pages about the area’s lack of access to nutritious food. Thousands of Dallas’ residents still live miles away from grocery stores and too close to fast-food options that lead to higher cases of obesity, diabetes and all sorts of ailments. And any project that promises to improve on land in that a neglected part of our city is a cause we can get behind. We’ve seen the negative impact vacant lots can have on neighborhoods. But our enthusiasm for this endeavor is tempered when we hear of another urban farm in an area that so desperately needs grocery stores with volume and product availability — and serious economic development. No urban farm can make up for decades of historic underinvestment in an area and the underlying societal causes that create food deserts in the first place. An estimated 700,000 Dallas residents have limited access to grocery stores. That’s an unacceptable that won’t be rectified by a micro farm.