This story was produced as part of Next City’s Local Reporting Hub, with funding from the Kresge Foundation.
Candice McFarland used to eat salads every other day. But even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials declared last month that the cyclospora outbreak was over, she still hasn’t eaten lettuce from a grocery store for several months, to avoid potential exposure to the microscopic parasite.
“I kind of resorted to eating more unhealthy foods,” said McFarland. She and her husband, Gordon, opened G&C Meat Market last year on North Galvez Street. The meat market is the only Black-owned corner store in the Upper Ninth Ward to offer healthy groceries for residents.
Designed as a food oasis in an area with few supermarkets, G&C also serves fresh produce, including mustard greens and lettuce. But after the cyclospora outbreak, the couple didn’t know if they should continue selling their popular salad greens.
“There’s a lot of people that are local to the area who walk to the store,” McFarland said. “If those neighbors don’t get something healthy at G&C, they might not get it at all.”
When outbreaks like this occur, the already-scarce fresh fruit and vegetables become most scarce in food deserts, said Shannon Coleman, associate professor and consumer safety specialist at the LSU AgCenter.
The official cyclosporiasis season began on May 1, when public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), started tracking an outbreak of cyclospora cases across the United States. Consumers reported exposure after eating iceberg lettuce contaminated by a waterborne parasite. The lettuce was traced back to Taylor Farms de Mexico, which supplies produce to major United States restaurant chains and grocery stores.
Listen (below) to G&C Meat Market owner, Candice McFarland.
On July 18, Taylor Farms voluntarily suspended the sale of all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico.
Several other bacterial pathogen outbreaks have been recorded this year. Brussels sprouts, shell eggs and jalapeños have been reported to be contaminated with Salmonella, while frozen blueberries and raw dairy have been contaminated with E. coli.
Though some people are still wary of all lettuce, other New Orleanians turned to local produce as a way of eating healthy without the worries of pathogen outbreaks. And the city’s urban gardeners, farmers, and food access advocates have been working to meet the need.
Creating regional foods systems with local shopping
It’s been a rough summer for New Orleans lettuce. First, there was heightened demand for it; no one could grow enough. Then came record summer Louisiana heat. “It was super hot, and [the city] wasn’t getting enough rain,” said Ashley Webb, co-owner of Barcelo Gardens, an Upper 9th Ward community garden. Local lettuce reacted by stopping leaf production and sending up flowers, also known as “bolting.”
Finally, in late September, lettuce was redistributed to the garden through the Agra Aquaculture Center of Excellence, which is operated by the Louisiana Chamber of Commerce and supplies several small local stores, including Barcelo Gardens. Last weekend, Barcelo Gardens announced that it “finally” has lettuce again
When news of the cyclospora outbreak started spreading nationwide, Webb saw increased skepticism from customers who regularly purchased produce from grocery store chains. She and other gardeners and food advisors across New Orleans also saw a spike in interest in what local gardens had to offer.
“People were asking a lot of questions and wanted to learn more about local shopping,” Webb said. She was happy to point people toward the work they’ve done over the past decade to broaden access to fresh produce, through Barcelo Garden itself, its storefront, and through community farmers markets organized with other local vendors — all which have expanded in recent months to meet the needs of New Orleanians across town.
In some ways, it seems like the crisis pushed everyone to think bigger: trading starter plants, starting campaigns to secure farmland, distributing more weekly food boxes, and expanding market locations to traditional food deserts in New Orleans East and the 9th Ward.
“We’re working hard to really build our local food system because regional food systems are one of the best ways to avoid issues like [the cyclospora outbreak],” said Samantha Fleurinor, regional director of the New Orleans Food Policy Council.
Most people are asking for ways to become stronger food policy advocates on a municipal and federal level, Fleurinor said. The council has been working hard to secure more state and federal funding for farmers while nudging constituents to talk to their Congresspeople about funding public health initiatives.
“At a local level, we’re trying to ensure that the urban agriculture program remains strong,” she said.
Four years ago, the NOLA Food Policy Council, alongside Sprout NOLA and the Greater New Orleans Growers Alliance launched the “A Greener New Orleans” (AGNO) campaign, to support local farmers and overall food security across the parish.
A liaison hired by the organizations supported local growers navigating the city’s policies to access farm land. “With an infrastructure that is more supportive to urban agriculture, [farmers] are going to be able to have more options to grow their own food and have access to locally grown food.”
How New Orleans East became a food desert
The McFarlands know the scarcities well. After a day of work in the Upper 9th Ward, they head home to New Orleans East, which is classified as a food desert by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
New Orleans East has only two supermarkets: Rouses at 9701 Chef Menteur Hwy. and Walmart at 6000 Bullard Ave. When fresh food crises hit, neighborhood residents struggled disproportionately, experts say.
