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In our next segment, we'll catch up with MSU Professor Kirk Goldsberry to find out how
to use maps to better understand the retail food environment.
Hi, welcome to What's The 411. I'm Tiffany Lemieux-McKissic and I'm here with Kirk Goldsberry,
who is a professor at Michigan State University, and he's here today to talk to us about his
interesting research on food environments and mapping.
So welcome Kirk, how are you?
I'm good, how are you?
Good. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Well, I'm a professor at Michigan State and I study geography and I'm sort of the cartographer
on campus. I'm the mapping expert on campus, so I teach courses in what's called GIS or
Geographic Information Systems. And my research usually involves mapping things in urban environments.
Awesome, so what are you guys doing around food systems? What does that mean?
Well there are these things called food deserts, which are areas within cities that don't have
ready access to healthy foods, and a lot of people have been talking about this issue
in the last decade or so but nobody's really been able to put their finger on where these
places are within cities. So one of the things mapping enabled us to do is go in and actually
visualize food access in a way that shows people that access within an urban area varies
from very good to very bad within one city.
So are you particularly concentrated in Lansing or different -- across the state, or where
are you looking at this?
We're looking at this right now in Lansing, East Lansing, the whole metropolitan area
here. So there's about 300,000 people who live in Lansing and East Lansing and what
we've tried to do is create a high resolution image of the food environment here in Lansing
with special focus on retail availability of fresh produce in different parts of the
city.
And so how does Lansing rate? How's it going here in Lansing?
Lansing is pretty typical. There are places within Lansing that are really good. We have
a lot of good grocery stores, a lot of good organic markets, a lot of good farmers markets.
However, just like any other city in the country, there are places where it's really inconvenient
and really hard to attain fresh, healthy food, particularly in areas around East Lansing
by the University surprisingly. There are no grocery stores over there.
Really? That is surprising.
And a couple areas here in Lansing that we're kind of concerned about too, where it's not
to say it's a food desert. There is food there. It's just unhealthy food. There's a lot of
liquor stores, there's a lot of restaurants, there's a lot of convenience stores, but there's
not a really good produce section for some of the neighborhoods in this area.
So what do you feel like are the implications of this for the community? What does this
mean to us?
Well, the first step is it should mean that we're aware of this issue. And that's really
the first goal of the project, like I said, is to visualize this. To put a picture of
the food environment in front of people's faces and say look, it depends on where you
live and some people in this area and some neighborhoods in this area are at risk for
obesity or diabetes because of environmental factors such as access to fresh produce. Just
raising the awareness was the first goal.
After that, good maps enable decision makers to sort of mitigate the problem in different
ways. For instance, with new farmers markets or there are certain programs looking at getting
fresh produce into Quality Dairies or some of the smaller markets in town that are really
helping.
But first we wanted to identify which areas needed that so that people in positions of
power could actually make good decisions about improving the food environment.
So what's the solution?
Oh, that's a big question. So what's the solution? I think the solution involves a lot of things:
better markets. Working with market owners to say, "Please stock fresh produce. You're
a really big resource in this community and your community is consuming food based on
what certain retailers stock in their stores." So convincing them to stock healthier food
is one big solution that we're working on.
Another one again is to raise awareness not only that people who live in a quote-unquote
food desert live in a food desert, but where can they go to get healthy food?
And the biggest thing I think is to teach people who have grown up in disadvantaged
nutritional areas is how to cook. Because I think you might live right next to a supermarket
with a giant produce section, but you might not know how to deal with a piece of broccoli
or a potato even. So getting people in organizations in the community to teach kids how to cook
again and the value of fresh produce and how affordable and nutritious this can be for
them, I think that's a big step as well.
So if someone wants to find out more about this or they want to see these maps, where
can they go?
They can look at my website (geo.msu.edu/food). Go to the geography website of Michigan State
University and find my website, and there's all sorts of maps. There's the local area
and different ways of looking at accessibility to fresh produce and other things in the food
environment. And I'd encourage people interested in this to do just that. Go to the website
and look.
Well thanks so much. I have one last question for you. What is your vision of Michigan?
If there were no constraints and it could be any way. How would you picture it?
Well, in terms of food systems I think that Michigan should be more proud of the agricultural
stuff that's going on here. It's second to California. You have so much diversity in
agriculture. You have fruits and vegetables and the envy of almost every other state.
And you don't really see that shown in the markets or shown in the food environment.
I feel especially in the summer time we could eat almost entirely Michigan products and
I'd like to be able to do that with supermarkets supporting those kinds of initiatives and
restaurants opening up that supported all local food because Michigan needs to be more
proud of its agriculture and its food system.
Well thanks so much for joining us on The Bright Side and good luck.
Thanks for having me.