{"id":28252,"date":"2017-05-08T09:44:21","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T14:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=28252"},"modified":"2018-02-20T18:24:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T00:24:58","slug":"new-law-plows-funding-path-for-locally-grown-food-to-fill-urban-grocery-gaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2017\/05\/08\/new-law-plows-funding-path-for-locally-grown-food-to-fill-urban-grocery-gaps\/","title":{"rendered":"New Law Plows Funding Path for Locally Grown Food to Fill Urban Grocery Gaps"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_28257\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28257\" alt=\"Sherry Laskey stands near land she bought in a north Tulsa neighborhood. Laskey is hoping to turn the empty lot into a profitable community garden that provides healthy food for the area.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Laskey_WEB.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Laskey_WEB.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Laskey_WEB-500x375.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Laskey_WEB-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Laskey_WEB-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Laskey_WEB-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sherry Laskey stands near land she bought in a north Tulsa neighborhood. Laskey is hoping to turn the empty lot into a profitable community garden that provides healthy food for the area.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>Low-income areas of rural Oklahoma are blotched with food deserts, where fresh, healthy food options are scarce. It\u2019s a problem in cities, too, but entrepreneurs, educators and legislators say newly signed legislation could help fill grocery gaps with community gardens.<\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/321565834&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=false\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p><p><!--more-->School just let out at Walt Whitman Elementary in north Tulsa and a group of third and fifth graders is eager to brag about the garden they helped plant on a hillside behind the school.<\/p><p>Thomas Boxley, an outreach liaison at the University of Oklahoma\u2019s Wayman Tisdale Specialty Clinic who runs the school\u2019s garden project, asks the kids about the coming bounty. \u201cWhat are you all growing this year?\u201d<\/p><p>\u201cAll kinds of fruits and vegetables,\u201d one replied. \u201cAnd, um, \u2026basils?\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>\u2018Hood stores,\u2019 dirt dreams<\/h3><p>For many Whitman students, fresh, healthy foods are hard to come by. This school, and the poor, mostly black neighborhoods that surround it, are located within an urban food desert, a government classification for a low-income area without a grocery store offering fresh meat and produce.<\/p><p>Boxley says most of the students are eligible for free or reduced school lunches.<\/p><p>\u201cAnd with the recent closing of a grocery store that is about, oh, approximately three-and-a-half miles from where we stand now, the options have even become more limited,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is an important piece to this as well, to show the youth that you can begin to grow some of your food needs right in your backyard.\u201d<\/p><p>Boxley\u2019s motivation is to teach<b> <\/b>kids about where food comes from, the economics of agriculture, and the importance of eating healthy. Sherry Laskey\u2019s goal is different: She wants to make money from some land that backs up to her modest house in the impoverished neighborhood.<\/p><p>\u201cI had an opportunity to just purchase these two lots, and I bought them,\u201d she says.<\/p><p>That land, for now, is just a patch of tilled soil, but Laskey is hoping the garden grows into a successful business that could be a permanent source of fruits and vegetables \u2014 a rarity for the north Tulsa neighborhood, which has a lot of places to buy snacks and junk food, but few outlets for healthy food.<\/p><p>\u201cWe call them hood stores,\u201d she says. \u201cThose are the people who will accept food stamps, and they\u2019ll charge, like, three dollars, four, five dollars for a gallon of milk. And people will pay it because you don\u2019t have anywhere to shop.\u201d<\/p><p>Laskey is trying to fill a need for a struggling area, and it\u2019s not cost-free. She had to buy the empty lots and gardening equipment. She hired local people to help with some of the labor, but Laskey does most of the work herself.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_28258\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28258\" alt=\"Thomas Boxley runs the school garden project at Walt Whitman Elementary, where he teaches children about healthy good by helping them grow their own food.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Boxley_WEB.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Boxley_WEB.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Boxley_WEB-500x375.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Boxley_WEB-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Boxley_WEB-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/05\/PHOTO-4-5-Boxley_WEB-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thomas Boxley runs the school garden project at Walt Whitman Elementary, where he teaches children about healthy good by helping them grow their own food.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Fund-to-Farms<\/h3><p>Gov. Mary Fallin this week signed into law the Urban Gardens Act. The law was created through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oklegislature.gov\/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=SB749&Session=1700\">Senate Bill 749<\/a>, one of the only Democratic bills to survive the 2017 legislative session. The bill\u2019s author, Sen. Kevin Matthews, says the measure creates a fund that can accept donations from individuals and businesses, as well as federal or state money available to address food deserts.<\/p><p>\u201cIn my district, at one time, people lived 14 years less than they did in the rest of the city,\u201d Matthews says. \u201cAnd now, we\u2019ve made some improvement, but they still live 11 years less.\u201d<\/p><p>Matthews says healthy food will go a long way to closing that gap. Thomas Boxley welcomes the help. The garden is relatively new, but he\u2019s already seen the impact it\u2019s had on young Tulsans.<\/p><p>\u201cWhen you get them outside and let them get their hands in the dirt, it just kind of seems to be a stress reliever and a means by which to burn energy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Low-income areas of rural Oklahoma are blotched with food deserts, where fresh, healthy food options are scarce. It\u2019s a problem in cities, too, but entrepreneurs, educators and legislators say newly signed legislation could help fill grocery gaps with community gardens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":28257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[679,702],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28252"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28265,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28252\/revisions\/28265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}