Residents in the East that relied on fast food were hit harder by the contaminated iceberg lettuce, which was used in Taco Bell products. Dollar stores and other non-supermarkets were also slower to pull tainted products from shelves, which expanded the window of exposure. And the few local gardeners selling lettuce in the East were almost instantly sold out, leaving many people without access to anything green and fresh.
The history of The East shows how neighborhoods can move in and out of food-desert status, after disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or because of economic downfalls, like Louisiana’s 1980s oil bust.
Megan Perry vividly remembers the East before Katrina. Perry made groceries at Schweggmann Brothers Giant Supermarket with family “for literally everything” before its closing in 1999.
The East was also home to Winn Dixie, Walmart, A&P (Atlantic and Pacific) Supermarket, and several other grocery store options.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, major fast-food chains, including McDonald’s, Popeye’s and Taco Bell, opened in the community, like other American suburbs. In 1980, white people made up the majority of the population in the East, at 54% of roughly 77,000 residents. In 1986, the New Orleans East oil bust exacerbated job loss and halted economic development, reducing the predominately white population.
By a decade later, the East’s population had switched to 61% Black. In response, remaining white residents started migrating to St. Tammany and Jefferson Parish and other areas in southeast Louisiana with fewer Black people. During the 2000s, the East became a mecca for Black middle-class and upper-class residents. The suburban community also had a large Vietnamese population that first migrated to Village de L’Est in 1975, after then-Archbishop of New Orleans Phillip Hannan sponsored 1,000 Vietnamese families to settle there after the Fall of Saigon.
Transcription of audio: “I came to the United States in 1975 at 27 years old. I came down to New Orleans in 1978, and after retiring, I worked on a farm here in 2013 and worked until now. I grow vegetables for the market and New Orleans restaurants.” – Phue Nguyen, organic farmer
The East’s multiethnic community produced a plethora of local businesses and family-owned grocery stores across the area. Then in 2005, the levees broke, changing the food landscape.
After nearly all of the East flooded in 2005, in the wake of Katrina, many supermarkets and food stores left rather than rebuild. While fast-food restaurants fixed up their properties and stayed, residents were left with far less access to healthier food options.
According to a NewsOne survey in 2011, six years after Katrina, New Orleans was ranked as the number one worst urban food desert in the nation. Pre-Katrina, New Orleans had more than 35 supermarkets. While today’s citywide total is estimated to be between 30 and 40, close to the pre-Katrina numbers, the stores are bunched together into neighborhoods that recovered better from the flooding, with only two choosing to stay open in New Orleans East.
Food boxes and farmers markets serve as alternatives
Some community-minded gardens have tried to address post-Katrina healthy-food gaps through food-box delivery. Grow Dat Youth Farm, a nonprofit agricultural program created to empower young people (ages 15 to 21) through growing food, prepares weekly food distribution boxes that can be picked up or delivered to consumers around the City Park area, with 50% discounts offered to SNAP recipients.
Beyond urban agriculture, Grow Dat students take a class called “Market Bill,” which analyzes how race and class affects access to healthy food. As they study the ways that lack of food access overlaps with racial and class oppression, the class starts becoming a life lesson, exploring ways to shape policy, said farm manager Leo Gorman. “Young people are dissecting across their own differences and life experiences and crafting solutions.”
The youth are also working on solutions to Grow Dat’s own processes, he said. For instance, residents from food-insecure areas face hurdles picking up the farm’s food boxes because of a lack of cars and mass transportation.
“We’re thinking of new ways to address [those barriers], such as new drop-offs down the road,” Gorman said.
Other residents visit local farmers’ markets to buy pesticide-free goods.
Brian Baskin, director of markets at the nonprofit Crescent City Farmers’ Market saw a slight uptick in attendance. “There’s an increased interest in fresh greens particularly with the cyclospora outbreak,” he said. The salmonella outbreak resulted in the residents scouting other goods, including eggs and jalapeños, he said.
Some local vendors have faced challenges because some people are nervous about eating any produce, Baskin said. But the Crescent City Farmers Market has a strict farm-to-table policy, where produce and meats must come from small businesses or farms within a 100-mile radius.
Though the Crescent City Farmers Market is now limited to three locations: Uptown, Mid-City and City Park, the market is also hoping to establish more market sites in geographically isolated regions of the city with limited transportation, including New Orleans East and the 9th Ward.
Few buses run regularly to the city from New Orleans East. While the average Orleans Parish resident can reach roughly 33% of the parish’s jobs within an hour using public transportation, that number decreases to 5% in New Orleans East.
The G&C Meat Market was also established with bus riders in mind, because most customers rely on public transit, said Gordon and Candice McFarland. “It was important for us to be located on a bus line,” she said. For [many] residents, we’re the only place to purchase food.”
