(upbeat music) - This year, we were actually able to partner up with our bicycle shop, which really works with teens and young adults that are experiencing homelessness.

- I mean, this is just going to be free food for the community.

- And so we've been able to enlist them to pay these youth to be our distribution arm.

- There's something beautiful about dirty carrots, you know?

- They pick up our produce and then they bike it over to the North Market.

So now that dollar produce, it stays at North Market.

It stays with our distribution channel and it stays with our urban ag outfit.

And we're a nonprofit.

And we recycle that money right back into the community.

- Where people live, in which community they reside, and their ability to access healthy, fresh, nutritious food, absolutely affects their eating habits.

A piece of what I believe contributes to people's eating habits, is how in close proximity they are to being able to access food.

- What are the restaurants like in your neighborhood?

If you can walk somewhere, where can you walk?

If it's a corner store, what does that corner store look like?

What are the kinds of foods that are available there?

Looking at the food environments in certain neighborhoods, can tell you a lot about health outcomes and a lot about the investments that we're making in those areas.

And there are just neighborhoods that just simply don't have the access that they deserve.

- We can't talk about food insecurity if we don't both intersect, both place and race as part of that conversation, and certainly more Black and Brown communities are food insecure.

In addition, our rural areas are also experiencing disproportionately kind of impact around food access.

- When it comes to food access, race absolutely plays a role.

Race plays a role in the way that race also plays a role in health disparities.

Depending on where you live, what your zip code is, that often has direct ties to one's racial identity.

- It's going to take a multi-pronged approach.

And one of the biggest things that I think we can lift up is policy.

And what are the policy changes that need to happen?

And then the kind of financial incentives to make grocers and other food access enterprises move in developing.

- So often kind of where we live shapes the world that we think we understand, right?

And you might have a ton of grocery options in your neighborhood.

Affording food might not be something that you personally are struggling with.

But as we can build relationships get to know people who live places that are different from where we live, who have different incomes or different education levels than we do, I think sort of our view of that expands.

- Food access is really prioritizing and centering the aspirations of the community.

Rooting the work in justice.

And so I'm hoping, that we will see more intentional investments that prioritizes and centers community voice and that they are the owners of new development that comes into communities.