Promote Policies that Increase Access to Affordable Healthy Foods

What Can Policymakers Do?

• Incentivize private groceries moving into underserved communities, this leads to lower food costs and more nutritious choices, creates jobs and revitalizes neighborhoods. Pennsylvania’s Fresh Food Financing Initiative (FFFI), a public-private partnership, provides loans and grants to assist food retailers in building or refurbishing grocery stores in low-income communities. The effort led to 4,860 jobs, 1.5 million square feet of grocery retail space and the expansion of food access for more than 400,000 residents.[1]

• Provide tax credits to other retailers for offering fresh fruits and vegetables. Corner stores and gas stations are sometimes the only retailers present in a community. By providing tax credits to those retailers that provide fresh fruits and vegetables, states enable access to healthy foods in a community while helping to offset the cost associated with carrying fresh foods. The District of Columbia Healthy Corner Store Program, supported by the D.C. Department of Health, aims to reduce food insecurity and improve D.C. residents' health by increasing access to fresh produce and other healthy foods in neighborhoods that do not have supermarkets. The program also supports corner grocery stores by expanding their capacity to sell healthy foods and thereby increase their profits by meeting the community’s unmet need.

• Provide state funding for farmers markets. By providing incentives to local farmers who create farmers markets in underserved communities, states can increase access to healthy foods while supporting local farms.[2] Farmers markets have also been proven to increase revenue to the local businesses in the community where they are located.[3] Arkansas provides funding to assist with the costs of construction and other expenses associated with farmers markets.[4]

• Support local food policies. Supporting local food policy not only promotes access to healthy food for children and families but can also bolster the local economy. States across the country are beginning to rebuild the local food systems so that producers have the proper infrastructure to provide fresh food to their communities.[5] Local food efforts can include the development of food policy councils that advance the availability of locally grown healthy foods, the financing of infrastructure development and the initiation of local food campaigns. Illinois passed the Illinois Food, Farms, and Jobs Act, which established the goal that by 2020, 20 percent of all of the food purchased by the state of Illinois will be produced within the state.