Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett, one of the newest members of the House Ag Committee, wants to make sure consumers who have trouble accessing healthy food options get relief when Congress considers changes to the farm bill.
Speaking on this week’s episode of Agri-Pulse Newsmakers, Crockett said the issue of food deserts — a lack of nearby quality, healthy and affordable food options — should unite urban, suburban and rural America. What’s more, she predicted it could be an area “in which we can both find bipartisan support.”
“No one should go hungry in this country; no one should say, ‘I don't know how I'm going to access food,’” she said. “And honestly, we can bring down our overall cost of health care if we just make sure that people have better access,” to fresh food options.
One definition of a food desert might be a rural community lacking a grocery store for miles, but Crockett has been vocal about the prevalence of the issue in more populous areas like her Dallas, Texas, area district. While many rural residents have access to a car to drive them the lengthy distance to the nearest food option, she notes many urban dwellers have to overcome hefty logistical challenges to meet their fresh food needs.
“A lot of times, that's not a reality without say, having to grab a couple of buses to get to that grocery store,” she said.
“Unfortunately, people don't understand that in inner-city, urban America, a lot of times, specifically my kiddos are actually eating whatever is at the local convenience store or the local gas station, which is so problematic,” added Crockett, who was a public defender, civil rights attorney and state legislator before her time in Congress.
“They're not getting nutritious foods, they're getting the junk food, the things that are not allowing them to develop the way that they should be able to develop and learn the way that they need to learn in school,” she said.
One of Crockett’s bills on the subject is a bill to expand the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program to include frozen produce, which would allow the items to be purchased through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Crockett introduced the bill with fellow House Ag Freshman Mark Alford, R-Mo., in May, and a Senate companion bill led by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., was introduced in July.
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Combating food deserts could be another way to maintain the urban-rural farm bill coalition that has shown fractures in recent farm bill cycles with the failure of what would become the 2014 and 2018 farm bills on the floor of the House of Representatives. Partisan fissures over nutrition policy were primary factors in both instances.
Lesly Weber McNitt, a former House Ag staffer now with the Eleanor Crook Foundation, pointed to those failures as a rationale for farm groups to redouble their efforts to make sure both urban and rural members of Congress are also incentivized to support the upcoming farm bill reauthorization.
“I think every group with an interest in the farm bill has a mandate to make that coalition really strong and to make sure that they're reaching out to members from all different types of districts, and working with partner organizations from all different types of districts,” she said.
This week’s episode of Agri-Pulse Newsmakers — which also features comments from Crockett, Weber McNitt and former Senate Ag Staff Director Joel Leftwich on the learning curve for members of Congress working on their first farm bill — can be viewed at Agri-Pulse.com.
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