"Food Deserts" in Mississippi (Meridian, Lambert: houses, living in, stores)

[grasshopper_60619]

Does anyone knows if "food deserts" are more common in parts of Mississippi than other areas in the Southeastern USA?




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g-X8GNBYCM

[sammyreynolds1977]

USDA Defines Food Deserts | American Nutrition Association

Here's a good map. Most of them are in the south and most of them are rural areas. So the number of the in the Mississippi Delta makes sense.

[Southern man]

Love the map. It includes the area around Big Bend National Park.

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

If more people did like their ancestors and grow vegetable gardens in the summer, the problem would lessen a bit.

I see the water tower in Lambert has been repainted. It used to be painted like a cotton boll, like the one in Sumner.

http://tinyurl.com/p9ygvok

[GrandviewGloria]

Food Deserts in Mississippi are more common, more extensive, and more devastating in their impact on individuals: especially in the Delta. And that's why it's so important to evacuate the Delta's poor to better places. Atlanta is the obvious choice, since it's the unofficial Capital of the South. Tyler Perry speaks about the transformational aspect of arriving in Atlanta, where there is so much opportunity for traditionally poor and oppressed peoples.

The difference is like day and night. Suddenly, there is access to big grocery stores (far different from living at the edge of a field, without any store, of any kind, within walking distance), excellent services of all kinds, and jobs galore, for anyone who might be inclined to work.

Two generations of my own uncles, on the Native American side, left Mississippi for cities like Atlanta (they've lived/owned industries in Ashville, Charlotte, Knoxville, Chattanooga...). They were dirt-poor, from a family frequently on the verge of starvation. If they'd stayed, the choice would have been between subsistence farming and criminality. But they made it out of Mississippi, and are doing well: REALLY well. They married white people from prominent families, and their descendants are now in "Hidden World of Atlanta's Private Clubs". (would'a been nice if they'd snatched Mom & me out of our poverty, when I was a baby. But they did "discover Gloria" after I'd crawled out of that mudhole on my own, gotten a doctorate, a spectacular husband, "connections", and a sizable array of investments: but I'll take what's offered - with gratitude. It's nice up in those country clubs. It's nice not having to "fly commercial", anymore. And it's nice at their beach houses and their mountain houses. And it was nice for my children to suddenly have relatives.)

One of Mississippi's power companies ran an ad, once, with text that read something like, "A TEN DOLLAR BILL and A CHOICE: Not too long ago, many a young man was faced with the agonizing choice of using that Ten Dollar Bill to feed his family, or to use it for gas, to drive his family as far from Mississippi as that money would take them." (The point of the ad, of course, was that rural electrification had made things better. It did: but not TOO much better. I assume readers understand they need to adjust for Inflation.) My uncles chose to leave. They did not look back.

And the benefits of such a move are even more pronounced for Blacks than they are for us Indians.

Poor whites zoom ahead, too, when they make it to more prosperous regions. It's as if some invisible force which had been holding you down is suddenly lifted. So much more is possible. And so much more is profitable.

Really, evacuating Mississippi's poor to less oppressive environments in other states would make a wonderful focus for a charitable group.

Mississippi is a wonderful place, for certain kinds of people. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Missi...e/126100860529 It takes a whole array of innate personal qualities, to do well in Mississippi, which many people simply do not have. The people who do well frequently grow and can their own produce. I know PLENTY of Mississippi multimillionaires who have vegetable gardens, fruit trees, pots of kitchen herbs on the patio - a clump of garlic here, a fig tree there... And they know how to order food from catalogues (and now, online), if there's something they can't find locally. Can't find a five pound bag of barley? ORDER IT. http://www.montanaflour.com/store/kamut/ Sugar in the commercial tomato sauce? Make your own! But, like I said, that sort of lifestyle requires a certain kind of innate wiring many people simply do not have.

If you're in Mississippi and you're poor, then you are NOT one of those people with the innate qualities needed for succeeding there. You did not inherit those innate qualities. Your family are probably not the kind of people who do well there. It's a difficult environment, where most people simply do not thrive. So, try someplace entirely different. You'd be amazed how things which seemed impossible can become possible, once you've moved to a place where ordinary people can succeed.

I haven't heard of any Food Deserts in Atlanta. But if there are any, there's a nice, air-conditioned bus, to take you to the big grocery store of your choice.

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

There's also a concrete structure in Lambert that was used to fill steam locomotives with coal.

https://goo.gl/maps/Vp9Yq

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

Originally Posted by GrandviewGloria

I know PLENTY of Mississippi multimillionaires who have vegetable gardens, fruit trees, pots of kitchen herbs on the patio - a clump of garlic here, a fig tree there...

I have a small vegetable garden and fig trees and I am not a multimillionaire by any means.

[An Einnseanair]

Originally Posted by GrandviewGloria

Really, evacuating Mississippi's poor to less oppressive environments in other states would make a wonderful focus for a charitable group.

Mississippi is a wonderful place, for certain kinds of people. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Missi...e/126100860529 It takes a whole array of innate personal qualities, to do well in Mississippi, which many people simply do not have. The people who do well frequently grow and can their own produce. I know PLENTY of Mississippi multimillionaires who have vegetable gardens, fruit trees, pots of kitchen herbs on the patio - a clump of garlic here, a fig tree there... And they know how to order food from catalogues (and now, online), if there's something they can't find locally. Can't find a five pound bag of barley? ORDER IT. KAMUT® brand khorasan wheat | Montana Flour & Grains Store Sugar in the commercial tomato sauce? Make your own! But, like I said, that sort of lifestyle requires a certain kind of innate wiring many people simply do not have.

If you're in Mississippi and you're poor, then you are NOT one of those people with the innate qualities needed for succeeding there. You did not inherit those innate qualities. Your family are probably not the kind of people who do well there. It's a difficult environment, where most people simply do not thrive. So, try someplace entirely different. You'd be amazed how things which seemed impossible can become possible, once you've moved to a place where ordinary people can succeed.

I haven't heard of any Food Deserts in Atlanta. But if there are any, there's a nice, air-conditioned bus, to take you to the big grocery store of your choice.

While desirable on the surface, evacuating the poor out of Mississippi wouldn't solve the problem. Those "innate qualities" you mentioned are ambition, intelligence, and a good work ethic. You need all three, plus knowledge and opportunity, to excel in life. You need at least two to advance out of the station your parents put you in.

All the people you mentioned did well once they left Mississippi, but correlation doesn't equal causation. The people you mentioned were all striving for and willing to work for a better life; they had those innate qualities. Once exposed to the better opportunities their development accelerated and they flourished.

You could relocate all the families you want: if they lack those three things they will languish on gub'mint welfare in the new location just like they are in their old location. There are ghettos in Atlanta that rival the poverty in the Delta.


The best thing we could do for the poor anywhere is educate them. It won't make any difference with the lazy, but it will open up the universe for the people with those innate qualities. Once they have the knowledge, once they realize they can get out of poverty and excel at life, they can solve the other problems on their own. Even those who choose to stay (say, to take care of relatives) can benefit. The reason why most rural poor people don't have gardens is because they don't know how to start. Teach them. Instead of just handing out EBT cards, teach classes and provide public locations and equipment for gardens.

[ColdAilment]

I used to work part time in Kemper County at an outlying Naval Air Station there. Kemper County is designated a food desert. Kemper County has right around 10,000 people and only two significant towns, they are DeKalb and Scooba. DeKalb has ONE grocery store which has a very meager selection of foods and almost no produce section to speak of. The nearest actual grocery store would be the Walmart Supercenter or Win-Dixxie in Meridian, which is around 30-40 miles away. The locals of Kemper County definitely showed the signs of people living in a food desert, rather poor health overall and a lot more obesity than in the larger towns and cities that had more options.